FAIRMONT – Lee Maynard, the late reporter and novelist known for weaving scatological tales of his occasionally misspent youth in the Mountain State in the 1950s – began practicing the craft when he was a kid.
The idea was to get his grandmother to react.
“It was a test,” he told The Dominion Post.
A test in the form of an accounting, with more dips and switchbacks than a Mountain State two-lane … of whatever it was that ensued in his life that particular day.
Of course, it was all (mostly) made-up, he remembered.
“I’d start with one that was a little out there. She’d say, ‘Boy, you’re a-funnin’ me.’ I’d add a detail that would be wilder. She’d say, ‘Boy, you’re a-storyin’ me.’ Finally it all got outlandish that she’d just say, ‘Boy.'”
A-storyin’ will commence next month at Fairmont State University, when the West Virginia Storytelling Guild convenes on campus.
Guild members will conduct a workshop on the craft of storytelling at the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center.
The gathering will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 21, and is for storytellers and storytellers-to-be 18 or older. Admission is free, but pre-registration is required by Feb. 21 and may be made online at www.fairmontstate.edu/folklife.
Lydia Warren, the center’s director, said the idea is to help participants find their voice through narrative – in a tradition here just as ancient as the Appalachians.
“It’s a really meaningful way to engage with this tradition,” she said.
Those in the audience won’t be that way for long, she said. They’ll be encouraged to get on the stage, too, to tell their tales.
For the Scots-Irish settlers isolated by the mountains, the accounts (funny, serious, educational and otherwise) were a soothing balm of community, people and place – where the settlers had been and where the settlers were going.
Look at West Virginia’s legendary ghost stories, said Bob Tinnell, the local filmmaker and author who often takes on such subjects in his work.
West Virginia’s legendary ghost stories, for example, he said, emerged from a need to set certain phenomena straight.
“If we can’t explain it,” he said, “we’ll use a tale.”
Visit https://www.wvstorytellers.com/ for the tale of how the guild came to be. It was formed in 1996 and has members of all walks from West Virginia and surrounding region.
