TALES MY PARENTS TOLD ME
William A. Wisdom

My father was a wonderful story-teller. He was born and raised in the rural south, where he absorbed the skills of a teller of (usually tall) tales. His stories had a number of common features. Whether an event had happened to him or to someone else, and whether it was fact, or fiction, or joke, it got recast in the first-person, with him as the principal character in the story. Instead of "Have you heard the one about the three guys on the golf course?" it was "I was on the golf course with Jim and Bob the other day . . . ." And what followed was more vivid and funnier than any mere joke.

The facts of an actual event were simply the raw material for his creative talents. But what my father regarded as a good story my mother invariably regarded as a bald-faced lie. As long as she lived, she never "got it"--or if she did, she never learned to accept it. The only times I can ever remember my father getting visibly angry at my mother were when she'd say something like: "Oh, Wiz; don't you remember? That's not the way it happened." And this occurred over and over. Sometimes she would take me aside after some particularly good story and say: "Now, Bill. I have to tell you that that story wasn't true." Of course it wasn't true. Even as a young child, I knew that perfectly well. Often I had even witnessed the events behind the story, and could see how the creative process had molded them- adding bits here and eliminating others there, rearranging pieces in space and time, until the whole thing "worked".

My mother had one or two jokes in her repertoire . . . they were terrible, and she told them terribly. She was, you might by now realize, quite strait-laced and conventional. I never heard her say a nasty word about anyone. Well, that's not quite true. She was critical of hippies -- as critical as she ever got of anyone. "Why don't they take a bath and comb their hair? And I don't know why they smoke that funny stuff! Life is so very wonderful, our experiences so rich, that I don't know why they want to mess up their minds that way!"

My mother did have a few stories, accounts of childhood experiences, that were so good in their scrupulously accurate details, with no "improvement," that they were a treat to hear. I'll present one father-story and one mother-story to illustrate my points.


FATHER

"Pop, I've noticed a little scar on the back of your head, where the hair doesn't grow. How did you get that scar?"

"Well, Bill. When I was just a little pup, no older than you are now, I used to work with a blind man, real big fellow, making a little extra pocket money. We'd split logs, the two of us. Here's how we did it. I'd set the wedge in the log and line him up. When everything was ready, I'd move back a little and grunt--'Uh-hunh!'--and he'd whomp that wedge just as hard as he could with his twelve-pound sledge hammer. That would open up the log a bit. Then I'd reset the wedge, line him up, and: 'Uh-hunh!' It was a fine system.

"Well one day we were working on a particularly large and knotty old oak log. He drove the wedge once, and it got stuck. I looked in and saw the wood all gnarled and twisty. The situation looked hopeless. As I was leaning over and looking in, I muttered to myself in frustration: 'Mmmnh-mmnh' . . . and that twelve-pound sledge hammer hit me square in the back of my head. Well, I've had that little scar there ever since."

That's the sort of story that used to upset my mother. I guess I can see why.


MOTHER

My mother's father was Superintendent of Indian Affairs for a large area in the west, and my mother spent much of her childhood on and around reservations -- particularly at Crow Agency near the Little Big Horn Battlefield in Montana. She didn't talk often or at length about her childhood. But she could be induced around Christmas time to talk about festivities on the reservation. Some of the religious celebrations were particularly solemn, spiritual affairs, to which the Whites were not invited -- just as a Jewish friend is not likely to be invited to Good Friday services. But other celebrations were more secular affairs, like Christmas, to which outsiders- in this case, the Whites -- were invited. So I would press my mother to talk about these Native American festivals every time Christmas-time came around. It seemed natural.

"Well, Bill, I guess I was about ten, eleven, twelve . . . in there. We would all gather in the long-house -- the Indians and the Whites, my neighbors and family, my brothers and sisters -- some older, some younger. There'd be a campfire in the middle, the smoke rising to a hole in the middle of the roof. The dogs would be running everywhere. Some of the Indians would be drumming, some singing, some dancing. And the old men would tell stories. It was wonderful, the sounds and smells and all. And we would chew on these little button-like things that came from some cactus or other. And all the colors would get so bright. And time would go so-o-o-o very slowly. The music was magical. And everything was so funny that we would laugh and laugh and laugh. It was a wonderful time."

I don't think she ever saw the connection between the button-things she chewed as a child and the "funny stuff" the hippies smoked. Certainly I never told her. (Imagine what Allen Ginsberg would have given to get smashed on peyote with the Native Americans when he was ten.)


Copyright © 2002, William A. Wisdom