My father and my Uncle Jim Frank were great story tellers whenever they got together. By “great,” I mean “prolific and enthusiastic.” First cousins, they had grown up together “in the country.” Uncle Jim Frank actually would have been my second cousin something-or-other. He told of being a young man and driving an elderly relative into the county seat of Lafayette, which had only recently installed its first traffic light. I’m sorry I can’t remember his name, but the old man was sitting in Jim Frank’s rumble seat. That’s how long ago this was. The light was red, and Jim Frank stopped and waited for it to turn green. Down the road apiece, he looked back and was astonished to discover the old man was no longer there. He quickly doubled back and found the old man at the intersection. Jim Frank asked why he’d gotten out, and the man replied, “You stopped and sat there, so I thought something was wrong with the car!” I’m not holding that up as one of my uncle/cousin’s best, but to illustrate a point. It seems to me, most stories aren’t extended narratives, as the name “story” might imply. They’re more like jokes, with a set-up and a punchline, and the best raconteurs are masters of brevity and comedic timing . I guess I would see it that way.
66 responses to “Storied Past III”
Elephants, pied crows [not 4 & 20]:
https://explore.org/livecams/african-wildlife/african-river-wildlife-camera
Peace,
One my Mother has always told….her Mother as s girl took a sweet potato out of the coals of the fireplace, broke it open and said, “Oh, Brother, come smell how good this is”. When he sniffed it she clapped it back together on his nose. My grandmother was born in 1896 and her brother in 2895. And here a i in 3017 relating the story to all of you. (PS my mother is 96 years old and I am leaving to take her to her beauty shop appointment). Blessings to all of you!
1895 for Brother!
2017 for me. Careless with my cell phone typing this morning!!
Wish my brother had never thrown his onions in the fish tank!
I think he’d be your first cousin, once removed.
First cousin, once removed is correct. Uncle Jim Frank’s kid would be Jimmy’s second cousin.
For a time, when in college, a second cousin and I accidentally dated. We were raised several hundred miles apart and had different last names. Think it shocked our mothers more than it did us.
Those pied crows, quite common in E. Afr., were out of there in seconds. As to ‘4 and 20’, I may have noted this before, those ‘blackbirds’ are obviously not crows, being much smaller, but are also not New World blackbirds [family Icteridae] but OW blackbirds [fam. Turdidae, thrushes, Turdus merula, closely related to American robins, Turdus migratorius]. My first intro. to them was scads on the lawn by the casino in Wiesbaden, W. Ger., 1952. All black, but otherwise reminiscent of our robins. Now you know more than the others at the cocktail party. Peace,
Jimmy your family must be like mine, they married their kin. Come to think of it, some of that wagon train dropped off in Alabama and stopped. It would not surprise me if we were related.
Sand, I eliminated all residents of an entire parish for dating on policy they were relatives, along with a list of last names.
Ended up dating one from different paridh, different name, cousin. Yeech!
My stepdad was my cousin more than once. My mama married her second cousin after my dad was killed. Her dad and his were cousins so they had same grandfather, right?
For all of those hurting….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvEVEbhYDI4
Thank you Steve. I listened and enjoyed and kept listening.
I haven’t commented in a while, but I thought I’d accept cxp’s challenge. I rescued a possum from a crab trap. My husband and I would set crab traps out and get blue crab. We would try to remember to remove any bait,but one night we left a tiny bit in one of the traps. The next morning I found a possum in the trap. I carefully opened the door and left it. Hours later the possum was gone.
Good story Laura.
I have not related that I am NOT married to my cousin.
But I do believe in 6 degrees of separation – closer in state.
emb & I are only 1 degree (twice) though we are 5 hours apart.
That’s interesting, Laura. Where does one find both possums & crabs? For some reason, I don’t associate possums with the seashore, nor do I associate crabs with the US inland areas, though there do exist land crabs in some parts of the world.
For those who have saved lives, a tip of the hat. I don’t know if I ever had that privilege, but there was one time in grad school when the neighbor’s wife [in married student housing] overdosed on something. Neighbor got me to rush her to the hospital; I never went through so many red lights & stop signs again! However, I did pause and take a quick look each time. The woman lived, but she may have lived even without my driving. She had been very homesick.
The couple were Pakistani, and they gave my wife & me hand-made festive “shoes” after they traced our feet and sent the tracings back home. They were beautiful, especially the embroidered decorations and the pointed tips. Unfortunately, they were also cut too small, so we used them only a few times on festive occasions – and only for short periods of time.
Anyone know who won the Jeopardy championship today? I was not able to watch.
“slow down” rather than “pause” , above
Something I learned from a DiscWorld book, Laura: you can keep live crabs in a bucket without a lid because if any of them try to climb out, the rest will pull it down. If you don’t believe me, look up either crab bucket or crab mentality (the same article) on Pikiwedia.
The Jeopardy champion was the guy who ended up with no money yesterday. Final Jeopardy was a good one. Category was state capitols; the answer included a date (1803, I think) and some other info but basically it was that the last 4 letters of the state were the beginning of the name of the city.
Love “Pikiwedia”. What follows is from today’s MPR News, a bunch of fake news items that sucked some in over the last wk.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/11/17/not-real-news-what-didnt-happen-this-week?utm_campaign=MPR+News+-+PM+Edition+-+No+Social&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_&utm_content=
Patheos’s invention of Andrew Canard is the kind of thing we elitists pull; some Villagers have, I believe, objected to such. I don’t, for 2 reasons. 1: I’m guilty of it [& wish I’d thought of Canard], and 2: so is any Villager who does it with knowledge outside of my ken [e.g., popular ‘music’ of the last few decades]. May even retain something from such posts, just as some may return my info re blackbirds.
Peace,
Last time I had canard it was confite. Ghost enjoyed his too. We had a lovely merlot to accompany the course.
c x-p: Didelphis virginiana, our common opossum [JJ’s monitor corrected the “pp” I typed], ranges to the shore on the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts, as far N as New England [& probably Nova Scotia] and southern BC [they were introduced to the W Coast somewhere, and spread rapidly], according to the map on p. 18 of “The mammals of Minnesota”, 1982, U.MN. Press. When we first came here, in ’58, it had been recorded only in the S tier* of MN counties. By the time that bk came out, opossums had reached the 49th parallel, and are doubtless well established now across S Canada. This, of course, has nothing to do with any politically contentious subject. Opossums care less about ocean breezes than about potential food [= almost anything], but their fur is not thick, and many of the northernmost specimens have lost hairless tail tips and tender ears to frostbite.
*Villagers from the SE and from the East Coast up to Down East, may be unfamiliar with “tiers” of counties. That’s because counties in the Colonies and older states “just grew,” often with peculiar histories. When the USGS mapped out the lands W of the Appalachians, they divided most of it up into 6 mi. x 6 mi. Townships, each of 36 “Sections”, and later settlers and legislatures drew co. lines along those borders. See maps in the above mentioned bk, pp. 14 and 15. Peace,
Jackie: Your absence on FB has been noted and caused concern. I told them they could find you here but don’t know if they will.
Thanks, RA & eMb.