(upbeat jazzy music) - [Announcer] Basin PBS presents a 30th anniversary of the Midland Storytelling Festival live from the Basin PBS Anwar Family Studio.

- Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the 30th annual Midland Storytelling Festival.

(audience applauds) I'm Barbara McBride-Smith, and I'll be your MC for tonight's show.

I'm so very pleased to have been part of an ensemble group of tellers that have been coming to Midland every December for 30 years.

Now, I haven't been here for all 30.

I think I'm up to about maybe 24, but I have been present for quite a few.

And it's one of my favorite things about December every year.

What started out as an idea to enhance the curriculum for the social studies department of the Midland Independent School District grew to what has been referred to as a national model for storytelling applied to education.

We look forward to coming to west Texas every year.

It's kind of like a family reunion for all of us tellers.

And we anticipate seeing familiar faces and experiencing the joy and excitement that comes from sharing stories.

There is truly nothing better.

The festival has evolved, and now we're doing brand new things and sharing our stories in exciting new ways.

One of those new ways is right here right now.

We're here at the Basin PBS studio, providing an opportunity for your whole family to experience the art of storytelling.

And I do mean art, and I do mean whole family, because storytelling is for everybody.

It captures our imagination.

It whisks us to far away places like Mount Olympus to eavesdrop on the conversation of the gods, or it hunkers us down in those places that we're familiar with these days, like a staycation, as we reminisce about our loved ones and the twists and turns that life takes us on.

Stories are powerful.

And you know that here in west Texas, which is why we are here tonight celebrating 30 years.

(audience applauds) As we're getting started, why not call or text your neighbors and let them know that the Midland Storytelling Festival is live on the air now on Basin PBS, and then we want you to settle in and gather everybody close so you can enjoy tonight's program.

Now there's a great deal of preparation that goes into staging a festival.

One component that continues to grow and thrill all of us is the involvement of our youth in the oral tradition of storytelling.

For a month, beginning in October, workshop sessions are held to introduce and coach students ages 6 to 18 in how to tell a story.

And these workshops are free.

And after those sessions, there's a contest where the participants get to present their stories that they craft to an eager audience of family and friends, as well as a panel of judges.

Well, that took place this year too.

And the reports that I've received are that all of the youth did an amazing job, and the judges, well, they had a hard time selecting the winners, but after some very serious deliberation, they did make selections.

And we're going to hear from those young people tonight.

The first young teller and her three older brothers participated in the youth storytelling workshops for the very first time this year.

The judges were impressed by her confidence and her poise, that may have had something to do with the fact that she learned how to deal with older siblings along the way.

Now she is only six years old.

She attends classical conversation school.

She won her category with her version of a time honored classic tale that has been passed down from generation to generation.

Let's listen now to Huxley Logan.

- I would like to be telling you the story of "Puss in Boots."

Once there was a poor miller who died and left all he had to his three sons.

The first son was given the mill.

The second son was given the donkey, and all that was left for the third son was a cat called Puss.

Now the miller's son thought to himself, "My brothers will not starve, but what good is this cat?

Even if I skin him and eat him, I'll soon be hungry again?"

Puss did not like the sound of that.

So he said, "Fetch me a pair of boots, a hat and a sack."

The miller's son was surprised that Puss could speak, but he got him a pair of boots, a hat and sack.

Puss put on the boots, put on the hat and grabbed the sack and went out to hunt.

When he came back, he had one plump, juicy, fat rabbit in his bag.

Instead of eating it or giving it to the Miller's son, he went to the King's palace and said, "I bought you this fine gift from my master, the Marquis of Carabas."

The king was very happy and told him to thank his master.

The next day, he came back with two plump pheasants.

Again, the king was very happy.

And Puss did this for several days.

And all the time he would say, "I brought you this fine gift from my master, the Marquis of Carabas."

One day, he heard that the king and his daughter were traveling through the countryside, was ran home yelling, "Take off your clothes and jump into the lake!"

The miller's son was very confused and surprised, but he took off his clothes and jumped into the lake.

Soon he saw the king's carriage approaching and push friend yelling, "Help, help!

"My master has been robbed of his clothes and thrown into the lake!"

The king ordered for his finest man, and he hauled him out of the lake.

The king ordered his finest man for his clothes.

And the miller's son put on the clothes and presented himself before the king.

The king said, "Would you like to join us on our travel through the countryside?"

And the miller's son said, "Sure."

And they hopped in and drove off.

While they were doing that nonsense, Puss jump, Puss ran ahead and convince some farmers to say that they were working on the land of the Marquis of Carabas.

Five minutes later, the King's carriage approached, and seeing the farmers, the king said, "Whose land are you working on?"

And the farmers said, "We're working on the land of the Marquis of Carabas."

The king was very impressed and drove off.

I meant to say, Puss ran ahead once more.

And he came to a castle that belonged to an ogre that claimed to have magic powers.

And he went inside and said, "I've traveled all this way to see if you truly do have magic powers."

The ogre roared and turned into a lion.

Puss was very scared, but still he said, "Can you turn into something as tiny as a mouse?"

The ogre roared again and turned into a teeny tiny mouse.

Puss pounced on the mouse and gabbled it up.

He went to the kitchen and said, "Prepare a fine meal," to the cooks.

And he went outside to wait for the king.

Once the king's carriage approached, he said, "You are most welcome into my master's castle."

The king was very happy and said, "Yes."

Puss ran back in and sat down.

All the other people came in.

The princess, the king and the miller's son sat down and ate.

Now you must wonder what became of that clever cat.

Took off his boots, put them away, took off his hat, hung it up, and put away his sack and closed the doors.

And he decided to be a normal house pet.

Thank you.

- Now that, (audience applauds) that's mighty fine storytelling, isn't it?

Can you imagine yourself six years old standing in front of a camera and a panel of judges?

Amazing.

Now our next youth teller Gianna Rendall is eight years old and has an imagination that is as big as Texas.

She and her sister were also first time participants in the youth storytelling workshops.

She wrote and told an original story.

She attends homeschool.

She loves to read.

And the judges enjoyed the way her enthusiasm shined through in her story.

We think you're going to enjoy it too.

The stages is all yours, Gianna, take it away.

- The title of my story is "The Invisible Easter."

Once upon a time, there was a bunny named Jerry and hedgehog named Tom.

They were best and close friends.

One day, they were so very excited because the next day was Easter.

On Easter morning, they woke up and went outside, but there were no Easter eggs.

They had no idea that the Easter eggs were invisible.

They searched everywhere, all over the forest, but they couldn't find the Easter eggs.

They kept smashing into the Easter eggs, and that is how they figured it out.

After two hours of searching, Jerry said, "Tom, I think the Easter eggs are visible."

Once they figured out the Easter eggs were invisible, they could find them everywhere.

And once the Easter eggs were found and put in the basket, they turned color.

And the Easter Bunny hadn't quite gotten out of the forest when Tom and Jerry started to catch up with him.

They were just about to catch him when he threw an Easter egg that made them fall asleep for 10 years.

10 years later, a happy little worker ant came walking along the path.

All of a sudden, he stopped 'cause he saw Tom and Jerry, and they completely covered the path that the ant was using.

And the ant could not get by.

And only way to break the spell was to bite them hard.

And so he went up to them and bit them as hard as he could.

And sure enough, 10 years later, they woke up on the same day, and there were 10 years worth of Easter eggs to gather.

They ran as fast as they could collecting the Easter eggs.

And they found every single egg except one particular egg, the golden egg.

They searched everywhere, but they couldn't find it.

The Easter Bunny had hidden it in the tallest tree in the forest so that they could not get it down.

Finally, they decided they were gonna have to catch the Easter Bunny and make him tell them where the golden egg was hidden.

Meanwhile, the Easter Bunny was hopping along thinking, "Hah-hah, they'll never find the eggs!"

And all of a sudden, Tom and Jerry jumped out from behind a bush and grab the Easter Bunny.

"Tell us where the golden egg is!"

they shouted.

"No, I won't tell you," said the Easter Bunny.

"Tell us now!"

they shouted even louder.

"Fine.

I will tell you.

It isn't the tallest tree in the forest, but have fun getting up there, suckers!"

So they let the Easter Bunny go, and then they started looking up at all the trees in the forest until they came to the tallest one.

"Tom, we found it, but the Easter Bunny was right.

How are we gonna get up there?"

"I don't know," said Tom, staring up at the top of the tree.

"Wait a second, I do know.

I'll use my spikes."

So up the tree, he went with his basket, higher and higher and higher until he got to the very top.

And he started feeling around and then feeling some more until he found the golden egg.

"Jerry, I found it!"

he called down.

"Open it!"

Jerry called up.

And so he opened it, and it was full of money and candy.

"Jerry, I found it!"

he called down.

And they lived happily ever after.

Thank you.

(audience applauds) - Thank you, Gianna.

Yeah, I know that all of you out there in TV land and those of you here in our small audience live are having a marvelous time listening to these incredible young tellers.

I know I am.

(audience applauds) Now, our next storyteller is Hanna Lancto.

She's an 11-year-old student at Midland Classical Academy.

This is her second year to participate in the youth storytelling workshops.

Her involvement has led her to telling her story for a community back-to-school event.

In addition, storytelling has unlocked Hanna's creativity and writing skills.

She is now in the process of publishing a children's book based on her original story about what really happened to Goldilocks.

The judges picked Hanna as a winner because of her enthusiasm and the dynamic way she shares her stories.

Let's listen now to Hanna Lancto.

- And I'm gonna be telling you the story of the tree sprites and the lions.

As we begin, I'm gonna need your help.

So follow along to my instructions.

♪ Once upon a time, there was a forest ♪ Now you sing it.

And in that forest, there lived two trees sprites.

