HALLOWEEN ON THE ISLAND

 Halloween on Ocracoke is a very special holiday.  

When I first came to the Island, trick or treating was scattered randomly here and there around the village.  One of the main streets for trick or treating was Lighthouse Road.  Lots of full time residents live there. Also, it goes straight for about a half mile then loops back on itself in return.

Gradually people who lived other places started going over to Lighthouse Road and setting up trick or treat “stations” along the sides of the road.  This grew on its own organically until now Lighthouse Road is where it all happens.

There are so many younger kids trick or treating that it all starts about 4:00 pm and is over by 6:00.  It also gets dark early here because we are so far east, this way everyone is back home by dark.

We decorate our little truck and take it over.  It makes a great candy station. This year we also gave out light-up rings with different Halloween characters on them.

Most of the grown-ups dress up too and they are many of the most outlandish characters.  There is SO much creativity involved is as great to see.

Many visitors come to the Island annually just to be here for Halloween.  We gave out treats to HUNDREDS of trick or treaters…nobody cares where they come from, it is just more and more fun! It turns out to be a huge time of community visitation and happiness. There are even some “adult” treat stops for those who are old enough.

Everyone catches the right spirit.

Andrew’s Valley Rail Bikes

 Fifty years ago, when I was still an active Methodist minister, I lived in the small town of Andrews, North Carolina as I was assigned to the church there.  At that time the Southern Railway trains came through town each day.

The train stopped coming in the 1990’s and the tracks were sold to the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad.  They run historic tours out of Bryson City, some thirty miles east of Andrews but their tours do not come this far.  So, in 2024 the Andrews Valley Rail Bike Tours started using this track.

We came to Andrews and spent the night in an Air B&B made from an old red caboose.  A nice adventure in itself.  Next morning we went a few hundred yards to the railway station for all our instructions.

Trish and I took this trip back when they first opened and always wanted to do it again.  On our first trip there were six or eight cars but this time we were on a sold out trip with sixteen pedal cars and three powered cars.  Business has boomed with a new station and, of course, gift shop.

We got on our way in the front seats of our four person rail bike.  We had two other passengers in the seats behind us who also were to pedal.  I was called the “driver” as it was my job to work the brakes and the electric booster when needed.  Soon we were on our way.

Once started we were spaced way out from other cars. Here is one of the carts to show what they looked like.

We traveled nearly five miles with some fair uphill grade until we came to a 300 yard plus tunnel. The tunnel was crafted in 1894 totally by hand as the layered shale was too dangerous to use dynamite. We explored the tunnel, with the flag above the opening,  while we had a picnic break and they turned all the cars around.

We crossed five trestles on the trip, including this one that comes  right out of the tunnel. This was an engineering feat in 1894 as the tunnel itself is on a six degree grade.

After pedaling uphill to get here, the trip back was mostly gentle coasting.  

This is a great adventure and we recommend it to anyone, especially in October when the leaves are in color.

Athens Storytelling Festival

 This past weekend was the twentieth Athens, Alabama, Storytelling Festival.  I was joined by Adam Booth, Josh Goforth, and Bil Lepp for the Festival with Carol Cain added for school days.

Alabama Legislators who cover Athens supply funding each year for the past twenty years to bring students to hear stories on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  We have a full tent on Tuesday morning. Then those children return to school while we have another full tent in the afternoon. We continue to do this for the three days and have seen nearly six thousand students, grades three through nine, by Thursday afternoon. 

The weekend Festival starts on Thursday evening with a dinner for sponsors followed by one story by each featured teller.  This year, as a special feature, Carol Cain presented a 45 minute version of her acclaimed Rosie the Riveter program.  Carol has been doing this for more than thirty years and is, herself, an honorary Rosie!

We go forward with two full days of storytelling Friday and Saturday.  What great fun.  

This year when we checked in to the Hampton Inn, the young lady at the desk got a big smile and said,  “You and one of those storytellers, aren’t you? My favorite memory from my school days was when we would get to go to the storytelling festival!”  She then told us a short version of a story she heard me tell more than fifteen years ago.  This stuff does last!

