Storytelling - A Gift From My Grandpa

I come from a storytelling people. My Irish ancestors steal stories from every culture on Earth and make them their own. My Cherokee ancestors told stories around the campfire on long nights. My Scots, British, German, Scandanavian and Jewish forebears told their own stories and told them quite well. You can find them if you check out any decent library. 

I'm pretty sure I got my storytelling gene from my Grandpa King. The way he told a story was like he was reciting poetry. The words had a rhythm and simplicity to them that engaged a child like me. They weren't fancy stories; no knights, dragons or fairies to be found in them. Just stories about his dog Old Bob and the skunk, duck or dynamite, his pony or his favorite cousin Alonso the original special effects guy. He'd follow up his stories with a piece on his harmonica like "Polly Wolly Doodle" or (my favorite) "I Never Loved Her Like I Loved Her Last Night in the Back of My Cadillac Eight." That one he waited till my grandmother was banging around in the kitchen and couldn't hear him before he'd do it. It was, therefore, our favorite song.

Like him, I tell stories like that - stuff that happened to me; stories like the time the motorboat almost ran over me and a canoe full of campers. That one was published in the Junior Guide magazine. Or there is the time my best friend and I were cliff climbing and he kicked loose a big boulder that nearly slapped me off the cliff. Stuff like that. Not everyone likes my storytelling, however, particularly if they've heard it a few dozen times. 

Storytelling is a gift that can be very powerful (not to mention useful), especially in an argument. A friend of mine once complained that whenever we argue, I've always got a story that proves I'm right. The implication is, of course, that I make these stories up to prove my point. Not so!  By the time you get to be as old as me, you've collected thousands of such stories. I just happen to remember most of them off the top of my head. I think my brain files such stories by subject. At any rate, your story collection shapes how you think and what you believe. We call that experience. It's the best way I know to discover the truth.

Grandpa, my favorite storyteller.

If you've managed to do things in your life, if you've stepped out of your comfort zone regularly, you've probably got a story to tell. If you've heard God's still small voice and said, "Here am I, send me," then you probably have a lot more interesting and illustrative stories than most folk do. When confronted by some deluded individual who insists he is right and that you must agree with him say, "Hold on there, Bub. I've got a story here and I'm not afraid to use it.

© 2019 by Tom King

New Book Release: Wampus Cat's Cure for Alcoholism and Other East Texas Stories

Just a quick self-indulgence this time.  My new book Wampus Cat's Cure for Alcoholism and other East Texas Stories is out this week on Amazon Kindle. Here's the book description:

Tom King's family stories and legends from East Texas introduce a fascinating collection of oddballs, characters, hound dogs and unusual ancestors. Tom King dips into the stories his grandfather and other gifted East Texas storytellers have shared over the years and offers up a couple of tall tales of his own. This colorful collection of characters include Wampus Cat, a reformed alcoholic and his mother-in-law; Cousin Alonso, an early twentieth century pioneer in special effects and pyrotechnics; Old Bob the water-walking wonder dog (she appears in two stories); Beulah the town's star testifier; and the legendary Aunt Agnes, who wages her own brand of guerrilla warfare during the Civil War in East Texas. Her weapons? A large quantity of lard, an old pipe and an aerial biscuit bombardment which crusty old Aunt Agnes and an assortment of pint-sized anarchist nephews use to cause a surprising amount of discomfort to the rebel forces in the neighborhood.

The Importance of Complete Information

(c) 2010 by Tom King

A friend told me this story once. It illustrates how easily it is to change your opinion, especially if you come to know what Paul Harvey used to call "the resto of the story.


My friend was driving to the pharmacy to renew a prescription. It was snowing and slippery. Suddenly a big Cadillac bore down on him from behind, blasted his horn and swerved past him at an extremely unsafe speed.

"Blankety-blank rich people think they own the blankety-blank road. What a selfish pig!" my friend, a confirmed member of the proletariate, thought angrily.

After 10 more minutes of slogging through the snow, he arrived at the pharmacy and sure enough, there sat the big fancy Caddie, slewed across two parking spaces (one of them a handicapped space). My friend stomped up to the entrance muttering dark imprecations and with a mounting determination to give that self-centered, capitalist pig a piece of his mind if he were to run into the man inside.

As he approached the prescription counter he found a well-dressed man (obviously the Cadillac owner) who was pushing his way to the front of the line. My friend surged forward, intent on thrashing this arrogant jackass now standing at the counter with his arm around the shoulders of a frightened looking woman in a thin bathrobe holding a small child. The man shouted at the pharmacist, who quickly pulled a bottle down off the shelf and soon the woman was struggling to coax some of the medicine down the child.

It was syrup of Ipecac. My friend could see the label clearly.

