As Jan. 20, 2025, nears, with some still feeling bitter and the nation’s flags flying at half-mast, I bemusedly recalled this old story attributed to one Dr. Thaddeus Pratt from Hancock County.

While suturing a cut on the weathered paw of a 75-year-old Maine dairy farmer, whose hand was caught in a gate while bringing in his cows, I struck up a conversation. The topic got around to politics — where we discussed some new politician, who was full of himself and far too big for his britches. Finally, the old farmer summed it up by saying, “Ayuh, what ought we expect? He’s just a post turtle.”

Not being familiar with the term, I asked him what a “post turtle” was. The old feller said, “When you’re drivin’ down a country road, and you come across a fence post with a turtle teeterin’ atop it, that’s a ‘post turtle.'”

The old dairyman saw the puzzled look on my face and continued to explain. “You know he didn’t get up there by himself; he doesn’t belong up there, and he doesn’t know what to do while he is up there.

“And, the worst of it is, most of us are left to wonder: Just what kind of a dimwit put him up there in the first place?”

Bruce Pineau
Lyman

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