Dayton, Tennessee

 Josh Goforth, Bil Lepp, and I have just finished the Stories Under the Oaks Storytelling Festival in Dayton, Tennessee.  This is a brand new Festival in its inaugural year and everything was great through and through.  The idea came from Kelley Kroeker, one of my workshop attendees.  She proposed the idea to the Public Library and they, along with the city of Dayton put together a marvelous event.

We started Friday morning with school students and home school families.  It was a splendid, appreciative, and extremely attentive audience.

Friday evening was to open in the same big tent we were in that morning, but, stiff afternoon winds began to pull stakes loose and there was danger of collapse.  No worries, the Festival Commitee simple moved everything right next door to an outdoor park stage venue and the evening went forward without a hitch!

The tent rental company arrived after dark and repaired the tent setup so we could start right in there on Saturday morning.

You can see that the tent is right on the back grounds of the historic Rhea County Courthouse where the famous Scopes Trial happened in July of 1925.  Earlier that year the Tennessee legislature has passed a bill making it illegal to teach evolution in schools.  The ACLU sought to oppose the bill on First Amendment grounds and secured John Thomas Scopes as a volunteer to help provoke the trial.

While substituting in a biology class, Scopes supposedly taught a lesson (straight from the state textbook) on Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest.  He was arrested and brought to trial.  While both prosecution and defense were handled by Rhea County attorneys, “supporting” attorneys were brought in by both sides.

The prosecution brought in William Jennings Bryan who had run for President three times and was besides a well known orator on many topics.  He was a religious fundamentalist.

The defense acquired Clarence Darrow, a religious agnostic.  These two men were probably the most famous attorneys in the United States at the time.  The trial was the first trial in the US to be broadcast on radio and drew National attention.

The trial quickly turned into a debating match between Bryan and Darrow with the local attorneys almost staying in the background.  After five days, Scopes was found guilty (he never denied his teaching) and the Judge fined him one hundred dollars.   The fine was never paid and in 1927 the verdict was overturned in grounds that the Judge himself had set the penalty illegally.  The statute, though largely ignored, remained on the books in Tennessee until 1968.

It was great fun telling stories right in the shadow of the Courthouse where these events took place. Two movies, each entitled Inherit The Wind, were made preserving the whole story of the trial.

Bil, Josh, and I had a fine time working together and hope this Festival will really take off as it should.

NATIONAL STORYTELLING FESTIVAL

 We are at last home and rested after the week of the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee.

Trish and I arrive a week early as I am the Teller in Residence the week leading up to the Festival.  This way we also get to see all of the tents going up for the coming weekend.  My habit is to go and stand on each stage where I am to be scheduled during the festival just to see how it feels and also to sit in several different seats to see how the stage looks from the audience point of view.  This helps me to be fully comfortable with the space before walking up on the stages the first time…very important to me!

Starting on the Monday before the Festival weekend, I begin performances in the Storytelling Center Theatre as part of my Teller in Residence programming.  Since a lot of people start coming in to Jonesborough early, we add to these performances until we are up to three a day.

By Wednesday evening I do a performance in the Library Tent as a lead into the weekend.  We have well over a thousand people there and it is still two days before the Festival officially starts. On Thursday I do two more shows in the Theatre and that evening Josh Goforth and Michael Reno Harrell fill the Library Tent with a wonderful evening of music and stories.

On Friday the Festival officially begins!

There are five big tents, the larger ones holding about two thousand people each.  What great fun we have!

I addition to telling stories, I get to play bass with the wonderful Jonesborough Novelty Band!  We play for the opening of the Beer Garden on Thursday afternoon, at the Dining Tent on Friday evening, and again for the Yarnspinner Party on Saturday evening.  We have a lot of fun!

Besides a tiny shower of rain, the weather was very enjoyable.

This was my forty-sixth year to be on stage at the Festival and Trish and I already look forward to 2027.

