Singers and Storytellers Page: 6
v, 298 p. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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SINGERS AND STORYTELLERS
vines uprooted so he wouldn't have any wine, and that's the
way it was when we were there.
We left this hacienda on good horses, with a good mozo,
and took nearly a day to travel to an outpost to which the
administrador had sent word that hospitality be extended to
us-as it certainly was. The caporal of the outpost insisted on
our sleeping inside. The house was beautifully whitewashed,
but at that time over great parts of the outlands of Mexico any
traveler took his bedding. I've been to posadas (inns) where
I was expected to use my own bedding. Henry Smith and I each
had a bedstead on which to spread our bedrolls. Our mozo lay
on the floor with his head just inside the door, to guard us.
No sooner was our candle blown out than I began to feel some-
thing, something conducting itself in a vulgarly familiar
manner. The familiars were not the fleas in one of Roy Bedi-
chek's stories. A cowboy said he didn't mind what the fleas ate
so much as what they tromped out. These weren't fleas.
"Henry," I asked, "do you feel anything?"
"I certainly do," he replied. "It bites, and I don't know
what it is."
"Well," I said, "I do." I lit a match and saw bedbugs by the
hundreds scurrying up the whitewashed walls and over my
tarpaulin.
I said to the mozo, "We're going to get out of here."
The moon was full and we took our beds off about a hundred
yards from the house and spread them down on the ground,
where we got rid of what we could see on the sheets and
tarpaulins.
You're not going to get tales that linger in the imagination
except from people who have time to linger, time to stare at
cows or anything else that comes along. In my experience, the
best taletellers did not spend hours a day in a bathroom scrub-
bing themselves. The first time that Bertha Dobie and I were
in Saltillo at the old Saenz Hotel there were no tourists in the
town, and the cook served frijoles fritos for breakfast, plain
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Singers and Storytellers (Book)
Collection of popular folklore of Texas, including personal anecdotes about storytellers and singers, as well as folk songs, myths, and ghost stories. The index begins on page 295.
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Boatright, Mody C. Singers and Storytellers, book, 1961; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67655/m1/12/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.