CRAIG SAVOYE

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 AFTERWORD

 

     Some readers may be curious about how this book came to be written, my approach to the actual writing and organization of the stories, and the “voice” I use. Way back in 2000 some ranch stories were related to me at a dinner party in St. Louis by someone who had grown up in rural Nebraska. They were among the funniest anecdotes I had ever heard. I wondered if a bunch of them could be collected and turned into a book. A quest was born, one that eventually took me to all corners of Nebraska and hither and yon across Texas over a 12-year period. I interviewed more than 150 cowboys, ranchers, and assorted characters, gathered their tales, anecdotes, and life stories, and distilled the material into the 23 stories/profiles in this collection. 

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     Prior to this project I had never attempted—or ever had occasion to think about—translating oral storytelling into the written word. It has its challenges. People tend to tell stories that are brief and might only fill a paragraph if merely transcribed. They also tend to switch from subject to subject rapidly and speak in clipped sentences. What seemed, ultimately, to work, was to group various anecdotes around individuals and focus on character sketches. This approach manages to achieve “narrative critical mass” even as a life creates a natural chronological spine.

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     Some of the stories contained herein are single-sourced to the subject of the sketch, as with The Flying Cowboy. Virtually all of the material in that chapter was gathered from Davey Davis himself. In other chapters, such as The Cowboy’s Cowboy, the anecdotes were collected from eight different friends and relatives of the subject, Martin Armstrong, who has passed on. Regardless of single- or multi-sourcing, the goal was to create, in each chapter, a seamless narrative, and overall, a thematically consistent book.

 

     Cowboys, Ranchers, and Assorted Characters is not easily categorized. It is not journalism. It is not history. It is not straight oral history either. It is not folklore, although I regularly describe it using the shorthand ‘lore.’ It is simply a collection of funny and engaging stories arranged to be readable. I am not sure it needs furthering labeling, although there is a one-word description I would attach with certainty to this book: nonfiction. It is clearly a creative technique to turn around and tell someone’s story—which often they themselves related—in a third person composite voice. But the creativity does not extend to adding fictitious material. Very early in my writing of these stories, before I had settled on an approach, I wrote a fictional anecdote, trying to match, in tone and style, real anecdotes I had heard from a source. In my judgment the experiment was an abject failure. My fictional anecdote was obviously so, while the true anecdotes from the source rang true. I forever after abandoned the notion of creating fictional anecdotes to supplement real ones.

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     The contents of each tale in this book “accurately” represent the core facts as they were related to me—though, yes, the quotation marks signal a caveat, which is: I have no doubt that many of my sources exaggerated aspects of the stories they told me. But that tendency is hardwired in the DNA of most storytellers. The primary intent here is to entertain. When someone’s Uncle Fred tells his war stories at family gatherings, it is every-listener-for-himself in terms of how much credibility to lend Uncle Fred. This book is a collection of Uncle Fred’s tales. Just as no relatives or friends would have reason to chase down the strict accuracy of Uncle Fred’s accounts, neither did I have any interest in verifying the details of personal anecdotes with scholarly or legal certitude.

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     The stories are what they are. One source, in relating an anecdote, mentioned the market price of a unique item from 25 years ago. A quick web check revealed that the price he cited was five times higher than historical reality. I would conjecture that, over time, to enhance the impact of his story, the tale-teller kept ratcheting up the price. I arbitrarily knocked 80 percent off his price when I included it in the final written story so that the credibility of the rest of the tale wouldn’t be undermined. Would such numeric inflation tend to suggest the storyteller’s non-numeric details were likewise exaggerated? Of course. Does my reduction in price render the story inaccurate or fiction? I’m relating all of this so that readers, who care to, can answer that question for themselves.

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     I heard an anecdote about the Brainards (The Feud) five times…from five different sources (the one about putting the cows on water). And yes, the same story was told five different ways. I simply chose to relate the version I liked best. I did hear a number of anecdotes over the years that sounded like whoppers to me—known in the West as “windies”—that I chose not to include in the book. Other stories that are in the book may possibly be urban legends retread as rural legends. I did do brief Google searches on several suspicious anecdotes but found no similar versions in cyberspace.

