Priceless veins of ore can be found in many places throughout the world. It doesn’t take a new Patrick Countian long to find out that one of the assets running through these parts is a vein of lore.
Possibly something in the drinking water, the collective genes, or fumes from an abandoned still, has the power to open a flood-gate of stories that are worthy of telling – and re-telling – and re-telling.
Brand new to Patrick County, some kin of mine recently came home from a parts run with a treasure trove of stories along with their electrical whatever, thanks to a grizzled old gentleman, who’d evidently made a career of holding up the shop wall. Walking proof that his legendary shenanigans weren’t fatal, the oldster allowed that smoking behind the woodshed at age 9 wasn’t what got his backside “lit on fire”. It was accidentally setting the shed on fire. His dad obviously had no latitude for forgiveness, despite both the boy and his brother risking life and limb to quietly try to put out the fire with quart jars of water relayed from the pump.
Pieces of advise were freely sprinkled-in with the yarns of juvenile mischief. Number one was not to try to give a cat a bath. Especially in a wringer-washer. Again, justice was swiftly served (to all but the unfortunate cat).
While helping re-roof the smoke-house, this young fellow kept falling off said roof. After the seventh time (a fact possibly distorted by the passage of many decades), his co-worker thought to secure him with a safety-rope – albeit around the neck – “’cause we’ve gotta stop this nonsense one way or t’other”.
The lane to our house passes by a ninety-year-old country church. A while back, an open picnic shelter was erected beside an adjacent stream. Recently, observing a scaffold at one end of the sanctuary, my husband detoured from our mailbox for a neighborly inquiry. A white-bearded elder explained that the church’s two ancient privies were being replaced with indoor flush-toilets. “Don’t that beat all”, he mused. “Now we gotta’ go outside to eat and indoors to go to the bathroom!”
Some years back, my sister took a college-level class on the subject of lore. The professor stated that lore is being formed around us every day, in the form of legend-bearing shirts and bumper stickers. To fulfill the semester’s requirement of introducing unique lore, my sister sent her father-in-law a hand-held recording devise, with the plea to record some of the deep-South-small-town yarns for which he was widely noted. What a service to subsequent generations it has been to have captured Homer’s signature tales in his own Camel-roughened southern drawl!
He started out, “Here I am, an eighty-year-old man, sitting on my porch, talking to a little old box no bigger’n my hand. I wouldn’t do this for anybody in the world but Miss Sue!” And he filled the cassette with stories that will continue to outlive generations of that family. Ideally, the true yarn-spinner has a target subject with a unique, euphonious name; in Homer’s case, it was Ol’ Joe Rippetoe.
Seems Joe Rippetoe built himself a new shed to shelter his old mule. Trouble was that when the mule’s ears grazed the cross-beam of the roof, the animal absolutely refused to go further. He was bemoaning the obvious, labor-intensive solution to the “boys” at the hardware store – the need to plane some wood off the underside of the beam and possibly weakening that cross-member. “Hold on there, Joe”, chimed in one of his listeners, “why don’t you just scoop out some of the dirt there at the threshold?”
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of,” said Joe, “ it ain’t that his legs are too short, it’s that his ears are too long.”
Homer went on to recount his honeymoon trip, many years ago, when he took his bride into a neighboring state, for their first-ever stay in a modern hotel. As they entered the ornate lobby and stood looking around, the “homeliest, scrawniest woman I ever saw was punching a button on the far wall. Two shiny doors parted, she walked inside a box, and the doors closed. Then an arrow above the doors whizzed back and forth and next thing you know, the doors opened again and let her back out, but by then she looked like a movie star.”
After the appropriate dramatic pause, Homer continued, “Bein’ it was our honeymoon and all, I didn’t think it would be gentlemanly to suggest to Miz Marie that she give it a try”.
Closer to home, we just heard what might be the start of more local lore. Over a juicy hamburger, a good buddy allowed as how he doesn’t eat chicken, and never will. Seems he and a cousin had a string of those teeninsey firecrackers and were “pokin’ around” his uncle’s farm, looking for something exciting to do, as third-grade boys are wont to do on a lazy summer day. Some chickens scratching in the yard presented an idea too tempting to pass up. A lit firecracker looked like Sunday Dinner to the nearest little biddy, who pounced on it and promptly went to that Great Barnyard in the Sky – with a bang. The fun didn’t end until all the firecrackers were gone, and the yard was littered with – well, chicken litter. You can imagine the rest, with Uncle arriving at the scene of mayhem. Did he take those two to the proverbial woodshed?? (I shall forever be in awe of that man’s forbearance and wisdom.) He told those boys they had killed table food, and weren’t going home until they’d plucked, cooked and eaten every single chicken that they’d killed.
Of such tales, lore is made.
