Kentucky Folktales

by Mary Hamilton

  In this section you’ll find both oral traditional narratives and personal experience narratives. Montell explains the difference: “The personal experience narrative is an eyewitness or firsthand account; the narrator says, in essence, ‘I was there, I saw the action, and this is the way it happened.’ . . . Oral traditional narratives, on the other hand, are secondhand (‘I wasn’t there, but my grandmother was, and she described it like this’) or thirdhand reminiscences.”1

  I first heard most of the family tales here from my father, so my retellings are second-, third-, maybe even fourthhand accounts. I don’t tell them the way they are told in the family because I usually tell to strangers. After all, family members already know the people, and they’ve been to most of the places, so much can remain unsaid. Fact is, if you asked my relatives, “Who is the Hamilton family storyteller?” they will name my father, not me.

  You’ll find a couple of tales I remember from specific events in my life, and you’ll also find the story of an event from my life that I have no memory of. Instead the event was remembered for me and told to me by my parents.

  In The Kentucky Encyclopedia, Laura Harper Lee describes family stories as “narratives people make up in response to real-life experiences.”2 Hmm, make up? While I understand what she means, in my family we call these true stories.3

  A PLACE TO START

  When my Uncle Sammy was a boy he was a real good eater. Every day, my grandma would send Sammy off to school with two sandwiches, and he would always come home with an empty lunch box.1

  Now when Sammy began first grade, sandwiches were made from double loaf bread—each slice was twice as wide as the slices of bread we have today. When my grandma made Sammy’s sandwiches, she would take a slice of that double loaf bread, put the filling on, and then fold the bread over for sandwich one. She would then take a second slice of double loaf bread, put the filling on, and fold it over—sandwich two.

  It was during Sammy’s first year of school that single loaf bread, like what we have today, became more popular than double loaf bread. The first day my grandma made Sammy’s sandwiches with single loaf bread, she took a slice of bread, put the filling on, and then put a second slice on top for sandwich one. Another slice of bread, filling, a second slice of bread—sandwich two.

  When Sammy came home from school that afternoon, my grandma opened his lunch box and she found two sandwiches. He hadn’t eaten as much as a single bite out of either one. My grandma looked at him, “Sammy, do you feel okay? Are you sick? Weren’t you hungry? You didn’t eat your sandwiches.”

  Sammy looked at his mama, and tears ran down his cheeks, “Oh, Mama, I’m hungry. I’m just as hungry as I can be, but I couldn’t eat either one of those sandwiches. They’ve got something wrong with them. Neither one of them has a place to start.”

  COMMENTARY

  First you need to know that my Uncle Sammy grew up to become an engineer for a nationwide company. Yep, he grew up to be a troubleshooter!

  In the telling of this story, I use my hands as substitutes for the slices of bread, showing how the different sandwiches were constructed. I know using a gesture will call attention to specific parts of a story, and in this one I want to be sure my listeners picture the different sizes of bread used to create the different sandwiches. Without that information solidly pictured, the ending will not make any sense. For years, I thought all my listeners pictured Sammy unable to eat the second set of sandwiches because he could not force himself to bite through the crust, but comments from a recent audience let me know that some listeners see the situation as Sammy viewing the first type of sandwich like a hot dog bun so he could start on an end while holding the section with no crust. Hmm, once again, I’m reminded that when a story is told each listener imagines it anew and creates his or her own version of the tale. Whether my listeners see him as unable to bite through crust or unable to find an end to use as a starting place, the story still works.

  When I was growing up I never heard this story. Why? It never came up. Then, several of us were visiting my parents. My sister was making sandwiches for the nieces and nephews. When she set a sandwich down in front of one niece (I no longer remember which one, or I would tell you!), the child looked stricken. My father noticed, and commented, “She’s like Sammy.” My sister immediately picked up the sandwich, cut off the crust, and returned the sandwich to the now happy child. I stood there flabbergasted, completely unable to make the connection between his comment and her actions.

  So, I asked, “How does ‘she’s like Sammy’ mean cut off the crust?”

  Now my father and sister were puzzled, “You never heard that story?”

  And that’s how the story ended up being told to me.

  Family stories! They exist, but in my family (and I suspect in many families) the stories are not told every time folks get together. Instead, they come up in the context of specific situations that bring them to mind. Even then they are not told full out, but only referred to because the family thinks everybody already knows. Fortunately, curiosity and confusion led me to ask, and voila! A story!

  JEFF RIDES THE RIDES

  The year my little brother Jeff turned eight was a real important year for him. On his eighth birthday, my daddy looked at him and said, “Jeff, now that you are eight years old, when Meade County Fair time comes, you can go over to the midway and ride all the rides all by yourself. You won’t have to have any older brothers and sisters tagging along with you to make sure you behave.”

  Oh, Jeff was excited. From his birthday in April all the way to fair time in August, he’d look at us and say, “I get to ride all the rides—all by myself. You don’t get to watch me. You can’t boss me around. You can’t follow me. You can’t tell me what to do. I get to ride all the rides, all the rides, all by myself, all by myself . . .”

