Tellable Cracker Tales
Tellable Cracker Tales
Annette J. Bruce
PINEAPPLE PRESS, INC., Sarasota, Florida
Copyright © 1996 by Annette J. Bruce
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Inquiries should be addressed to:
Pineapple Press, Inc.
P.O. Box 3889
Sarasota, Florida 34230
www.pineapplepress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bruce, Annette J., 1918–
Tellable cracker tales / Annette J. Bruce.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56164-100-0 (alk. paper) 978-1-56164-094-2 (pb)
1. Folklore—Florida 2. Country life—Florida 3. Florida—Social life and Customs. I. Title.
GR110.F5B78 1996
398’.09759—dc20
95-41668
CIP
First Edition
HB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
PB 10 9 8 7 6 5
Designed by Carol Tornatore
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to
John, Bette, & Barbara,
who also have sand in
their shoes …
Contents
Preface by Ormond H. Loomis
Introduction
Cracker Jack Tales
Introduction
Bear Hunting — Cracker-Style
Sech As It Is
Successful Jack
Folktales & Legends
Introduction
Judge of Character
Need or Greed
No Difference
The Christmas Groom
The Boot
Sam’s Whistle
Historical Stories
Introduction
The Barefoot Mailman
“Bone” Mizell
Four Female Giants
How Orlando Got Its Name & Kept Its Courthouse
Jake, King of the Crackers
Seminole Invasion of Key West
Tall Tales & Nonsense Stories
Introduction
Epaminondas
Gator Tadd or How the Green Swamp Got Its Name
Moonshine Hollow
Gator Tales
Introduction
Ole One Eye
Ignorance Is Bliss
Index
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my appreciation to the myriad of storytellers who have, through the years, willingly shared their stories; to the librarians at the Eustis Memorial and Tavares Libraries who are always willing to help me in my search for that evasive answer; and to Linda Chancey of the Bartow Library for going the extra mile to help me in my search. I want to express my gratitude to those who read the manuscript and wrote the preface and blurbs, and to David and June Cussen and the entire staff at Pineapple Press for their enthusiasm and consideration. I want to especially thank my friends Harryette Hannah and Stasia Wiseman for carefully checking the manuscript for typographical errors.
Preface
Annette Bruce’s collection of Florida stories is a treasure trove for tellers and readers. By putting some of her favorite tales in written form, she gives aspiring as well as practicing raconteurs material to draw upon, and she offers all who enjoy local Floridian color hours of entertaining reading. On the following pages, she generously shares a volume of gems.
Tales told today at festivals, school assemblies, and special library programs are frequently borrowed from printed sources, but they seldom return, as told by the tellers, to print. Annette Bruce, one of Florida’s best-known storytellers, writes stories with much the same idiom and feeling with which she tells them. With this book, audiences can enjoy her tales in print as well as in live performances. Her written collection is sure to be a welcomed addition to any shelf of Floridiana.
The narratives in this book contain historical facts and engaging fictions artfully woven together with lessons for life, messages about social values, and ample measures of wit. Readers can see how a contemporary tale-teller borrows from history: at times adapting types, motifs, and formulae from often collected and anthologized folktales, and at times using known characters, events, and places to add interest and lend authenticity. Like any folktales, Bruce’s stories illuminate the teller’s personality and vision as much as they reflect the history and culture from which they spring.
Whether you are a teller or a reader of folktales, I know you will enjoy this collection.
Ormond H. Loomis
Chief, Bureau of Florida Folklife
Introduction
As this collection of tellable Cracker tales goes to press, I sense the same joy and pain that enveloped me when my two daughters left for their first days at school. I had a deep appreciation for the availability of a good school, and the satisfaction that, to the best of my ability, I had prepared each of them, both mentally and emotionally, but, as they walked away, a lump formed in my throat and a tear trickled down my cheek. That which had been given to me, I had coddled and enjoyed, but the time had then come to let them launch out toward a wider horizon.
It is said, “The best inheritance you can give your heirs is roots so they can stand, and faith so they can fly.” The perfect containers for these substances are stories. Roots will not thrive in the cold, rocky soil of facts and figures. Faith is the end result of demonstrated consistencies. To flourish, both need the warmth and integrity of personalities. Because storytelling speaks in a unifiable language, it not only links tellers and listeners, but also connects the past with the future, and bridges the moats that surround generations and cultures.
The art of storytelling, once an endangered specialty, is now enjoying a revival. Many storytelling workshops and festivals are springing up all over the United States and abroad. Thousands attend the annual National Storytelling Festival held the first full weekend in October in the little town of Jonesborough, Tennessee.
