Voices of the NCSG - J. A. Bolton

J. A. Bolton was raised in Richmond County North Carolina along the banks of the Pee Dee River. He loves to hear the old characters tell their tall tales. Won't long he was telling 'em with the best of them. He loves telling stories to any age group and finds that telling stories is a good stress reliever for himself and his listeners. Around these parts he is known as "Richmond County's own professional story teller." So if you need a speaker or just someone to tell humorous stories, he's your man. "Live, love, laugh" is his motto.

Little Rattler (The Best Snake dog in two Counties)

When I was ten years old my Great Uncle gave me a little mixed hound puppy. The Mama of this pup was a fine Black and Tan Hound, while the daddy was just a mixed up fiest named Ol’ Rattler. Uncle L.D. said the only reason he kept Rattler around was to guard against Rattlesnakes. Those type of snakes and others were bad around his farm which was located deep in the Uwharrie Mountains.

You see this black fiest-looking dog just showed up one day at Uncle L.D.’s house looking poorly.  “Kinda felt sorry for the dog because he was just a stack of bones and hadn’t seen a good meal in a Coon’s age,” he said. He fed the dog and asked everyone in the neighborhood if’n that was their dog. Of course no one claimed him and it looked like Uncle L.D. was stuck with him even though he had a pen full of nice hounds.

Well, time went on and the mutt started to put on weight and his black hair started to shine like new money. Won’t long he started following Uncle L.D. everywhere he went on the farm and he was turning out to be a good guard dog, don’t you know. The dog would follow Uncle L.D. on the tractor and when my aunt rang the dinner bell he would lie under the tractor till Uncle L.D. returned and then go to the house to get his dinner.

Uncle L.D. just called the mutt “dog” until one evening he went out of the back screen door to draw up some cool water out of the well and heard the dog baying right under the back porch steps. Uncle L.D. went back into the house, got his gun, and slipped out the front door and came around to the back steps. There under the steps was a large Rattlesnake about five foot long just a rattling away while the dog kept him at bay. Of course that shotgun made short work of that snake while the dog ran at the sound of the gun. Uncle L.D. finally got his hands on “dog” and petted him up good and from then on his name was Ol’ Rattler and he was known as the best snake dog in the Uwharries even though he was a little gun shy.

You know I hoped my little pup would turn out like his daddy and so I gave him the name of “Little Rattler.” As time went by I could see some of the fine traits developing in Little Rattler. In just a few months he started following me everywhere and even if we got separated he would trail me right up. Why he could sniff out a frog or grasshopper in a heartbeat. I started taking him fishing with me and he would smell every fish I caught. Won’t long he could sniff out a bream bed in the middle of the lake. The way I could tell he knew there was a bream bed; he would go to the water’s edge and start whining and dipping his front paws in the water. Took me a while to figure it out but every time he put his paw in the water was how many feet the bream bed was out in the water. Folks, it won’t long everybody in the community wanted to go fishing with us!!

The next year my Dad built us a riverboat and we would leave Little Rattler home when we fished in the river. Mom said the dog would howl and whine the whole time we were gone and that we needed to take him fishing in the boat.

The next Saturday, Dad and I decided to fish in Capel’s Mill pond and he said we could take Little Rattler. As we loaded the boat in the truck, Little Rattler jumped in the boat and laid down; ready to go.

Soon we were at the mill pond and Little Rattler jumped out and took himself a good swim then proceeded to shake himself off all over us. We loaded all our gear while Little Rattler plopped himself right on the boat’s front seat. As we left the bank he let out a few good barks as if to say, ‘let’s go fishing, boys.”

The water in the pond was low because the dam was leaking, so we started paddling up the main run which was Mountain Creek. The creek wound around a large hill that Daddy called Cave Hill. He said there was a small cave located about half way up the hill and that old people said the Indians had a burial ground around the cave. He also said that a lot of people had seen some strange things come off that hill and most old people avoided it.

Well, we were enjoying paddling our boat under the large canopy of trees that lined the creek bank when all of a sudden Little Rattler got a whiff of something and sailed off into the creek. As he got to the bank, I tried to call him back but no luck. Rattler made his way straight up the hill while Dad and I anchored the boat. It wasn’t long we heard Rattler barking and he seemed to be baying something. I wanted to go to him but Dad said that I might get snake bitten in all that brush.

We listened for a while then all at once we heard Little Rattler barking, running something down the hill toward us. When he got in sight it looked as if he was jumping back and forth through a hoop rolling down the hill. At first it looked like a tire but as it got closer dad said, “I ain’t never in my life seen it before but it’s a Hoop snake and that dog is jumping through it to make it go faster.”

