Mel, I remember it from "Humor in Uniform" also. One thing about getting to a certain age - you get to see things come around again. Jokes stick around for a long, long time.

Here's one I've always liked that I bet dates from the 1920's because it deals with a hand-cranked wall telephone.

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A little farmer lived alone outside of town, and he stuttered and couldn't talk plain. He decided to finally get a telephone installed like his neighbors had.

He stopped by the telephone office in town and placed his order, and a couple of days later two big guys from the phone company came, ran a wire to the highway, and installed a phone on his kitchen wall.

As soon as they left, he tried to make his first call.

(crank, crank, crank) "Operator."

"G-g-gimme one tree tree fo' fi', peas."

"Excuse me, sir?"

"O-o-one tree tree fo' fi', peas."

"I can't understand you, sir."

"O-O-ONE TREE TREE FO' FI'!"

The Operator got snooty and said "Sir, you're going to have to talk better than that or you can't make a call."

That made the little farmer mad, and he said "Y-y-you can jusht take thish phone and shhtick it up your asshh.", and he slammed it down.

The next morning the two big guys from the phone company knocked on the farmer's door. One of them said "Sir, we don't allow people to talk to our women like that. Now, you've got a choice - you can call the operator up and apologize right now, or we're going to remove your telephone."

The little farmer calmly walked to the telephone.

(crank, crank, crank) "Operator."

"A-a-are you the operator I told to shhtick this ph-ph-phone up her asshh?"

Still offended, the operator said "I CERTAINLY am!"

"W-w-well, get r-r-ready. Th-they're bringing it in!"