It was at one of these Jonesborough festivals that I first heard the popular teller Doc McConnell say, “You only need two things to be a storyteller — gray hair and hemorrhoids. Gray hair so that you will look concerned, and hemorrhoids so that you will be concerned.” Doc McConnell is a marvelous entertainer with a great sense of humor, and he knows that, in reality, the storyteller also needs the writer’s command of words, the painter’s love of beauty, the orator’s rapport with an audience, and even the actor’s flair for drama. But all of these accomplishments are to no avail if the teller has no tellable stories.
Often, after a performance, someone will come up to me and say, “I am a storyteller” or “I would like to be a storyteller. Will you tell me where I can find some good stories to tell?”
Finding and choosing the “good” or right stories is what separates the cream from the whey in the art of storytelling. It is by far the most important and the most difficult task in the art. It is a task that cannot be delegated or accomplished by a “hot tip,” but there are a few guidelines to help the novice teller find and choose the right story. The teller will find the mother lode of tellable stories among the folktales. A tellable story is not too complicated, not cluttered with description, has some but not too much dialogue, and has a definite beginning, middle, and ending. Tellers will be wise to choose stories that are between five and fifteen minutes in length and which use the flora and fauna that are familiar to both them and their listeners. But, since the right story has to be one that the teller really likes as well as one that fits
his or her pace and “lingo,” the right story must be the teller’s personal choice.
In finding and learning even one story that is really his or hers, a teller will learn to recite many that will eventually go on the back burner or be discarded altogether. But the bona fide storyteller — one worthy of the title — will have stories and a style that are distinctively his or her own. The teller will lift a story off the printed pages, breathe life into it, and it will become the teller’s own story. The teller will enjoy telling the story, and audiences will enjoy hearing it told, over and over again.
For years now, Americans have bought more nonfiction books than fiction, and have clamored for educational programming. In an effort to restore storytelling to the status it once enjoyed, tellers have defined it as an educational instrument. In so doing, they have shortchanged the art. I highly recommend using the art to educate; but to cite the by-products of any art form as a reason for its existence is to reduce the art to a tool — like planting our flower gardens with clover instead of roses. The primary function of storytelling is to entertain.
If a story does not entertain it is worthless — salt that has lost its savor — fit only to be trodden underfoot. So, for whatever reason a story is told, the touchstone, the criterion, the main concern of the teller should first, last, and always be: Will my telling this story entertain my audience?
An entertainer is not necessarily a storyteller, but a storyteller is of necessity an entertainer. People do not choose to do things they do not enjoy. It is only when tellers enjoy telling their stories, and their audiences enjoy hearing the stories, that stories can accomplish their intended missions. It is only when stories entertain that listeners want to hear them again and again, and the facts in the stories become indelible impressions in the listeners’ minds.
The stories in this book have met the test of tellable tales. Some were told to me by my parents. Others have been related by friends. Last but not least are the stories that have been suggested by historical nuggets.
In relating these stories, it has been my aim to please, but I have also endeavored to be accurate in all historical and geographical details. Although some of the stories are about real people and actual events, I have been more concerned with the truth in the story than whether or not the story is true.
My hope is that you will enjoy these stories and find them worthy of your best efforts when sharing them with others.
Do Tell!
Tellable Cracker Tales
Introduction
Cracker Jack Tales
We are all indebted to Richard Chase for his work in collecting and recording the Jack tales. These folktales continue to give hours of pleasure, both to tellers and to listeners, even though they reflect bygone cultures of the Appalachian and English societies from which they came.
Now, meet the Jack from the polyglot society of the Sunshine State, where the two big classes of people are not the “haves and have-nots,” but the Crackers and the Yankees.
A Cracker is likely to be a hybrid, for if a transplant adapts well, he will be considered a Cracker in a few years.
The Yankee is anyone who does not appreciate the values of the natives and who is unfamiliar with the climate, flora, and fauna of the state. To the Cracker, the four-letter-word Yankee is one who is afflicted with the “everything-is-better-where-I-come-from” plague.
While the core of the Cracker Jack stories is deeply rooted in Southern folklore, Cracker Jack is a character I created to personify the humor and values of the typical native Floridians as I have observed them for more than three-quarters of a century.
The Florida Jack, like the Appalachian Jack, is a popular character who can, and usually does, fall into a compost pile and come out smelling like a rose. To his Yankee neighbor, this Jack may seem to be shiftless and, at times, even slightly retarded, but don’t you sell him short. … Meet Cracker Jack.
Do Tell!
Bear Hunting – Cracker-Style
Cracker Jack and his pa lived on gators and taters and got most of their hard cash from Yankees. They were good fishing guides; so, not only did they get invited, they got paid, to go fishing in the Yankees’ fancy fishing boats.
There was nothing that Jack liked to do any better than to fish except to hunt. But he soon learned that more Yankees came to Florida to fish than came to hunt; so, Jack never missed a chance to talk about the big game that could be found in Florida’s scrubs and swamps, and brag about his ability to stalk and kill wild hogs, panthers, and bears.
