photo by: Lauren Fox

Betsy Evans has been providing her neighborhood with laughs and one-liners via her daily jokes, which she started a couple months ago to give people a reason to smile during these difficult times.

Everyday, there’s a new joke outside of Betsy Evans’ home in the Hillcrest neighborhood.

On Thursday, the whiteboard easel read, “The best thing about the good old days was that I wasn’t good and I wasn’t old!”

For the past couple months, Evans has provided the neighborhood with laughs and one-liners with her daily jokes, an effort the 80-year-old started to give people a reason to smile when “there’s not a whole heck of a lot to laugh about.”

“I think I have a good sense of humor — inherited from my mother,” Evans said. “I like people. I enjoy seeing them smile and laugh. Especially during these times.”

Across the street from Evans’ home is neighbor Beth Nettels. She said she notices that people who walk by like to stop and take pictures.

“It’s charming,” she said. “It’s nice to see people getting a kick out of it.”

Evans first started exchanging jokes as a lab courier for LMH Health. Her job was to drive around town collecting samples from doctors’ offices that needed to be taken to the lab.

“There was this one doctor I saw on my rounds that was just friendly and one day he told me a joke, and next time I saw him I told him one,” Evans said. “We started this routine of trading one-liners. It was really fun. I looked forward to running into him. I missed that when I quit that job this spring.”

So Evans decided to start putting out jokes for her neighbors to enjoy. She said there’s a lot of traffic on her street. Evans hopes the doctor who started her tradition will “read this and know that I miss him.”

Here are some of Evans’ favorite jokes from the past couple months: “I know a guy who’s addicted to brake fluid, but he says he can stop anytime,” “I dream of a time when a chicken can cross the road without its motives being questioned” and “The spread of COVID-19 depends on two things: 1) How dense the population is, and 2) How dense the population is.”

Rachel and Jared Auten, who live next door to Evans, said they love her and the humor she’s been adding to these sad times — even when the humor hits a little too close to home.

“One that we thought was really funny — because we have our garden right here in the front yard — was a couple days ago she had one that said something like, ‘Growing your own tomatoes is a good way to waste 3 months of your life to save $3.97,'” Rachel said. “So we felt called out by that, but in a funny way.

“So we were like, ‘Betsy’s not getting any tomatoes this year,'” Rachel joked, laughing.

Evans gets most of her jokes from friends: “Old people send a lot of emails,” she said. She also receives the occasional joke from kids in the neighborhood and sometimes, her iPhone.

“Did you know that Siri can tell you a joke?” she asked. “If I run out of material I can always ask Siri.”

Evans said she is starting to run out of material, so she’s asking anyone with jokes on hand to send her an email with their suggestion. She especially likes a good play on words, she said. Evans plans to continue with her daily jokes until COVID-19 is no longer “headline news.” She can be reached at evanstobetsy@sunflower.com.