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     Continuing for a moment on the subject of “accuracy,” if a reader had access to the transcripts of the interviews I conducted and compared them to the finished stories, they would see a significant difference between the two. But the lack of recognition would be in the area of presentation, not basic facts. As mentioned, oral stories (from non-professional storytellers) are not generally told in a manner polished for print. They have to be structured around some sort of theme, fashioned into some sort of order, given transitions, enhanced with detail, enriched with stylistic flourishes, and so forth. But that metamorphosing of raw oral material into consumable literature is simply my value-add as a writer. That process certainly does not alter its state from “truth” to fiction. At the same time, I also specifically tried to capture, or retain, a sense of the randomness of oral story within the structure I created; that is, one anecdote “reminding” the narrator of another story.

 

     While this book is unarguably a commercial venture, a genuine desire to preserve these stories also motivated my efforts. They document, albeit in lighthearted rather than academic fashion, a way of life that is quintessentially American, but also fast fading. I’m sure many relatives of those profiled in the book have thought about writing down these stories or tape-recording them. But it rarely happens. For one reason, as I have alluded to, the magic of oral storytelling is lost in mere transcription. Hopefully this book will help save these stories, which are not significant enough to constitute recordable history, but nevertheless deserve preservation.

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     Let me briefly discuss the narrative voice I use. It is an amalgamation of the dozens of voices I heard while doing interviews. I hope readers intuitively understand what I am attempting to do with the voice. It certainly was not a momentary decision to employ it. Most editors advise against writing in vernacular. I would both take and give that advice myself in most cases—but not in this one. The voice used here is not just words and phrases. It provides context and even creates it own environment or world. Anyone who would deem it “fake” is missing the point by 180 degrees. The very reason I employ the voice is authenticity. That is, telling the stories in proper English is what would render them “fake,” or inaccurate, in my opinion. Substituting a cowboy’s words and phrasing with proper English would literally be putting words in his mouth. A reader of one of my self-published books of western stories complained about what he referred to as the “hick” voice. Allow me to address what I believe to be the unspoken complaint in that reference: that the voice makes fun of those portrayed in the stories or condescends to them. I can’t imagine anyone who has read this book through could think the author, by employing the voice, is condescending to those profiled. On the contrary, I have the utmost respect for those I was privileged to interview. The book honors them; I hope that shines through. Allow me to reiterate: the voice is simply an attempt to communicate the stories in as engaging and authentic a manner as possible. A final thought on this. Mark Twain wrote in the vernacular in his epic novels, and if it is good enough for him, it is certainly good enough for me.

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     One more point about my general intent, of which the voice is an aspect. I have read many feature stories over the years and recently concluded a collection by one of the foremost feature writers in the country. It was outstanding, and what I am about to relate is not a backhanded slap at his achievement or the approach of most other feature writers. But virtually all such writing has the feel, to me, of an outside observer describing events. In the collection of feature stories just mentioned, the author twice visited remote towns to do stories. We are with him, the writer, as he journeys around town, describes what he sees, who he runs into, and profiles individual 

citizens. Outside looking in. My attempt here is to penetrate to a deeper level, to essentially tell stories from the inside out. That is, have the reader hear stories as if from the teller, rather than describe the teller and his or her anecdotes and life story to the reader. My approach also consciously strips away virtually all description and observation in an attempt to distill pure storytelling. Obviously the reader will have to decide if I have been successful—and if they even like the approach.

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     Interviews for this book were conducted between spring, 2000 and January, 2012. That is a significant span, and the earliest ones a long time ago. I have chosen not to update any references to time in the stories. All such references reflect the date of the interview. In other words, ‘…four years ago…’ is four years ago as of the date a tale was related to me. The same is true of references to age. I felt uncomfortable going back into long-ago completed stories and randomly updating a person’s age. Indeed, given that a great many of those profiled in the book are of the “Greatest Generation,” they, and other interviewees, have since passed.

     

     A minor point, but a loose end the reader might appreciate having tied up: ‘Annnnnnnyway…’ is a word/usage I adopted from a rancher and natural storyteller, now passed, from Nebraska. Like any writer would, I have rewritten, edited, proofed, and read over these stories literally dozens of times each. I have therefore re-read the word Annnnnnnyway hundreds of times, but every time I encounter it I can still hear the storyteller’s lazy bell curve lilt whenever he said it. Any writer understands the value and functionality of transitions. For the oral storyteller I borrowed it from, Annnnnnnyway (always seven Ns in print) served as a wonderful, charming, and all-encompassing transition that could stitch together anecdotes as distant as continents. (The family of the storyteller asked that I not identify him.)