E. Annie Proulx’s knitting joke

I knit, and I like jokes.  Here’s a good one from E. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News which I finished recently:

“I can tell you about the time buddy was ripping along down the Trans-Canada knitting about as fast as the truck was going when this Mountie spies him.  Starts to chase after him, doing a hundred and forty km per.  Finally gets alongside, signs the transport feller to stop, but he’s so deep in his knitting he never notices. … Mountie flashes his light, finally has to shout out the window, ‘Pull over!  Pull over!’  So the great transport knitter looks at the Mountie, shakes his head a bit and says, ‘Why no sir, ’tis a cardigan.'”

Okay, corny joke, but I love it anyway.  The image of truck drivers roaring down the roads of Canada while knitting is burned on my brain.  Men knitting–just like the old days.  Yes, my friend Heather tells me shepherds used to knit while their sheep grazed and did whatever it is sheep do all day.  (If they’re anything like my kids, they would be crowding around, peering at my knitting, asking, “Is that MY wool you’re knitting with?”)

Proulx did plenty of research (and possibly fell in love with Newfoundland as her bio says she splits her time between there and Vermont) while writing the novel.  I don’t know how much of it is true, how much local legend, and how much just Newfie humor, but the same character claims, “This driver used to barrel right across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, had his arms sticking through the steering wheel, knitting away like a machine.  Had a proper gansey knit by the time he got to Montreal, sell it for good money as a Newf fisherman’s authentic handicraft.”

Who ever said men can’t multitask?

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