GUEST POST
THOMAS AND THE DRAGON QUEEN
SHUTTA CRUM
Today I welcome Shutta Crum, author of the fabulous book, Thomas and the Dragon Queen. Shutta is a master storyteller and she tells me that her father was her greatest influence. I asked Shutta to share one of her favorite stories with me. Here is a true story about her father.
My Dad’s War
I’ve known that life is a story since I was a child standing big-eyed and listening to my Appalachian relatives tell hair-raising tales about mountain folk. However, it took me years to learn that stories can also create a life.
You see, not too long ago, my niece invited my father to her history class to talk about his experiences in World War II. He spoke of being a platoon leader, of a soldier’s life, and fighting. According to the teacher, the class hung on his every word. My niece glowed in the limelight, the teacher was pleased and the students interested. What they did not know—including my father—was that he’d never been in the war.
He was in the service after WWII and before Korea. His army experiences always got all muddled-up for him. My father suffered from Alzheimer’s. And despite the disease, Dad was a great storyteller. The problem was he believed his own stories.
Born and raised in the hollers of Kentucky, Dad was the last child of twelve. He had to talk to be noticed; and he talked with a passion. Then as our family grew, we pestered him to repeat favorite stories. These included the relative who got bit by a rattle snake and saved himself by drinking a quart of moonshine, how Dad learned to run faster on his knees than his feet while working in the coal mines, and the times he had outpacing the law in his 1941 Mercury Coupe* while running moonshine over the state line.
Perhaps these are not the sort of stories we tell children today, but they gave a mythic quality to my father. He was faster, stronger, and wilder than all my friend’s fathers—and he truly was for many years. He raced motorcycles, he won championships in archery, and he built speed boats and water-skied—barefoot. He did anything he “set his mind to,” as he used to say. At seventy-four he was hill-climbing with four-wheelers. In his mid-seventies he was still bear and wild boar hunting, though Mom had to go along to make sure he didn’t get lost. And always, he had a storyteller’s silver tongue to embellish his exploits.
It was not until I became an adult that I learned a painful secret about my dad—one that also, perhaps, helps to explain his “gift of gab.” He couldn’t read. As a child he’d only been allowed to go to school when the weather was bad. In good weather he worked the farm. When he did show up at the tiny one-room schoolhouse, he was embarrassed to be put back with the little kids because he never knew where they were in the lessons. But he was a visual learner and taught himself many things—and fooled us along the way.
One morning after I had spent the night at my parents’ home, I got up early to find Dad at the kitchen table with one of my picture books. He said he’d “made it through” with the help of the pictures. I gave him a kiss on the top of his bald head. He told me, “Ya, done good.” And I told him the same thing—for he had. He had raised a writer and a reader, though he was neither of those things.
However, because of his lack of education schooling was very important to him. When other kids were able to stay home from school with upset tummies . . . we were marched out our door and never missed a day unless we were bed-ridden. And I remember often reading aloud to Dad while he “checked” my reading. I know now that I and my siblings were portals into the mysterious world of books for him. It was another way to sate his appetite for more stories—stories he might later reshape and retell.
After the incident in my niece’s class, I asked my mother why she had driven Dad to the school and let him speak to the class when she knew he had never been in World War II. She said it keeps him alive.
That’s when I realized the stories Dad told were chapters in a life he was constantly in the process of creating. For him story was a necessary world where despite his weak body, his bad eyesight and his illiteracy, he could fight the good fight.
Dad died in 2008. Somewhere, I know, he is still telling stories.
Thank you for sharing your story with us today Shutta. Your Dad was an amazing man.
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