  By the time August and fair time rolled around we were all sick and tired of listening to Jeff go on and on about how he was going to ride all the rides.

  Finally, the Meade County Fair got set up on the fairgrounds in Brandenburg, the county seat. We all crowded into our car and Daddy drove the fifteen miles from our farm down to the fairgrounds. Everybody jumped out, and Daddy said, “Now, listen up. Tonight is English horse show night. That means there’s going to be organ music playing. When the organ music stops, I expect all of you all to come on back to the car because it will be time to go home.”

  We all said, “All right, Daddy.” Then we ran off in all directions to find our friends and enjoy the fair.

  When the organ music stopped, everybody came on back to the car—including my little brother Jeff.

  On the way home, Daddy asked, “Well, Jeff, did you ride all the rides?”

  Jeff said, “Oh, I tried to, Daddy. I rode ’em all except one.”

  “Jeff, I thought I gave you enough money to ride all the rides. Why didn’t you ride that one?”

  “Oh, you gave me plenty of money. I rode some of ’em two and three times. I couldn’t ride that one because I couldn’t figure out where to buy a ticket.”

  “Jeff, what do you mean you couldn’t figure out where to buy a ticket? What was that ride?”

  “Well, I’m not real sure I figured out the name of it right because it didn’t have a big sign over the top of it like all the other rides did. But I can tell you what it looked like. It was tall—taller than you are, Daddy. And it was white, and there were several of them lined up side by side, and each one of them had a door on the front. From the outside the ride didn’t look like it did too much. A person would walk up, open the door, step inside, and close the door. After a while they’d open the door again and step out. So from the outside it really didn’t look very exciting, but every time I was anywhere near it there were always great long lines of people looking like they could hardly wait their turn to ride that ride. And after the ride—when they opened the door and walked away, they always looked like they’d had a pretty good time; so I believe it was one of the better rides th
ere.”

  Now, none of us were laughing out loud—after all, this was the youngest child talking, so we didn’t dare laugh—but we were quivering all over from the effort to hold our laughter in.

  My Daddy shook his head and said, “Jeff, are you sure there were no words, no words at all associated with that ride?”

  “Oh, Daddy, I knew rides had names, so I looked it over real careful and I found some words, I believe that ride was called the Port-a-Car.”

  It seems the Port-a-Can company was hired to supply the portable toilets at the Meade County Fair that year and an important part of the “n” in their logo was missing. My little brother Jeff really would have ridden the portable toilets, if he just could have figured out where to buy himself a ticket.

  COMMENTARY

  This story falls into the realm of family folklore. Everyone in our family knows the story because it usually gets told when folks new to the family are meeting Jeff. Because I usually tell stories to strangers, the story has needed some shaping to make it work for my audiences. For example, in the family there is no need to explain who Jeff is. Usually, there is also no need to provide much information about the Meade County Fair because the listeners already know about it. Calling it “the fair” or just saying something like “the county fair” will suffice.1 So strangers need some background information that family members can easily do without.

  In addition, given the actual event, a told version for strangers needed some shaping. The year Jeff told Daddy he could not figure out where to buy a ticket for the Port-a-Car, I did not attend the fair with my family. I’m almost twelve years older than Jeff. I had stayed in Lexington, attending summer classes at the University of Kentucky, and did not go home for the fair that year. I learned about Jeff’s experience in a phone call with my father. When I asked my dad how the fair had gone, his reply was, “Now Mary, wouldn’t you think Jeff was old enough to be let loose on the midway by himself?” Of course, I had no idea what had happened, but I knew something had gone wrong. In proper conversational fashion, I replied, “What happened?” Then Daddy told me that Jeff reported he’d ridden every ride except the Port-a-Car. When I protested there was no such ride, Daddy responded, “Think about it Mary, the Port-a-Car?” Eventually it dawned on me that Jeff was referring to the portable toilets. When I guessed that, Daddy gave me the details of telling Jeff he could go by himself, then wondering about his decision when he heard Jeff’s report of his adventures.

  I hadn’t even considered telling this family incident to strangers. Then, sometime prior to 1987, I was telling stories to middle-school-aged students in Wyoming, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids. The students asked, “Do you know any true stories?” I remembered the incident with my brother and told it to them. They enjoyed it! After that I sought my brother’s permission to tell the story. He gladly gave it with his encouragement.

  Now, the telling varies, especially in the section where I’m describing the portable toilets and the behavior of the people waiting in line. It is during this section that audience members reveal through laughter and facial expressions that they have figured out what Jeff is talking about, even though Jeff is still in the dark. Because audiences have more fun when they are ahead of Jeff, I vary description details. Sometimes I’ll have Jeff say that some were white and others were a sort of blue green. Sometimes I’ll use body language or stance to show how the people looked when “they could hardly wait their turn.” Once I can tell recognition is dawning, I move on to the comments about our suppressed laughing in response to Jeff’s telling.

