There’s something magical about telling a story. The teller directs the narrative, moving the action one word at a time. Pacing is all about choosing the right words in the correct order. Almost like removing one block at a time from a Jenga tower – you have to be careful; otherwise, the whole thing, like a Ponzi scheme, could come crashing down!

What if someone could capture those fleeting elements of their story, compiling them into a historical snapshot? It would be a book of their making, letting someone else wordsmith and play with all the information they’d been given. You would unlock a fantastic piece of their life, something you could hold on to forever! Better than a photograph, these would be their stories, their words shared for generations to come!

Me and Uncle Jim? That’s what we had. Growing up I had the best childhood, filled with incredible people, showing and telling me all kinds of things and explaining the world.

So why am I choosing to share with you my experiences with Uncle Jim? Well, I figured all my words were lying there, not doing anything. I just thought it was about time I did something with them. I thought, “What if someone was writing down these stories, like me and Jim, and putting it into a book, or a memoir?” What if I could do that for someone else?

What I’m about to share with you? It’s a silver of all the stories Uncle Jim volunteered when I was a young boy.

Uncle Jim rocked in the creaky chair, whittling an oak branch, a pile of the pieces lying at his feet. Three teeth remained in the upper part of his mouth, his bottom teeth still intact. “That’s why they added all those chemicals to the water,” he’d wink at me, lighting a corncob pipe on the upturned apple crate he used as a makeshift table. Uncle Jim lit the pipe and swallowed the last bit of bourbon in his glass. Aunt Hattie used the bits of wood at his feet as kindling, laughing about Uncle Jim’s antics before they were married. She came out long enough to snatch the glass balanced precariously on the apple crate. “I’ll not have you breakin’ my good glassware out here while you is talkin’ to the boy. You hear me?” She playfully slapped his shoulder.

“Yeah, I hear ya, Hattie.”

Before Aunt Hattie opened the screen door of their small log cabin, she looked at me, wagging her finger, “And don’t you go lyin’ to the boy about the trip you made to Spokane all those years ago. I swear, the older he gets, the longer that story goes on and on and on.” Aunt Hattie threw up her hands walking inside, letting the screen door slam – something she wouldn’t dare let Uncle Jim get away with. She came back out long enough to say to me, “But he did kill his Pappy’s horses. That part is absolutely true. I heard it from the horse’s mouth, hisself!” She cackled, going back inside, this time letting the screen door close slowly.

“So, pull up a seat here, Doug, and I’ll tell you how those horses weren’t about to make it through the Snoqualmie Pass in the early spring of 1889.”

If you enjoyed reading the above story and want something like that for your family’s archives, let me know in the comments below!