These fairy-like creatures protected and nurtured all the trees in the forest.

♪ And in that same forest ♪ Now you sing it.

There lived several lions.

Now these were no cowardly lions who might've been afraid of the forest.

No, sir.

These were big, bold, menacing, ferocious lions.

They would (roars), and it would terrify all who heard them.

And every time they would (roars), it would frighten away all the animals, the tree sprites and even the people who lived on the edge of the forest.

Not only that, but they preyed upon the animals in the forest.

And any people who dared come into their forest, they'd leave their bones on the ground for everyone to see.

One day, one tree sprite said to the other, "I am so, so, so tired of listening to those lions roar and seeing all the other animals running away in fear, and I'm really, really tired of seeing all those unsightly bones they leave lying around.

I think I will scare them away.

And they can just go and live in some other forest."

The other tree sprite shook her head.

"Yes, it is true that they are loud and fierce, and the lions do leave bones everywhere, but I do not think it would be wise to send them away.

They have always been here, and they have a part to play here, don't you think?"

The other tree sprite would not listen.

She had made up her mind that the forest would be better off without the lions.

So she spent her days plotting ways to get rid of them.

Finally, one day, she changed herself in a huge terrifying monster much bigger than the lions with a (roars) much louder than theirs.

She (roars) into their cave and said, "Leave!

Or I will eat you up."

The lions ran away from their cave in fear with the monster chasing them all the way out of the forest and into another forest in another land.

The next day, it was very quiet in the forest, and it was quiet the day after that.

What do you know?

No new bones appeared on the ground.

He was quiet for the next several days.

And the people on the edge of the forest tiptoed in.

"Are the line's gone?"

they asked one another.

"Are they gone?

We no longer hear theirs roars.

Perhaps it is safe now for us to come in."

And so they did.

Gone were the roars of the lions, but they were replaced with a new sound, that of trees falling to the ground, of new houses being built up.

Sadly, the tree sprites witnessed all of this.

"I can't believe I did this!"

the one tree sprite said.

"If the lions had been here, this never would've happened."

Because of me, we've lost our home."

Finally, all the animals and the trees were gone.

So the tree sprites had to leave and search for a new home, one where they would learn to accept all of its creatures.

♪ If I could be you ♪ ♪ If you could be me for just one hour ♪ ♪ If we could find a way ♪ ♪ To get inside each others' minds ♪ ♪ If you could see you through my eyes ♪ ♪ Instead of your ego ♪ ♪ I believe you'd be, I believe you'd be ♪ ♪ Surprised to see that you've been blind ♪ ♪ Mm-hmm ♪ ♪ Walk a mile in my shoes ♪ ♪ Walk a mile in my shoes ♪ ♪ And before you abuse, criticize and accuse ♪ ♪ Walk a mile in my shoes ♪ Thank you.

(audience applauds) - I think you'll agree with me that these young women did an absolutely wonderful job of telling stories tonight.

Yeah, the studio audience here and those of you at home have enjoyed something truly special.

Let's give them one more round of applause.

Why not?

(audience applauds) Well, it's family fun night, and you know a family has many generations.

We have the young, and we have the young at heart.

Willy Claflin certainly qualifies for that second category of being young at heart.

He and his sidekick, Maynard, have been sharing stories for quite some time.

Willy, come on up here.

I got something to ask ya.

Innit good to be back in Midland again?

- Yes, ma'am.

It sure is, live.

- Can you tell me- - Not even on Zoom.

Live and on TV.

- (laughs) Right.

- We're in Midland, it's real, it's 3D.

You can see people, you can (sniffs) smell them.

- So what do you think?

What have you missed most about Midland over these two years that we've been away from here?

- Everything.

I was miserable last year.

(both laugh) All my old friends from Midland, all my old storytelling friends and all the kids and Sue Rosebury, and have memories of Patty and the whole darn thing.

- Yeah.

- I just.

- Right, yeah.

- I mean, we did it last year, but we were remote.

- We were, right.

How was it telling those stories into your own camera, knowing that maybe people in Midland might be hearing you, and you're not sure, how did that feel?

- It felt like telling to a wall, but some walls are really good at listening.

They are, some walls have ears.

So watch out.

(audience laughs) - How did Maynard feel about it?

- Well, I think he kind of forgot about it.

He was kind of in a hibernation, and he lives in a studio with a lot of other furry creatures.

So I think they were kind of bonding, you know?

- Yeah, you think, were they telling stories to one another?

- I think so.

It was in moose.

It was the original moose speak, which I don't like don't translate myself.

- Right.

Did you find yourself trying to be creative during that time at home alone?

- Well, that was my intention.

I thought, "Two years.

I'm gonna be locked down.

I'm gonna come out with a novel and an album of music."

And I watched a lot of TV.

(audience laughs) I thought, "I'm gonna hike.

I'm gonna get in good shape."

And I walked around the block a couple of times.

- (laughs) Yeah.

- And for some reason I just kind of sat there like a pillow.

But here I am, I survived.

The pillow survived.

- Yeah, a lot of us can identify with you, but I know you'll agree with me.

We are overjoyed to be back in Midland with all these wonderful people and all of you out there.

- Yeah, I am too.

- We hope some of you will come and hear us live tomorrow.

- We're live tomorrow.

- So, Willy, take it away.

- Thank you very much.

Well, the first story I think I ever told in Midland was my only Christmas story.

It's a heartwarming story of the truck driving through my living room on Christmas, and it was 49 years ago.

And the reason I love this story, well, the first gift I was given was that I'm still alive.

And the second gift was that was the beginning of storytelling for me, because I didn't really have any stories.

But once a truck has driven through your living room, you have a beginning story.

Now that may take all the suspense out of it, but don't worry.

It gets much worse than it sounds.

The old farmhouse, the old Wescott place in Blue Hill, Maine, and local folks that said, "Why, geesh, I wouldn't buy that place if I was you.

That place is haunted."

But we were city folks.

We didn't believe in haunted houses.

We bought this old farmhouse, and we settled right in.

It was on a three-mile straightaway, by the way.

We did not live on a corner.

Three-mile straightaway, seemed real safe there.

We were gonna have an Christmas, our first Christmas there.

And my dad, he'd driven over from Wolfborough, New Hampshire to be with us and to be with his grandson.

So there we were, me and my first wife Lola and my son Brian and my dad.

And we were sitting around the Christmas tree, and I had been given two presents for Christmas.

One was a lucky rabbit's foot that I just put on my belt, and my son gave me in my stocking.

And I was interested in world religions, and so my wife had given me a book on Zen Buddhism.

It was called "A Zen Monk's Life."

Well I sat down near the tree with my back against the wall, And I opened up "A Zen Monk's Life."

And the living room went (mimics explosion), and two of the walls blew away, and the temperature dropped 70 degrees, and slowly in slow motion floating through the sky, little shards of glass, little pink clouds of Owens corning fiberglass insulation.

Little pieces of wood were floating around.

I had no idea what had happened.

In the far corner of the living room unaffected by the crash was the present that my dad had given his grandson, my son Brian, it was "Peter and the Wolf."

My wife had been hit by some flying glass.

It was a minor wound, but blood was streaming down, and my little boy was running around screaming.

And my father, well, had reached that point in "Peter and the Wolf" where the soundtrack to this unfolding disaster playing loudly in the background was.

(vocalizing lively soundtrack) My father rushed around the room.

He said, "How do you turn this fool thing off?"

That was all he could think about was inappropriate soundtrack for the disaster which was occurring.

I was even more useless than my dad, however, was a disappointment to me because I thought that in an emergency, I would be the guy that knew what to do.

I'd know where the first aid kit was.

In an earthquake, I'd know to stand in the doorway.

I would be able to control everything, but I stood in the middle of the living room, and I said, "This can't have happened!"

What I meant was, what I meant was suppose.

Suppose right now, while y'all are watching, either in studio or at home, there's a big explosion here, okay?

And a hole opens up on the floor, okay?

And I disappear (whooshes) through the floor.

There'd be two possibilities, right?

One would be that there had been a big explosion, and I had fallen through a hole in the floor.

The other explanation would be that something had gone dreadfully wrong between your ears.

That there'd been some synaptical misfiring, and that you'd gone temporarily nuts.

Well, I wasn't quite sure which it was, but then I saw the truck tracks across the living room rug.

And since two of the walls were missing, it was easy to follow the tracks out into the apple orchard.

And there was a three-quarter ton pickup truck on its side.

And I thought, "Oh, Lord."

And I said, we lived in the middle of a three-mile straightaway.

So to leave that road to come down into a ditch, climb a hill, go through a porch, go through the living room, go out the other side of the living room and 100 feet into the apple orchard, you would've had to been going about 90 miles an hour.

I thought whoever is in that truck is gonna be dead or they'll be so badly injured.

And I didn't want to go out and look, but I didn't have any other likely candidates.

So I couldn't, my wife was bleeding profusely.

I couldn't say, "No, suck it up.

Go out there and check it out."

Or my little boy running around, "Time to become a man, go check this out."

"Ah, Dad!"

Or my father who was walking with a cane, I could have sent him out on the ice, but it seemed like I was the only likely candidate.

So bravely, I went out, and I peered in the passengers side door, which had rolled upright.

And they're sitting on the driver's side door, very calmly and completely unscathed was Homer Gray, and Homer Gray, well, he was, if this had happened now, we'd say he had issues with alcohol.

However, it was 49 years ago, and he was called the town drunk.

Well, anyway, he'd been at the rifle range.

What he did on Christmas was he would drink a fifth of whiskey and blaze away at the targets.

And then when people near the rifle range suggested in colorful colloquial language that he might head home to avoid a disaster, he'd pack it up and head on back again.