  When my brother Jeff was a high school music teacher, he used this story to help his students grasp the concept of improvisation. He began the lesson by playing a recorded version of the story,2 stopping at the point in the story when my father tells us all to return to the car at the end of the night and we all head off. He then asked his students to brainstorm ideas for the rest of the story. His students always came up with many different ideas. Each idea was discussed and evaluated based on its plausibility. Every time he used this exercise, his students identified multiple equally plausible story endings, but no one ever proposed the actual ending. Then Jeff played the rest of the recording. He explained to the students that the only reason he knew what had actually happened was because he was the “Jeff” in the story. He and his students agreed that their endings also created perfectly viable stories.

  It was a relatively small task for him to connect plausible story progressions to plausible musical progressions. Then his students could let go of their reluctance to improvise musically for fear of not getting it right, and embrace the idea that many possible “rights” could actually exist in any musical improvisation, just as they had existed in their story improvisation. That the actual tale was based on a real happening was also freeing for his students because they could see that their improvisations would have been satisfying for listeners, even though they bore little resemblance to the real life event. I’m delighted that my telling of a tale on him proved so useful to my brother, and I applaud his creative use of storytelling in his classroom.3

  JUMP ROPE KINGDOM

  First grade babies

  Second grade tots

  Third grade angels

  Fourth grade snots

  Fifth grade peaches

  Sixth grade plums

  And all the rest are dirty bums.

  I heard that rhyme on my first day of school, which at Flaherty Elementary in Meade County, Kentucky, was the first day of first grade. I’m not sure who started the rhyme. Could have been the snots. They were proud of themselves. Might have been the peaches. Might have been the plums. I don’t believe it was the dirty bums because, if memory serves me correctly, the dirty bums were much too old for recess.

  I heard that rhyme on the playground, day after day, recess after recess. Even when the bell rang, and our teachers left the school building to meet us and we left the playground to meet our teachers, I could still hear the rhyme, now a whispered taunt:

  First grade babies

  Second grade tots

  Third grade—

  I was in first grade, but I was not a baby. I was the oldest child in my family, and the only one old enough to walk all the way out our long, winding gravel driveway, stand by the highway, catch the big yellow school bus, and ride it to school. I wasn’t a baby. I was a big girl. But somehow I knew if I said, “Teacher, teacher, do you hear . . . ?” there would be laughter, and I wouldn’t think it was funny. The big kids were the ones who chanted the rhyme, and at my school the big kids were the rulers of the playground.

  The big boys ruled the kingdom of marbles. Marbles, a game played in rings drawn in the dust beneath the shade of trees. I can’t tell you what happened in the kingdom of marbles, because when I was a girl marbles was a boys-only world.

  The big girls ruled a kingdom too—the jump rope kingdom. They decided who was going to turn the rope, who was going to jump, what chants would be chanted—they ruled the jump rope kingdom.

  When I began first grade, I knew how to jump rope. I did! My mama would tie a rope to a porch post, and then she would string the rope across the porch. My mama would pick up the end of the rope. I’d stand beside the rope and watch her carefully. She would turn the rope, and I would jump. I knew how to jump rope when I began first grade.

  But in the jump rope kingdom ruled by the big girls, no one stood beside the rope and waited for the rope to turn. Oh no, the big girls ran in while the rope was turning! They ran in as they chanted the words of the jump rope rhymes:

  Not last night but the night before

  Twenty-four robbers came a-knocking at my door.

  As I ran out [the big girl would run out]

  They ran in [and she would jump back in, called “going in the back door”]

  And hit me on the head with a rolling pin

  And this is what they said for me to do:

  Fancy Dancer, do the twist [the big girl would twist and jump at the
same time]

  Fancy Dancer, give a high kick [she’d kick and jump on one foot]

  Fancy Dancer, turn all around [she turned in a circle while she jumped]

  Fancy Dancer, get out of town [the big girl would run out; the next would run in, and the chant would begin all over again]

  The rope never stopped. If a rope-turner grew tired, a second big girl would walk over, stand beside her, take hold of the rope, and the two of them would turn the rope together. Then the one who was tired would step away—the rope never stopped.

  I was not prepared. So I sat on the sidewalk and I watched—recess after recess, day after day. I learned the rhymes, took them home, and taught them to my little sister. But I did not, because I believed I could not, jump rope with the big girls.

  One day, one of the big girls, Anna Jo Hinton, walked over, looked down at me, and said, “Don’t you want to jump rope?”

  “Oh, I do. I do, but . . .”

  “But you don’t know how, do you?”

  “I know how to jump. I know the rhymes and everything. I just don’t know how to run in.”

  Anna Jo looked back at the other big girls. “Hey, she knows how to jump. She just doesn’t know how to run in. I believe I can teach her.”

  Some of the other big girls laughed, but Anna Jo offered me her hand. “You hold my hand. When I say run, you run. When I say jump, you jump.”

  I held her hand. “Run!” she said. I ran.

  “Jump!” she said. I jumped.

  Missed—I missed, and the rope stopped. Some of the big girls laughed—at me. But Anna Jo said, “Hey, she almost got it. Turn the rope again.”

  And again, “Run!” I ran. “Jump!” I jumped. I wish I could tell you I got it on my second try, but it wasn’t an easy thing for me to learn.

  Over and over Anna Jo made the other big girls turn the rope, until . . .