Archive for March, 2007

Moral Stories

Farmer Fencerow was walking across his fields when he came upon a rattler trapped by a fallen tree. In a benevolent mood because of his good crop, he lifted the tree and let the snake slither free. He was surprised when it followed him home with such strong signs of affection, that he decided to keep the reptile for a pet. That night he hurried downstairs to see what the commotion was about and found his new pet curled around a burglar’s neck it’s tail stuck out the window rattling for help!

Another rattler crawled into town and also was pinned by a bough. A tipsy sodbuster lifted the limb. The grateful creature, its beady eyes soft with appreciation, followed its benefactor home. For many years it served as his bodyguard, rattling affection and curling beneath his bunk by night, catching flies by day.
The moral is that you’re lower than a snake if you fail to show appreciation for a favor.

Illogical Lines

Both feminine fancies and government goofs make a fellow wonder about logic. This is particularly true when you consider the young girl who says Freddy is intelligent, sensible, thoughtful and kind; but Billy’s a welcome relief! Her chorus girl chum answered by describing the new stage-door Johnny who’s just the kind of a guy who takes “no” for an answer.

After a particularly bitter quarrel a husband and wife decided that they’d divide the house-he’d have one side and she’d take the other. That was fine until the husband asked which one was his, and she told him, “You can have the outside-I’ll take the inside!” Another illogical lady was luncheoning with a friend. After a prolonged discussion about the check she ended it by saying, “Of course, if you insist on paying I can’t stop you. After all you are my guest!”

We had a little old lady who left the services early every Sunday morning and explained, “Now if everyone left when I do, they’d all avoid the crowd.”

When California’s criminologist Orlando Wilson came to Chicago to clean up some of its police practices, he asked a sergeant why the Department paid four men to walk the same beat at the same time. Surely there couldn’t be work enough to keep four men going? “That’s right,” the sergeant told him, “but if they weren’t there, there would be!” Cities and villages worry about banning fireworks, while Washington keeps working for mightier missiles; and until recently we sent missionaries to China to help them get to Heaven … at the same time we laid down laws to keep them out of America.

Loose Lines

People the world over have listened to lines that began even before Beowulf, and reach down to the latest political platform. The most remote aborigine was the product of a long line his Mother listened to … and the Indian maiden hit by Cupid’s arrow handed Hiawatha a lot of teepee talk about keeping her wigwam. Today’s adolescent Alvin still tells his Debby how he’ll protect her from hurt and harm.

There are other lines besides those that gave Minnehaha a bow and arrow (or was it a beau and error?) The fisherman has his special line; the Navy’s is purely nautical; the stagecoach driver maneuvered lines by the handful. . . and even the old bullwhacker depended on the “lead” line he clutched. These days we listen to the salesman’s palaver, business man’s bull, and every means employed by management. All are lines that lead to something. We’ve sought to set out samplings of these tall tales and loose lines for use on your audiences.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Yards of Yarns

Everyone enjoys a good yarn-especially when he tells it. But be careful not to over-do. It’s all right to tell a girl that she has pretty ankles-but don’t compliment her too highly. Sometimes it strains the facts but helps the story to add a little stretcher. Our late Veep Alben Barkley was a master of mild tales; he had gags for ordinary guys, and epigrams (Ph.D. gags) for boys in the salon set.

One of his favorites was about the farmer who came into a country store with his four children. They were dressed in new clothes obviously purchased elsewhere; so, “How come” the storekeeper wanted to know, “you shop at another store when I’ve been carrying you on the books for so many years?” The surprised farmer was almost speechless when he told him, “Honest, Zeke, I didn’t know you sold for cash.”

Another farmer had a frau who decided to dye her curtains blue. A little lamb gamboling by fell into the vat. She fished him out and he scurried away. A passing motorist spotted the little blue BaaBaa and offered the farmwife a fancy price for what he thought was a new species. The wife decided that she had a good thing going, so next day she dyed another little lamb and it too sold for a ridiculous figure. From this beginning she developed quite a business of buying, dying and selling lambs. In fact she turned out to be the biggest lamb dyer in Kentucky.

