Rick E, I can't comment on what the blow off line SHOULD have been. To the best of my recollection (never very good on my best days) the story ends just that way.

There are stories that do that. They end with a twist and a wry smile instead of a guffaw of laughter. There are ranges of humor in the old stories and the old timers (some even older than Sandy, Art, and Kendall!) used to tell them not so much for the laugh but to play with the minds of their listeners. Thus, Kendall's story about the bear and the thin ice above is very funny but not so much for the punch line but for the twist that it puts on the listeners' heads. I would bet that at least half of the listeners to that story miss the fact that the narrator started out picking berries and ended on thin ice. Fortunately there is always some alert listener who catches the "mistake" and brings it to the narrator's attention thus opening up the punchline.