Faster and faster they got and be John Brown if’in that old snake didn’t rolled right through that creek and up the other side, never to be seen again.

Folks I had witnessed something most people never see or never will see thanks to my little dog.

Little Rattler had proven to me that he was a chip off the old block and was the best snake dog a little boy could ever own!!

Check back weekly for more voices of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild. If you enjoy these stories, you're bound to enjoy the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival on November 3 & 4, 2017, at the Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC.

Voices of the NCSG - Sarah Beth Nelson

Sarah Beth once stood in the Roman Forum, surrounded by dusty ruins. Instead of a gaping hole, she saw a statue of Jupiter. Instead of the wind, she heard Nero’s fiddle. The ruins were alive with story.

As a Latin scholar and librarian, Sarah Beth draws much of her inspiration from classical history and mythology. But, Rome isn’t the only place with a few good tales, so Sarah Beth dips into other folk traditions as well.

Check back weekly for more voices of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild. If you enjoy these stories, you're bound to enjoy the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival on November 3 & 4, 2017, at the Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC.

Voices of the NCSG - LeeAnna Lawrence

LeeAnna teaches Humanities in the College division at UNC - School of the Arts, where she tries to incorporate myths and storytelling into her teaching process. She’d like to develop as a storyteller. Many of her stories involve her childhood in Fuquay-Varina, NC, as well as myths and ghost stories. She also teaches mixed media visual arts to middle schoolers at the Sawtooth School of Visual Arts and would love to explore ways of mixing storytelling and visual art.

     The Strange Mother:  Raleigh, NC, 1884

     My neighbor’s kids are good at Watching.

     They don’t play outdoors much, and when they do

     it's usually with mechanical things like lithium-powered little cars

     or bikes or skateboards.

    

     When they get bored they mostly go back inside to watch things on a screen,

     but sometimes they Watch me.

     I tend a pollinator bed between their house and mine.

     I’ll be on my knees watching butterfly larvae

     in a clump of parsley,

     and something will make me look up

     and there they’ll be, three impassive little guys

     aged three, four, and five, in adorably tiny

     helmets and knee pads, Watching me.

     Watching isn’t the same as simply looking.

     Watching is about demanding answers, connecting the dots.

     I have no kids myself but I’m amiable enough, moderately good-hearted,

     and I’ve been told you can never go wrong

     by speaking to a child. 

    So I show them the butterflies on the sedum

    and the little wasps on the anise hyssop,

    which smells like Christmas cookies and churches.

    We compare husky bumblebees, who are bullies,

    to the honeybees, who are smaller and seem

    to want to do the job without any trouble.

    And I urge them to wish the honey bees good luck.

    “You play outside a lot,” says the oldest.

     That’s because I like the outdoors, I tell him.

     “Why?” asks the three-year-old.

     Because it makes me happy,

     and a better planetary citizen, I answer.

    What about you guys, I ask. 

    Do you like inside or outside best?

    The two youngest defer to the oldest boy.

    “Oh we like inside best,” he says.  All three nod emphatically.

    But why’s that, I ask, when you can watch

    butterflies in the bog sage?  Or explore the pleasures

    of dirt?

    The oldest gives me a look

    I’ve been getting from a lot of young men lately,

    particularly young men who want to fix my cell phone or computer—

    a look of pity and dismissal mixed—

    and he says, as if it should be perfectly obvious,

   “Because that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

    Well, we all have our needs.

    Sometimes our needs take us to strange places.

    For instance, in May 1884 in the northeastern part of Raleigh, North Carolina,

    a farmer noticed that his turkey hen wasn’t acting right. 

    He knew she’d made her nest some distance from the house,
    and  laid a clutch of eggs.

    But she wasn’t on the nest that fine spring day.

    She’d appeared on the front porch, flustered and oddly mute,

    with a shocked look in her eyes—an observation which can only come

    from someone who has intimate personal knowledge of turkeys.

    So the farmer checked the nest she’d constructed so carefully

    in the blackberry bushes on a southern facing slope

    and had something of a shock himself:

    A highland moccasin was curled around the eggs

    as motherly as any setting hen.

    No wonder the poor turkey had a mental breakdown.

    The farmer was flummoxed, had never seen the like;

    and while he had some doubts about the propriety

    of the situation, he was a Watcher by nature

    and decided for curiosity’s sake to see it through.

