The Goldendale Sentinel, Goldendale, WA., May 15, 1952, page 6

TALL TALES FROM THE VALLEY OF TROUT LAKE AND NEAR-BY SURROUNDINGS
As told by A/1c Donald Stoller

     When the folks up our way tell yarns, they believe in makin'em big. For instance the one about a black bears ability to get food under difficult conditions. A bear, a hunter told me, can hear a acorn drop a mile off, and run fast enough to catch it on the second bounce. A farmer by the name of Dick Madison claimed his oats grew so tall it was darker than a dense pine forest. You could see lightin' bugs in there at noon, and owls hooted all day. Dan Burdett once said that oats near his home town in Washington grows so high the moon has to go around by the way of Oregon. A man in the big red apple belt in BZ Corners told of a great crop he had once produced. Them apples growed so big, he said, that it only took four of them to make a dozen. But Darrel Stoller reports that he stopped at a "cider for sale" sign in a part of the BZ Corner where the apples are really big. The cider mill man said, "I sold all my cider last week, but reckon, I can oblige you. How much do you want?" Darrell asked for 50 gallons, "Young feller, the man replied, "I'll be danged if I'm going to ruin a whole apple just to make you 50 gallons of cider." Frank Stoller was always bragging about a goose gun, an eight inch bore with 44 inch barrels, which killed game at a great distance. One afternoon a flock of wild geese came over very high, and Frank fired both barrels, then he did the chores, went to bed and enjoyed a good nights sleep. Next morning he came out just as two geese came crashing down into the yard. "That just goes to show," said Frank, "how high they geese was a flying." Most Trout Lake mountaineers are rifleman rather than pistol shooters, but some boys in Glenwood still wear revolvers. It is said that one young farmer near Glenwood, the hangout of two-gun Slim years ago, got so handy with a .38 that he could stand in front of a mirror and beat himself to the draw. The weather in this part of the country is often a little freakish. At a town in Eastern Washington an old man tells about a dust storm that was so bad the chicken hawks had to wear goggles and fly backwards to keep from choking to death. It got so dry that trees was following dogs around. People had to prime the mourners at funerals before they could cry. When a rain drop fell on old Jake he fainted dead away, and they had to throw three buckets of dust in his face to bring him too. Gib Stoller, who works for the Hollenbeck Lumber Co., tells of a fog so dense that when he cut a tree it didn't fall down. The fog held it upright. Gib cut 60 pines in foggy weather once and nary a tree fell, until the next morning when the sun came out and the fog lifted. Then you could hear them trees a crashing down all over the place. Once a hunter in the Mosquito Lake county caught a mosquito in a bear trap. Figuring that maybe he could train it to drill well, he buckled a mule harness onto it. But the critter broke loose, seized a deer and flapped away with it through the tree tops. This is an exaggeration, however, it actually takes two mosquitos to fly off with a deer. One day I was driving up through the valley and came up to a gas station. Felt something raise the back of the car and let it down gently. Got out to look and there was a fancy gadget that knocks holes in gas tanks and solders them in a matter of minutes. I heard somebody laughing and it was no other than Tommy Burkell grinning from ear to ear with a gas hose in one hand and a cash register in the other. Tommy finally tamed a mosquito and has it trained to drill for oil. Business is pretty poor for the gas companies now, but Tommy is building a little Fort Knox in the back of his house. Somebody told Harley Fordyce that by soaking beans in whiskey and mixing them with his seed corn he could protect his crop from marauding crows. He tried it, but it didn't work. A few hours after planting began, all the crows in Washington gathered in the corn patch and dug it up. Harley says one old crow was trading the other crows one whiskey bean for several grains of corn, and doing a land office business. Merideth Stoller used to spin a yarn about her invention of a marvelous scarecrow. It was made of tin and not only waved its arms at intervals, but emitted a loud yell every few minutes. "Did it scare the crows," I asked. Merideth said "Why that contraption scared them crows so bad that some of them brought back corn that they had stole from me two years ago." The just about brings an end to my little journey throughout the valley. You will have to agree with me its a pretty remarkable place.

A/1c Donald Stoller
AF 19 351 162
Box 261 Hq & Hq Sqn,
39th ABG Depot
APO 942 c/o Postmaster Seattle, Washington

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©  Jeffrey L. Elmer