"CAN YOU TOP THIS?"

If you are 70 years old, or there-abouts, you may remember when radio was king.  Those days before TV and computers.
Colgate-Palmolive sponsored a program called. "Can You Top This".  Listeners would send in jokes and if they were used on the program they were paid $10.  The joke was read to the audience, a live one in those days, and their laughter was recorded on a "laugh meter".
Three joke tellers were on stage to tell a better joke.  They were; "Senator Ford, Harry Hershfield and Joe Laurie Jr.
Now each man would come up with a joke to try to top the one just read and if the response on the "laugh meter" did not top it $5 was added to the sender's check.  All three tried to top the joke sent in so it was possible for that person to earn $25 from the joke.
Many of the jokes were ethnic, Jewish and Irish being favored but also included other races as well.
The program was very popular and ran for 12 years, from 1942 to 1954.
It seems a shame that we as a people have become so sensitive and "thin-skined" that the humor is gone from relationships that we used to value and delight in........Medicineman!