The Funniest People in Families, Volume 4

This is a short, quick, and easy read. Some Sample Anecdotes: • Edsel Ford of the famous Ford family had the ability to recognize good advertising, and he had the ability to make up his mind quickly. He once read five full-page ads for the Ford Motor Company, then said, "I think they will do all right. I have one change I'd like to suggest. In one of the advertisements, I see you use the word 'perfect.' I think it would be better to say 'correct.' Nothing is perfect." • Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) was a Swiss educator and reformer, but he was very careless about the way he dressed. One day, poorly dressed as usual like a beggar, he was arrested by a police officer who thought that he was a tramp and possibly dangerous. The police officer took Mr. Pestalozzi before a judge, who recognized him and greeted him warmly. Of course, the police officer was embarrassed, but Mr. Pestalozzi gave him some money and told him, "You have done your duty." • Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman tended to work with the same 18 people over and over, and he always hired a hostess, who brewed coffee and baked pastries and made the set homey. At Cannes, film director David Lean once compared notes with Mr. Bergman, asking him, "How large a crew do you use?" Mr. Bergman answered, "I always work with 18 friends." Mr. Lean marveled, "That's funny. I work with 150 enemies." • African-American major league baseball player Bob Gibson's second wife was a white, blonde woman named Wendy. At a gathering of baseball people, Wendy looked around, then told her husband, "We're the only black couple here." • When children's book author Verna Aardema was growing up, she would go to her secret place in the cedar swamp in back of her house for two reasons: to escape from having to do the dishes and to make up stories. Her ability to make up stories served her well. When she became the mother of a finicky eater named Paula, she started to make up "eating stories" in an attempt to get her young daughter to eat. She mailed the idea for an eating story to a publisher, and soon she had her first published book. Later in life, when she was really busy she would sometimes disappear into her office after a meal. Her husband calls that "going to the swamp," because he has to do the dishes just as Verna's sisters had to do the dishes when she disappeared into the swamp so she could make up stories.