    He kept his eyes and ears open

    and five days later he heard the peeping.

    He ran to the nest

    and made it just in time to see the snake

    making a sinuous break for it up the hillside

    with the whole brood of turkey chicks happily following her.

    The mother turkey never got over it.

    She laid dud eggs that never hatched

    and lost her excellent nest-building skills.

    She’d looked into the lidless eye of the snake and seen something

    she couldn’t resolve—perhaps some vastly primitive ancestral connection

    between herself and the interloper.

    The snake must have offered her a grim negotiation:

    These Eggs are mine by right of Saurian Antecedent.  Submit to my Need

    or you will die, you disgraced descendant of dragons.

    Encountering such vehemently cold-blooded desire

    turned her brain to ash.

   

    By the next autumn she’d taken to wandering alone

    through the goldenrod at the edge of the woods,

    her feathers dusty and unkempt.

    A fox got her before too long.

    She didn’t put up a fight, thinking, possibly, with some relief,

    Well, at least this is normal.

   

    The farmer, too, was changed by what he’d seen. 

    People’s lives were vastly more rural then

    and being a Watcher, he knew something about snakes.

    In his experience no self-respecting North Carolina moccasin

    builds nests or incubates their young.

    They bear their young alive and wiggling

    and only spend a day or so with them, for politeness’ sake.

    (By the way, to be perfectly clear, the only snakes that

    incubate their eggs are the python species,

    and the only ones who build nests for eggs

    are king cobras).

    Why would the snake act so contrary to its nature?

    The episode was so unusual, so larger than life somehow,

    that he kept turning it over in his head

    to try to ferret out a meaning. 

    Was it a Sign? 

    Was it a warning that the world’s threads

    were unraveling?

    Was it simply that the wise (if emotionally vulnerable) old hen

    had made her nest  in such a warm and cozy spot

    that the snake, still a little sluggish from her winter sleep,

    had enjoyed it too much to leave?

    That answer seemed to him almost too…mundane.

    It had to mean something wonderful.  He couldn't bear any other conclusion.

    He finally decided that there was simply something damn special

    about that snake and let it lie

    because people got tired of hearing him

    talk about it, and told him so.

    He became more vigilant

    of things like the number of crows on a fence

    or the patterns left by snails in the pine straw.

    And while he craved certainty more than before, he went to church less.

You have to wonder what became of the snake

and her flock of turkey chicks.

It couldn’t have been easy, being an interspecies blended family,

but I like to think they made a go of it.

There may have been some sort of kink

in her reptilian heart that prompted her

to forge such a strange family.  She may have satisfied her heart’s desire,

and the chicks, well, they knew no better,

having been imprinted on the snake,
so she was all they could have wanted in a mother.

Check back weekly for more voices of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild. If you enjoy these stories, you're bound to enjoy the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival on November 3 & 4, 2017, at the Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC.

Voices of the NCSG - Alan Hoal

Alan is a highly energetic and animated storyteller who has taken home numerous storytelling awards. He travels throughout the United States telling stories at festivals and retreats as well as at colleges, schools and libraries. Alan has also shared his talents at church, corporate and civic events. He has a diverse repertoire from the hilarious, to the heartwarming and inspirational. His stories are tailored for audiences of all ages.

Check back weekly for more voices of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild. If you enjoy these stories, you're bound to enjoy the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival on November 3 & 4, 2017, at the Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC.

Voices of the NCSG - Joan Leotta

Joan Leotta performs folklore and personal stories featuring women from history on stage. Her original story THUNDERBOLT received Honorable Mention in the Editor's Choice Award in Wordsmith Journal Magazine. Joan loves to express her imagination in writing and on stage. To learn more about Joan see her website https://joanleotta.wordpress.com

THUNDERBOLT

Weather science is not involved. In my world, a THUNDERBOLT is an explosion of inner sound that reverberates throughout one’s very being.  I've always suspected that THUNDERBOLT would be how I would recognize my true love my love. I would be hooked by one glance, accompanied by the deafening roar of instant love.

My first THUNDERBOLT experience was about two years ago in the parking lot of a local mall. THUNDER roared when a Nordic god tapped my shoulder.

I could barely hear his silky tenor asking: “Miss, miss, did you drop this?” over my heart’s pounding. I shook myself back to reality and saw that the newfound object of my affection was holding my car key in his perfect, strong hand! (Sigh!)

