How to Tell a Good Story

Whatever happened to great words that writers once used in literature? I grew up on the works of people like William Faulkner and Edgar Allen Poe who made me create an image in my brain of people and things I had never witnessed, and hopefully in some cases, never will. In classic literature, the person didn't just read a book, he perused it. He wasn't sad, he was morose. And he didn't sit on the porch, instead he languished on the veranda.

In the South, we love a good story. People here can take a minor event and turn it into a tale of drama or humor. For instance, I could tell you that the hubby left a watermelon out on the side porch overnight, and a fox found it and ate it. Not much to that. But let me tell you what really happened.

The hubby recently stopped on his way home to buy a watermelon from his old friend Burlin, who was relaxing under a shade tree at the edge of a parking lot. Burlin's this great farmer who truck farms and always grows the best fruits and vegetables, and his pickup bed was filled with lush green melons.

You know you can trust Burlin's watermelons unlike those half-green gourds they sell in the local groceries because he knows the thumping technique. Any true Southerner knows you have to get a good hollow sound on a melon for it to be ready to eat. Burlin picked a nice large watermelon off the truck and handed it to the hubby who brought it home.

Arriving home, the hubby laid the melon on the side porch and proceeded to clean out his work truck. Later, instead of coming into the house through the front, he used the back door. Thus, he forgot all about his watermelon.

Later that night, the red fox that lives behind the house came sniffing around. Foxes are nobody's fool. Everybody knows that's why we say somebody is "sly as a fox." He spotted that watermelon, and as fast as you can Jack Spratt , he was on it. After all, it was easier than chasing something down and killing it. Besides, anything left outside is fair game is his mind.

The next morning the hubby complained that he had paid $5.00 for that dern fox's supper. He was madder than a wet hen caught out in a thunderstorm, not at the fox but at himself for leaving it out there in the first place. I told him not to fret just because that fox was out there thinking, "It's true what they say, there's one born every minute." I guess you could say that the hubby was out-foxed.