*Now and then as I ponder what words mean and how they may best be arranged, which is really what that lawsuit was about, I think of one of the best told stories I ever heard. It is precise, dramatic, artfully contrived, and delived with manificent speed. A lobsterman on Vinalhaven Island told it and it runs thus:
My wife had always wanted to see Disneyland, so we went to the main, and one day in Utah...
consider that. With nineteen words he has taken care of motivation, preparation, getting his automobile off the island by ferry, and he has covered two thousand miles. Concisely and instantly he has informed his listener of all antecedant material, and is ready to proceed:
... one day in Utah I came up behind this pick-up that was doing about fifteen miles an hour, and just as I started to pass it the thing swung straight across my bow.
The lobsterman, paused, looking at me to judge how long his suspense should be continued, and he soon said:
Now, sir- there was an accident!
I had no reason to contradict him, so he concluded:
Then this joker gets out of this pick-up feather white, and I can tell you he was some mad, and he should at me and says, "You fool, you- you should-a known I was turnin' off! I live there!
I've long believed that the laws might be better written if more lobstermen ran for the legislature.
*a clipping I read at work today. It was a part of a longer article, 'How to confuse speech' by John Gould, for some local newspaper criticizing the courts back in the mid- 1960s in Canada~ couldn't trace it.
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