How to tell a story on this blog.

Circle "E" brand western boot. Circle E boots I thought Joe Erwin might be interested.

My wife says; “ everything that Ernie says is based on the truth, then he embellishes, exaggerates, changes things that don’t fit, and in the end he tells a great story that leads you to believe that something happened, but you are not sure what”. Just like that last sentence, that isn’t what she said at all, but I’ve heard her say something much like that statement, until in my mind, it becomes what she said. That is how “twice told tales” are passed down. Ancestors, become more heroic, battles become bigger, villains become more ruthless, and common thieves like Black Bart, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and others become, not common thieves, but adventurers bigger than life itself.

Today, people ride into the South Fork of the Eel canyon, wiggle around a little bit, find a place to drive themselves a stake, put up “No trespassing by God, this is my Land” signs on every edge of “Their Land”, then they make themselves comfortable, and start to look around them. They can’t help but love this wonderful place. They become curious about our history, and start to study. Soon, they read a story or two about some event, they take the story quite literally. They haven't heard all umpteen versions, like some of the people with residential seniority, but they feel that they need to express their outrage and horror.

They pass judgment with very little information, when it's probably more fun to learn most of the stories before passing judgment anyway. I was raised knowing that a good story was in the person telling it, and everybody's version was at least a little bit different, so it paid to just listen to the story, know that it was based on the truth, and wait for the next story, or the next telling. Black Bart may be one mans hero, and another mans common thief. Same with the early pioneers. Some were made out to be far better than they deserved, and some were made out to be far worse than they really were. The one thing that I found out in talking to the Old-Timers. You believed what they said, and the way that they said it. Most of them would admonish you that what they were telling you was the truth, and other people would tell you a different story, but theirs was the only true version. They would go so far as to point out that other people were “damn liars”.

So, I was raised listening to stories, leading them in the direction of things that I wanted to know, but I was always smart enough not to question the story teller, or I wouldn't get to hear any more “tall tales”.

When oral history is passed down from generation to generation, great becomes greater, big becomes bigger, small become smaller, until you end up with stories about giants, and wee people, and knights in shining armor killing maiden-stealing-dragons.

Evey telling of the tale is like telling somebody about a dream that you had. We all know that a dream makes no sense whatsoever, but when we try to tell somebody about it, we add continuity, we leave out the part that might embarrass us, and we add a few things here and there to make the dream sound better. After all, we are the only one that knows about the dream, so we tell our own story our own way.

I guess what I'm getting around to saying, is when you tell a story here, tell it your way. We want to hear YOUR version of the story, the way that you tell it, or the way that you heard it. Too many people won't tell their stories today because everybody is so quick to judge. The rules of this blog is that spelling doesn't count that much. Punctuation doesn't count that much. Colloquialisms are okay. For the readers, the rules are to be good listeners and DON'T interrupt, like my cousins did. They didn't get to hear half as many good stories as me.

After all, you might to hear a good story!

I heard that Joe Erwin has a cousin Naoma that knows some history about the Circle “E” ranch up panther gap way. As usual, I'm not bashful about asking questions. So, I would like to ask Naoma if she has ever found any arrowheads or Indian artifact on the ranch, and does she knows who were the first white settlers there.





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