As the crowd fell back, the well-dressed man explained the situation to the pharmacist. As he told the story, my friends emotional state changed almost instantly.

The woman had been on the way to the pharmacy in the snow when her small compact car had slid in the snow and run off into the ditch. Her son had broken into the refrigerator and drunk a large bottle of cold medication kept there. She called poison control and they recommended getting him some Ipecac to make him throw up as soon as possible and then to bring him on to the hospital which was some 30 minutes away. Ambulances were all out on emergencies in the snow and unavailable, so panicked, she set out on her own when the car went into the ditch in front of a large estate near the edge of town.

The man in the Cadillac had answered the door when she pounded on it.  She told the man what was happening and without another word, he pulled on a coat and loaded the mother and child in his big Caddie.  They roared off toward the nearest pharmacy, honking at couple of slow moving cars along the way to warn them as they rushed past.

As the story became clear, my friend's opinion changed instantly. By then the crowd around the counter was watching the child anxiously.

"You better take him to the restroom," the pharmacist pointed toward the back of the store. "He should be about to....."

About then the kid threw up on my friend's shoes. Somehow, my friend didn't mind even that. Tears formed in his eyes as the child, his mother and their rescuer rushed out the front door on their way to the hospital.

The pharmacist looked down at the empty bottle of Ipecac on his counter, realizing suddenly that it had not been paid for in the rush. My friend reached into his wallet and laid a ten dollar bill on the counter.

"My treat," he grinned at the druggist.

"Paper towel?" the man grinned back pointing at his shoes.

It's a good idea, before you form an opinion of someone, to get the whole story.

Tom

The Canceled Series Network

What I want is my own television network.  Actually, I could just buy the Sci-Fi network and cancel all the "reality" shows and horror movies and do just as well.  What I would replace them with are all the television series that people loved that were canceled without ending properly.

One of the reasons a television series gets canceled is because they don't find an audience quickly enough.  Oddly enough, this isn't so much a consequence of the quality of the show or how well-written or well-acted it is.  It's all about numbers.  What's aggravating for television viewers is that too often, the networks' dim-witted scheduling decisions, hide the good shows so that you can't find them and by the time you do, they've canceled it.   Is it any wonder so many shows don't collect a fan base quickly enough to save them.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm just about ready to stop watching network television of any kind. I'm sick of investing time in a new show only to see it canceled just as it is getting interesting.  I can name a whole string of shows that have gone by the board that shouldn't have.  I can also tell a couple of cautionary tales about dumping a show prematurely.

Way back in the 60's an unlikely new show came out called Star Trek. The network didn't quite know what to do with it and almost canceled it. It was their first experience with outraged fans and it frightened them a little so they left the show in place. They finally canceled the series well short of the end of Enterprise's famous "5 year mission".  The ensuing movies and cable series are proof as to how wrong the network was.

Then, an oddball comedy show called M*A*S*H appeared on CBS.  The network moved it around all over the schedule so no one could find it anymore and then almost canceled it the first year.  Fortunately, smarter folks at CBS prevailed and M*A*S*H went on to become one of the longest running series in history with the largest audience for a finale in TV history.

Give an audience time to find really well crafted writing and acting and you will have a loyal audience. The hardest part for audiences is finding something worth watching.  Networks should make it easy for them to do that.  That's why I propose creating the Cancelled Series Network (CSN).

Now not everything that is canceled deserves to be revived, of course.  My Mother the Car springs to mind. But finding a good canceled series is easy.  Just check what people are watching on Hulu or in the network archives and pluck from oblivion, any series with a loyal fan base.  In the past few years, here are some notable examples:

1. Firefly - I don't care how many people didn't "get" Firefly at first, it was great storytelling, wonderful characters.  The best SF series ever if you listen to the rabid fans.  That's the first one I'd bring back.

2. Jericho- Even if you only shot another 5 episodes and brought it to an end, at least you'd have a DVD set worth buying! I mean, the Republic of Texas was fixin' to kick some Western Alliance behind unless I missed my guess. My favorite post-cancellation stunt by the fans was filling up CBS's lobby with nuts in protest! That kind of imagination and loyalty should be rewarded.

3. Kyle XY - It took me a while to find this little ABC Family gem as it did many others.  When it went to Hulu, viewers worldwide discovered it and made the series immensely popular in places like Canada, France, Brazil, Iraq and Turkey of all places.  It needs another season or two to bring the story cycle to its end. Besides it's a really good story with admirable characters actually doing honorable things.We should be exporting shows like this one with a really decent main character set.

4.  Journeyman - This involuntary time traveler tale was just beginning to get interesting when ABC pulled the plug. I think there should be a rule of a minimum one year and a requirement that the series be ended properly or you can't start the series at all.  A one-season mini-series would have been about right for Journeyman.

