Tag Archives: stories

Lad Stories

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Nashville, TN
Performance Date: 3/23/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: French

The informant remembers stories that her grandfather used to tell about a dog named Lad.  One of the stories she remembers vaguely is:

“There were these robbers trying to rob a house. Lad… the mister and mistress were sleeping in bed, and the kids were tucked away safetly in bed.  Lad was out on his nightly rounds, protecting the house. He heard something weird and saw a strange man approaching house.  He was not any normal man.  [Lad] basically starts to bite the man, and they have a struggle.  He wards off the man, but Lad is beat up at the end.  He is okay though, and he survives.”

The informant believes that this story in particular shows the values of upholding family and sacrificing for honor of the pack.  She also added that it was “more dramatic when grandpa told it.”

The informant remembers hearing the tales.  “He would always tell it when the grandkids were over. Everybody was lying on the floor.”  She said that the grandsons specifically would call for the “Lad stories.”  Her grandfather would talk to the younger kids, and it was very special for them, the way he told the story.  “We were present and cared about Lad.  He was always on the side of justice.  My grandpa cares about that a lot.  [Lad] had a kindness and fun for kids.”  The informant believes that the character of Lad represented her grandfather, always sticking up for the kids and being a teacher.

She would like to tell the stories one day to her kids. She thinks that the stories are good because they are a common ground for the children.  It is a common way to share values.  The informant seemed happy to recall these stories and the other things that her grandfather used to share with the family such as army songs.  Lad stories were a way for him to teach them and instill his beliefs in a fun way, and they seem to have worked because the stories still stick with her today.

Nightly Bible Stories

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/13
Primary Language: English

Here my informant recounts a tradition she shared with her Mom in childhood:

My mom used to… We had this old book of Bible stories, but they were kid versions, it was like, our kid Bible which our grandma bought us, and so we’d read a story from that every night and that was always really with my mom.

This tradition shows how the informant and her mother combined the common family custom of mothers and children reading stories before bed with her religion, sharing nightly Bible stories with her mother. The informant explained how she feels this not only strengthened her bond with her mother, but it is now a large part of her faith, and the stories she read as a child are still her favorite Bible stories today, as they carry the added significance of her Mother’s love.

Camp Stories

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Edgewater, Maryland
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

My informant told me about some of the camp stories that she used to hear at her summer camp, Camp Letts, in Edgewater, Maryland, which as my informant describes, is an offshoot of the Chesapeake Bay.

She said that the counselors were the ones who typically told these stories to the campers, and that there aws no particular time that they always told the stories. It was sometimes around a campfire, or sometimes just in the cabins or during mealtime.

There were two stories in particular that were mainly used as a means to scare campers away from wandering in the woods or near the pool late at night, thought this intention never occurred to my informant until she was older.

The first story was the girl with the red scarf. My informant doesn’t remember why she had a red scarf, but it was significant to the story. The story is that there were two counselors who were in love and they decide that in the middle of the night that they were going to go into the middle of the woods and meet up at this spot. The boy goes into the woods and he waits and waits for this girl but she never shows up. It’s really dark and the guy doesn’t have anything with him to light the way. He starts walking when suddenly he runs into a body, which turns out to the body of the girl, hanging from a tree by strangled by her red scarf. Her death was blamed on a strangling ghost, meant to scare the children at the camp.

The second story scared children away from the pool. There was a camp manager having a secret relationship with a counselor, and they would often meet at a certain spot that would later become a spot for the camp pool. One night, there was an accident and the girl counselor slipped and fell and died. The camp manager, afraid of getting caught in the relationship and blamed for her death, buried her under the spot where the pool was built and the campers were told that if you went to the pool at night, her ghost would try and grab you. They also warned campers of swimming to the bottom of the pool because of her ghost, to keep beginner swimmers from pushing themselves too far.