Draft chapter: Come ‘n listen to my story about Grandpa Bunn

Bunn's as it looked in 2015

E. L. Moore's Bunn's Feed & Seed project is becoming something of an organizing point in the book as it captures just about all the key aspects of a classic ELM article. This chapter is about the tall tale that was in the manuscript, but removed from the published article. It's based on this post on the same subject.

Here's the chapter:

In ELM’s manuscript for Bunn’s Feed & Seed, the MR article that got me started on this journey back in 1973, there was a tall tale woven through the how-to-build instructions that was removed from the published article.

Before I saw the manuscript I thought that ELM’s articles from the 1970s had less story in them because he had moved on from all that. I found it interesting that there was a story in this manuscript, but the editors had sliced it out, and from the title too, which was originally Grandpa Bunn’s Feed & Seed. Here’s the story:

This is how the article was to have opened:

About a month ago, in response to a knock at my door and a shouted "Come in!" a homely face fringed with unruly hair poked in followed by an ungainly body which lumbered through the living room and squatted on a stool in my workroom, from which I had just removed my feet. I was sitting in the only easy chair and made no move to relinquish it. After the usual pleasantries Cousin Cal announced abruptly: "I'd like for you to build a monument to Grandpa Bunn -- bless his departed old tight-wad soul."

"A monument builder I am not." I answered flatly. "Why not a tombstone maker?"

At this point Cousin Cal fished out a snapshot and passed it over. It showed a disreputable row of attached buildings, only one of which could lay the least claim to contemporary ... and with a silo at the far end. Undoubtedly it was a rambling old feed mill but without benefit of appearing picturesque. "This was Grandpa Bunn's up-state feed and seed place," he volunteered. "Reckon you could make something out of it?"

Now, if I read him aright, he was beginning to talk in my dialect. "As it stands it'd stretch out an ungainly foot." I shrugged, unwilling to commit myself.

"But couldn't you work it around? What I'd like is something kinda compact, with maybe a sign across the front showing it was still the product of Grandpa's addled brain."

"Well -- leave it with me and I'll see what I can work out."

Later, when I showed Cousin Cal a working drawing of the proposed renovation he stood with his adenoids sagging and gulped: "Holy Cow! That's just exactly what I had had in mind." well, being a jack-leg model architect and builder had its lighter moments.

Then there was some how-to stuff you can find in the published article that goes in right about here, and after finishing attaching the office sign the story continues:

"An office! Huh! Betcha that old skinflint had no more'n a table and his deep pockets!" snorted Cousin Cal.

"But times have changed," I said. "You've inherited the business, and you need an office ... and a pretty secretary.

Then there’s some more how-to stuff, and after explaining how to build the roof top piping there’s some more story:

"And just how in thunderation does this cyclone and these fancy pipes work?" asked Cousin Cal.

"That," said I, "is a very good question. I'm glad you asked me. They look real nice, don't they?"

"Yeah ... but how do they work?"

"Well now, let me see.... you've heard that old song, haven't you, about the music that went in here and then went around and around and came out somewhere else?"

"Uh-huh, I guess so."

"Well that's the way they work."

"How?"

"Don't be so dumb. It's like I said. It goes in here, then goes around with a Hi-de-ho ......."

That last part of the story is a riff on the scene from the movie The Five Pennies where Danny Kaye, as Red Nichols, sings The Music Goes Round and Round to his on-screen daughter, Dorothy.

Back when I read the article in 1973, I wouldn’t have cared that it didn't have this story, I didn’t even know it was meant to have one. I was youthfully pragmatic with what was published, and I suspect other readers were too. The editors no doubt made the right business decision cutting it. Back then I couldn't have appreciated it, and I also realize that back then folksy, rural stuff like this story was on the outs throughout all sorts of mainstream media, the most noticeable being the so-called ‘rural purge’ of American television networks in the early 1970s.