5.  New Amsterdam - This one, a Highlander-like, tale of a 400 year old police detective was, again, just starting to get interesting when they killed it.  This is another one that begs to finish the season and have an ending.


6.  Life on Mars - This one they did right.  I'd like to have seen one more season for this series, but at least they ended the series.  I loved the ending. I think the American ending was better than the British one, but then I like my stories to have closure.  I hate open-ended ambiguity.  Bravo to whoever let "Mars" write an ending before they killed it.

7. Crusoe - I was really getting into this retelling of the Robinson Crusoe story and I don't care how politically correct it was compared to the original or how few people watched it.  At least end the series for crying out loud.  For people that liked the series, you could at least buy the series or watch it on Hulu or something where it could generate some ad revenue.  Get the man home to his wife at least.

8. Defying Gravity - This intriguing bit of science fiction got pulled halfway through the first season and left me hanging big time. I'm beginning to despise ABC for doing that to me. They will be the first network I boycott.  Let them do dancing idol worm-eating survivor desperate ghost wife shows without me.  At least finish the couple of seasons it will take to complete the series.  That or turn it into a mini-series and end it.

9. The Unit - Finally the network does a military series that isn't anti-military. But, of course, CBS can't figure out where to put it and manages to hide it from any hope of an audience.  This one just needed to go on for about 5 more years till everybody on the team's hitch is up.

10.  Early Edition - The engaging saga of Gary Hobbs, the pub owner who gets tomorrow's newspaper today lasted only 3 seasons.  It could have gone on much longer.  I don't know whether they ended it or not, because I can't watch it on-line anywhere yet (at least not without risking an FBI raid).  I hope it ended well for Gary. At any rate, EE was one of those good-hearted shows that you watch every week to make you feel like there's some hope for the world.  I miss it. 

The Rest - Eli Stone I would have like to have seen brought to an end.  It was quirky and interesting. Same with My Own Worst Enemy.  Dead Like Me was a very strange little show, but killing it, then following up with a movie that doesn't end it either is just goofy.  Showtime needs to go ahead and run a few more seasons or finish with a closer movie WITH Mandy Patinkin this time.  Threshold and Invasion were two SF shows that deserved at least an ending for crying out loud.  And I don't think I'd have ever got enough of Monk, but at least they did wrap the series up.

Shows in Jeopardy:

Chuck - If NBC kills Chuck, I may commit an act of terrorism.
Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles - My Sweet Baboo likes the Terminator movies and this spinoff TV series. I don't know why, but I put this in for her.
Flash Forward - I just got into this one.  Please don't cancel this one.  I'm just catching up on the back episodes.
Numb3rs - They always cancel the geek shows.  Remember Dweebs.  I loved that show and it didn't last but a few paltry episodes.  Numb3rs is brilliant and must be a bear to write with all that math in it.  I hope they at least bring it to an end.  I think they are, at least based on the last few episodes I've seen.

My network would mine from these series that have a dedicated fan base and set them up with a secure home for a minimum of one complete season.  No series would be canceled without at least a two hour series finale or more.  The first series I would sign would be FIREFLY, then The Unit, Jericho, Early Edition and Kyle XY and on down the list.  I think you could make a fortune buying and rebroadcasting these series with the promise of new episodes and an ending.  I'd rerun Life on Mars and add a half dozen or so new episodes sandwiched in between the last two episodes.  Forget the 26 show season minimum. We could just broadcast however many episodes the series works out to be.

I'd love to borrow Fawlty Towers, Red Dwarf and Good Neighbors from the BBC and revisit them too.  I think you could build a successful TV network using that model.  Only two rules.

1. NO CELEBRITY ANYTHING.
2. NO REALITY ANYTHING.

Only good storytelling, great acting and well-crafted concepts. I'd work for 5 figures and hire gifted amateurs to run the network and shoot the first marketing guy that shows up to tell me my demographic is skewed.

I would.  I'd get a conceal and carry permit just for that purpose.

Tom

Telling Stories About Grandma - Leaving a Legacy

My wife and I lost a very dear friend this week.  My wife is a nurse, but for the past 3 1/2 years she has been companion and caregiver to a lovely woman, Mrs. Mary Bob Thomas.  Mary Bob became a part of our family - something of an adopted grandmother. She was a bright, lively Christian woman with a dry rapier wit.  She called me Charlie Brown for some reason. Probably the big head, I don't know.


Her memorial service was uplifting. We told funny stories on her. She'd have enjoyed that. I'm writing a short biography of her life as a gift to her family.

