–Informant Info–

Nationality: American

Age: 56

Occupation: Housewife

Residence: Los Angeles, California

Date of Performance/Collection: 2022

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): N/A

(Notes-The informant will be referred to as FB and the interviewer as K)

Background info: FB is a mother of 2 who grew up in Southern California, where this story takes place. She did not witness this story and was told by her grandmother. She told me this story multiple times throughout my life, but it was over dinner this time.

K: Wait, wait, uh… what’s the name of the story, where did you hear it, and when do you tell it?

FB: Uh well I guess I’d call it uh the Uncle Jake story uh I always heard it from my mom just randomly, mainly when I’d ask about it.

K: Ok! Whenever you wanna tell it go ahead.

FB: Yeah ok so uh Uncle Jake lived on an uh old apple orchard os he had hundreds of apples he had no use for. So he decided to go down to a local uh convent with a bunch of nuns with a truck bed full of apples. So he went down there and found a bunch of uh starving nuns who basically launched themselves on the apples. He asked them why they weren’t eating, worried something had happened, and they explained the church wanted them to uh wait for an action from God to get them to eat, and if no one came it was their time, meaning time to uh die. So Uncle Jake went down to the uh Bishops office, which was decked out in a bunch of gold, and asked him what was going on. The uh bishop said the same thing and said jake was uh God’s action, so Jake went ape shit and tore up his office as he should have. When he went back to the convent after, they were healthy and eating regularly.

Interpretation:
This was cool to hear about! The informant did note that she was unsure about how truthful it was, as some major plot points changed for whoever was telling it, but she liked it anyway, to the point where both my brother and her son were named after Uncle Jake. I will note my and her bias, which we agreed on. Neither of us is religious, so the retelling of this story from DS directly is much less focused on the religious part of it, and how this one man was incorrect, and more so focused on Uncle Jakes’s revenge and how the religion as a whole is incorrect. Hearing how she told it to me definitely follows that train of thought.