The Storyteller

I've been thinking a lot about writing down my dad's stories. He has enough to entertain anyone all day long and often does when he can get the chance. I started by writing this introduction about who he is and I though I'd share.


My dad is the stuff of legends. A regular Robin Hood, who has at least once in his life, shot an arrow within an arrow which he pulls out at every family get-together. I think he would use it as a curtain rod or proudly entomb it in a shadow box above the couch if my mom would let him. He’s a Canadian bushman through and through, scheduling his vacations around hunting and fishing seasons. Six foot six with an imposing upper body and a gait that says, “I know where I’m going and who I am.” In other words, my dad could beat up your dad any day of the week. But he wont, because for all his tough talk he really just wants to make you his friend. He talks to everyone and anyone no matter where we are. He teases the wait staff at the restaurant, chats easily about the weather with the gas station attendant, and even has a word for the grocery store cashier scanning his steaks and hamburgers.

In his youth his friends called him Stretch. In my mind, he’s the biggest man whose ever lived since Paul Bunyan or the first created man, Adam. He has to duck through doorways and under lighting fixtures, but that hasn’t caused him to slouch his frame. He stands tall and proud of his stature. As children we climbed him like a tree.

He has a game he likes to surprise people with that I like to call, “I’m-faster-than-you-could-ever-think-of-being game.” He puts a quarter in your palm and tells you to hold your hand out flat. He does the same, holding his fingertips straight out from yours. He tells you that he will grab the quarter out of your palm before you can draw back or close your hand. And he does. Every time.

Whenever one of his three girls brought home a boyfriend he’d pull out the most menacing weapon he owned. He said this was to scare them off but really he was testing their manliness and seeking approval on his. If my husband-to-be couldn’t pull back a 90lb. bowstring he would never live it down. Thankfully, he could.

Being such a manly man you’d think he would be disappointed he didn’t have a son. But he loves his three girls and often sang us a song called “Daddy’s Girl,” a story about a man who wanted a boy, had a girl and ended up loving her just like a son—and that’s how she knew she was his number one. He read the words to that song at my wedding and choked up with emotion the same way his voice waivered when giving his toast at my middle sisters wedding or when my youngest sister told him he was going to be a grandpa.

And having girls didn’t stop him from teaching us to fish or shoot a bow and arrow. My youngest sister owns her own bow, in fact. When I was a pre-teen he would wake me early and we’d sneak out to the lake just us two. And he would brag more about the fish I caught than he would for any son, even if I did scream the first time I saw my catch wriggling and rising from the water like some evil black snake. That scream brought my uncles from the other side of the lake and my dad proudly showed off my catch even though it was a Great Northern and most Canadians wont eat them.

He likes to sit around and listen to the oldest country western music available. You know the songs where the singer stops periodically to tell the story in a regular talking voice. Stories about lost love with a Mexican girl, war with Indians, or an old horse named Camanche.

But most of all he’s a storyteller himself, stringing words together so fast you know he’s told the same story at least a hundred times, pausing only to give you a direct, matter-of-fact look that says, “You better believe it.” And you do! Not because the story sounds legit (I mean really, how can so much happen to one person?), but because he tells it with so much authority and delight. As a kid I never really listened much to those stories, so now that I’m grown I’m hearing many of them for the first time. It’s like learning something new about someone you’ve known your whole life. It sounds impossible but when you do you look at that person a little differently. He even has favorite phrases or adjectives like “the bear came tearing through the woods with a rickety, smash crash,”  or "the thing blew, by cracky!" Oh, there are tall tales too. The ones where he goes hunting with one bullet loaded in his gun and steps into the water to get a closer shot at the buck to his left only to realize there’s a bear to his right. In a moment of sheer Indiana Jones-ness he aims and shoots at an indented v-shaped rock dead ahead, splitting the bullet in two and on direct paths to kill both animals. The kick of his gun sends him back into the water; a few buttons off his coat pop off lodging them straight into the air, sending down partridge dead at his feet in exchange. He comes out of the water with his pockets full of fish and a knowing smile on his face. Yeah, that's my Canadian bushman-of-a-dad.