The Storytelling Festival

Hooray! Hooray! For stories.  What a wonderful morning spent listening to stories.  I began the morning listening to Olga Loya tell two different “tio conejo” stories from two different countries.  She also told a “moral of the story” story and then finished by making up a story with the help of the audience.  What talent!

The second storyteller was Bil Lepp.  I liked his stories, he tells the kind of stories that my brothers tell and I felt such a kinship with him.  I had to buy one of his CD’s to share with my family. 

The second session starred Motoko and Bill Harley.  Motoko is a native of Japan and not only told stories but sang stories also.  Bill Harley also sang us a story and then told a story.  I so enjoyed laughing, crying and smiling at the stories told.

I went alone and the whole time I was there, I was wishing my family could be there to share it with me.  You see I grew up with story tellers.  We were fortunate enough to live next door to my grandmother and all of the aunts, uncles, and cousins always came to visit Grandma, and we got to see them also.  The time spent together was spent visiting and telling stories; we would be up until the wee hours of the morning laughing and telling stories. 

When I married I discovered that my father in law is a great storyteller.  Whenever the whole family got together the grandchildren would beg for a “Fat Boy Story.”  I was a little dismayed at first but then when he finally gave in and began to tell the stories I was elated.  He would tell the best stories about a little fat boy and his little fat pony.  He began telling these stories when his children were young and it wasn’t until the children were almost adults that they realized that the stories were actually about him. 

He would only tell one story a night; sometimes the children were able to coax two, but never more than two at a time.  When Dad died in 2002, we found some of the stories, he had begun to write them down but hadn’t finished.  One of my sisters in law had also written some of the stories, and so when my daughter needed a senior project she chose to collect all of the stories and publish them in a book.  It was the best thing she could have done, because now we all have a story book of Granddad’s stories, and they help us all remember Grandad.

Thanks for the assignment and the opportunity!