Father Goose Tales

A few changes in the old nursery rhymes (according to Sunny Pete Smythe, Mayor of East Tincup, Colorado) seem intended to keep the kindergarten class up to date on current events:

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater.
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her.
Peter glumly shook his head,
“This damned inflation!” Peter said.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, Why won’t your garden grow? “I’ve put it all in the Soil Bank, sir, and live on government dough!”

Mel Allen tells about the poor little girl who invented a mosquito repellent and made a million dollars over night. She wound up marrying a prince. It’s a real Citronella story.

Red Skelton twists the “little Piggy” routine:
1. This big piggy went to the L.A. County Fair and won a red ribbon. He’d have won the blue ribbon-but he slipped
and sprained his tail.
2. This proud porker was auctioned at Fort Worth to one of the largest packers in the country, and will be na
tionally advertised.
3. This bacon protege liked his dirty old mudhole better than the air-conditioned barn so he was sent to a big pig psychiatrist. When he didn’t show any improvement, the farmer sold him for pork and beans.

A grandmother was telling the story of the princess and the frog;
“When the little frog rescued her golden ball from the well, the princess was so grateful she let him spend the night in her room. The next morning when she woke up, he’d turned into a handsome prince so they were married and lived happily ever after.” The grandchild looked skeptical as she said: “I don’t believe that story; and I’ll bet her mother didn’t believe it either.”

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

The Paul Bunyan Clan

Down through the years, countless storytellers beside far-flung campfires have contributed to the classical picture of Paul Bunyan, the colossus who tossed the Aurora Borealis around the cold shoulders of our Northland as a token of appreciation for her frigid affection.

Before snow covers our lake-dappled north country, modern Bunyanites swarm to Michigan’s annual conclave at Traverse City. There under the golden oaks and crimson maples, stories of Bunyan’s deeds and doings are recited and embellished with yarns about Babe the Blue Ox, a fabulous critter he reared from its doggie days.

Occasionally Bunyanites adopt a fact but normally the truth is too confining. Only when the tang of early frost is wanned with hot buttered rum do the Bunyan yarns and loggers’ legends grow mellow and modern. Then they tie the wildnerness into our industrial world with dubious tales such as the one about Bunyan’s egg beater. Seems that it was so perfect and so durable that Chicago’s Henry Crown copied it in miniature and made millions using them for Material Service’s concrete mixers.

Texas Tales

Texans run a close second to Bunyanites (they’re growing accustomed to coming in second). By the campfire under the prairie stars, waddies have told tales taller than the shadows behind them. One was of a headless vaquero who rode the great mustang country setting off wild horse stampedes. Judge Roy Bean was the Law West of the Pecos; Sam Bass robbed stages, then tipped farm wives with gold pieces for hand-out meals. Big Bend Ben who boasted that his Mother killed a dozen Comanches with a broom handle, used to ride mountain lions bareback. Ollie the oil field roughneck from Burkburnett, drank a gallon of green corn at one sitting and used carbolic acid for a chaser. It isn’t that they exaggerate-they just remember big!

A food magazine recently reported a Texas-developed beehive in which the bees deposit honey in jars and large-jawed beetles follow close behind to tighten the lids.

Walt Disney had a long distance call from a Texan; he requested a twelve-room reservation at the Disneyland Motel for the following Tuesday and concluded, “We’re arriving by car.” When Walt wanted to know, “How can you bring twelve rooms full of people by car?” the Texan drawled, “Son, it’s a RAILroad car.”

Down there in their baseball parks, vendors holler “Peanuts, popcorn, oilstock!” . . . and natives boast about “punkins” so big they’re cut in half and used for cradles. They tell of a Texan who gave his small dog a boy to play with.