Anyway, he was sitting on the driver's side door, and he was very calmly putting cartridges back in cartridge boxes.

Well, I hauled him out of the truck, and he came wobbling across the snow.

He looked at the Christmas tree and all the presents that were lying there.

And that was when I realized that the truck had come through three feet from where I was sitting.

Three feet to my right was where the truck had come through.

The explosion was so loud, at first, I had no idea what it was.

All the windows were shut.

We didn't hear him coming.

And I realized I was alive by three feet.

I thought that was a pretty good Christmas present, delivered express.

Well, Homer Gray, he looked at the Christmas tree and all the presents lying in the snow.

And he said, "Boy, jeez, it's too bad about your tree."

Later they said the next day down at the general store, he said, "Why, jeez, that was hilarious.

You should have seen all them young hippies run out of that house like ants running out of an anthill."

(laughs) Well, anyway, there we were.

It was about six degrees outside.

We had no walls.

But local neighbors are the best neighbors in the world.

And everybody went down to the lumberyard, all our neighbors, even though it was, you know, Sunday, it was Christmas, and they got a whole bunch of two-by-fours, and they got a great four-by-six to prop up the second floor there in the corner where the truck came through, and they got big sheets of plastic to hang on the two-by-fours to keep the cold air out.

Staple guns.

(mimics staples thudding) So there we were.

That end of the living room is now encased in plastic.

And of course there's no light there.

Well, that was okay.

Kept the heat in.

But this was in the old days when the old Blue Hill copper mines were still open, and the big copper mining trucks would come roaring down that three miles straightaway.

And if you ever stood at the edge of the road, when a big rig goes by, you know they throw out a wake of wind behind them.

Well, those trucks would barrel down the road, and that darkened end of the room with the plastic, it would go (mimics plastic rattling), make this horrible sound as the plastic rattled with the wind kicked up by the trucks.

Well, I was a complete nervous wreck.

I thought, "I've got to relax.

What can I do?

I'll take a hot bath."

So I got in the bathtub.

I made a nice hot bath.

I could feel my shoulders beginning to relax.

I thought this could just be a tad warmer.

And so I reached for the hot water tap.

And when I touched the hot water tap, I got the strongest electrical shock I have ever gotten in my life.

(mimics electricity hissing) All I could do to pull my hand off the water tap.

We called Central Maine Power Company to come out and see what on earth had happened.

They were not pleased at all to be summoned on Christmas night, but they came out grumbling.

They were sure we were just out of our minds.

They said, "Why, jeez, you can't get electrocuted in the bathtub.

Ain't know that electricity in this end of the room at all.

How you expect me believe that?"

So they ran in about three inches of water.

Guy, puts his hand in, and he grabs for the hot water tap, and sure enough.

(mimics electricity hissing) It's all you can do to pull his hand off.

And he's got an H burned into his palm, and he says in typical Maine fashion, "Huh?

Why, jeez, that kind of smacked."

Well, it turned out, in a completely unrelated incident, it had nothing to do with the truck crash.

They had miswired a transformer outside the house.

See the old transformer, too much juice was coming through it.

And you know what transformers do.

They step down the amount of electricity, right?

So all your home appliances don't have their little brains fried.

Well, this was not working.

It was not working.

And people's toasters and ovens and everything were getting burned up.

So they ordered a new transformer from Boston, but it was gonna take three days for the transformer to get there.

And in rural Maine, when something breaks, you don't wait for the replacement part.

You rig up something.

Well, by jeez, they done rigged up something, but they didn't tell us that they'd rigged up something.

What they done was, you could see their thinking.

Okay, too much juice is coming through here.

So we'll ground the thing.

We'll ground the transformer.

And they got to a four-foot iron pipe.

They drove it into the ground.

They board a hole in the top.

They threaded it with a wire, heavy wire up to the transformer.

All the extra juice (whooshes) right down into the ground.

Perfect.

The transformer was working just fine.

It was grounded.

But the problem was that the pin was four-feet long, and the underground stream, which fed the well, which fed the bathtub, was three and a half feet below the surface.

And so the electricity was going straight into the bathtub, into the well, into the bathtub.

You turned on the water and the electricity at the same time.

Well, things calmed down a little bit after that.

But a couple of weeks later, we were lying in bed, and all of a sudden, the bedroom started to go (mimics vibration).

Jumped out of bed, ran to the top of the stairs.

Completely freaked out.

My nerves were still so raw from what had happened on Christmas.

I flicked on the light, and the light bulb just happened to burn out at that moment.

But I was in such a state that I fell down the stairs.

Boom, boom, ah!

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Picked myself up at the bottom, went into the living room (mimics vibration).

Looked out on the porch, and the electric line had broken free, and it was snapping like a whip in the sky.

And showers of sparks were going into the night sky.

And I was like, "Wow!"

And then the phone line had not broken.

The phone line was vibrating like a giant string of a bass guitar.

And it was keyed into the four by six, which was in the corner of the house, which held up the bedroom.

And it was like being inside a giant tin can telephone.

The bones of the house were resonating.

They were amplifying the sound (mimics vibration) made by that wire.

Well, we hung in through the winter.

Following may, it got warmer.

I mowed the lawn for the first time.

I was mowing the lawn.

Ping!

I hit one of the unspent cartridges from Homer Gray's truck.

Luckily, my neighbor, the well driller, Ken Taplin, he said, "By, jeez, Will, you know what?

You're a lucky son of a gun.

You hit that cartridge only spot you could have without blowing your foot off."

At that point, maybe we thought the house was not a good fit for us.

So we moved across the road way back from the road.

Homer Gray, by the way, was charged with imprudent driving.

And he was found innocent by the judge who was his uncle.

My favorite remark was a remark by old man Hatch who lived down the road, and he sat on his porch every single day of the year no matter what the weather was.

And later he was talking about, and he said, "Why, Jeez, Willy, I seen him go by.

By jeez, he ain't never gonna to make it to town.

I guess you didn't, did he then?

No, he come right, come visiting, didn't he?"

Well, he moved back from the road, sold the house.

I felt bad about selling the house, you know?

You're supposed to file a disclosure.

You're supposed to say if anything's wrong with your property, you're supposed to let the new owners know.

But I didn't know what to say.

Trucks drive through here, or the lookout for the bathtub.

I didn't know.

I didn't say anything at all, but I worried.

I worried, and so I went to visit Barney, the new owner.

Sat down at the kitchen table.

Great big butcher block table.

It had a whole burnt through it like that.

I said, "Barney, what happened here?"

He said, "Oh, nothing."

I said, "Well, what do you mean nothing?

I don't see how you could possibly burn a hole in a butcher laminated butcher block table.

You couldn't even do that with a torch."

He said, "Ah, lightning, come in here."

(audience laughs) (laughs) I said, "What do you mean lightning come in here?"

He said, "Well, you know, the way I see it.

We live on a ridge.

Now if lightning hits just right, it'll make a ball fire, okay?

It'll roll right down the ridge until it finds something to follow like a line, a phone line.

Well, it found the phone line.

It come right in here right up on the table.

Phone was on the table.

It burned a hole right down through it.

You should've seen the dogs (laughs)."

So he's perfectly content living there, I guess.

We moved back.

We were glad that we moved back from the road.

And actually we were very fortunate because as my friend, Rob McCall said, not only was I given a profession, storytelling, but I was handed in my life.

And one of the things I learned about the truck driving through after I'd opened up "A Zen Monk's Life," which I never read, was that Zen, for me, has to do with understanding that I'm alive.

And that's the gift that's been given to me.

And the other gift that was given to me is when I moved back from the road I met in Aroostook County pygmy moose.

He's the only quadruped on the storytelling circuit.

Got just a few minutes left here.

And I want to introduce you to my moose.

'Cause if I hadn't moved back there in the woods, I never would have met this.

Not now my moose handler, thank you very much.

She's a moose whisperer.

And I'm gonna, this is not fully moose accessible, the studio.

I was working on getting it quadruped accessible, but I have to readjust a couple of things for this moose.

I got Maynard right after I moved back from the road.

He was dropped off by a neighbor who thought maybe I could tell stories to my little boy using this puppet.

I had no idea how I'd do that.

But one day, indeed, Maynard came to life, and he began to tell stories.

And he's been telling stories ever since.

One of his stories, in fact, was turned into a book that was the Texas Blue Bonnet award winner in 2009, "The Uglified Ducky."

So if you tell stories to your kids and tell them with a puppet, you never know where it's gonna lead you.

It led me to Maynard, and Maynard led me to Midland, Texas.

Hey, Maynard.

- Hello, I am extremely pleased to be able to share one very short moose story for you this evening.

This has a moral.

Morals from animal stories help us rearrange our priorities.

So.

This is called "Turtle and Bunny."

Pay attention for the moral.

Because you know what?

A story without a moral is just a mindless entertainment.

Might as well stay home and play video games.

Okay, once upon a time, there was turtle go real slow.

Boom, boom, boom.

There was a hyper-activated bunny that go real fast.

Boing, boing, boing, boing!

Bunny make fun of the turtle.

I'm fast.

You're a slow (laughs).

This angrify the turtle, and steam came out of her ears.

"Oh ya, bunny?

You think you're so smart, bunny?

I'll show you, bunny.

I challenge you to a race, bunny."

"Fine, swell," say the bunny.

"I'll race you."

So the very next morning at the starting line in their northern forest habitat, we have the skink and the skunk and the vole and the mole and the porcupine and the white-tailed deer, and the moose said, "On your mark.

Get set.

Go!"

Off go the turtle.

Boom, boom, boom.

Off go the bunny.

Boing, boing, boing, boing!

And the bunny ran so fast, he won the race before the turtle has even gone two feet.

And the moral, pay attention.

Time to pay attention to the moral, words to live by.

