Ancestor's Tall Tales and Funny Stories

In reading about our ancestors there are a couple that stand out as telling real whoppers. One of these was Ellis Whitney Wiltbank. According to E. W. Wiltbank "if a man told his stories so big no one would believe them, they they weren't lies because they deceived no one." Here are a couple of the stories.

 Ellis Whitney Wiltbank as a special treat told his grandchildren, "of going out to hunt wild pigeons; of how hearing them cooing, he finally located them on the inside of a hollow tree. Wanting all of them, he hammered his bullet wedge shaped then shot into the tree. When the tree opened then closed as the wedge shaped bullet entered, the pigeons toes were caught in the crack. Then taking his ramrod and loading his old muzzle loading gun using the ramrod instead of a bullet, he shot it through the birds, then opened the tree and had a whole ramrod full of pigeons. Starting homeward he was walking close to the bank of the Little Colorado River when he stepped on a rattlesnake. The snake was killed but he jumped in fright fell in the river. When he came out his bib overalls were so full of fish that a button busted one of his britches and the button hit and killed a rabbit. The family living in Amity. About four miles away he saw a large band of antelope about where the school in Eagar now stands. The snow was so deep they could hardly move, so he stopped, unhooked one of his team from the wagon, rode in among the antelopes and killed as many as he could. He then loaded the wagon and went on home with a complete supply of winter meat."¹

Others of our ancestor's told stories that were at least partially true. William Ellis "Pacer" Wiltbank must have gotten some of his story telling from his father E. W. Wiltbank. I found this following story in almost anything written about Pacer Wiltbank.

Pop Pacer would tell this story on himself. The following story was told by his son Milo at Pop's urging. "As a lad living at the old ranch, we children, my sis and I, had to ride six miles each day to school, so come rain or shine old King and Dot was under saddle ready to make the trip. One day I came riding home before noon. Of course Pop wanted to know what the trouble was. He finally got it out of me. I had been kicked out of school, so he said "Get on that horse, and we will go see what the trouble is." So away he rode six more miles to that little pole and mud schoolhouse with corner fireplace and dirt floor - seven grades and twenty-nine students. On reaching the school we tied up our horses. Mr. Sherwood, the teacher, asked Pop what he wanted. "Want to know why you kicked my kid out of school," said Pop. "I kicked him out because he was such a smart aleck" said the teacher.  "What did he do?" asked Pop. "It was not what he did, it was what he said" said the teacher. "What did he say?" "Well I asked him who signed the Declaration of Independence" said the teacher, "and he looked up at me and said. 'I don't know who did but I sure as hell didn't.' So you see Pacer, I just had to get rid of him." Then Pop reached over and tapped Sherwood on the shoulder and said "Now look here Sherwood, my kid seldom lies and if he said he didn't sign the damn thing, I don't think he did either."
Well, Pop had no more to say to the teacher ... So home we did again ride, at last coming to the last gate to the home pasture, I got down to open it and he looked down at me and said "Now you mean little devil, you tell me the truth, did you or didn't you sign whatever that fool thing was?"²

I think that a little humor is a good thing and we certainly need to be able to laugh at ourselves when we make mistakes. I know I certainly do things that when I look back on them are really funny if I will get over my pride long enough to see how funny it was.

Sources
1. Pg 19, Lest Ye Forget, Published by the Apache County Centennial Committee Arizona 1980
2. Lovin' Memories, Published by Carol Bloomfield 20