TIMPANOGOS STORYTELLING FESTIVAL

 The past ten days have been so incredibly busy that I have had no energy left each day to post to the blog.   Now let me look back over those days.

We arrived from Boise, Idaho, to Lehi, Utah, on Sunday, the day before Labor Day.  We were in Lehi for the exceptional Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. We got there just in time to get organized for the week.

Monday we spent doing accumulated laundry during the daytime and then went to the Labor Day Luau in Ashton Gardens that evening. Ashton Gardens is also the site of the storytelling festival and we wanted to go to the luau partly to see the venue from an observers point of view rather than as a performer.

The luau was quite enjoyable with an island buffet and performers from about a half-dozen South Pacific islands centered around Tahiti.

On Tuesday morning I had an appointment with the ophthalmologist there as a follow up to an issue earlier in this trip.  From the appointment we went to the BYU studios to record for the splendid Apple Seed storytelling podcast. (If you don’t know about this fine program, google Appleseed Podcast…it is a storytelling treasure.). Every year they film several of the tellers who are in town for the Timpanogos Festival…I think I have filmed for the past five years.We are in a studio with a small audience…fun!

Early Wednesday morning we took our car to the nearby Mercedes dealer for its 110,000 mile service…it is now three years old.

By now all the other tellers have arrived and several are now doing their Apple Seed filming. 

In the evening we all gather for dinner with the storytelling board for orientation and to have a tour of the entire festival site in Ashton Gardens.

 Thursday all of the tellers meet for a question and advice time with the National Youth Tellers.  They come from all over the country and on Friday they each tell a story at the beginning of all of our sets. What fun!

Festival begins Thursday afternoon with a reception/dinner for sponsors.  It seems that I am always called in to speak at that event. (Trish and I are also sponsors.)

Afterwards we go to the Waterfall Amphitheatre for the evening performance.  The amphitheater is huge and people who have not bought actual seats go early in the afternoon to stake out their blanket places on the huge hillside. While we are in five different tents during the day, the evening performances all come together in this one space.

There are two large Jumbotron screens on either side of the stage here because the audience area goes far back.  Here I am on Jumbotron!

 Before the Saturday night finale each year, we are led in by the bagpipes.  What a thrilling entrance into this beautiful garden.

On Sunday morning, before departures, all the tellers are special guests at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s weekly broadcast.  What a lovely finish to a great week!

Trish and I, exhausted, drove that afternoon to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, so we could spend the evening soaking in the comforting hot mineral springs.  The following morning, Monday, after we each had slept ten hours, we headed for home.  Today, Friday, we are headed for the ferry and will be home by 4:30, 7,361 miles since we left here.

CRATER LAKE

 Wow!  What an adventure we are having at Crater Lake National Park! 

We had planned hikes ahead of time, then it rained all the way here. Even in the rain, the drive into the Park was beautiful…the trees are astounding! But…it is in the 40s with more cold tomorrow, so, we will only do car hiking!

In the evening we drove up to see the Lake and the Lake was not there!

So, the next morning we started driving around the rim road to see what the day may hold. As we stopped at one overlook, suddenly the clouds began to rise, and, suddenly the Lake appeared!

As we stood in this one spot, the clouds lifted as we watched and we could see the Lake for about four or five minutes.  Then the clouds began to come back down, a bit like a window shade, and the Lake disappeared again.

We settled by the fireplace in the rim hotel and were snug reading for the afternoon.  Suddenly sun began to emerge and so did the Lake! It was uniquely beautiful! (Remember the tree on the left for an upcoming photo comparison.)

We kept watching the weather forecast for the coming day and there were some hints about an early snow.  We woke up this morning to snow falling!  Trish and I got in the car and headed from our cabin up to the rim.  The snow got harder and harder as we got higher.  The trees were already covered and made a fairy land.

By the time we got up to the rim, there were several inches of snow and it is still falling!  We had breakfast here and are now settled where we can read and watch the day.  After all these great surprises, we are wondering what else might bring us delight as the day rolls along? The first photo is our present view of the Lake taken from our porch.