The fastest person always wins the race.

As it's good to learn to run fast.

Good for your body.

Good for your brain.

If you don't believe me, watch the Olympics.

You think the slowest person wins the race?

No, no, quick, before it's too late.

Get rid of the old moral and rearrange your priorities.

Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much.

And I hope I did not drool on the floor.

Thank you.

(audience applauds) - Thank you.

Thank you.

- By jeez, I hope I never have a Christmas like Willy had.

And I don't know, does anybody else but me become completely mesmerized by Maynard and just watch Willy become invisible?

That moose, I think he's alive.

So, well, we've enjoyed a teller from the west coast.

You know, Willy's from San Francisco, California, but now let's take it all the way over to the east coast.

Bil with one L, Lepp with two Ps, is from Charleston, West Virginia.

And he is actually proud of the fact that he is one big fat liar.

That's right.

He is a five time winner of the West Virginia State Liars contest.

In fact, someone who shall remain nameless once said, "Bil Lepp is the women's undergarment of storytelling."

(audience laughs) Well, that's not exactly what she said, but this is a family show.

What she said was he takes something small and insignificant and pushes it up into something really big and mighty interesting.

And I'll let you figure out what the lady's undergarment was.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Bil Lepp.

(audience applauds) - (clears throat) Thank you very much.

When I was a little kid, I was little.

I didn't get to be six feet tall or break a hundred pounds until I was probably a junior in high school.

And as a consequence, I was just bad at everything.

And to make matters worse, I would go into my sister's room, and my sister on one wall, there was nothing but blue ribbons from the swim team that we were on, except there was an occasional red ribbon thrown in where she'd been forced to be on a relay team with some weak sister who was never heard from again.

And then on another wall, there was nothing but trophies, and they weren't, thank you, your parents paid $25 for you to be on the team trophies.

They were most runs batted in, most baskets scored.

You go in my room, there were three ribbons on the wall from the swim team, and they were pink.

They didn't say last place, but they were the same ribbons that you got for being disqualified.

And for example, when I was in elementary school, we were studying the water cycle, and we learned about how the sun beats down, shines down on the ocean, and some of that water evaporates.

And then it goes up into the air and it reforms in the clouds, and the clouds blow out over the land.

And then it rains, and that rain goes in the creeks, and then some of it goes under Willy's house and electrocutes him.

And then.

(audience laughs) But most of it goes in the creeks and eventually makes it back to the ocean.

And so when it came time to do the science fair, I decided I was gonna do my report on the science fair.

And so I got like a turkey roaster, and I filled it up with water, and then I got a stand, and I put a hairdryer on it.

So I could blow hot air onto the water in the turkey baster, and then I put a terrarium over that.

Terrarium is a fancy word for upside down fish tank.

And then I made an ocean diorama, and I put that behind my little thing.

And what would happen was I would turn on the hairdryer, and the hot air would blow into the turkey roaster, and some of the water would evaporate, and then it would hit the top of the terrarium, and it would condense.

And then I could bump the table with my hip, and that water would fall like rain.

So we were at the science fair, and I had my three-by-five cards, and the judges came over, and I read my report, and then I bumped the table.

And when I did the hairdryer fell into the tub of water, and the lights went out in the entire county, and I did not win the science fair.

So I would go home, and I would get really down on myself.

Now I'm the last of five children, which means that by the time I came along, my parents were tired, and they really just didn't care that much anymore.

My mother's sympathy tank was empty.

And so, but she did try.

She would come in the room, and I'd be crying.

She'd say, "What's wrong?"

And I'd say, "I'm little.

I'm not good at anything.

I never win anything.

I'm never gonna change the world."

Now I don't know why at seven years old I thought it was my job to change the world.

But I would just get obsessed with that.

And my mother would take a deep breath, and she'd say, "Listen."

She'd say, "You're gonna grow up.

You're gonna find what you're good at eventually.

And most people who changed the world," she would say, "Never really intended to change the world.

They just were doing what they thought they had to do or what they felt like doing at the time or what they wanted to do.

And those actions caused other people and other actions to occur, and that changed the world."

She said, "Martin Luther didn't want to change the world.

He just wanted to fix the Catholic church."

And then she would name people who had done great things, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and Chuck Yeager, 'cause I'm from West Virginia.

So he always gets in the conversation, and Neil Armstrong.

People that just doing what they love to do.

Freddie Mercury, she did not say Freddie Mercury, but I wish he had, but people who were just doing what they did, and then through that, changed the world.

I don't know if it really made me feel better, but I know it made me fall asleep.

So that's where we were.

And then every summer my family would drive from Half Dollar, West Virginia to Islesboro, Maine.

This was a 21-hour drive.

And my dad would put all of our family gear in the canoe, tie it in the canoe, then put the canoe on top of the car.

We had a Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon.

Young people listening, you don't know what a station wagon is, imagine a minivan that's lower and cooler.

That's what a station.

So we had to put all the gear in the canoe because in that car was in the front seat was my dad, and then my grandmother and then gross papa.

Gross papa was my grandfather.

It's German for great father.

It has nothing to do with his personal hygiene.

So in the front seat was dad and mama and gross papa.

And then in the back seat was my brother.

No wait, that can't be right.

No mom was in the front seat.

It doesn't really matter.

But then in the next seat was my brother Paul, my brother Kevin and my grandmother, right?

Mom was in the front seat.

It's really not important.

But, and then in the back, the back of a station wagon is like, you know, it's like the back end of a pickup truck.

It's just this long flat area, except there's a roof on it.

And we were so far back there that even if the adults had cared what we were doing, they couldn't reach us.

And we would roll down this giant back window and lean out the back window.

And we would play who can be the person to last leave the state, which meant that we were hanging out the window.

"Hold my ankles."

And people were behind us, beep, beep.

"Look at those kids, that looks fun."

And so we pulled in at a rest stop, and I was, you know, you pull in a rest stop, 21-hour trip, 11 or 9 people in the car.

Everybody has to go to the bathroom.

And I was the last person out of the bathroom.

And instead of climbing over everybody, I just rolled in that big tailgate window.

I was sleepy.

So I put a blanket over myself.

And I fell asleep.

As I was crawling in, I made eye contact with my dad and gross papa in the rear view mirror.

So they knew I was in the car.

Dad put it in reverse.

We pulled out.

About 15 minutes later, my sister Tammy said, "Where's Bil?"

Because when you're the last of five children, it takes 15 miles for anyone to realize you're not there.

And she said, "Where's Bil?"

And gross papa said, or no, my dad said, "I think we left him at the rest stop."

And my mom said, "John!"

And my dad said, "What?

He'll be fine.

We'll pick him up on the way home."

And my mom said, "John!"

And I got to tell you, I was 18 before I realized that my father's name was not John!

Thought that's how it was pronounced.

And then it gross papa said, "I told him if he didn't hurry, we'd leave him."

And you know, everybody had a great time.

And then like 20 minutes, of course my sister, she was panicking and hysterical.

20 minutes later, I finally popped out, "I'm here."

Oh, it was great fun.

So anyway, we got to Maine, and we got to, we were on the ferry boat that was crossing to the island.

And you park your car on a ferry boat, and then you get out and you could look out at the ocean, and there were all these, they were lobster buoys, but I didn't know what they were.

They were just colorful things floating in the ocean.

I said, "Gross Papa, what are those things?"

And he said, "Oh, those mark the places where all of the other ferry boats sank."

(audience laughs) Gross papa always had the absolute best answer.

I always asked him questions.

Even once I figured out he was lying to me, I always went to him 'cause he had the best answers.

So we get to where we're going, and car doors open, and me and my buddy Skeeter, he was with us, we went running out of the car, and we went running down to the ocean, just straight down to the Atlantic Ocean.

It was probably the house was here, and then there was maybe 50 yards to where the edge of the ocean was.

So we went running down the beach into the ocean.

We went running into the North Atlantic Ocean.

I don't know if you've ever been in the North Atlantic Ocean, but by the end of that vacation, it was colder than the bottom of lake superior.

By the end of that vacation, I was blue from my knees down and then pale white where my swim trumps had been, and then bright red from my waist to the top of my head from being in the sun.

I looked like one of those patriotic rocket popsicles.

(audience laughs) We went running in the water, and we came running out.

And gross papa said, "Is it cold?"

And we said, "Yes, it's cold."

And he said, "Well, you have to acclimate yourself to the water.

And we said, "What does that mean?"

He said, "You have to get your body used to it.

Then you won't even notice it's cold."

We said, "How do you do that?"

He said, "You got to go in, and you gotta put your whole body under water."

So we ran into the ocean, and we dove down, and we popped out, and we came back, and he said, "Are you acclimated?"

I said, "I don't think so.

I'm still cold."

And he said, "Well, did you open your eyes?"

And we said, "No."

He said, "You have to open your eyes."

So we went back into the Atlantic Ocean, dove down, opened our eyes, popped out, came back.

Gross papa said, "What happened when you opened your eyes?"

I said, "It burned."

He said, "Yes, that's because it's salt water."

And Skeeter said, "It's dark."

And gross papa said, "Yes, that's because the sunlight can't penetrate into the ocean.

It can only go so deep."

He said, "The deeper you go in the ocean, the darker it gets.

You get to the bottom of the ocean, it's so dark that there are fish down there, that they're their bioluminescent like a lightening bugs.

They produce their own light."

He said, "There's a fish called the lantern fish.

It's got a light post coming right out of the middle of its head with a little lamp so it can see where it's going."

Gross papa said, "The light just, it can't penetrate because it's light, so it floats."

And I said, "Gross Papa, that can't be right.

Because I go to the swimming pool, I can see all the way to the bottom of the deep end."

And he said, "That's because that's fresh water.

