A century or so ago, the endless and varied sources of entertainment that there are today weren’t available–folks had to rely on themselves or people around them for entertainment. During the nineteenth century, the humorist became popular–men such as Artemus Ward and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) were big draws. They would travel from town to town by rail, hire a hall, put up playbills, and the residents of the town, as well as those from miles around, would flock to see their humorous monologues.
One of these was Cal Stewart, who specialized in comic monologues where he pretended to be Uncle Josh Weathersby, a homespun character who lived in an imaginary New England village named, “Punkin Center.”
The following is one of Stewart’s stage monologues that was included in a book called “Uncle Josh’s Punkin Center Stories,” which may be found on Gutenberg.org.
[Author’s Note: The “Annanias and Safiry” referred to are the husband and wife, Ananias and Sapphira, who, in Chapter 5 of the Book of Acts, sold some property and lied to Peter claiming that they donated all of it. For this transgression, they were both struck dead.]
A Meeting of the Annanias Club
Well, sometimes a lot of us old codgers used to git down to Ezra Hoskins’ general store, and we’d set ’round and chaw terbacker and whittle sticks and eat crackers and cheese and prunes and anything Ezra happened to have layin’ ’round loose, and then we’d git to spinnin’ yarns that would jist about put Annanias and Safiry right out of business if they was here now.Â
Well, one afternoon we was all settin’ ’round spinnin’ yarns when Deacon Witherspoon sed that echos was mighty peculiar things, cuz down whar he was born and raised thar was a passell of hills that comed together and you couldn’t git out thar and talk louder’n a whisper on account of the echo. But one day, a summer boarder what was thar remarked as how he wasn’t afraid to talk right out in front of any old lot of hills that was ever created; so he went out and hollered jist as loud as he could holler, and he started a echo a-goin’ and it flew up agin one hill and bounced off onto another one and gittin’ bigger and louder all the time ’til it got back whar it started from and hit a stone quarry and knocked off a piece of stone that hit that feller in the head, and he didn’t cum to fer over three hours.Â
Well, we thought that was purty good fer a Deacon and none of us sed anything fer a right smart spell and then Si Pettingill remarked “he didn’t know anything about echos, but he calculated he’d seen some mighty peculiar things; sed he guessed he’d seen it rain ’bout as hard as anybody ever seen it rain.” Someone sed, “Well, Si, how hard did you ever see it rain?” and he sed, “Well one day last summer down our way it got to rainin’ and it rained so hard that the drops jist rubbed together comin’ down, which made them so all fired hot that they turned into steam; why, it rained so gosh dinged hard, thar was a cider barrel layin’ out in the yard that had both heads out’n it and the bung hole up and it rained so hard into that bung hole that the water couldn’t run out of both ends of the barrel fast enough, and it swelled up and busted.”Â
Well, we all took a fresh chew of terbacker and grinned and nudged each other; and Ezra Hoskins sed he didn’t remember as how he’d ever seen it rain quite so hard as that, but he’d seen some mighty dry weather; he sed one time when he was out to Kansas it got so tarnation dry that fish a-swimmin’ up the river left a cloud of dust behind them. And hot, too; why, it got so all fired hot that one day he tied his mule to a crib of popcorn out behind the barn, and it got so hot that the corn got to poppin’ and flyin’ ’round that old mule’s ears and he thought it was snow and laid down and froze plumb to death.Â
Well, about that time old Jim Lawson commenced to show signs of uneasiness, and someone sed, “What is it, Jim?” and Jim remarked, as he shifted his terbacker and cut a sliver off from his wooden leg, “I was just a-thinkin’ about a cold spell we had one winter when we was livin’ down Nantucket way. It was hog killin’ time, if I remember right; anyhow, we had a big kettle of boilin’ water settin’ on the fire, and we set it out doors to cool off a little, and don’t you know that water froze so durned quick that the ice was hot.”
Ezra sed, “Guess its ’bout closin’ up time.”
As someone once said, “The first liar doesn’t stand a chance.”