Clem
Carney, Story Teller
From C.A. Weslager, "Delaware's Forgotten Folk," pp. 153-155:
Clem
is speaking. His worn hat is pushed back on his head and ringlets
of gray hair tumble over his forehead. His remarks are addressed to
Nate as though the two were standing there alone. Not once does he
look up at his audience, although he knows that they are eagerly listening
and enjoying every word.
"Nate,
you old son of a gun," Clem says with a twinkle in his eye, "I
never knowed a bigger liar than you in all my live long days. Everybody
knows that I got my faults, but I ain't never told a lie in my life
and that's a particular." One of the men winks at another, for
this is the signal that Clem is going to tell one of the tall stories
for which he is famous. Some of the folks say that Clem reads them
in joke books. Others say he makes them up out of his own head. His
language is picturesque, and his words drawl out with a suggestion
of southern pronunciation.
"I
was up to Philly, last week," Clem continues in a slow, matter-of-fact
tone, "and I made a visit to a sick feller. He's got a job washin'
windows in one of them there big buildin's onto Market Street. He
had a little accident, kind o' like, a few days before and is all
fret up. He was washin' the windows on the highermost top floor of
the buildin' and his belt broke in half and he fell all the way down
to the street. Darned if that there buildin' wasn't so high that he
had to stop fifteen minutes for dinner on the way down!"
Nate,
a tall, Indian-looking man, spits out a sliver of the peach twig he
is chewing. "Clem," he drawls, "I'm sure suprised to
see you all keyed up about such a triflin' matter. So you think them
buildin's in Philly is big. Well, sir, you should a been out to the
Rocky Mountains with me and my missus last year." He pauses for
a moment as if waiting to be challenged. He knows he has never been
further west than Cambridge, Maryland, and his listeners know it,
too.
Out
there in the Rockies," he continues, "you hear more tell
of highness than anywheres else m the world. One of the mountains
is so high that they had to put the top on hinge. Yes sir, they had
to hinge 'er back to let the sun rise up in the mornin' or else there'd
a been no daylight."
It
is Clem's turn next, and he sucks at his pipe for a minute before
speaking. "Talkin' bout sunshine, Nate," he says, "when
I was a boy we had a flock of mosquitoes out at Moore's Corner so
thick that they blotted out the sun entire. My father used to shake
me up early in the mornin' to get my gun just like as If we was goin'
gunnin'. Then I'd go out into the yard and shoot holes in the flock
of mosquitoes so the sun could shine through. If I hadn't done it,
the crops couldn't a growed and we would all starved to death."
There
is loud laughter after this one. Clem leans back on his heels and
strikes a match to his pipe. Nate, whose expression hasn't changed,
stands up and stretches. "Clem," he says, "you ain't
gonna believe this, but I swear it's the gospel truth. Me and Jim
Mosley went rock fishin' down to Woodland last week, and there was
more fishermen there than fish. A crowd of city men was crowded up
on the beach like turkey buzzards after a dead chicken. There was
one fish that kept takin' their bait, but nobody could hook him. After
dark when the city men went home, Jim and me was the onliest ones
left and we agreed to stay until we got that there fish. About midnight
I got a bite and it felt like a whale fish pullin' at the line. When
I hooked him and got him on the bank, it was only a rock fish about
eight inch long. But we figgered he weighed more than fifty pound,
he had so many hooks into his belly. We knowed he had too much metal
into him for a good meal, so we took him to the junk yard at Dover
and sold him for scrap iron."
Clem knocks the ashes from his pipe on his heel. He puts the pipe
in his side pocket, a sign that he is ready to make his final thrust.
The audience lean forward expectantly because Clem's last story is
always the best one.
"About
three year ago," he begins. "No," he corrects himself,
"it was three year, four month to be exact. I was crabbin' down
to Woodland, and got a good haul and was makin' ready to come on home.
All of a sudden I looked out over the water and there a comin' was
the blackest cloud I ever seen in my whole life. When it got closer,
I seen it wasn't a cloud, but the biggest most congregation of mosquitoes
that ever jined together, in one bunch. I decided I better get away
fast before they et me alive, so I went a flyin'. I didn't think they'd
pay me no mind, but the big feller that was leadin' them saw me. He
buzzed to the others and they all came after me as mad as bulls.
"I
kept a runnin' as fast as I could and made right for the woods. Them
bugs kept followin' right after me. Then I seen an old water biler
that someone had hauled into the woods for junk, and I crawled inside
of her to hide. But those darn mosquitos flew down on the biler after
me and began to drill right through the iron. I thought I was dead
sure when their drills began to come through on the inside and they
was long as pokers and as sharp as needles. Then I got an idea. I
reached into my back pocket for a hammer that I had with me, and I
started to hit their drills as they came through the biler, and bent
them over like nails. By and by I had about a hundred mosquitoes caught
by their noses and they was a beatin' their wings so fast it sounded
like a northeaster.
"All
at once I felt myself goin' up and up. Them there mosquitoes was flappin'
their wings so hard they took me, biler and all, right up into the
sky. They flew me all over Kent County till they got so tired we all
fell down into Garrison's Pond. I swum ashore and got home safe and
sound without feelin' the least shacklin'. And right here," he
concludes, reaching in his back pocket, "is proof that I'm tellin'
the truth. It's the very hammer that saved my life."