Beech Tree News Network

From where do wild, zany, tales and stories originate?  More surprisingly, most are not witnessed by people telling them— They’ve heard them second hand; yet they relish repeating them.  Maybe they get somewhat of an ego rush from this.  Who knows?

          Here is one going ‘round some years back:  they were carrying this man’s casket to the gravesite in the cementary.  A large crowd followed, suddenly the bottom fell out of the casket and the corpse hit the ground.  There was nothing to do but pick him up, go back to the funeral home, re-casket him and start over. 

          But when you ask around where this happened you get: “Well, somebody said over about Ennis, or Licksskillet, or maybe at a church up somewhere around Benchley or Cobbler’s Knob.”  Nobody ever knows for sure.

          I once heard a minister’s account of his family vacation to Florida… with my own ears (How else?, Certainly i couldn’t hear through someone else’s.)

          The pastor and his wife befriended some people, who told about another couple who were laying on the beach when this small brown dog came up and took up with them.  It looked lost.  It followed them back to the motel.  They locked it in the bathroom and gave it a bowl of water, and went to the motel office to report the lost dog to the manager.  When they got back to their room the dog had chewed through the bathroom door— then through the motel door and was gone.  The small, brown, friendly dog turned out to be a large brown rat. 

          Because the preacher told it, some of the church members believed it, and went about repeating the story. 

          Surprisingly these tales at times range over long distances.

          I first heard this one when my family and I lived in Texas: These three “undereducated” fellows were determined to learn to water ski.  They got a couple of two-by-fours, eight feet long.  They suggested he keep his shoes on, and wired the first trainee’s feet to the two-by’s.  The guy on the “skis” hollered, “Full throttle capin’, this ski-cat is ready to launch.”

          Of course the skis sank and dug into the bottom; turned ski-cat, tail-over-tea-kettle upside down where he nearly drowned, Disaster!

          Scarcely a week after hearing this Texas story, my family and I went on vacation to our hometown of Greenville, Kentucky.  Only a day or so after we arrived home, I heard the ski-cat and capin’ story.  It supposedly took place at Kentucky Lake. 

          I hope my last account of wild tales offends no one.  But the man who told it to me was as serious as a heart attack. 

My summer work as an agriculture teacher was from farm visitation; of both high school students and adult farmers.  Sometimes i would help a kid castrate his pigs, or give shots.  With adult farmers I might take tissue samples of a diseased plant for testing— or pull soil samples, etc.

          One day I was with this older farmer looking over his crops.  We were talking as we walked along.  “By the way,” he said, “did you hear about this woman at Bowling Green hospital?  She gave birth to an eight-pound frog.”

          I was so dumb-founded; this, otherwise, sensible man had recounted this, and evidently believed it.  I can’t remember what I said, maybe nothing.  I’m sure I didn’t try to refute his story in any way.  I didn’t see any use.

          “Yeah,” he said, “they think she may have been swimming in a pond which had several bullfrogs in it.”

          nuf-CD. You get the drift.

          Well, I’ll close with a story about an old Indian Chief.  It may be true, then again it may not; I ain’t sayin’ I wouldn’t tell you even if i knew. 

          The chief called all the braves in the tribe together:

          “This last bunch of horses we stole from the white settlers has a few problems.  I noticed some are so lacking in flesh their ribs and backbones are pretty prominent— ‘been on poor grass I expect… some of the backbones are even sharp. 

          “I’m sure sorry to have to tell you this, but we don’t have enough saddles to go around.  But the good news is, I just got in a brand new shipment of PREPARATION— H.”

          Happy trails…

                    Kindest Regards…