This is salt water.

Salt water is more buoyant so the light can't get down as far."

And I said, "How deep are these bioluminescent creatures."

And gross papa I said, "Oh, they're deep.

They're deep.

Maybe seven, eight feet."

And so Skeeter and I went running out in the ocean, dove down to the bottom, swam to the bottom as deep as we could go, grabbed hold of rocks so that we wouldn't flow to the surface, open our eyes and the freezing burning salt water, and waited for bioluminescent fish to come swimming by until we couldn't stand it anymore.

And we went out, and we were standing there on the shore shivering.

And when we finally quit shivering, after like 10 minutes, gross papa said, "Are you starting to feel warm again?"

And we said, "Yes."

And he said, "Uh-oh."

And we said, "What do you mean, uh-oh?"

And he said, "Well, they say that just before you freeze to death, you start to feel warm."

So there was a stream coming out of the woods, going right into the ocean there.

And he said, "What you guys oughta do is build a dam across the stream, and then that'll build up a pool of water back here, and the sun will shine down on that, that'll get warm.

It'll be like a hot tub.

You go play in the ocean.

You get cold.

You come out, you sit down in your little pond here.

You warm up."

So we got shovels.

We made just a beautiful dam.

It was probably three feet tall, maybe four feet across.

And sure enough, it warmed up that pool of water.

We sat down there.

Finally it came time to go to bed.

We went up to the cabin.

We played some games.

We had supper.

We went to bed.

Skeeter and I got to sleep on the screened-in porch.

Now, one thing that I will tell as an adult, I will tell the young people listening.

If there are people who are bigger than you, and they are saying things to you like, "Oh, you're so lucky that you get to sleep on the screened-in porch."

You are being manipulated (audience laughs) because they're bigger than you.

And if they wanted to do it, they would just move you.

So Skeeter and I slept on the screen-in porch.

0.5 millimeters of steel separating us from the werewolves and the ax murderers that lived on Islesboro, Maine, and were so scared that we couldn't admit it.

So we told each other scary stories, and then we didn't fall asleep till four o'clock.

And at dawn, gross papa came out on the porch.

He said, "Boys, boys, boys, I think you're in a lot of trouble."

Which is no way to be awoken.

And we said, "What's wrong?"

And he said, "I think you broke the ocean."

And we said, "What are you talking about?"

And he pointed, and whereas the water had been 50 yards from the cabin yesterday, now the water was like 100 yards from the cabin.

He said, "That dam you built."

He said, "Do you know anything about the water cycle?"

It's like, "As a matter of fact, I do know something about the water cycle.

Sun shines down, water evaporates turns into clouds, blows out over the land.

It rains, the rain goes into the creeks.

The creeks refill the ocean."

Gross papa said, "Yeah, that dam you built.

I think you stopped the flow of water into the ocean."

He said, "Now the ocean is gonna drain.

And of course that's gonna cause a catastrophe 'cause there won't be any transatlantic shipping, which means, you know, there'll be financial disaster.

Plus all of the seals and the porpoises and the seagulls and the lantern fish are gonna die.

So that's an environmental disaster.

And then there'll be a drought in America 'cause there won't be any rain."

And I said, "Gross papa, there's no way humans could cause that much climate damage."

And he said, "What you need to do is go open up that dam.

So the water can go back in the ocean."

So we went down, and we opened up the dam, and sure enough, the water started flowing back in.

And he said, "Now you guys hide behind this log, and I'll keep an eye out for the ocean police, and you guys stay there, and we'll see if the ocean starts to refill."

Well, we fell asleep 'cause we hadn't slept much the night before.

We were tired.

There was all this adrenaline.

And I don't know how long we were asleep.

But when we woke up the water was about where it had been the day before.

And gross papa said, "I think it's working."

He said, "But let me ask you this.

Do either of you remember exactly where the water was yesterday?"

We said, "No."

He goes, "'Cause I think it's higher."

He said, "I think you might be letting too much water back into the ocean, which is bad, because Maine is north, and north is up, and water flows down.

So if you flood Maine, it's just gonna bottleneck right down through New England and then into the greater continental United States.

It's gonna flood Central and South America."

He said, "You guys need to stop.

You know, you gotta get that water flowing exactly how it was yesterday."

Well, we were seven.

We didn't know anything about hydrology, but we worked the rest of the day trying to get that flow to be exactly right.

And then mom called us for supper.

And we went upstairs, and we ate dinner, and we played some games, and we went to bed, and at dawn, gross papa was out there waking us up, "Boys, boys, boys, whatever you did, it didn't work."

And he pointed in the ocean and sure enough, it was draining again, and he said, "The only thing I can think to do now is displacement."

We said, "What's that?"

He said, "Well, that's where, you know, two bodies of mass can't occupy the same space.

It's like if you fill the bathtub up halfway, and then you get, in your body pushes the water out from where you are.

So it looks like there's more water in the tub, but there's not.

It's just your mass has moved that water."

He said, "If you guys go down there and start throwing rocks into the ocean, maybe you can throw enough rocks into the ocean, you can displace enough water that nobody's gonna notice that the ocean is draining."

So we went down, and we were throwing rocks into the ocean with our right arms until we couldn't move our right arms anymore.

And now we were throwing with our left, and then we were kicking rocks into the ocean, and it was working.

The water was coming back up.

It was.

And then gross papa said, "It's coming up too far.

You need to build a seawall."

So there we were building a seawall, and I heard someone coming behind us, and I looked and there was my mother and father.

And you might ask yourself, where have they been in for two days?

I don't know.

And my mom said, "What's wrong?"

And I said, "I think we broke the ocean.

And my dad said, "Oh, no, we better hide you away in the basement."

And my mom said, "John!"

And he said, "Only until the ocean police come, then we can stow them away on a ship to Timbuktu."

And my mom said, "John!"

And my grandfather laughed, and dad and gross papa walked away.

Gross papa was dad's dad.

And then it was Skeeter and I standing there just crying that we had broken the ocean, and my mom knelt down between us.

And she said, "Listen."

She said, "There is no doubt, no argument that the two of you are good at breaking things."

"But," she said, "I don't even think the two of you could break the ocean."

She said, "You don't know anything about the tides, do you?"

I grew up in the state of West Virginia.

The freshest seafood I ever had in my life said Sunkist on the side of it.

(audience laughs) I said, "No, I don't know anything about the tides."

And she said, "Look."

She said, "There's the sun and the moon.

And the earth spins underneath the sun and the moon.

And as the earth spins around the gravity on the sun and the gravity of the moon pull on the earth, and the sun is bigger so it has more power.

But the moon is closer in proximity is power.

So the moon's gravity wins, and as the earth spins, the moon's gravity pulls on all of the water so that the water is in constant flux, and every 12 hours on one side of the world, it's way high.

On the other side of the world, it's way low."

She said, "The ocean has tremendous, almost indescribably potential power inside the ocean."

She said, "But the freezing air can turn it solid, and it can crush ships, or an earthquake on one side of the ocean can cause a tidal wave that can wipe out an island on the other side of the ocean."

She said, "Hurricanes can blow up from the ocean."

She said, "The ocean has tremendous power to change the world."

She said, "But the ocean can only change the world when another force acts upon it."

She said, "The ocean can't do anything all by itself."

She said, "So even though the ocean is almost indescribably more powerful than the two of you," she said, "You two are actually more powerful than the ocean because you two, small as you are, can decide to change the world."

And then she walked away.

And Skeeter and I stood there looking at the ocean.

And after a few seconds I turned, and I started to go, and Skeeter said, "Where are you going?

And I said, "I'm gonna change the world."

And he said, "How are you gonna do that?"

And I said, "I'm gonna get an extension cord and a hairdryer."

(audience laughs) (audience applauds) - Alright, hold on, hold on, Bil Lepp, come back up here just a minute.

You want to give them a round of applause?

That was an amazing story.

(audience applauds) Okay, so Bil, I gotta ask you a question.

So you know this past couple of years, it's been a hard time for storytellers because we've not had live audiences.

And so some of us who are old and actually had real jobs in our former lives and have retirement, we were worried about tellers like you.

And so we started thinking we needed to have a bake sale for you to keep you alive during the pandemic.

But then I heard you actually had some other work that came up this past year.

Can you give us a little bit of information about what that was?

What did you do?

- I'm women's undergarments apparently.

(audience laughs) - Right, right.

- I was on little television show on the History Channel called "Man Versus History" where we explored to find out how true some of the historical things that we just sort of take for granted, whether they're true or not and the mysteries behind those events.

- Yeah, well, I watched those shows, and let me tell you people, if you haven't seen them, you got to check them out.

Go to Prime Video, and see if you can find "Man Versus History."

Now my personal favorite was the one about John Henry.

You know it, I love the story, and I love the way you delved into the history of that story.

What do you think was your favorite episode?

- John Henry was certainly one of my favorites.

In fact, I think it was my favorite.

That's the first one we shot.

So it was a lot of fun, and it was close to my house.

What was interesting about that was they told me at the end of every episode I had to say whether or not I thought this was true.

And I told the producers, I'm like, "I don't care what we find out about John Henry.

There's no way I can say the story wasn't true because I live here, and they'll burn my house down."

So I definitely proclaimed it as true.

But I call the show "Man Versus Humiliation" because history usually won.

- Yeah.

Well, if you haven't seen it, let me tell you another thing You got to see.

It's Bil Lepp hanging upside down in a straight jacket from a crane.

He's lifted about 20, 30 feet in the air.

And we all kept saying, "Drop him, drop him!"

(audience laughs) It didn't happen.

But thanks, Bil.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for this story tonight.

Now we're gonna take you to commercial break, everybody.

We'll see you in a bit.

