THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9501050377
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
I WANT TO TELL you about the crooked storekeeper who got religion, but first let me pause for this commercial interruption:
Storytelling - the oral, face-to-face kind - has compelled the collective human race at least since the first campfire. Abraham Lincoln once confided to his Cabinet that a good story ``has the same effect on me that I suppose a good drink has on an old toper; it puts new life in me.'' And even in our subsequent switched-on, prerecorded, video-bombarded era, effective live yarn-spinning still teaches and entertains us with enormous power.
It's not just for kids, as the ongoing adult renaissance of storytelling festivals nationwide keeps proving.
Now top American practitioners of the art form afford us a primer, Ready-to-Tell Tales, edited by professional raconteurs David Holt and Bill Mooney (August House, 224 pp., $24.95).
What I like even more than the great yarns collected here is that this volume manages to be politically correct and genuinely subversive of the status quo at the same time.
Because these international folk tales demonstrate forcefully that human folly is, and always has been, multicultural.
The evidence lies in anthologized efforts of such famous spellbinders as Donald Davis (from Ocracoke), Jackie Torrence, Jay O'Callahan and Heather Forest, among many others. They provide performance-tested tales from all over the world guaranteed to have sure-fire effect, and they even append helpful how-to hints on the manner of telling. Everything from sound effects to seating is touched upon.
There are ancient tales such as ``The Twelve Labors of Hercules'' (Greece) and ``How the Turtle Cracked His Shell'' (Cherokee); traditional Old World tales such as ``The Old Giant'' (England) and ``The King's Child'' (Jewish); and home-grown American tales such as ``The Dead Mule'' (Midwest) and ``Jack and the Haunted House'' (Appalachia).
So this is certifiably a good book, and budding fabulists would be well-advised to buy it.
Now for that story about the storekeeper:
I borrow it from seasoned Tennessee teller Doc McConnell, who, in Ready-to-Tell Tales, testifies in turn that he got it from his expansive Hawkins County brother, Steamer:
When the town finally got the crooked storekeeper to attend the Baptist tent revival, he gave every evidence of instant, psalm-singing salvation. But the savvy townsfolk weren't content with that spontaneous witness. They began to observe their pious new believer very closely to see if he had really changed his ways.
When a little boy came into the store for a nickel's worth of candy, the storekeeper gave him a 25-cent bag, intoning, ``Suffer the little children to come unto me.''
That was nice.
When a woman came into the store for a birthday present to give to her 90-year-old dad, the storekeeper supplied a bandanna, a Barlow knife and a pair of sock supporters, all worth a full two bucks, for only 25 cents. Under his breath, he murmured, ``Honor thy father and mother.'' Then he sang a chorus of ``Just As I Am.''
That was nice, too.
But then an out-of-towner in a Stetson showed up, looking for a blanket for his fancy $10,000 Tennessee walking horse. The storekeeper provided him an old moth-eaten $2 number for $9.98, but the horseman said he wanted a more expensive blanket, better suited to such an expensive horse. So the storekeeper obliged by offering up another moth-eaten cover, this time with the holes folded in, for $99.98.
The out-of-towner promptly paid the storekeeper $100 and told him to keep the change.
Meanwhile the locals watched closer than ever to see exactly how the storekeeper was going to justify his sale this time.
First, he sang one more chorus of ``Just As I Am.''
Then the storekeeper lifted his eyes heavenward and said, truly: ``He was a stranger and I took him in.'' MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Raconteurs Bill Mooney, left, and David Holt edited ``Ready-to-Tell
Tales.''
by CNB