As I delete my forwarded emails, I often pick some to share in this column.

Following are a few gleanings:

So-called experts are not always correct in their predictions.

For example, check these: Before World War I, a French military strategist and World War I commander said: "Airplanes are interesting but of no military value."

And in 1899, the U.S Commissioner of Patents declared that everything that can be invented has been invented.

I'm sure that Decca Records retracted their rejection of the Beatles when they reported: "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out."

Another retraction probably came from the 1977 president of Digital Equipment who predicted: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."

And what of the elementary teacher who said of Albert Einstein: "He's not very intelligent," and the high school coach who noted that Michael Jordan did not "have much talent."

If you are a lexophile (one who loves words), you might enjoy thinking about these sentences:

You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

The batteries were given out free of charge.

A dentist and a manicurist married; they fought tooth and nail.

A boiled egg is hard to beat.

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

A bicycle can't stand alone; it's just two tired.

We Southerners are accustomed to ridicule about our dialects, but some "rednecks" may not appreciate the following jokes:

A senior citizen in Louisiana was overheard saying: "When the end of the world comes, I hope to be in Louisiana."

When asked why, he replied: "Because everything happens in Louisiana 20 years later than in the rest of the world."

A young man from Mississippi came running into a store to tell his buddy: "Bubba, somebody just stole your pickup truck from the parking lot!"

Bubba asked, "Didja see who it was?" His friend answered, "I couldn't tell, but I got the license number."

When a Tennessee state trooper pulled over a pickup on I-65 and asked the driver: "Got any ID?", the driver replied: "Bout whut?"

Then there was the North Carolina man who had a flat tire, pulled off on the side of road and put a bouquet of flowers in front of the car and one behind.

A passerby studied the scene and was curious enough to turn around and go back to ask the fellow what the problem was.

The man replied: "I got a flat tahr."

"But what's with the flowers?"

The man responded: "Well, when you break down, they tell you to put flares in the front and flares in the back. I never did understand it neither."

But maybe this Georgian had the best comment: "You kin say whut y'all want bout the South, but I betcha never heard of nobody retirin and movin North."

Perhaps our biggest smiles these days, however, are happening when we see the fluffy white and glowing gold blossoms on trees and shrubs, realizing that there are many more to come.

Helen Taylor's column appears periodically in the Dawson Community News.