Barely able to move my lips, I mumbled, “Yes, it…it’s mine.” and thrust out my right hand, palm upturned to receive it. My own plain brown eyes remained locked onto his perfect blue orbs. I am not sure what the rest of my body was up to. Face slack?  Legs wobbly?

He pressed the key down onto my palm. I closed my fingers quickly so that the tips of my fingers lightly brushed his for one shining moment. Ecstasy!

When I arrived home, I dropped the key he had touched, now the key to my heart, into my keepsake box. The long unused duplicate became the utilitarian key. But I had forgotten to ask his name. THUNDERBOLT for him too? I would never know.

On Valentine’s Day, a few months after that, I followed a medium height well-chiseled stranger out of the grocery. Love was in the air but ice was on the ground. Despite my sturdy boots, as I sauntered toward him, I slipped. My legs splayed out and I landed, (splat!) on my back. Fortunately my knit ski cap protected my head.

He reached out to grab my arm to help me up.  A gallant gesture. Off balance from trying to aid me, he fell as well.  His hat-less head of blond curls was cushioned from the cement by one of my knees.

After untwining from each other, he managed to pull himself upright and help me up.  I gazed into his manly steel gray eyes and the THUNDERBOLT struck. I managed to mumble thanks and invite the guy to a nearby café.  We sipped hot chocolate and chatted. Chad and I exchanged phone numbers.

A week later, my telephone remained silent.  I called him. Two more weeks slid by. No return call.  

Perhaps my THUNDERBOLT was just an ear pop?

Over the next year and a half, THUNDERBOLTS raged about me.

A ticket stub from the all-day Lord of the Rings marathon found its way into my keepsake box when I was sure that the ticket taker was the ONE. My grocer, Gary gave me a rose and a THUNDERBOT.  He called me daily for three weeks. . I broke off that one. Quick parting, just friends—all that.

Gary called a few weeks later to thank me for breaking up. “Because of our breakup I discovered that your best friend Barbie is my soul mate! No hard feelings, right?”

I scratched Barbie’s name out of my address book.  No hard feelings?  Right!

Not long after Barbie’s perfidy, I ran into her brother, Vergil. He was the slightly nerdy older brother who had ignored us “kids”. He encouraged me to make up with Barbie. “She wants you to be her Maid of honor.”  

I plunged into the whole wedding planning thing with Barbie. Vergil often tagged along.

Vergil and I laughed a lot. At the same things. He listened when I talked and I liked listening to him. Since no THUNDERBOLT was pounding, I could actually hear what he was saying.  When my very ill and very beloved grandmother took a turn for the worse, Vergil took off from work to drive me to Pittsburgh to be with her.

Were we falling into a cliché?  Yep.

Barbie, proving herself a true friend after all, encouraged us to use her September wedding day for a joint ceremony.

As I write this, I am on my honeymoon.  THUNDERBOLT?   Not for me.  I know now that TRUE LOVE does not boom and pound; true love whispers and listens.

Joan is one of the six featured tellers at the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival Nov 3 and 4, 2017. To buy tickets click here.

Check back weekly for more voices of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild. If you enjoy these stories, you're bound to enjoy the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival on November 3 & 4, 2017, at the Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC.

Voices of the NCSG - Lona Bartlett

Lona Barlett is a talented storyteller, puppeteer, and educator. She is known for her work in schools, libraries, conferences, churches, festivals, and corporate events. Lona's life began in a small Catskill Mountain town where stories float down on each breeze. Her folktales, fairy tales, puppets, and personal stories reflect pieces of her life. You can learn more about Lona from her website.

 Lona is one of the six featured tellers at the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival Nov 3 and 4, 2017. To buy tickets click here.

Check back weekly for more voices of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild. If you enjoy these stories, you're bound to enjoy the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival on November 3 & 4, 2017, at the Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC.

Voices of the NCSG - Jon Sundell

Jon Sundell performs an exciting, bilingual mix of multicultural folk tales and folksongs accompanied on guitar, banjo, autoharp and mountain dulcimer. For over four decades he has been working with and performing for audiences of all ages and backgrounds across the United States, Europe and Latin America.  His varied background as teacher, librarian, cultural collector, organizer and advocate has helped created a warm, visceral and dynamic style he calls ”Perfect Storm Edutainment.” Find out more about Jon at his website.

Jon is one of six North Carolinian storytellers featured at the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival on November 3 & 4. Go here for more information.

Check back weekly for more voices of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild. If you enjoy these stories, you're bound to enjoy the Tarheel Tellers Storytelling Festival on November 3 & 4, 2017, at the Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC.