"My Grandfather Was the Best Storyteller I Knew"

On this episode of Our American Stories, OAS listener from South Carolina, Dennis Peterson, shares the spellbinding story of his grandfather, "Paw" Summers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
story from our regular contributor, Dennis Peterson. Dennis is an
author and historian who specializes in Southern history. Today, Dennis
shares with us a story about his grandfather entitled Pauw
Thummer's Storyteller.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Take it Away, Dennis, Part of the Southern Appalachian heritage
is the skill of storytelling, and whenever that topic arises
in a conversation, my mind automatically returns to memories of
Frederick Newman Summers, or pau as we grandchildren called him
to me.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
He was the quintessential storyteller, a natural who probably never
realized his own skill. During all of my lifetime and
until his death in December nineteen seventy two, Paul lived
in the Rocky Hill country of the rural community of
High School, Tennessee, between Knoxville and Clinton, but he moved

(01:10):
around considerably during his eighty two year lifetime. He had
also held a variety of jobs before my time. He
had been a well driller and a house painter. He
even sold Mason's shoes on the side, and I'm sure
that he enjoyed every minute of it, even if he
never made much profit. Paul was the proverbial jack of

(01:33):
all trades, master of nine unless you count storytelling. He
was an avid student of politics, politicking as a precinct
worker for innumerable elections. His yard always seemed to have
one or more campaign signs in it. Paul also had

(01:53):
some fame, at least locally, as a musician. In fact,
he and my grandmother met and fell in love at
a rollicking barn dance at which he was playing and singing.
Carl Beam, a distant relative and a frequent performer at
the now world famous Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee,

(02:14):
remembered recording Pause singing the Name song, which mentions about
every name imaginable. I faintly remember Pause playing his guitar
and singing that song and a lot of other humorous ballads.
But I more clearly recall his singing old fashioned hymns.

(02:38):
For years he led singing in Little Mount Harmony Baptist
Church in high school. There. At his funeral, the mourners
sang his favorite hymn, when I've gone the last mile
of the way before we laid him to rest in
the family plot in the cemetery behind the white clapboard church.

(03:00):
Perhaps it was his breadth of experience, his length and
variety of life that provided grist for pause story mill.
Many of his stories involved himself. Others were about people
he had known or had worked with or for. But
some of his stories were renditions of stories he had

(03:20):
heard others tell, but always with his own interpretations and
embellishments thrown in to give them a homey, personal flavor.
As a kid, I used to sit with him on
his blue painted wooden porch on many warm afternoons, staring
out across Raccoon Valley Road toward the Southern Railroad tracks

(03:41):
and listen to him tell stories to whoever would listen.
He sat in a homemade rocking chair that was held
together by innumerable layers of paint, and stared off into
the distance, rather than looking at me or whoever else
might be happening by for a visit. As he spun
his tails, he was perpetually moving, incessantly, tapping his foot

(04:08):
on the porch planks. Occasionally he patted the wide arm
of the rocker with his hand for emphasis. Sometimes his feet,
as though moved by an uncontrollable urge, burst forth with
energy tapping out a brief but lively buck dance routine.
When the urge for motion had apparently been satisfied, his

(04:30):
feet got still for a while. An occasional car often passed,
and Pauw threw up his hand in a friendly wave.
Who was that, Paw? I would ask, Oh, that was so?
And so he responded, he knew more people, and more
people knew him than I've even met. Seeing the person

(04:53):
who had just passed reminded him of a story, and
off he went with another tale. And frequently someone whom
he didn't know would pass. To my query about who
it was, Paul usually responded, I don't know him. He
must be from off somewhere else. Paul dropped out of

(05:16):
school in the fourth grade. We were working on short division,
he explained to me one day, and the teacher said
that tomorrow we would start on long division. I took
one look at those problems and never went back. In
spite of his limited formal education, Paul was an intelligent man.

(05:36):
He read a lot and had a vocabulary that surprised
me as a college student. On the end table beside
his chair, which sat behind the front door of his house,
was always a magazine or two, the Knoxville Journal, perhaps
a copy of The Watchdog Grosser, politician Coon Hunter kas

(05:57):
Walker's political scandal sheet, and a big Warren Bible. Although
Paul probably never read Mark Twain's instructions on how to
tell a good story effectively, he was an expert at
doing exactly what Twain advised. Like Twain, Paul made a
big deal out of insignificant minor details in his stories.

(06:20):
For example, during a story, he would worry over what
day of the week the event about which he was
telling actually happened, what the weather had been that day,
what year it was, or whether the event had happened
in Clinton or in Kingsport, or on Chestnut Ridge or
beside bull Run Creek. He quite often diverged innumerable times

(06:43):
during his story, burying stories within stories, but finally finding
his way back to complete the original story just when
listeners were beginning to think he had lost his way entirely.
Yet he somehow always left his life listeners wanting to
hear more, or he would use the just finished story

(07:05):
as a springboard into the next story. Invariably, a train
would come through during one of Pau's stories, he stopped
his story in mid sentence and rocked silently amid the
rumble of the diesel locomotives and the click clack of
iron wheels on shiny rails, counting the freight cars as

(07:26):
they went by. When the caboose had passed from view
down the track, he picked up right where he had
left off, without missing so much as a word. Sometimes
Nanny was sitting with us. She too, sometimes entered into

(07:46):
Pau's storytelling, usually to argue with him over one of
the many insignificant details of his story. Sometimes discerning the
story that Paul was about to tell. Just as he
began it, declared, good, Lord Fred, you know better than
to tell that. Because he knew so many people, Paul

(08:08):
had a lot of visitors, especially on Sunday afternoons. I
suspect that many of those visitors came not so much
to talk to Pau as to listen to him tell stories.
I think that he was totally unaware of his own
storytelling prowess. He was just being himself. Perhaps that is

(08:29):
what the very quality that makes Appalachian storytellers unique. Like Pau,
they just do what comes natural. Storytelling is an important
way in which my generation and countless ones before it
learned of its heritage, and it is a part of
our heritage that must be preserved and fostered, a skill

(08:51):
that must be passed on to our children and to
their children for generations to come.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
A job on the production by Monty Montgomery and a
special thanks to Dennis Peterson. Check out Dennis's website at
Dennis Lpeterson dot com. Frederick Newman Summers a k a.
Paul Well driller, house painter, shoe salesman, singer of songs
and teller of stories. The story of Paw here on

(09:25):
our American Stories