Were our forefathers liars? "You bet they were," says Roger Welsch,
"and damned fine ones at that." The proof is in "Catfish at the
Pump," a collection of the kind of humor that softened the
hardships of pioneering on the Great Plains. From yellowed
newspapers, magazines, and forgotten Nebraska Federal Writers'
Project files, the well-known folklorist and humorist Roger Welsch
has produced a book to be treasured. Here are jokes, anecdotes,
legends, tall tales, and lugubriously funny poems about the things
that preoccupied the pioneer plainsman: weather extremes; soil
quality; food and whiskey; an arkload of animals, including
grasshoppers, bed bugs, hoop snakes, the ubiquitous mule, and some
mighty big fish; and even sickness and the poverty that would
inspire black laughter again in the Great Depression.
"Catfish at the Pump" proves abundantly that the art of story
telling was practiced diligently by our plains ancestors. Roger
Welsch, who brought out "Shingling the Fog and Other Plains Lies"
in 1972 (reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 1980),
now issues this "book about lies and liars," knowing full well that
"underlying the pioneer sense of humor is a profound respect for
truth."
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