Illustration by Donn P. Crane for "My Book House" The Untold Story by Juan Wilson © 1994 The Gobbler: Summer Bounty It is something that is slipping from us every day. We lose it when we turn from a conversation to watch TV or tune out dad's old story with a Walkman's headphones. What we've lost is our ability to tell and listen to stories. What is a story? It's something that has a beginning ("Once upon a time....") and an end ("...and they lived happily ever after"). In the middle something happens to someone and someone does something about it. Stories are a form of art that provide us a frame of reference and a point of view. They allow us to identify with another person in another situation. Finally, stories have a point ("...and the moral of the story is..."). A good story entertains and engages us and maybe even teaches us a lesson or makes things clearer. The best stories make life more meaningful or even change our lives. Most of us pay for stories these days. We go to movies, rent videos, or watch TV. But that is only a recent phenomena. In the last few centuries, before electricity, people got their stories from the printed page, or handwritten letter. Most people today are too young to remember a time before radio and television, to a time when people entertained themselves writing correspondence to loved ones and friends. It was considered an art form unto itself. For millenia, before widespread literacy, people heard stories that were told to them personally by storytellers. Through most of human history the majority of our knowledge came from these spoken words. Great stories were handed down through scores of generations becoming legend, epic or myth. Why should we care how we get our stories as long as they are entertaining and informative? Why should we listen to, or tell stories today when we have cable TV? For a couple of reasons. Our own stories told through the spoken word or written can be about us or someone close to us and therefore be more personally meaningful. Also, story telling itself is as important as listening to stories. It is a creative process requiring skill, experience and knowledge of the audience. Illustration by George Metchum for "My Book House" Much of what is known about us as individuals is what has been told in stories, whether tragic or funny, or as gossip. Yes, even gossip is a form of storytelling. It is one of the few kinds of stories still told today. But even that seemingly indestructable institution is threatened by "Hard Copy", "Day One", "First Edition" and other TV celebrity gossip shows that thrive on the tragedy of celebrities, making the details of their lives more important than our own. One of the most astute observers of our time was Marshall McLuhan. He was the Director of the Center for Culture & Technology at the University of Toronto. Thirty years ago he published a book titled "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man". The New York Herald Tribune said of him "McLuhan is the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein." McLuhan's influence on TV, advertising, and other media related fields is incalculable. The central thesis in "Understanding Media" is that all forms of communication involve physical media that in effect become extensions of our bodies. Moreover, to properly perceive communications media like TV, photography, or even the written word; we must physically and psychologically change ourselves. Ultimately, the media by which we communicate has more influence on us than the content of what is communicated. This is precisely presented in McLuhan's followup book "The Media is the Message." McLuhan recognized that the behavioral effect of TV on children had little to do with how "educational" or uplifting the content. TV brings about a short attention span in the viewer regardless of the show watched. He also saw the distinct differences between oral and literate societies. In Western society the fusion and transition between oral to literate society was the compilation of the Bible. The spoken word was the primary means to preserve and pass wisdom. The compilation of the bible took the results of thousands of years of spoken story telling and recorded them in the Old Testament. These stories, in part, summarized the knowedge of western man up to that time in a form that was repeatable generation to generation. There are ancient examples even today of this oral tradition passing knowledge. Have you ever thought about how you learned to play the game tag or hopscotch. They were most likely taught to you by another child. Many of the games we first learn have been passed from child to child, generation to generation for hundreds of years without the intervention of adults. It was a shock for me to learn that a childhood rhyme and dance I learned as a child dates back to 13th century Europe, at the time of the Black Plague. The rhyme was "Ring Around the Rosy". In the 1950's schoolyard of my youth we danced in a circle singing the words. At the end we would all fall down and laugh. The words were: Ring around the rosy, Pocket full of posy, Ashes, Ashes All fall down. Scholars say this song refers to discoloring around the open sores on plague victims. Posy was apparently an herb that was carried to protect children and others from the disease. I don't know if children still sing these words, but if they do I doubt they know where they came from or what they mean. Some cultures, that have survived to the present, rely heavily on the spoken word. Native Americans and Hawaiians are examples. In researching an article on local Native American traditional ceremonies it became obvious that it would not be easy to discover the details of these ceremonies. Even finding the dates and times of annual events was not to be found in the Salamanca Indian Library or other places consisting of written records. It seems this information has not been documented intentionally, and is only passed on through the spoken word, face to face. In this way these ceremonies are protected from exposure to the "wrong"people. Stories are often told amongst those of a kind. Within a family, social group, age group, or other kin. They bond us together. They tribalize us. Understanding stories lets you understand others. In this issue of The Gobbler we have three articles that relate to storytelling. Two are articles from the past. One, "My Childhood on the Farm", is an eyewitness account of life in our area around the end of World War I. This is about as far back as eyewitness accounts can take us. The other, "Remembering Watts Flats", is a third-party account of the spoken word of an eyewitness. This takes us back to about the Civil War. Our last story is a fictional account of baseball's opening day, and, of course, fiction can take us anywhere and anytime. Hope you enjoy them. Story Index