By Neal Wooten
My dad loved to tell stories, and like most mountain folk, he often put a little extra jam on the bread. That is to say, he exaggerated. When he would tell about the fish he caught, they always seemed to weigh at least a pound more than they actually did. Over the years, as he retold the stories, they would gain more weight.
But something happened when I was 13, and it was a revelation of sorts. Dad and I were standing with a group of five guys, from my age to adults, at the ballfields in Rainsville one evening. My sisters were playing softball. Dad loved an audience, no matter the size, and he was in his element telling them a story.
I don’t remember the particular yarn he was spinning that night, but I remember knowing it was a true story. He might have embellished a tad, but it did happen. After he walked away, another guy who was there didn’t know it was my dad. I can still picture this guy. He had long black hair, unshaven, and was missing most of his teeth.
“Boy, some folks sure can tell some whoppers, huh boys?” He went on and on about Dad’s totally unbelievable story, and as ashamed as I am to admit it, I didn’t defend Dad or even let the guy know I was his son. Now this guy was the focus of the group, and he, too, seemed to love the attention. He began telling his own stories, and one of them sticks in my memory.
“I had this 1970 Camaro, and that baby would run like a scolded dog. I was going down the road doing 80 miles per hour and went to put it in 4th gear. But I accidentally put it in Reverse. And there I was going down the road doing 80 with my tires spinning backward, smoke billowing off the asphalt.”
After that story, he walked away, and I headed back to watch the game. But even at that age, I knew he was full of it. You wouldn’t be able to get the transmission into Reverse at that speed, and even if you somehow managed to, every cog in the transmission would fly into a hundred pieces.
As I took my seat in the bleachers, I was a little wiser. And what I learned that night still rings true today. Almost everybody is full of it. The people who are most full of it are the ones most bothered when someone else stretches the truth. Like I’ve always said, everyone is crazy. We just hate when another person’s crazy doesn’t match our own.
