When was the last time a stranger entertained you with a story? Traveling minstrels don’t favor hot concrete so I bet it wasn’t this summer. And in the absence of a minstrel, who is going bend your ear?
Larry McMurtry bemoans the death of the coffee shop story in his book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. He’s right; there isn’t much storytelling at coffee shops these days with all the laptop screens dividing customers into their own mutually exclusive, synthetic, virtual worlds.
I traveled riverside this afternoon and was delightfully surprised that the river can transcend time and technology. Those of us gravitating to the southerly flow of rippled liquid seem to want to tell and be told stories as much today as folks did back in the days of Huck Finn.
“How did you end up here?” My waiter inquired, on the shore of the Ouachita River in Eastern Louisiana. I had already told him I was en route to Fort Worth, and being that the Warehouse No. 1 Restaurant isn’t just off the interstate, it was a fair question. And I had already noticed he looked like a young Dave Grohl, so I didn’t feel like I needed to hold anything back.
I briefly mentioned that I research all my stops on a trip. I am an official member of the Hey See Club (as in, "Hey, see this," and "Hey, see that"). We don’t tote membership cards but you’ll know us when you meet us. We think the journey is just as important as the destination. That’s why we’re drawn to rivers, where the allure of slow travel on a boat still hangs in the breezes today.
So I told my waiter I grew up in a river city (Louisville, Kentucky is, after all, the River City) and I’m always trying to see ones I’ve never seen before. My waiter told me the river I had chosen to see was one of the most beautiful in the state. “Not here, where there’s all this crap in the water, but not too far from here.” He told me the river is named silver water in Indian speak. Then he told me a story.
Time was I could have my story before lunch every day—didn’t even have to wait for bedtime. Grandpa George would drive me into Battletown before noon because it was just too hot to be out past lunch. We’d go to Jake’s General Store, the one that smells musty. There Jake would be behind the counter, ready to spin a tale about a president coming down the Ohio on a boat.
I was a story hog growing up. When I was sick with the flu or in bed with a headache, my dad would sit on the edge of my bed and ask if I needed anything. “Tell me a story,” I’d say. Then I’d add, “About when you were little.”
And Dad would oblige. He had stories about swinging across Beargrass Creek on vines, climbing the fence to get into Churchill Downs and running from the police in Germantown. Uncle Gordon never got caught and Dad didn’t think that was fair.
If Grandpa George were here today, I’d say, “Tell me a story about when you were in the CCC.” He fought forest fires in California and made a daytrip to Tijuana with his buddies. I have the Daguerreotype of them in a mule cart with a fringed surrey. But I don’t know the story behind the picture.
I think the only person who is going to tell me a story today told it to me an hour ago. Here it is: Last spring there was more rain than there’d ever been in years in Monroe, Louisiana. So much rain that the Ouachita River rose until it was “a foot up off of the deck.”
Now here I had to ask my waiter what he meant. We were on a deck that seemed to be about twenty feet off the ground. I put my hand down, like I was petting a dog at my feet, and inquired, “Do you mean it was this high?”
“No,” he said, “It was just a foot under the deck.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Yeah, it hadn’t been that high since 1991. And we all came out here on the deck, and hung a guy over the railing, keeping him just above the water.”
And that was his story. It was over just as soon as it began, but I suppose it’s the sentiment that counts.
My waiter told me to come back in the fall, when it’s cooler and people like to sit on the deck to linger over dinner. They probably flipped for me today to figure who would wait on the only woman crazy enough in Eastern Louisiana to eat lunch outside in the heat. But I think I’ll return next time I’m passing through especially if there’s a story waiting for me there.
Onward I went over the Ouachita, and after passing into Texas, at the very first stop possible, I saw a sign, shining like a beacon and a promise of all things Larry McMurtry to come. It was a DQ!
Maybe here, in this state of “tall tales and other big lies,” I’ll find someone to tell me a real story. And go on and feel free to click on that link to see one of the funniest animated shorts ever, starring Ray Wylie Hubbard and produced by my friend Troy Campbell.
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