I had a great time on a quick trip to Brasstown, North Carolina and the John C. Campbell Folk School. I shared a family style dinner at the dining hall with Kanute, Walt, Walt's wife Debra and several other folks who are students or instructors at the school.
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| L-R: Walt Belcher, Me, Kanute Rarey |
I was great to share a stage with these two friends, I enjoyed their performances greatly. I had intended to tell my signature "Prowler" story, but decided at the last minute to tell my "Fried Chicken" tall tale. It is a reworking of a piece of the "Old Dry Frye" folk tale. I tell it in the first person and add characters and settings from my own experience. I had a ball. Since the story is. a short one it freed me up to interact more with the audience, and on a whim, opened by singing a bit of "Methodist Pie."
I hope our late beloved family friend, the Rev. Y.A. Bailey, would forgive me for this absolutely fictional story that I placed him in. As far as I know Preacher Bailey did NOT have false teeth! Here's a simplified version of the story.
Fried Chicken/Preacher Bailey’s Teeth
I am a double Methodist preachers kid. My Daddy was a Methodist preacher and my Mama still is. But it goes deeper than that. I’ve got sisters and cousins married to Methodist preachers. I’ve got at least three cousins who backslid and became Baptist preachers. My great-great granddaddy, Boggan Mask, was a licensed exhorter in the Methodist Church and actually baptized the baby boy who would end up marrying Boggan’s granddaughter and thereby get to be my granddaddy, Wilson Baird. And Wilson Baird did some Methodist lay preaching himself.
So you can see how I grew up to be a storyteller. And I know something about Methodist preachers and I know something about dinners on the grounds. When I was a kid every country Methodist churchyard had, besides a cemetery, and an outhouse, a bunch of tables under a shelter of some sort. Every chance the church got in fine weather there was a dinner on the grounds! Un-unh!
Banana sandwiches or even better something called banana croquets, fried okra, creamed corn, greens, and casseroles, and macaroni and cheese, and desserts of all kinds, but always, always, always, fried chicken. My daddy wasn’t a big man, but his plate at those things was always mounded high. He said it was a duty. He had to try a little of everything to avoid hurt feelings.
Well, one Sunday, out at Bethel Church there next to the creek, Preacher Bailey was waxing eloquent, between bites, telling some fine tale. With his plate in one hand he swapped his sweet tea in the other back and forth with a fork full of casserole or a fistful of chicken. Now he did his talking in a strange way. I don’t know why, some medical problem he had, but he talked... [... breathing in. Like this . Even preaching. I was always fascinated by that.]* But I reckon he sneezed like everyone else, cause with his hands occupied like that, and in mid-sentence, the pollen got to him and a big sneeze came on him and he turned his head away from us and toward the creek and sneezed explosively. AND out popped his false teeth. They went flying right into the middle of that muddy little creek and plopped down and out of sight.
Well everybody got busy trying to fish ‘em out. There were a few cane poles leaned against a sycamore there and folks were poking those out in the water. Then somebody came running with some rakes they kept there at the church and tried raking ‘em out of the water. But it was all to no avail.
It was then that my Methodist preacher heritage and experience came in handy. I knew those fellows with the poles would never fish those teeth out with empty hooks. AND I knew the bait to use.
Preacher Bailey had a chicken leg left on his plate that still had some meat on it. I grabbed it and snagged it onto the hook on one of those poles. Why, I want you to know those teeth snapped onto that chicken leg as soon as it hit the water and I jerked ‘em to shore in no time.
It took some doing to pry the chicken leg out of those teeth, but after that Preacher Bailey rinsed ‘em a little in his sweet tea and plopped ‘em back in his mouth, and was ready for another plate full of fine eating.
If you want catfish, use worms. For perch, I recommend minnows. But if you need to catch a Methodist preacher, or his teeth, fried chicken’s the bait to use.
* I demonstrate the way Preacher Bailey talked with the bracketed words.
