(Host) Vermonters appreciate a funny story, and awhile back, VPR invited listeners to tell us their funny stories about life in Vermont. Tuesday at 7 pm, we’ll hear a selection of Funny Vermont Stories, as recorded before an audience in our Colchester studios. And to get your funny bone limbered up, here is Jim Howland of Hartland, someone who has been telling funny stories to the Windsor Rotary for years.
(Jim Howland) Some years ago, I worked at the Vermont State Prison in Windsor as the institutional parole officer. And one of the perogatives of working there was eating our meals in the officers’ dining room. And that was downstairs from the guard room. So just before noon, why we we’d go into the guard room and wait until they’d open the gate to let us down into the dining room.
Well, one day I went in and the boss mechanic was a long time friend of mine named Warren Tessier. He was sitting there with a couple of state troopers, waiting to go have lunch.
In those days, the troopers would bring their cruisers in for servicing at the prison garage. Well, I thought I could pull their chain a little bit, so I went over, I greeted them and then I said, “Warren,” I says, “you know, when I get out on the Interstate and I get up around 90, 95…” I said, “my car vibrates like everything.” I says, “What do you suppose causes that?”
Warren didn’t change expression at all.
He says, “Jimmy,” he says, “that has to be the nut behind the steering wheel.” The troopers liked that answer. So did I.
Storyteller Jim Howland is from Hartland.