A Tale Retold

Back in the day, when the 20 and 30-somethings who live here or visit often were small, easily bored people, who needed portable entertainment, a tradition was started.

Stories. I have always loved stories, loved to read them, loved to make them up and tell them to myself in my head, and had them swirling around in my mind my whole life.

Thus a set of stories was made up around a central character, whose initials were JM. I won't say his real name as he was named after a real person, who happened to have a pretty cool name. JM went everywhere we did, keeping small people in the back seat contented for miles and hours.

Checking out the birds between chapters

He fell into a host of adventures, rescuing his dad from a tractor accident and running the farm while he recuperated, living wild for a while in a canyon, having dogs that found lost kids, finding a wild dog and taming it. 

He was a real cool guy and we liked hiim. However, as his fans grew into bigger and better stories, he languished. Just couldn't compete with Harry Potter.

For years there were no new adventures. No new stories.

Yesterday afternoon a big hay customer came. Liz and the boss had to go load out hay. A certain small person had to stay in the house. She brought her little pink chair out on the new porch, put it next to mine, and we visited for a bit. 

Then she said, "Let's tell stories. You tell one and then I'll tell one......"

Ha, she had no idea what she was in for. Out of the closet came our old buddy JM. He needed to regress a bit in age and detail, as the new audience is a bit younger than his earlier fans, but he was a big hit.

In fact my little pal kept saying, "I don't want to tell one right now. You tell another one."

So I did. JM was a hero and caught Bad Guy Brown several times...dunno who kept letting him out of jail though.....A whole new cast of other characters was born as well. 

There was a big brindle cow with long horns, who was named Belle because she wore a bell on her collar. Belle tossed a wolf that was trying to bite her calf 57 feet in the air. He came down and went splat. And then tossed him 58 feet with the same result when he tried again. Then she threw him 67 feet, ditto. She finally pitched him up into a tree and ran home with her baby.

A dog named Reba had puppies under the barn. JM and his brother Jerrod each got to keep one.

There were horses and ponies, Cherry Blossom, Buck, and the terrible bucking horse, Devil Dog. JM rode Devil Dog to the 8-second bell to win enough money to pay the taxes and save the ranch.

Later we came inside and did a little illustrating using the Paint program.

Man, did we have fun!

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