Faith, Folklore, and Friends

Stories from my Daddy Storytelling is the oldest form of record keeping.  Most of what we know of ancient history is from oral telling of facts and events, with each generation passing them on to the next. Stories are the most important inheritance we have to pass on.  ~ Donald Davis I cannot remember a time when my Daddy wasn't telling stories.  He told them while we worked, at the supper table, before bedtime.  In the summer, when the heat from the tin roof and wood cook stove drove us out of the house, we sat on the porch with a gnat-smoke in a metal half-bushel tub and Daddy told stories: Stories about hard times, violent deaths of people we didn't know but had allegedly shared DNA, war stories, and mule stories. They included tales about his siblings, which amazed me because his subjects were now elderly people with children of their own, and it was so hard to imagine my sweet aunts jumping fences while running from snakes. Daddy told stories of favorit...

Image from Wikipedia I can't remember the first time I heard my Daddy tell the story.  A friend of his, who apparently didn't get out much, hitched a ride to town one Saturday.  Red clover was in bloom all along the roadside.  The friend, astounded, looked out and said, "Just look at all those strawberries!" My Daddy thought it was hilarious, and told the story every time we were riding and saw some red clover outside the car window. We, being terribly smart and contemporary, would roll our eyes at each other, smirking at that lame story we were hearing for the hundredth time. Image from Wikipedia Isn't it crazy, and isn't it sad, that by the time we are mature enough to realize the value in some stories, the storyteller is no longer with us?  This story was a part of who my Daddy was, and a part of who we all were, part of the glue that bound us together as a family. We are lonesome animals.  We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. ...

Storytelling is the oldest form of record keeping.  Most of what we know of ancient history is from oral telling of facts and events, with each generation passing them on to the next. Stories are the most important inheritance we have to pass on.  ~ Donald Davis I cannot remember a time when my Daddy wasn't telling stories. He told them while we worked, at the supper table, before bedtime.  In the summer, when the heat from the tin roof and wood cook stove drove us out of the house, we sat on the porch with a gnat-smoke in a metal half-bushel tub and Daddy told stories: Stories about hard times, violent deaths of people we didn't know but had allegedly shared DNA, war stories, and mule stories. They included tales about his siblings, which amazed me because his subjects were now elderly people with children of their own, and it was so hard to imagine my sweet aunts jumping fences while running from snakes. Daddy told stories of favorite milk cows, of coon dogs,...

Beginning in the  early seventies, country comedian Jerry Clower made us all laugh with his tales from his hometown in rural Mississippi. I was honored to meet him in the eighties when he came to UNA to perform to a packed house.  While working as a fertilizer salesman, Mr. Clower became known for his funny stories with which he entertained potential buyers.  The right person heard him and offered him a record contract, and Mr. Clower stopped selling literal fertilizer for a living. Jimmy Neil Smith, a journalism teacher in the tiny town of Jonesborough, Tennessee, was listening to his car radio one day and heard Mr. Clower tell about hunting in Mississippi (knock 'em out, John).  Mr. Smith loved storytelling, and wondered if the city of Jonesborough might start a storytelling festival.  In 1973, on a sparkling October day, the first National Storytelling Festival was held. That October weekend birthed the renaissance of storytelling, and more than forty...