- Hi, it's me, Emily, your Basin PBS membership director, here with some special words about Basin PBS.

And I want to be clear.

I'm here with the guarantee that there will be no solicitations, no special messages on the screen.

No super-imposed messages.

Good.

I'm here because I believe in quality.

Quality is what makes the programs you see here on Basin PBS so special.

Having said that, it's our belief that people don't need to be told to call and donate to our programs.

And by now, people know there is a website where you can contribute.

Frankly, we are offended when stations beg for money, even for a worthy cause like this.

So confirm my belief in humanity that you don't need these course reminders.

My fellow viewers, thank you for your time.

♪ So have yourself a merry little Christmas ♪ - [Host] Join us for the third annual Main Street Unplugged Yuletide concert, Thursday, December 16th at 7:00 PM, Recorded live at the Anwar Family Studio at Basin PBS, featuring local talent performing your favorite holiday music.

Share this season with Basin PBS, underwritten by HEB and Beten Bough Homes, sponsored by Arts Council of Midland.

(upbeat jazzy music) - Welcome back everybody.

Well, you've had a chance to stretch and to get up and to put a little ice in your water or whatever beverage you're having tonight.

And maybe you've fluffed up your pillows, and you've been able to reposition yourself so that you can enjoy the next part of our show.

So we've been west, and we've been east, and now let's move to America's mid-west region.

From Ann Arbor, Michigan, Laura Pershin Raynor brings to life the very colorful cast of characters from her unique and loving family, characters like her grandma Dina and stories about the old country, provide a vivid landscape for her own stories.

She is a recently retired award-winning librarian from the Ann Arbor District Library.

And there are scores of children from her city that will agree with me that she is the best retired storytelling librarian that has ever lived.

(Laura laughs) Let's welcome Laura Pershin Raynor.

(audience applauds) - Thank you.

- I have to ask you this, Laura, because, how in the world did you stay so positive during this pandemic that we've been through and we're not through yet?

For me getting communication with you was part of what kept me going.

You were the person most of all connected with this festival who reached out to everybody.

You gave us phone calls, you texted us, you sent us emails and kept us all strong and hopeful about coming back to Midland.

So thank you for that.

- Thank you.

- And how did you do it?

How did you stay so positive?

- I ate so much.

(audience laughs) I cooked constantly, and I Zoomed storytelling out to the classrooms that I knew and saw those little faces, and it kept me happy.

- Wonderful, thank you for the power of story and the power of good food.

- Power of food.

- All right.

Let's hear a your story, Laura.

- Thank you.

I want to tell you about when I was 12 years old.

When I was 12 years old, I would do anything to make my best friend Shelly Popkin laugh.

It seemed like in our 12th year, it was a little harder to keep her attention.

It hadn't always been that way.

We had always loved the same card games, the same board games.

We would blast Motown records so loud in her bedroom and dance on top of her bed.

And we would laugh so hard together.

But what I really admired about my friend Shelly Popkin was that in a house full of rules, she managed to be very courageous, and she taught me a few tricks.

Now there were quite a few rules in her house.

Rule number one, never open the candy drawer.

The candy drawer called to us when we came home from school hungry back to Shelly's house.

It was a big drawer in the kitchen filled with Clark bars and Butterfingers and sticks of licorice and those long rolls of waxy paper with the bright colored little candy buttons and Mary Janes and Bazooka bubble gum.

But no one was allowed to touch that drawer except for Shelly's mom Faye Ann Popkin when she was in the mood to dispense candy.

Rule number two, never ever go into the living room.

The living room was like a beautiful beach.

There was a big picture window, sand-colored carpet, and a wonderful big puffy sofa that looked like a low-hanging cloud, shiny turquoise chairs like warm water.

And all of it covered in bright shiny plastic.

Never go into the living room if you were a kid.

Rule number three, never interrupt cocktail hour.

After school on Tuesdays, the grown women were invited, the friends of Faye Ann Popkin, Shelly's mom, were invited for cocktail hour, which meant Harvey Wallbanger and crab meat on round Ritz crackers.

And they would close the wooden door to the den.

Never interrupt that, so the grownups could talk.

So on Tuesday afternoons, as soon as that door would close, Shelly and I would tiptoe into the kitchen, open up the candy drawer, stuff our packets with Clark bars and Butterfingers and all the sweets we could, go into the living room, sit on the crunchy plastic couch, stuff our faces with candy.

Then we would pull the plastic off all of the furniture, and jump from one chair to a sofa to another chair, round and round, so free and happy we would jump, and then quickly cover everything back up, and run up to her room and blast Motown before her mother ever found out.

We were partners in crime, and we never got caught.

It was great.

But now we were 12 years old.

That summer of 1965, Shelly had gone and gotten beautiful.

She was curvy and pouty, and sometimes we'd be in the middle of our favorite game, and she'd get that far away spacey look.

And I knew she was mooning over Andrew Goldfarb who was two years older than us and had whistled at her when we went into Peggy's candy store to buy Jawbreakers.

But if I could get Shelly to laugh, her little freckled nose would crinkle, and her blue eyes would sparkle, and she would look like she was five years old again.

And I'm sure that's how I got into trouble.

It was a very hot day in the summer, and Shelly and I decided it was time to cool off in our favorite room in my house, the basement.

So we went downstairs, we were wearing our little short-shorts.

We had ponytails on top of our heads and tendrils poking out from the humidity, and we were playing Monopoly.

I had just purchased Park Place when Shelly started to get that restless look.

She started straightening her ponytail, and I knew I was gonna lose her.

She would go home, and I wouldn't see her for the rest of the day.

So I looked around the basement to find something to make Shelly laugh.

Now the basement was our favorite place because it was filled with wonderful things.

My dad had painted all the concrete walls sunshine yellow, and the metal poles going down the middle of the long narrow basement were pumpkin orange.

The speckle linoleum floor looked like a giant had crushed my collection of marbles into the ground.

Now in the corner slightly behind us was my dad's work table.

My dad was a plumber, an artist and a trickster, and he had made a few things that made Shelly laugh over the years.

One time she came running downstairs to find me, and she saw my dad's latest creation.

It was about a head taller than she was.

It was a gigantic rose made of copper.

It had pedals that were beaded around the edges, a thick long winding stem with sharp thorns sticking out from it.

And Shelly said, "Mr. Pershin, that's pretty cool."

And he said, "Oh, you like it, Shelly?

Well, you should go smell it.

Smells just like a rose."

So Shelly walked up, and she stood on her tiptoes, and she put her little nose right up towards that rose.

And my dad squeezed the bulb in his pocket, and water came shooting out right into her face.

Well that made her laugh pretty hard.

And after that day, she always said, "Your dad, he is kooky."

Now in the far left corner of the basement was the gigantic spider that my dad had made out of copper, a huge body and a web that stretched from the ceiling to the floor with big long legs.

He said he made it to scare all the little spiders away so that Shelly and I could have sleepovers down there on Saturday nights.

In the far right corner was the stage my dad had built out of wood.

My mom made beautiful sparkly orange curtains, and that's where Shelly and I put on endless productions of "West Side Story" wearing my mom's old Kremlin petty coats.

I want to be in America, and then very close to us was my mom's work table.

And that's when I saw it.

I knew I would get a laugh.

It was a tall wastepaper basket made of thin red plastic.

And I had tried this trick once before.

It had worked really well.

I turned it upside down.

All of my mom's scraps of material came flying out.

I turned it right side up, and I sat down in it.

Now what made this funny was that my knees came up to my chin, which meant that my feet stuck straight out.

And I used my arms to balance on that narrow bottom of that wastebasket.

And I had tried it a few months before.

It had made my sister laugh, but it hadn't been 80% humidity, and I had been a little smaller.

This time when I sat down in that basket, that plastic just sucked me down and molded to my bottom, like caramel to an apple.

I knew instantly I was stuck.

Well, of course, Shelly started to laugh.

She said, "You look like a red licorice stick."

And I was bouncing back and forth.

I said, "Shelly, I think I'm stuck."

She said, "Oh, well I know what to do."

And she ran over and she lifted up the bottom of the basket, setting me flat on my feet, and I wattled over like a duck to one of the metal poles, and I held on tight, and Shelly tried to pull it off of me.

But as soon as she tried twice and fell on her bottom, she started to laugh too hard to be of any help at all.

She said, "You are stuck.

We're gonna have to get your mom."

And she ran up the stairs, and I could hear her footsteps above going all the way to the back of the house.

I could hear my mom following her.

My mom got halfway down the stairs, saw me holding onto a metal pole with this thing coming out the back of me, and she sat down on the steps and started to laugh.

She laughed so hard that black mascara made a line down her face.

And that's when I got a little upset.

"Mom, you need to help me now."

"Oh, of course, honey, but first, Marsha has to see this."

And she went running four doors down the street to get her best friend Marsha.

Well, by the time they came back, I was in whining mode.

(crying) "Mom, get me out of here."

"Oh, of course, but we have to get a picture for dad."

And she went off to find the camera.

By the time by mom came down, I was almost in tears.

She said, "Okay, honey, I'm ready to help."

I grabbed onto that pole.

Mom grabbed onto the basket.

Marsha grabbed onto mom.

Shelly grabbed onto Marsha.

And they pulled and they pulled until finally (sucks) with a great sucking sound it was removed from my body.

Oh, I sprawled out on the cool basement floor, stretching my aching muscles.

And that was the last summer that Shelly spent much time in my basement.

But as we grew up, in between boyfriends, Shelly would come back once in a while for a good laugh.

And we even managed to go off to college together.

And we were delighted to be placed in a dormitory in the basement.

We were two rooms away from each other.

And the first thing we noticed was that my corner room was a great place to people watch.

There were two windows, and because it was ground level and right near of very busy intersection where all day long hundreds of college students would be walking.

