In this section you’ll find both oral traditional narratives and personal experience narratives. Montell explains the difference: “The personal experience narrative is an eyewitness or firsthand account; the narrator says, in essence, ‘I was there, I saw the action, and this is the way it happened.’ . . . Oral traditional narratives, on the other hand, are secondhand (‘I wasn’t there, but my grandmother was, and she described it like this’) or thirdhand reminiscences.”1
I first heard most of the family tales here from my father, so my retellings are second-, third-, maybe even fourthhand accounts. I don’t tell them the way they are told in the family because I usually tell to strangers. After all, family members already know the people, and they’ve been to most of the places, so much can remain unsaid. Fact is, if you asked my relatives, “Who is the Hamilton family storyteller?” they will name my father, not me.
You’ll find a couple of tales I remember from specific events in my life, and you’ll also find the story of an event from my life that I have no memory of. Instead the event was remembered for me and told to me by my parents.
In The Kentucky Encyclopedia, Laura Harper Lee describes family stories as “narratives people make up in response to real-life experiences.”2 Hmm, make up? While I understand what she means, in my family we call these true stories.3