My cousin refused to lie about pushing over the outhouse

Mark Twain quoted Benjamin Disraeli years ago when he was talking about the prevalence of lying on the national scene. He said there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics.

When I was growing up, the truth wouldn't always set you free, but it made living in our household a lot easier. My dad could tell if I was in the garage and knew what I did there. There were several things in the garage he didn't want touched. There was an old 12 gauge shotgun way up in the rafters. He might as well have just handed it to me; in those days I lived in trees, rafters and roof-tops. There was a box of shotgun shells, which he wanted me to never touch. I didn't bother to count them and he did. But the holes we blew in the garage floor sort of gave it away.

I think I mentioned holding the shells in a vise and blowing them off with a hammer and a nail set in an earlier column. It took a few near-death episodes for me to realize I could take the BB pellets out of the shell without having the whole thing blow up in my face, and afterwards enjoy the same explosion and smell of burning gunpowder — realistic enough to satisfy my boyish desire to flirt with fire, death, deafness and pedal amputations.

I still have 10 toes in spite of the fact there were only half as many shotgun shells in the box when we moved from that house as there were when we moved in, and not a single shot was fired through the barrel of the gun.

I stopped lying about what I did in the garage because my dad always knew everything anyway.

My dad could countenance a little lying from me, but a lying politician really set him off. One of the most common lies they still proffer is the yearly financial disclosure lie. A really rich politician would say his net worth was somewhere between $250,000 and $10 million. That's like you earning $100,000 and declaring an income of 50 bucks.

You have to be accurate to the penny, and them bums get by with the accuracy of a two-year-old baby making it to the bathroom on time.

Some of the lies being told are so ludicrous it defies one's imagination that the "experts" even try.

There was one major lie told during the Great Beverly Hills Leaf Blower Fiasco. The government EPA guy said that running a leaf blower for an hour put out as much pollution as 100 cars going 100 miles.

Now those same "statisticians" (lying idiots) are telling us that if you trade six of those new fluorescent bulbs for six incandescent bulbs, the effect would be the same as taking a million cars off the road.

I, for one, don't want a million cars off the road. And I sure as heck don't want light bulbs that are so dim you have to hold a candle under it to see if they're turned on. And don't even get me started on how difficult it's gonna be to dispose of them, seein's as how they are loaded with mercury and other pollutants. It would make the asbestos out at the schoolhouse look like face powder.

George Washington never told a lie. Back in the '30s, one Halloween night, a bunch of my cousins knocked over an outhouse. When my uncle confronted my cousin with the news of the event, he started with a little psychology. He said, "Son, do you remember the story of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and the fact his father was so happy with him for being truthful, he didn't give him a spanking?

"In light of that, were you one of the kids that knocked over the outhouse last night?"

My cousin said, "Well ... yes."

At that, my uncle turned him over his knee and walloped his posterior with a vengeance never experienced by either the spanker or the spankee.

My cousin sniveled with each word when he protested, "You said you wouldn't spank me for telling the truth."

Said his dad, "There was a slight difference. George Washington's dad wasn't in the tree when he chopped it down."

Bob Bader is a local writer and chiropractor.