Storytelling is a part of life that helps us make sense of what we do not understand. Stories educate, inspire and build relationships between the teller and the listener. To hear and retain stories has built my faith, appreciation of ancestors and pride in my hometown, state and country.
You receive a special gift when someone takes the time to tell a story of something they love enough to want to share. I was blessed to hear and still remember stories I was told throughout my life.
Mrs. Nina Dekle Price shared her gift of storytelling to my sixth grade Georgia History class. Instead of just reading the lesson on Georgia Revolutionary heroine Nancy Hart and asking our responses, she turned the text into a fascinating tale of the frontier woman who shouldered a rifle and captured six British troops who were trying to steal her supplies. She made such events come to life.
Mrs. Mae Vann told Biblical parables to my high school Sunday school class as realistic as if she had been part of the group gathered around Jesus. She put us into the stories. After walking the road with the Good Samaritan, we were ready for a discussion of “Who is my Neighbor?”
My Grandmother McIntyre was a master seamstress—then called “taking in sewing.” I spent a lot of my childhood sitting beside her as she treadled her machine and told me stories. Parts of the stories of her young life as daughter of a sharecropper and raising her own family during the Great Depression are tucked into my novels. Her tale of canning blackberries for winter is a favorite. When her food supply was running low, she cooked stewed blackberries and served over hot biscuits to my mother, aunts and uncles.
My father put his stories on paper and shared in his I Remember column in The Blade. From these saved columns, we learned that he and Dr. Dess Smith sold the first Coca-Cola in Swainsboro and details of the celebration of our town’s 100th birthday.
I had to write books because I had so many stories saved from times when I had been the listener. I was happy to learn that enhancing, enlarging, or changing around your story is called fiction and perfectly acceptable when in a story form.
I don’t worry what’s true and untrue in memory or fiction. “There’s a lot of making up going on with both.” That is a quote from the late beloved South Carolina author Pat Conroy.
Reach Shirley at aptwiss@gmail.com.
