“There are eight million stories in the naked city...” — epilogue, The Naked City, 1958
Southerners have a story for every situation. Teaching opportunities while refereeing kid battles. Passing time waiting in line at the grocery store. “Remember when” at a family get together. Whiling away the hours at the funeral home. Seeing whether — after 32 years — you still have the ability to perfectly time the delivery of a punch line so your brother will shoot milk through his nose at the dinner table .
We are taught the value of a good story before we’re knee-high to a grasshopper. Our mamas, grandmamas, aunts, great aunts, and best friend’s mama used stories to help us remember the life lessons that are just too painful to experience ourselves. With prayer, we’ll recall the outcome before putting ourselves in the same situation somewhere down the road. Reality being what it is, too many of us just cannot make it to our next birthday without doing something incredibly stupid that not only leads to our experiencing said a situation ourselves, but improving, embellishing and embroidering the story to epic proportions.
In our house, Mother told stories she had learned at her mother’s and grandmothers’ respective knees. Her melancholy tales brought forth great feelings of guilt — the desired result — regarding some transgression one or more of us had committed. My brothers and I — well, it was mostly them; I was the perfect child — often exited a room with tails tucked between legs having been fully and completely shamed.
Our father, on the other hand, believed in storytelling only for the entertainment value. Nothing was sacred if it got in the way of a good yarn. Yes, Haase Arnold was known for sharing the humorous, the ridiculous, the uproariously funny, the irreverent, the knee slapper and, on occasion, the probably-shouldn’t-be-told-in-mixed-company.
True to world class yarn weaver form, once C. H. was out of the shoot with one story, there ensued a seemingly endless reel of stories, jokes, and anecdotes punctuated by the intermittent one liner. So long as there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when he’d completed his session, Daddy could leave fulfilled. He had completed his task: bringing laughter to a friend, customer, or room full of strangers looking to leave the mundane behind if for only a few minutes.
The best stories involving my father, though, are those in which he plays the central character. I am constantly amazed and humbled by how many people around here have a story they want to share whenever they run into me around town.
And they all want me to write about it.
The other day, I was deep in conversation about the issues involved when a parent suffers a stroke. We talked about causes, the events that led to the stroke, and the fact that my father would rather sit in his recliner for an indefinite period than go to the emergency room because he would have to wait. He finally went to the ER when his daughter leaned over the bed, stuck her finger in his face and said, “I’m more stubborn than you ever dreamed of being; you’re going to the hospital.”
Three weeks later, Daddy was released to come home and continue his recovery on an outpatient basis. Mother had been with us in Suwanee while Daddy was hospitalized, but I was beginning a major trade show the morning he was released. So my brothers agreed to come to Winder to pitch in with Daddy’s care while I was working in Atlanta.
Never one to allow his health to interfere with a good practical joke about which he could tell a great story, Daddy decided it would be great fun to tell my brothers he needed assistance with some of his daily functions. Bob shrugged, took care of the task and went on about his business.
Steve, on the other hand, took the matter a bit more seriously. I can still see Daddy doubled over as he recalled my brother walking into the bathroom clad in my mother’s bathrobe (backward), rain pants, rubber gloves, and knee high galoshes. It’s the mental picture of Steve with a towel safety pinned around his head, Vicks salve up his nose, a shower cap, and goggles that is one of those that I’m not sure was funnier to have been there or to hear Daddy telling it.
It is said that truth is stranger than fiction. In our family, truth is the stuff of legend. We’ve got a million of ‘em.
Helen Person is a Winder resident and columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at helenperson@windstream.net.
