Today’s Joke: Apr. 8

Photo ©iStockphoto.com/ Heather Craig

It’s 3:00 p.m. on a hot summer day in the middle of farm territory. A businessman is driving home from a vacation, racing back because he has an important meeting with his boss scheduled for the next day, when the car suddenly seized. It’s been at least a half hour since he passed the last town, and he has about 100 miles to go before reaching home.

He hasn’t seen a car for quite some time, not since that town, anyway; so he decides to continue on foot down the highway in an effort to find a place where he could use a telephone.

He sees no indication of civilization for two hours; then, appearing on the left side of the road is a sign next to an unpaved driveway. He reads as he walks to the sign: HORSE FOR SALE $35. So he walks up the driveway another two miles before finding a farmhouse.

A knock on the front door is answered by a woman in her 30s.

“Hello, ma’am. My car broke down a few miles down the highway. May I use your telephone to make arrangements to fix it and go back home? I need to be at an important meeting tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have a telephone here; in fact, there are no telephone lines at all in this area.”

“Sorry to hear that. What’s this about a horse you have for sale?”

“It’s true, we do. Good-looking, strong horse, in fact. Would you like to take a look at him?”

“Sure,” the businessman said.

In the stable is an alert yet placid horse, his eyes showing plenty of life. The horse shows no fear or aggression toward the stranger.

“He looks healthy and seems pleasant enough. But only $35 — what’s wrong with him?” asks the man.

“Nothing wrong at all. He’s in the prime of his life; but he’s my father’s horse, and Dad’s getting up there in years and can’t take care of it anymore, and since I have my hands full with everything else here, we need to sell the horse to someone who appreciates it.”

“I see. Anything else?”

“Wellllll, my father is a very religious person; so he trained him to obey just two commands. If you want the horse to go anywhere, you say, ‘Praise the Lord,’ and if you want him to stop, you say, ‘Amen.’ Other than that, he’s a perfectly normal horse.”

“OK, you sold a horse,” the businessman says to the woman, thinking that he’d be home in a few hours before calling the tow company to get the car — he could then sell the horse for a huge profit!

After paying the $35, he mounts the horse and commands, “Praise the Lord!” The horse trots across an expansive grassland at a leisurely pace.

The man thinks to himself, “This is nice, but too slow. Let’s see…” and commands again, “Praise the Lord!”

Now the horse is going at a trot, still going across the grassland as the sun begins to set. “One more time — PRAISE THE LORD!!”

The horse is going at a full gallop, hurtling over four-foot-high fences and running full speed toward a wide, deep ravine.

As the man sees what’s ahead of him, he panics and forgets the command! So he starts saying everything he could think of as the horse continues running and hurtling toward possible doom. When he runs out of ideas, he starts saying a prayer in desperation: “Our Father…”

The horse and panicked rider continue their flight toward the cliff. Three hundred yards, two hundred yards, one hundred yards, fifty… when he finished the prayer, “AMEN!”

The horse slides to a stop, his front hooves less than ten feet from the ravine. The businessman wipes his brow, collapses, and heaves a huge sigh of relief.

“PRAISE THE LORD!”

Source: Good Clean Funnies List