One young chap down there grew up disappointed because his father couldn’t get him a set of trains it seems the New York Central wouldn’t sell. There are Texas ranchers who park more Thunderbirds in front of the house than roans beside the barn. They don’t have depressions down there-only sometimes their boom is a little lower.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Unless a tall tale is told by a born story-teller gifted in colloquialisms, or it carries a two-way stretch, it falls flat. A yarn has to do more than pull the wool over your eyes, it needs a point or two to put it over. Only seasoned raconteurs can tell stories effectively. A raconteur is a liar who earned his social prestige by telling tales in a way that makes his listeners anxious to hear what’s next.

Very few fables and odysseys have lived through the ages; Aesop’s windies continue to be popular, and Homer’s Iliad has been a best seller since B.C. America’s enjoyment of outlandish yarns, whoppers and tall tales is expressed in the galaxy of exaggerations that spring from annual raconteurs’ conventions. The most quoted present-day raconteurs are among Wisconsin’s Burlington Liars’ membership, the Paul Bunyan clan, or big-talking Texans.

Burlington Liars’ Club

Annually in Burlington, the soul of Ananias comes hissing out of the halls of Hell to live again, and a new winner is named. Recently a grandfather’s clock won the award because it was so old the shadow of its pendulum wore a crescent-shaped crevice through the wooden back. One time a cavalry incident on the Mexican border came in for recognition: The supply wagon horses reared when a rattler sank its fangs deep into the wagon tongue; when the tongue turned blue and began to swell, the troopers had to cut it off to save the wagon!

A South Dakota homesteader was one of the winners when he told about the drought in the Dirty Thirties when “It got so consarned dry that when one of the kids wanted a drink I had to pull up the well and run it through the wringer.”
Another time a long-armed fisherman (they can tell ‘em taller than short-armed anglers) qualified by citing the day he pulled in an old mattress with 24 jumbo perch sound asleep on one end!

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Mountaineers

Mountaineers with all their pride, prejudice, and poverty play a colorful part in Americana. Their wit and wisdom are reflected in yarns from the hills and tales from the cloud country. Peering up the roaring creeks you see mountain shacks that seem ancient as the hills surrounding them. Each shack boasts a packed-dirt floor, a lopsided door swinging on a leather hinge, one small, rag-stuffed broken window pane that serves as a lookout . . . and a chimney fashioned of sticks and clay to carry the wood smoke up and away. Each sagging stoop is festooned with tattered men folk and flea-bitten dogs lolling in almost indescribable attitudes of repose. Some of them are out early when the morning mists are fresh . . . and others stay through the day and on until the lonesomeness has moved down from the hills and the moon is “middle ways of the sky.”

Even today shaggy old coots back there in the hills take pot shots at one another … still feuding for reasons they’ve long since forgotten. They cling to a grudge like a flea to a hound . . . and as for their shootin’ they can knock the eyes right out of a somersaulting squirrel. At long range some of these lanky sharpshooters get so good they have to rub rock salt on their bullets to keep the game from spoiling before they cut their way through the cat claws and briar patches to pick it up. These men of the hills manage to keep their women barefooted, pregnant and busy … that’s why mountain folk have more kin than a microbe. A want-ad in the Mountain Country Clarion Call tells the story of these work-worn women:

WANTED: A mule fit for me to ride to go fishin’ and gentle enough for the old lady to hitch to her plow.
The same Mountaineer stopped at the store one time to get a present for Samantha. “A presunt?” she blinked in surprised delight. “Yep,” he told her, “Doc says you gotta take it easier and durned if I ain’t a gonna git ye a lighter axe.

In the more remote regions, snuff-sniffin’ women do all the chores, raise a dozen kids, and make hooked rugs in their spare time. Mountain men have been known to wear out three wives in a lifetime. They begin with child brides taken to wife before they’re half through teething. According to their peculiar way of thinking, a woman who waits too long either gets to spittin’ like a wildcat, or she gets to lookin’ sullen like a hoot owl and you gotta near whup her to death to make her work!

