1/5/97 BURLINGTON, Wis. (AP) - A man won the Burlington Liar's Club annual competition last week by reporting a child was so small that his missing-person photograph would be confined to a half-and-half dairy carton.

The organization was established in the 1920s by newspaper reporters fabricating humorous fables for a slow-news holiday. This year's contest attracted about 300 entries from throughout the world, it said.

Stories are judged on how logical and realistic they sound prior to the punch line, club spokesman John Soeth said.

The 1996 winner is John Bertschler, of Ohio.

"He told us about a child that was in his son's grade in school. He was so small that they figured if he was ever lost, his picture would start appearing on cartons of half-and-half," Soeth said.

A person's gotta know about stuff like this, dontchathink, Art? Actually, Art, it may be only in the Midwest that people tell lies for fun. In the rest of the country, people are dead serious about it - they do it for what they call "expediency."
-Joe Offer-