It’s not only because the joke is funny, but also because I’m experiencing the kind of secret joy of being an insider. I’m guessing, what, maybe 1% of the general population gets this Fark Photoshop contest entry. It’s a response (one of many) to the question “what if seniors ruled the earth?”, created by this Navy dude. It’s a little wide, but I want you to be able to read it:
I’m sure a bunch of you will get it (Richard definitely should). If you get the joke and want to explain it, feel free to do so in the comments.
UPDATE: You clever commenters are correct:
“We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell them stories that don’t go anywhere. Like that time I took the ferry over to Shelbyville; I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. ‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say. Now where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have any white onions, because of the war; the only thing you can get was those big yellow ones.†– Grandpa Simpson
DarrenBarefoot.com 
1. The logo is from The Onion
2. “Onion on our belts” is a Simpsons reference. Grandpa Simpson is brought in as a strikebreaker for Mr. Burns and his main weapon is boring old stories that don’t go anywhere…but the important thing is that I had an onion tied to my belt.
If that’s not it, I give up.
– Mike
This picture reminds me of a holiday i spent with my family in Springfield back in ’53. The holiday was Broom Tuesday and the whole town celebrated with a marathon game of checkers, which in those days were called buckets.
My opponent was about to trounce my last bucket when I distracted him by pointing out the embiggening line up over at the kissing booth, which is what we called port-o-potties back then. As he turned his head I pulled the old switcharoo on him. A switcheroo was what we called hats back in those days and I had squirrelled 3 extra buckets in my switcheroo for just this kind of situation. I quickly dropped those buckets into strategic places all over board, and as he turned back around to complain about his tiny bladder I crowed ‘Swedish Pants’ which was the popular term for ‘check mate’. Which brings me back to my original point.
Darren, when are you headed to Malta?
Bobby.
Bobby: I’ll be posting an itinerary some time soon, but we’re leaving Vancouver on April 18, hitting various stops on the way, and getting to Malta around May 1.
OMG. I totally thought this was because the people in front of you in the grocery store are always elderly people just buying one onion and in dire need of a belt. But now I get it.
I don’t think you can really call a joke that depends on knowing Simpsons episode trivia “obscure” in this crowd.
It’s still funny, though.
Trivia would be to point out that there’s a slightly dirty Anglo-Saxon riddle the crux of which involves hanging onions from your belt while you’re out gathering them in the field.
Which makes me think that somebody on the Simpson’s writing staff has a thing for Anglo Saxon riddles, which doesn’t surprise me at all, really.
If you’re curious, the riddle is #23 on this page:
http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/medieval/riddles.html
Oops, never mind. I was mixing up my riddles. The one about hanging from a belt is this one:
http://www2.kenyon.edu/AngloSaxonRiddles/Riddles/Riddle42.htm
and it’s not an onion.
So it’s not remotely relevant, but it is completely trivial.
I was just bumbling about in the matrix and found this site, and although I don’t know the obscure joke in this pic, i do find it funny that there’s a very obvious sign saying KEEP OFF THE GRASS—and there isn’t any.
But belts and onions, man…now I know funny and THAT’S..not very funny. At all.
you are way too elitist