The “Father and Son Banquet" was an annual FFA event. That within itself suggests a different era in time. I’m sure there were single mothers raising boys back in those days, but I didn’t know very many of them. It was assumed that every boy had a Dad, and we were able to share this annual event with our fathers.
We didn’t learn much about farming at these events. The guest speakers didn’t discuss crop rotation. I did learn some valuable techniques of public speaking from those who were our guest lecturers. I learned that if you don’t know much about your subject, you go for humor.
One year the guest speaker was the local Baptist pastor. He talked about the family experience of trying to find a project for his son. Apparently, they settle on a chicken – not chickens, but one chicken. This created a great deal of family consternation. Do you name your chicken? If so what you name him or her. I think it had to be a her because he indicated they expected eggs. Of course he may not have known that roosters don’t lay eggs. Where is the chicken going to sleep? Does it eat with the family at the table? If it does lay eggs, where would you expect to find them? on the couch? on the kitchen cabinet (that would be convenient)? Or would it be a hide and seek game. As you can see it has endless possibilities for a humorous talk.
On another occasion a politician came. He was equally uninformed about farming. He told a story about another speaker who was invited to address a group of farmers. This fellow had one subject that he lectured on - Patrick Henry. He was a Patrick Henry devotee and was well informed on his material. Unfortunately, the farmers assigned him a topic – “Colic in Mules.” But the guy was an ingenious speaker. He knew how to work his expertise into any topic. He said, “Colic in mules begins in the alimentary canal. There’s a great war that rages between the while corpuscles and the red corpuscles and on each side the combatants are screaming, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
On another occasion I attended an FFA event at Tarleton College in Stephenville. At the beginning of the program the MC announced that the speaker was late because his plane had not landed at the airport. He kept fumbling around for time, and at one point he introduced a West Texas rancher, as a VIP in the audience. He talked a little more and the speaker didn’t arrive, so he asked the rancher to come up and say a few words. The rancher stuttered, and stammered. He was nervous. If you remember the Don Knotts character on the Steve Allen show many years ago, it was something like that. He had trouble making words come out right. In a little while they began to sound funny, but you were afraid to laugh because the speaker was obviously embarrassed. Then it become so hilariously funny that you had to laugh. Of course the whole thing was a ploy. The speaker was not delayed by a late arriving plane. The West Texas rancher wasn’t a rancher at all. He was a highly polished public speaker with an incredible sense of timing.
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