Ham on Wry

READING THROUGH some of the earliest issues of the Grapevine, we wondered whether those "six ink-stained wretches" who started the magazine had much of a sense of humor. For the first year and a half of publication, we found no humor section at all. We don't know why that was, but we were glad to see that in December 1945, the editors wised up and began asking readers for their favorite jokes and quips, and put together the first humor column, entitled "!!!Barleycorn!!!" Here are some jokes that appeared in that early forerunner of Ham on Wry: