Tale: Whistlin' Bill and the New Mexico winds

Begins on page 2 of the transcriptRoy V. Simpson Fayetteville, Arkansas November 13, 1951 (Collected by Irene Carlisle) Reel 134 Items 1-6 I (Roy V. Simpson) was born in the mountains near Pine Ridge, Arkansas, and spent about thirty years o' my l i f e in that section. I knew a good many characters who showed a good deal of the individualism of the backwoods; among those was one Uncle Riley Runnels, on whom a good many stories are told. One of my favorites was the story of how he divided the rent corn. Uncle Riley had rented a field and put it in corn. The idea, as is usual in the countryside, was that he would pay one-third the corn as rent to the landlord. Came f a l l , and Uncle Riley asked his landlord how he should divide the corn. The landlord said, "That's easy; just haul two loads to your crib and one load to my crib." Along toward Christmas, the landlord discovered that he had never gotten any rent corn from Uncle Riley's field. He went over and asked Uncle Riley what the trouble was. Uncle Riley said, "I gosh, I didn't MAKE the third load!" Another character who lived practically all his l i f e near Pine Ridge, Arkansas, was known as Whistling Bill Friar. From all accounts, he deserved the title. I've heard remarkable sto,ries of his whistling in his early years before age overtook him, and his consumption of white mule thickened up his lips until his whistling lessened a bit. I've even heard that you could hear him whistle for two miles on a clear frosty morning when he felt his oats, or perhaps really his corn. A good many stories are told of Whistling Bill Friar; enough to f i l l a book. He traveled a great deal. On the borders of Arkansas and Missouri, one time, Reel 134 Roy Simpson 2 at some eating house, he met some Missourians. These Missourians told Whistling Bill that you could always t e l l a person from Arkansas; that when he washed in the washpan, he always left the water in the pan. Whistling B i l l ' s reply was, "You can also tell anyone who comes from Missouri. " They asked, "How?" He said, "They come along and wash in the same water. " One of Whistling B i l l ' s friends in Oklahoma thought up one to get off on Whistling Bill--a story for which Whistling Bill would 'a' had no reply. One evening he met Whistling Bill on the streets and said, "Whistling Bill, have you heard the news?" "The Arkansas River just burned up," Whistling B i l l ' s reply was, "I thought so; I just saw two trainloads of fish going through." One of the few times that I ever saw Whistling Bill myself was at a three-day picnic at Norman, Arkansas. Whistling Bill brought his fiddle and fiddled out the entire night. He had just returned from New Mexico, and one of the things I remember hearing him say was that it was so windy out in New Mexico that it took three men to hold a sheep-hide over a key-hole. Another early friend of mine, in my own community, was a man we called Uncle Joe Brown. At least, to hear his own stories, he had hunted about a hundred years of his l i f e . He was a small man, slender, insignificant-looking; but the tall stories he told of hunting would f i l l several volumes. But the story I remember best about Uncle Joe was the story that was told of the man who tried to think up some way of getting past him. This man met Uncle Joe one day and said, "Uncle Joe, what would you do? I've got an old sow, and she sucks herself." Uncle Joe's reply was quick- "Heh-heh-heh! Pa and I had an old sow one time who sucked herself, and we just yoked her. That's all it takes," Reel 134 Roy V Simpson 3 Of course, the whole point is the utter impossibility of the old sow doing such a thing People in the country are rather fond of practical jokes and horse-play One good example that I remember of this occurred on one clear, moonlight, fro sty night in October I at the time was about eleven years of age It so happened that my oldest brother lived about a hundred yards away from us, under the hill We lived on top, in a typical pioneer log cabin, with side-room, front porch—which of course we always called a gallery—and mud-and-stick chimney On this particular night, three older brothers—there are seven brothers in the family—happened to gather into the home The oldest brother, John, came up just before night and borrowed a shotgun that he wanted to k i ll an owl that was feeding on his chickens Lowrey, the second brother, whom we called Doc because he has practised medicine all his l i f e , Vol, and Jesse, were also present After we had eaten the evening meal, which of course to us was supper, we drifted out into the moonlight, and one of the boys hooted like an owl One of the others said, "You'd better be careful; you'll have John out shooting " This brought on the suggestion that they make an owl for John and get him to shoot it The idea took on immediately In the smokehouse out behind the house they found an old bag that they thought was just about the right size They even tried to f i x a head out of a gourd, but it didn't work quite so well, and they decided he couldn't see the owl's head in the moonlight anyway At last they had the bag stuffed, and started the hundred yards down under the hill to the barn Of course I wanted to go along, but I suppose they were a l i t t le afraid that I might give the joke away; so all I could do was stand out in the nippy, frosty night air, on the hill above, and Reel 134 Roy V Simpson 4 wait developments John at the time was sitting up before the fireplace, enjoying the heat of the logs that were burning, and talking to a brother-in-law, Seab Hoover, who was spending the evening with him It wasn't long until I heard a chicken in distress; he was certainly squawkin' on that night John, as I was told later, and Seab both jumped for the gun, yelling, "He's got one'" John, being near the gun, beat Seab to i t , and came tripping out across the rough yard to look for the owl The brothers had stuck the owl on a walnut limb, right out in the middle of the yard, and had stuck a crooked pole under it and attached i t to i t , and had run a rope from this pole into the stable where two of the brothers were By pulling on the pole, they could make the owl wiggle around very realistically up on the limb The third brother, of course, was in the chicken house, catching the chicken They turned the chicken loose as John left the house I listened, and then on the clear night air came the boom of a shotgun, ringing out as only a shotgun or any other gun can ring on a clear, frosty night There was a moment's stillness They meant to let John walk across the lot and pick up the owl, which of course they had pulled off the limb when he shot; but they never let him reach it They—loud guffaws followed Later in the night the owl did visit the garden and got in a steel-trap (Recorder trouble here: "Baited with a chicken" is not heard) that he'd killed on a previous night John's sons wanted John to go out and k i l l the owl, but he said that he'd had all the owl-killing he wanted, and the young boys had to knock the owl in the head themselves However, it must be said, for to his credit, that he put nearly all the shot from the shotgun shell in that old bag He would have killed an owl, had it been an owl Roy V Simpson Reel 134 5 I shall now give a poetic version of how they saying started, "Me and my Betty just slaughtered a b'ar" The poem is an old one, and I have seen it in print, but not in recent years It goes like this: In a pioneer's cabin out West, so they say, A big black grizzly trotted one day And seated himselfFunding for digitization provided by the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Happy Hollow Foundation