photo by Russell Lee
There used to be benches in front of the courthouse, and there used to be folks resting in those benches most days.
These folks were the world’s problem solvers. If one could take a moment and sit on the bench and listen to the discussion taking place, one could learn a lot of good, factual, scientific information to take care of all the problems of the day.
For an example, how to handle your domino hand when you are holding the double six and the fellow you are playing has the six-three. You are ahead just 15 points in the game. If you want to know the answer to this problem, you need to go sit on the bench in front of the courthouse.
We now know why the March weather has slipped to April. According to the wisdom of the bench, NASA fired off so many rockets from Florida all that energy expended leaving the earth kind of moved the earth a little forward in the rotation. Simple solution to get the weather back in sync with the Old Farmer’s Almanac would be to fire some rockets off in California. There is an in-depth, scientific answer to a world problem. It was solved right there on that bench in front of the courthouse.
There is a really good method, according to those on the bench, for keeping quality people in the community. If you keep your nose clean for ten years, you will get a letter in the mail saying you can stay another ten. If you don’t get that letter, it is time for you to move on.
Progress has to continued to move on, and someone inside the courthouse decided the outside benches had to go. So, you don’t see all that wisdom solving problems on the bench in front of the courthouse now days.
I know they would have been able to solve a lot of problems that we have before us today. Shoot, back then, we really didn’t have all that many problems in the first place. But, look at us now. Maybe they need to put those benches back in front of the courthouse. Think so?
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