The year my little brother Jeff turned eight was a real important year for him. On his eighth birthday, my daddy looked at him and said, “Jeff, now that you are eight years old, when Meade County Fair time comes, you can go over to the midway and ride all the rides all by yourself. You won’t have to have any older brothers and sisters tagging along with you to make sure you behave.”
Oh, Jeff was excited. From his birthday in April all the way to fair time in August, he’d look at us and say, “I get to ride all the rides—all by myself. You don’t get to watch me. You can’t boss me around. You can’t follow me. You can’t tell me what to do. I get to ride all the rides, all the rides, all by myself, all by myself . . .”
By the time August and fair time rolled around we were all sick and tired of listening to Jeff go on and on about how he was going to ride all the rides.
Finally, the Meade County Fair got set up on the fairgrounds in Brandenburg, the county seat. We all crowded into our car and Daddy drove the fifteen miles from our farm down to the fairgrounds. Everybody jumped out, and Daddy said, “Now, listen up. Tonight is English horse show night. That means there’s going to be organ music playing. When the organ music stops, I expect all of you all to come on back to the car because it will be time to go home.”
We all said, “All right, Daddy.” Then we ran off in all directions to find our friends and enjoy the fair.
When the organ music stopped, everybody came on back to the car—including my little brother Jeff.
On the way home, Daddy asked, “Well, Jeff, did you ride all the rides?”
Jeff said, “Oh, I tried to, Daddy. I rode ’em all except one.”
“Jeff, I thought I gave you enough money to ride all the rides. Why didn’t you ride that one?”
“Oh, you gave me plenty of money. I rode some of ’em two and three times. I couldn’t ride that one because I couldn’t figure out where to buy a ticket.”
“Jeff, what do you mean you couldn’t figure out where to buy a ticket? What was that ride?”
“Well, I’m not real sure I figured out the name of it right because it didn’t have a big sign over the top of it like all the other rides did. But I can tell you what it looked like. It was tall—taller than you are, Daddy. And it was white, and there were several of them lined up side by side, and each one of them had a door on the front. From the outside the ride didn’t look like it did too much. A person would walk up, open the door, step inside, and close the door. After a while they’d open the door again and step out. So from the outside it really didn’t look very exciting, but every time I was anywhere near it there were always great long lines of people looking like they could hardly wait their turn to ride that ride. And after the ride—when they opened the door and walked away, they always looked like they’d had a pretty good time; so I believe it was one of the better rides there.”
Now, none of us were laughing out loud—after all, this was the youngest child talking, so we didn’t dare laugh—but we were quivering all over from the effort to hold our laughter in.
My Daddy shook his head and said, “Jeff, are you sure there were no words, no words at all associated with that ride?”
“Oh, Daddy, I knew rides had names, so I looked it over real careful and I found some words, I believe that ride was called the Port-a-Car.”
It seems the Port-a-Can company was hired to supply the portable toilets at the Meade County Fair that year and an important part of the “n” in their logo was missing. My little brother Jeff really would have ridden the portable toilets, if he just could have figured out where to buy himself a ticket.
This story falls into the realm of family folklore. Everyone in our family knows the story because it usually gets told when folks new to the family are meeting Jeff. Because I usually tell stories to strangers, the story has needed some shaping to make it work for my audiences. For example, in the family there is no need to explain who Jeff is. Usually, there is also no need to provide much information about the Meade County Fair because the listeners already know about it. Calling it “the fair” or just saying something like “the county fair” will suffice.1 So strangers need some background information that family members can easily do without.
In addition, given the actual event, a told version for strangers needed some shaping. The year Jeff told Daddy he could not figure out where to buy a ticket for the Port-a-Car, I did not attend the fair with my family. I’m almost twelve years older than Jeff. I had stayed in Lexington, attending summer classes at the University of Kentucky, and did not go home for the fair that year. I learned about Jeff’s experience in a phone call with my father. When I asked my dad how the fair had gone, his reply was, “Now Mary, wouldn’t you think Jeff was old enough to be let loose on the midway by himself?” Of course, I had no idea what had happened, but I knew something had gone wrong. In proper conversational fashion, I replied, “What happened?” Then Daddy told me that Jeff reported he’d ridden every ride except the Port-a-Car. When I protested there was no such ride, Daddy responded, “Think about it Mary, the Port-a-Car?” Eventually it dawned on me that Jeff was referring to the portable toilets. When I guessed that, Daddy gave me the details of telling Jeff he could go by himself, then wondering about his decision when he heard Jeff’s report of his adventures.
I hadn’t even considered telling this family incident to strangers. Then, sometime prior to 1987, I was telling stories to middle-school-aged students in Wyoming, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids. The students asked, “Do you know any true stories?” I remembered the incident with my brother and told it to them. They enjoyed it! After that I sought my brother’s permission to tell the story. He gladly gave it with his encouragement.
Now, the telling varies, especially in the section where I’m describing the portable toilets and the behavior of the people waiting in line. It is during this section that audience members reveal through laughter and facial expressions that they have figured out what Jeff is talking about, even though Jeff is still in the dark. Because audiences have more fun when they are ahead of Jeff, I vary description details. Sometimes I’ll have Jeff say that some were white and others were a sort of blue green. Sometimes I’ll use body language or stance to show how the people looked when “they could hardly wait their turn.” Once I can tell recognition is dawning, I move on to the comments about our suppressed laughing in response to Jeff’s telling.
When my brother Jeff was a high school music teacher, he used this story to help his students grasp the concept of improvisation. He began the lesson by playing a recorded version of the story,2 stopping at the point in the story when my father tells us all to return to the car at the end of the night and we all head off. He then asked his students to brainstorm ideas for the rest of the story. His students always came up with many different ideas. Each idea was discussed and evaluated based on its plausibility. Every time he used this exercise, his students identified multiple equally plausible story endings, but no one ever proposed the actual ending. Then Jeff played the rest of the recording. He explained to the students that the only reason he knew what had actually happened was because he was the “Jeff” in the story. He and his students agreed that their endings also created perfectly viable stories.
It was a relatively small task for him to connect plausible story progressions to plausible musical progressions. Then his students could let go of their reluctance to improvise musically for fear of not getting it right, and embrace the idea that many possible “rights” could actually exist in any musical improvisation, just as they had existed in their story improvisation. That the actual tale was based on a real happening was also freeing for his students because they could see that their improvisations would have been satisfying for listeners, even though they bore little resemblance to the real life event. I’m delighted that my telling of a tale on him proved so useful to my brother, and I applaud his creative use of storytelling in his classroom.3