Over the past decade, I have been involved closely with my wife's work with geriatric patients and I've been struck by the number of really interesting people there are who have become old people.  Our society seems to assume that once you become old you should slip quietly out of the way so that more interesting folks can occupy the mainstage. People used to assume you'd just be put out to pasture in some old folks home and after a few years, everybody would read your obit one day in the paper.

But my generation, the Boomers, seem to be staging something of a resistance as they reach the "being put out to pasture" age.  It's about time someone did.

My wife has a special affinity for older folks. She's always seen them as people - warm, vibrant individuals with stories to tell and contributions still to make. She worked for 8 years as adult day program director at an intergenerational day care program.  I had the privilege of direction the program its last 3 years of operation.


Children and old people are natural allies. Children need time that busy parents don't always have. Old people have time that their busy children don't always have. It's little wonder that when we look back on who had a powerful influence on us as kids, the most common response is grandmother or grandpa or some older relative who used to take us fishing or hang out with us and tell us stories.

And what stories those were!  I remember my Grandpa's stories.  I got them on tape while I still had time and have started recording what I remember about him before it fades from my memory. In Sheila's senior day care, we used sit and swap stories. We had pilots who flew astronauts around and landed planes on airstrips in Vietnam where where small arms rattled off the fuselage like hail. We had submariners who torpedoed Japanese ships in the Pacific ocean. One sailed on a sub that was sunk and then raised and put back in service. One lady was a Kilgore Rangerette in her heyday and installed canopies on P-38's during WWII.  We had three Rosie the Riveters at one time - lovely ladies with bright smiles and unexpected stories.

There was the gentleman who served in the 101st Airborne at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Another served with Patton. One was a mechanic at Edwards Air Force base when Chuck Yeager and Scott Cunningham were breaking speed and altitude records.They told us stories that some had never told their families.

Like the old fellow who had a thin scar across his belly that my wife saw when she was giving him a treatment one day. Turns out he'd been an Army Ranger in the Philippines and a Japanese soldier had jumped out of the jungle and stuck a bayonet in his belly. Charles killed him with his bare hands. It was a memory that still shook him even 50 years later and one he didn't talk about with family.

We used to put together memory books for our Alzheimer's patients.  We collected photos and memories from their past and printed up a book that they could reread every day to help them hang on to their most important memories. With a little help from Adobe Pagemaker, Photoshop and a word processor, I was able after a while to start making printed paperback books containing these stories and photos and memories. As our friends came to the end of their lives, we were often asked to print copies of the memory books for the families and to be used in their memorial services.

The families loved having a printed record of their loved one's lives and exploits.

For Miss Mary Bob, Sheila and I are assembling a history of her life with photos and stories we tape recorded as we sat around an reminisced this past week.  I have written a biography of my own son who died 4 years ago. We collected stories from his friends that tell better than a dry recitation of facts, what sort of man he was.

I suspect that most of us would like to leave some record of who we were and what kind of people we were for our children.  My grandpa's stories are safely on CD and copies are in the hands of his grandkids and great-grandkids so we don't ever lose the classic story of my Great Great Grandpa H.B. French the pastor who used to make a practice of praying in the haypile, up until my grandpa's cousin Alonso heard him praying up there about hell one morning and set the hay on fire.  Alonso was an early special effects man!  Alonso went fishing one day with a stick of dynamite he'd stolen from H.B.'s shed and a dog that was an excellent retriever. You can imagine the rest of the story.

To help prevent the loss of such wonderful stories, I have begun 'The Legacy Project". We will be assembling teams of writers, desktop publishers and interviewers, training them and building a network to help families and individuals record their life stories. I have a concept website up and am creating more samples.

I want to work with funeral homes and senior centers as partners to find families that want to create such personal histories.  If you'd like to be a part of this effort, check out the site.  Click on the "Legacy Project" link on my website at The Orion Project .  We're also looking for business partners and investors if this sounds like fun to you.  I love doing this work.  The stories are wonderful and families are so happy to have the books. We even produce videos with sweet and poignant stories for the memorial service that help bring a smile to everyone's face.

Grandma used to take poor children to the movies for a treat.  Grandma once pulled a little red wagon all around the neighborhood collecting food for a family whose house burned.  Grandpa and Grandma once let total strangers stay in their house while they were away one weekend because "God sent them to our door and they were so tired and discouraged."  Great Aunt Bennie used to sneak out of the girls dorm by climbing down the fire escape.  Honeymama used to smuggle food out of the cafeteria's back window to feed the farm boys at the school who couldn't afford meal tickets. Aunt Jane and her daughter once rolled up an inebriated Cousin Bob in a sheet and horse whipped him. He woke up bruised and battered in his underwear on the front lawn. He never came home drunk again.


These kinds of stories need to be recorded. That's what the Legacy Project is all about.

Tom King