What did we call them?

The not backpacks with their little knapsacks or carrying their heavy textbooks, and all day long, you would see them walking by.

Now Shelly loved all the action at college.

And I tried to be mature.

I was homesick, and I tried to hide it in letters home.

But one day my dad said, "You know what?

I think Laura needs a little cheering up.

I think she misses us.

Let's go visit her."

So they were ready to come visit just a couple hours away.

But before they went, they made some preparations.

My dad went to the bank and got a whole roll of shiny brand new quarters.

Then he went to the hardware store, and he got roofing nails.

He bought a bunch of roofing nails.

He took them home down to the basement to his work bench, and he soldered those quarters to the heads of the roofing nails so that they would stick there forever.

He put them in a paper sack, packed his little red toolbox, came up to visit, and we had a wonderful picnic lunch near the river, Shelly and my parents and I.

And after lunch, my dad took us back to the dorm room, and he said, "Girls climb up to the top bunk and look out the window."

And we watched as my dad went out the side door of the dormitory with his little toolbox.

He squatted down, he opened it up.

He took out that little sack with the quarters on the nails.

He took out a hammer, and he pounded those quarters into the cracks of the sidewalk, right at the busiest intersection so that they just gleamed in the sunlight.

For the rest of that day and the rest of that school year, whenever we wanted a little entertainment, Shelly and I would climb up to the top bunk, and we would watch hungry college students trying to pick up quarters.

(audience laughs) Now some of them just walked right by.

They didn't even notice, but the ones that did would stop suddenly, look down, squat down, try to pick up a quarter, and when it wouldn't budge, they look around to make sure nobody was looking, and then run off.

But our favorites were the ones we called the diggers.

They would get down on the ground with their fingernail or they'd pull a pencil or a pen out of their pocket trying to get to those quarters.

Well, years and years passed by, and it had to be 20 years at least when I decided to take my kids up to walk around the beautiful campus of college, and the family was cruising around, and I said, "Let's go see if we can find any quarters.

And we looked around, I knew the spot perfectly.

And we were just about to give up.

After all those years, we didn't see a single coin until, as we were walking away, my daughter Emma said, "Look!"

And right near the grass, there was one quarter.

It was dull.

It was the same color as the sidewalk, and that's why we missed it.

Well, of course, you know what I did.

I got down on my knees, and I was trying to dig up that quarter.

I wanted to save that quarter so I could have it forever and tell my story, and I couldn't get it up.

And I looked, and my whole family was standing there with their hands on their hips just shaking their heads.

They were just laughing at me, and I remembered it was good feeling to remember how so long ago my father spent all that time putting quarters on the heads of roofing nails for the pure and simple pleasure of making his daughter and her best friend Shelly Popkin laugh.

Thank you.

(audience applauds) Thank you.

- Well, in our studio audience tonight, we have some board members from the Midland Storytelling Festival board of directors.

And I would like to speak with a couple of them here tonight.

First of all, we have Maria Mata, and she's one of the long-tenured members of the board.

And we have Terrill Littlejohn who is a brand new board member.

He just came on board this year, and I'd like to get a little of their perspective.

So, Maria, what can you tell us about the fact that this festival now has been alive and well for 30 years in Midland?

What significance does that have?

What has that festival brought to this community?

And what does storytelling mean in Midland and in west Texas?

- Well, first of all, I believe that this particular storytelling festival, along with the ones from way back 30 years ago, have meant or have told us that we have stories to tell.

And it was those two educators that you talked about earlier, Lucinda Windsor and Dr. Patty Smith, that gave us that vision that told us, you know, doesn't matter where you come from.

It doesn't matter what your background is.

All of us have a story.

And I remember those earlier days when we first started, it was really a curriculum kind of thing.

We wanted to make sure that our students were able to write correctly and all of that, you know, and express themselves.

And so we started with fourth graders, and it was basically a school-related sort of thing, if you could say that, but then it didn't stop there.

It expanded, and it expanded.

So these 30 years that we've been doing this, of course, Dr. Patty is no longer with us, and Lucinda has moved somewhere.

Hope she's looking at us or seeing us right now and seeing that, she had a lot to do with this too.

Now we've expanded not only to students, but we've expanded to the community.

We've had our executive director, Sue Rosebury, whom I just adore.

She's just wonderful.

I met her when she was working for an oil company, and they took us in as, as partners.

So she's one that has also done so many things to expand our program, not only for children, but now for adults as well.

We have what we call story, our seniors tell stories about their life and how they grew up here in Midland, and it's local people.

And so we're just really excited about what we're doing now.

And I love that the stories that the children have been, you know, we've added that program as well.

So we've been very busy, and our board is very versatile and just wants to expand more to community, not only children, but also adults.

And we just want everyone to have the opportunity to hear stories, and then to say, "I have a story as well."

- Thank you.

That's exactly what we're hoping for.

And, Terrill, being the brand new board member.

Can you tell us a little bit about why did you say yes when they asked you to join this board?

What have you learned about the work that you will need to do as a board member?

- Well, first of all, Ms. Barb, it was such a pleasure and an honor to be invited to join the board of an organization that has brought me so much happiness over the years.

Storytellers on my traveling companions.

So this is an opportunity for me to give back and to hopefully enhance what's already in place to make it better than what it has been.

So it's a blessing and a pleasure to be a part of this organization.

- Well, thank you.

Thank you, Terrill and Maria, for doing all that you do to make it possible for the storytellers to come here and for the audience to enjoy what we do.

And it's all because you do all that background work to make it happen, so thank you so very much.

- And we appreciate you guys a whole lot.

(audience applauds) - Thank you.

- I do want to end with one thing that's here, is this 30 years later, the practice of sharing stories continues, and the people of the land are living happily ever after.

And I truly believe that, and we appreciate you.

- Thank you.

Thanks you.

- Thank you all.

- And thanks to all of you for being here tonight.

Now, our final teller for this evening is completely at home in Midland and in the role of closing out tonight's family fun night program, because he's been coming to Midland since the festival started way back in 1992.

If you look up the word storyteller in the dictionary, there should be a photo of this man.

His stories are hilarious.

They're unpredictable.

And for 30 years they have filled our hearts with joy.

He's a fan favorite at numerous festivals across the world, but nowhere is he appreciated more than right here in Midland America.

(audience applauds) Let's welcome Donald Davis.

- Ah, thank you, Barbara.

It's wonderful to be in Midland, and as we go around town to run into people up and down the street and in stores and where we go out to eat, who were little kids when we were starting this 30 years ago.

And they come up and say, "I remember you.

You told the story about this, you tell the story about that when I was a student at Crockett or when I was a student at Buoy."

And so it is like being home to be here in Midland in December for this wonderful festival time.

My father was born in 1901.

And when he got married in 1943, got it?

1943, he was 42 years old.

He never thought he was ever gonna get married.

And my mother was nearly 20 years younger.

So when my little brother and I were growing up, we would watch our daddy because he had two main hobbies.

One of his hobbies, we called "Spoiling My Mother."

He just adored her.

And he was simply a model for how to treat someone whom you really adore.

Spoiling our mama was his number one hobby.

But he had another hobby.

His other hobby, we called "Annoying My Mama."

(audience laughs) And he was so good at it, that sometimes, he could do both of those things at absolutely the same time.

My brother and I used to love Christmas time, because on Christmas morning, the most enjoyable thing was waiting to see what did Mama get from Daddy this year?

The first time I remember doing that, I was maybe about seven or eight years old.

And on Christmas morning, my brother Joe and I looked to see what Santa Claus brought us.

And then here came my daddy, bringing his present to our mother.

He handed it to her.

It was a long box.

It was a wide box.

It was a very flat box.

And she opened that box, and he had given her for Christmas this beautiful set of seven little yellow-handled screwdrivers.

(audience laughs) It was just absolutely beautiful.

There was even a little rack that screwed up on the kitchen wall, and they would hang in kitchen.

So anytime she needed a screwdriver, one was just.

Didn't he spoil her?

Didn't he just totally spoil her?

She was the first woman on our side of town who had her own weed eater.

And she always had a better chainsaw than anybody else in the whole family.

But the year my daddy outdid himself was the year when I was 11 years old, because that year on Christmas morning, we got up and my dad handed my mother a big box.

It was wrapped in bright red paper.

It had red ribbon on it.

She took off the red ribbon.

She pulled off the paper.

She opened the box, and she screamed, "You got it!

You got it!"

Because as she pulled up out of that box, it unfolded itself, unfolded itself.

It was a beautiful full-length bright red wool overcoat.

My mother put it on, and she said, "Oh, Joe, this is so beautiful.

How did you know?

How did you know I wanted this so much?"

Well, I knew how I knew.

We'd watched her try it on 50 times at Turner's store.

If he hadn't figured it out by now, he was dumb.

(audience laughs) Well, he said, "Did I get the right size?"

And you could see her kind of go, "Mm, mm."

And even an 11-year-old boy could tell that he should have gotten one are maybe two sizes larger.

But she was so flattered because he got the little one, she wasn't gonna say a word about it.

(audience laughs) Well, we opened all of the rest of our presents, and we played with what Santa Claus brought us.

Then we had our Christmas breakfast there on that morning, and in a little while, it was time for us to load up and go to my aunt Addie's house.

That was my mother's next little sister.

Because this year she was gonna be the host for the big family Christmas gathering.

Now my aunt Addie was the next sister of my mother's six little sisters, and eventually two little brothers.

Aunt Addie was only 10 months younger than my mother.

They'd gone to school like twins in the same grade, all the way through school, because the way their birthdays fell, they weren't far enough apart to be in two different grades.

Most people thought they were twins, and actually they looked just alike, except my aunt Addie was one or may be about two sizes smaller than my mother.