Out in the jackpine flats and misty river bottoms, a sprinkling of the natives still put stock in “spells.” Way back there where neither railroad nor telephone reaches and the last carrier pigeon went into somebody’s stew, some primitive souls hold with relics of sorcery although the majority are “smartenin’ up” to hear tell. With the coming of the highways, learning is seeping through to people up and down the creeks and in the hollers. One proud lad boasts that he kin read numbers but cain’t read writin’ … he can tell from a sign how fur to but not whur to. And his baby-havin’ tater-hoein’ sister brags, “we talks about the same as other folks, ‘cept we ain’t got no accent.” Mountain men are frugal folk; when a visitor spied a little four-legged cook stove set on tree stumps he asked whether the housewife had such a weak back she couldn’t bend . . . and her man explained, “Nope, tweren’t thet . . . it’s jes that that ther’s all the stovepipe whut we had.”
When he saw his first avacado, the storekeeper asked Zeke if he wanted to try one, but “Nope” he drawled back,

“I already got me so many tastes I cain’t satisfy I ain’t about to take on no more!”
According to fact and legend, these people consume quantities of corn liquor, a circumstance explained by the Bald Hill boy who said, “You got to remember a keg of likker don’t last long in a fam’ly that cain’t afford to keep no cow.”
Some of these hill folk wilt at the thought of work and others are too lazy to entertain a hope. One hillbilly sat with his son in front of a warm fire, crossing and uncrossing their skinny legs. After a while the man told the boy to “git outside and see if it’s a’rainin” . . . but without looking up the boy whined back, “Aw, Paw, jes’ call in the dawg and see if he’s wet!” When the same dog kept howling one day, the boy told a passing salesman, “Ain’t nuthin’ ailin’ him; he’s jes bin a-layin’ ‘ginst a busted jug an’ he’s too lazy to turn hisself over.”

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Michiganders

Some thirty miles off the Lake Michigan shore at Charlevoix, isolated Beaver Island is rich in folk lore about French trappers and Irish lumberjacks. A cumbersome ferry plies between the island and the mainland, except in midwinter when dog sleds haul supplies across the frozen waters.

The first rollicking voyageurs who came to Beaver Island practically destroyed the industrious beavers, and on their heels came the boisterous Irish intent on ravishing the virgin timber. They left the land denuded as a molting pullet a barren condition that existed until a slow, steady regrowth restored the sylvan charm of the island. Thanks to those ancient despoilers, a wealth of stories has lived through the years, and as they’re told by the present generation of island people there’s some suspicion that the tales have improved with age.

Visitors are attracted by an ill-kept enclosure not much bigger than a pint-sized living room and boasting but a few markers. It’s identified as the Protestant cemetery, resting place of the very few departed worthies who were not French or Irish folk, and ardent Catholics. Local lore has it that these few turned Protestant to escape early mass on the Lord’s Day.

Naturally, the course of conversation turns to Irish wakes and somehow always gets around to Jerry McCarthy’s. In logging days, a wake was a mighty important occasion-on a par with any National Democratic convention. When winter held this northland in its icy grip, a wake would be a protracted event to boot.

When Jerry departed this earth and Tom Hogan failed to join the rest of the mourners in paying his respects, two of the soberest among them set out to find him. On reaching his cabin, there they found poor old Tom slumped in his chair, dead as a mackerel. The mourners decided between them that it wouldn’t be right or proper to hold two wakes at one and the same time . . = that wouldn’t be respectful to the deceased. So … they left Tom’s body in his cold cold cabin and went back to bury Jerry.

Once those services were over and the mourners recovered enough to stir themselves … old Tom was “officially” found to have joined the dear departed … he was thawed out, laid out, and given his own Irish jamboree.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking