One of the things I've learned about story telling over the years is that no two people will tell a story the same way. My mother, bless her heart, loved them, but could never tell a funny story at all. She remembered the funny part, but had no idea how to get to it. Once I told her a joke about an old moonshiner who spent the night in jail and was kept awake by the first electric light bulb he had ever seen. He went home and told his wife, "They had a big, shiny lamp in that cell, kept me awake all night." His wife asked, "Why didn't you blow it out?" He said, "I tried, but they had it in a bottle."

That night at supper, mother told dad: "Gus, this man in jail was trying to blow out the light bulb. It was so funny but I can't remember why he was in there." Mother could mess up almost any kind of story that way, but she wasn't alone. My life has been full of people who set out to tell something funny but never got around to it.

Like my friend Max, who had read a story I had written for Today's Farmer about two brothers Bill and Joe. The old bachelors lived together and would occasionally fall out and only speak through the mailman. Reading this had reminded Max (who also knew them) that one was deaf and the other nearly blind. He wrote to say that he remembered them buying an old truck which the near-blind Bill drove while Joe shouted directions. No story, just facts, much like my mother remembered things. I knew it had to be funnier, and hunted up a neighbor older than me.

Trust old people to understand the art of telling something. Here's what he told:

"Well, them two old fellers was the terror of the back roads in that time," he said, "careenin' that old truck around curves, with old Bill steerin', Joe yellin' directions. But let me tell you how that all turned out. They was taking a ridge road to get groceries, and the sun was so bright that Bill mistook the shadow of a big pine on that gravel for livestock. He hollered ÔBlack Anguish cow!' and before Joe could tell him different, Bill drove around that shadow and took to the woods, with fenders just a'peelin' off that model A, and the stock rack shedding off it like stove billets. Them old fools rode that thing out, Ôtil there was enough parts gone that it quit and fetched up agin' something. No tragedy, never broke a bone in them or nothing, but that was the end of that truck and Bill a'driving anything." Best part of that to me, though, was what Joe said when they asked him about the truck. He says "Well I never seen nothing like that ride in my life. I've done my best to describe it to Bill."

Don't you love it when a person comes up with a STORY?