Fresh pellets were added to the stove before the fireplace insert door was closed. He calmly took his seat in the worn leather chair. With the light low, the flames dancing, and that old oak tree casting shadows on the wall, he knew the conditions were just right. He put an oversized orange cowboy hat on top of his head and began to tell a story, tonight it’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Conveniently, he doesn’t have to seek out volunteers to act out this tale, because there are already several little people in the room who are more than willing and eager for him to get started. We squeal and laugh as we run from porridge bowl to porridge bowl, and from Papa’s bed to Baby Bear’s bed. We jump up and run to the woods outside when the bear family comes back to find us in their cabin and that’s when our storyteller calls after us “Remember there’s bears in them woods!”
Still to this day, when I wake up in the early morning hours to climb a tree stand, my heart pounds in my chest as I am still waiting for those bears to pop out of the woods on my grandparent’s land in Northeast Oklahoma…where there are in fact, no bears. My grandpa, Tim, is still acting out those stories with that oversized orange hat on his head, but this time it’s with my own three little boys and I’m no longer the little one running from porridge bowl to porridge bowl.
The Storyteller
What better place to start than the beginning? Tim married my grandma, Kathy, a month before I was born. Biologically he’s not my grandpa, but by love, he is. He chose to love the family he stepped into- and that is a most precious thing to me. It also speaks to the man I am writing about today. When you take the time to get to know people you will find that every now and then you come across someone that seems refreshingly rare, genuine to who God made them to be, and you’re attracted to their company like bees to honey. Tim is one of those people. Husband, father, business owner, gardener, paperboy, fisherman, auctioneer, cook, reader, teacher, veteran, grandpa, and great grandpa are some of the titles that fit this man, but there is one that he wears the best: storyteller.
The mind of this man is extraordinary and the best way I have found to describe it is as his own personal filing cabinet packed full of details and pages from every person and interaction he’s probably ever had. I still have not figured out his secret to keeping his memory so sharp, but I am prone to believe it’s founded in his love of learning and creativity. In the twenty-nine years I’ve known Tim he’s owned a mower shop, created beautiful gardens, cooked many good meals, rigged up his own fishing jugs, flies, and lures, and has devoured one book after another. Once he masters one skill he tackles another one to add to his list and that alone has been one of my biggest inspirations over the years. Lately, we’ve all benefited from his latest skill of leatherwork: dog collars, belts, guitar straps, bracelets, and knife sheaths all made by his willing hands. He grows tomato plants taller than anyone who walks by them and smokes the best Thanksgiving ham you’ll ever want to eat. He’s a master of talents, and the creativity he weaves in his stories just adds to his list.
Bloody Bones and Cornbread may sound like the title of an old western novel, or maybe even a corny horror movie (pun intended). However, this is still one of Tim’s most famous campfire stories from my childhood. Autumn nights in Oklahoma are perfect for sitting around a campfire late past our bedtimes watching the flames devour the large brush piles. Ears attuned to the owl hooting nearby we would sit on the edge of our seats and stare wide-eyed as we heard about the little boy who was sent to the store by his mother after school. He dawdled too long and had to make his way home in the dark resulting in an ending that left us just scared enough to want to hear it again. It left an impressionable mark on all of us kids at the time. Especially on my little brother whose elementary teacher had a lot of questions for my mom after he copied it down for a writing assignment. Bringing that up still makes us burst into laughter.
He may have mastered telling stories around a campfire and even acting out classics like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but I realized there is more to storytelling than just fiction. Every conversation I have with him is weaved with thought-provoking questions, a funny punchline, a lesson learned, wisdom shared, and all said in love. For the last few years, I’ve taken the liberty to record some of the everyday conversations I have with him or even some he is having with others. I love randomly pulling them out on my phone and listening to some of my favorite voices and stories from the speakers. Stories told from his time in Vietnam, a phone conversation he had with his brother, laughter as he jokes about my uncle’s fear of snakes. Each recording is filled with stories of specific people, exact locations, and times throughout his life. He turns simple everyday conversations into stories worth remembering.
The Art of Remembering
There is something special and rare about Tim, and it’s to regard people as worth knowing and remembering. He can skim through those files in his memory until he lands on the exact one he was searching for. It doesn’t matter if it took place just months ago or even decades back- he knows the details of the people he grew up around, worked with, served with, or did business with. He’s a master of storytelling because he understands that people and their stories are the story. This has shaped how I tell my own stories in life, and I get the privilege of telling them as the granddaughter of a storyteller. One who chose to love a gangle of little kids who just begged to hear Goldilocks and the Three Bears one more time, and who always remembered that there’s bears in them woods.