Well, we got ready to get in the car.

We put in the family presents.

We put in the food.

You know what food we were taking.

You know.

One of our boys one time said to his mama, he said, "Mama, can you even make deviled eggs if you're not going anywhere?"

Yep, we had the deviled eggs in that big round Tupperware thing with the little egg dips all around the edges of it.

And in the middle yellow jello with graded carrots in it and a big old glob of mayonnaise on the top.

Well, we got in the car, and we drove out to my aunt Addie and uncle David's house.

So we drove up in the yard, and my daddy and my little brother Joe, they gathered up all the presents and went inside, and they took the presents inside.

And I went around with my mother to the trunk of the car to help her carry the food in.

In addition to the deviled eggs and jello, she had also made what she called a midnight delight chocolate mint cake.

And I said to my mother, as we were getting out the food.

I said, "Mama, mama, you didn't take the tags off of your new coat."

Right on the side, coming out from the top of the pockets, a little string on each side with a cardboard tag there.

One of them had, I guess, the size on it.

One of them had something about how to take care of it.

And my mother took those tags, and she just stuck them in the pockets as she said, "Sh, sh, don't tell your daddy, the one he got is too little.

I need to take it back up there and swap it on Monday.

I left the tags on so they'll take it back, and I can swap it."

Well, then we headed up to the door of aunt Addie's house, and she met us right there at the door.

She looked at my mother in that red coat, and she said, "You got it!

You got it!"

See, they'd both been trying on this red coats.

That's what they both wanted.

And my mother said to aunt Addie, "Did you get one too?"

She says, "Oh, you know David Boyd wouldn't spend enough money to buy me a coat like that.

And besides we spent so much time getting ready for everybody to come out here, we haven't even opened a single present inside.

And my mother said, "Well, look, the one he got is really too little for me.

I bet it would fit you exactly.

Just try it on a minute and see what it feels like."

And my aunt Addie put that coat on.

It fit her perfectly.

She almost cried.

She said, "I'll never have a coat like this.

I will never have one.

It is so beautiful."

And she gave it back to my mama.

Well, we went in the house, and we took all of our coats, and we put them in that room that at architecture school, they teach you to put on houses for coats.

We put them on the bed in the front bedroom.

And then we went in the kitchen to enter an extended semester of eating.

Now let me tell you who's there.

My grandparents were there, my mother's mama and my mother's daddy.

My mother and daddy are there.

My mother's six little sisters and the six fellows who married those six girls.

My mother's little brother, uncle Spencer and his wife, my mother's baby brother Steve who's only four years older than I am who didn't even know he was ever gonna need to get married, and a whole big bunch of what eventually would be 30 cousins.

Well, we ate and we ate and we ate, and we laughed and we laughed and we laughed, and we had great fun, and everybody exchanged recipes and told stories and told stories about all the things that had happened since last year, because all of my mother's sisters and her brothers lived spread out from Chicago to Florida.

And we almost never saw them except at holiday times.

Now the seven men who were married to those seven women always every time the family got together played a trick on one of those girls they had married.

We never knew what it was gonna be, but everybody knew someday it was coming.

I remember a Christmas when my aunt Nancy, aunt Nancy had very terrible teeth in a time period when there was no dental care.

And one year she had all of her teeth pulled, and she was fitted with false teeth, beautiful tooth plates.

She had never look better in her life.

Now, the only problem was aunt Nancy was born with a tiny little birth defect.

She didn't have a lid to go on her mouth, and it ran all the time.

It ran non-stop.

It ran all day.

At night, she'd just stop talking long enough to go to sleep, and then she'd talk in her sleep all night.

Well, that Christmas came, and she opened the little present.

And out of that present came this little set of windup teeth that went, da-da-da-da-da-da-da (hands thumping).

Everybody said, "Look, look, these are the ones you were supposed to get Nancy.

They're the only ones that can keep up with your mouth."

And it was right.

That's the way her mouth moved.

One year, my aunt Betty picked up a present, and she opened it up, and it was some kind of garment.

And she didn't look at it carefully.

She just picked it up, and as she picked it up, it was a big pair of underwear made out of new dish rags.

And there was a little poem pinned to the side of it that said, "If you do not like wearing these britches, just step right out and wash the dishes."

They were always pulling jokes like this.

Well, about halfway through the eating time, my uncle David, aunt Addie's husband, and my uncle Ralph, aunt Marry Gray's husband, they just kind of slipped out of the kitchen.

It was so crowded and busy, nobody really noticed.

And they eased up into that front bedroom, and they took my mother's new red coat.

Folded it up, put it in a box, wrapped up that box in Christmas paper, put ribbon around it, and labeled it as a present to aunt Addie from uncle David.

Well, in little while, all the eating was over, and it was time to go open presents.

We all headed up in the living room.

There was a big tree up there.

Presents where everywhere.

In no time, paper was flying all over the place.

Ribbons were flying all over the place.

There were cousin presents and grandparent presents, brother and sister presents, an aunt and uncle presents.

And all of a sudden, somebody said, "Look, Addie, look, this is a present to you from David!"

And she picked up that present, and opened it up.

And when the lid came off, she and my mother both scream, "You got it.

You got one too!

I got one too!"

Oh goodness, my aunt Addie put that coat on.

It fit her perfectly.

And she went running over to uncle David and grabbed him around the neck, and at the same time started crying and kissing him.

"Oh, David, David, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!

I never knew you would ever get me a present like this!

Oh, it is so gorgeous (crying)!"

You should've seen the look on his face.

He looked like he had just stepped in a hole that turned out to be a lot deeper than he thought it was gonna be.

Well, she wasn't gonna take it off.

She just was gonna wear it the rest of the day, going all around, modeling it, showing people how beautiful it was, and how David got her this wonderful, wonderful coat, the finest present she had ever gotten in her whole life.

She'd never believed she get something like that.

Well, pretty soon it was time for us to go home.

And went up there in the front bedroom to get our coats, and one of them was missing.

Now my mother knew all those guys who had married all those girls.

In fact, she had negotiated most of the marriages, and it took her about 30 seconds to totally figure out what had happened, and to devise what she was gonna do about it.

Well, she came storming out of that bedroom like she was mad.

She said, "David Boyd, David Boyd.

It's a warm day.

The windows are up.

The doors are open.

It's a warm day in December.

And some member of the wandering traveling element has come into your house and stolen my new coat Joe got me for Christmas."

David said, "No, oh no, no, no.

You know how we like to play jokes on everybody.

Ralph and I did it.

Addie's got it on, Addie's got it on."

My mother said, "Look at Addie.

Addie is nowhere near my size.

I couldn't get in that coat if I tried to squeeze it into it.

Now you stop teasing her like that.

The way she has thanked you for it.

And the way she loves you for giving her that coat.

You just stop that right now."

And we went out the door, and got in the car left.

When we got home, we drove in the driveway.

We got out of the car.

And as we started into the house, the telephone was ringing.

My mother said, "Think it worked."

She went over and answered the telephone.

It was my aunt Addie.

She was almost crying.

She said, "Lucille, I just can't believe that David got me that coat for Christmas.

It is so beautiful.

It's the most beautiful present I've ever had.

It's the nicest thing he ever got me, but he is so terribly, terribly upset that somebody came in our house and stole yours.

He couldn't even call you on the phone.

He talked me into calling you.

He wanted me to call you and see if you have any idea in the world where he can get you another one."

And I still remember on that Monday after Christmas, going with a whole lot of the family uptown to Turner's store and watching while my uncle David in 1955, laid out $41 to buy my mother the red coat that fit just right.

And you know, after that Christmas, those fellas never played another trick on any of the girls they married.

And the next year, when we got up on Christmas morning, and my daddy brought out to my mother this long box, square and long box, and she opened it up, and it turned out to be what for the next 40 years she called her Silver Bullet Electrolux vacuum cleaner.

(audience laughs) She said, "Oh Joe, how did you know to get me that?"

He said, "It was easy, Lucille.

Addie's already got one."

(audience laughs) You know the nicest thing about being a storyteller is we get to listen to each other's stories.

And every time I hear one of those stories, Laura's story reminds me of when I used to glue a quarter and a nickel and a dime and a penny to the pavement outside our house at the beach where we could watch tourists try to pick it up on their way to supper at night.

Bil's story reminds me of how my daddy's three brothers tried to build a swimming hole, a big wooden and earthen dam, and the dam washed away.

And it washed little Joe Medford's chickens away.

It didn't drown them.

They just went all the way through the neighborhood, and my granddad had to pay for it.

And then Willy's story.

We were driving through Maine, and we met the man who bought that house, Barney, that Willy had the truck run through.

They all fit together, don't they?

And hopefully our stories will remind you of some of your stories during this wonderful holiday season.

We get holiday stories because, you know, at holiday times we all have expectations, and anytime we have expectations, guess what?

They don't work out, do they?

And every time a whole day gets turned upside down, stories come rolling out on the other side.

And then we can laugh because we discover that we've all done things like this together.

Now we want to thank all of you for joining us, watching the television version tonight of our stories, and let you know that tomorrow we will have stories at the Busch Convention Center, right next door to the theater where we are now, 10 o'clock in the morning for families with children.

We'll have two sessions in the morning.

And then tomorrow evening at seven o'clock, we'll have our grand finale next door, where all the tellers from this weekend will be bringing you a story each for the evening.

And as you listen to our stories tomorrow night, we hope you'll listen thinking, "Does that remind me of somebody I ever knew?

Does that remind me of a place I've ever been?

Does that remind me of something I once did or I saw someone else do it?"

Because if our stories can remind you of things like that, then as you go home tomorrow night, you'll be all telling stories to each other.

(audience applauds) (bright music)