Much of his talk was only that. In truth, Jack and his pa were not equipped to kill big game, and Cracker Jack would not only give those varmints a wide berth, he was actually afraid of those man-eating critters.
“Jack, son,” his pa said one day. “Iffen you don’t knock off some of this here big talk ’bout bears and sech, you’re gonna talk yoreself into more trouble than you can talk yoreself outten.”
But Jack kept it up, and his advertising got results. Three of their best fishing customers came back to Florida and wanted Jack and his pa to take them on a bear hunt.
When Jack named his price, he thought that would make them change their minds, but they readily agreed to the price, and added that if they were successful, they would give Jack and his pa a nice bonus.
Jack and his pa had no thought of getting the bonus, and, under the condition it was offered, did not want it. They just wanted to save their reputation as reliable guides. So they decided to take the Yankees to Emeraldo Island in central Florida where deer and small game were plentiful, but no bears had been seen in years. They arrived at an empty cabin on the island about nightfall and set up camp.
Early the next morning, for the benefit of their Yankee customers, Jack said, “Pa, while you’re gettin’ breakfast, I’ll walk out and size up the situation.” He picked up his gun and walked off, grinnin’.
He was ambling along, feeling good about the situation, when out from behind a thicket of palmettos and gallberry bushes stepped one of the biggest, meanest-looking, man-eating bears Jack had ever seen.
Cracker Jack dropped his gun (for he knew it would just be in his way), wheeled around, and started running. He ran and ran until he was hassling and his tongue was hanging out like a hound dog’s after a fox chase. He slowed up to catch his breath, but he caught sight of that bear hot on his trail so he took off again. Just when he was about to give up in despair, Jack sighted the cabin. The cabin door was open, and his pa was in the front yard. He got his second wind and made for the open door with the bear gaining on him all the time.
Just as the bear made a lunge for Jack, Jack stumped his toe on the threshold to the cabin and fell. The bear jumped completely over Jack into the cabin. Cracker Jack jumped up, pulled the door closed, latched it, and hollered out, “There’s the first one! Y’all kill him and Pa will skin him out while I’m roundin’ up the second one.”
When the Yankees gave Cracker Jack and his pa their bonus, they said, “Boys, you can expect us back to do some fishing, but don’t count on us doing any more bear hunting — Cracker-style!”
Telling time: 6-7 minutes
Audience: middle school - adult
Unlike the Appalachian Jack Stories, most Cracker Jack stories are short. Every teller needs several fillers to round out a program. The Cracker Jack stories fill the bill, for they are not only short, but they also bring a chuckle and have a wide appeal. I have found that men are especially fond of the Cracker Jack stories. Remember to keep these stories uncluttered, and do not rush the telling.
Sech As It Is
There was nothing that Cracker Jack detested more than clearing new ground. But as sure as Christmas rolled around, the following day the grub hoes would be stacked in front of the tool shed, and one of them would have his name on it.
Jack was now fourteen years old and wanted to be treated like a man, but he was not too anxious to work like one. The hand-blistering, back-kinking job of digging up palmetto roots was not to his
liking, to say the least. But Jack’s pa was determined that as long as his offspring stayed under his roof and put their feet under his table, they would do his bidding.
In a burst of anger, Jack told his ma, “Clearin’ land is work for oxen. It will kill a body before his time. I ain’t pickin’ up that grub hoe again. I’m leavin’ here.”
His ma’s eyes filled with tears, but she said nothing. But his pa, who overheard Jack’s threat, walked into the kitchen and asked, “Do you need any help packin’?”
Jack packed an old saddlebag, and with his Christmas money in his pocket, he headed off on the old mare, Brocade. He had no idea where to go. He ambled over to a cousin’s home, a few miles north of Alligator. But his uncle had all his cousins clearing new ground too. So Jack saddled Brocade early the next morning and headed out again. As he pondered on which direction to take, a cold wind, blowing from the northwest, slipped through his clothing and sent chill bumps right down his spine. This took care of his indecision. He turned his back to the wind and headed southeast. All day he rode through the pine woods, and as the sun started setting, he stopped at a little cabin and asked if he could get a night’s lodging, something to eat, and some food for his horse.
Brocade was given some corn-nubbins, and Jack did not fare any better. He shared the sowins and gopher-meat which the old woodsman had for his evening meal. As hungry as Jack was, he could hardly get the sowins past his nose, and no amount of chewing could prepare the gopher-meat for swallowing. He didn’t sleep well on the pile of moss in the enclosure at one end of the back porch.
But the next day, still wanting to put more distance between him and the grub hoe, Jack rode on. At nightfall, he stopped before another cabin. Again he asked if he could get a night’s lodging and something to eat.
The woman replied, “You’re welcome, if you can put up with sech as it is.”
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