papa tells the story

This is an audio recording of my grandfather, James K. Richardson Sr., telling the story of "The Dirty Cowboy" to me and my husband. I've turned a cassette tape into a digital recording, then mashed it together with a few slides and a photo of my grandfather. This Youtube video is not particularly spiffy but I am proud of my technological achievement anyway since it's only my second (or third) Youtube thingy.  

I made this mostly for teachers, librarians, educators, and I suppose, the curious too. I am sure that a good teacher could make quite a unit out of writing tall tales from family stories, or recording family stories, transcribing them, and then concocting all sorts of other written work -- short stories, picture book texts, poetry, and experimental whatnots. I hereby throw this into the educational pot!  

So here's the raw material that inspired the book, The Dirty Cowboy. Papa was the first person that told me this story and I tried to use Papa's turn of phrase in writing the book. In fact, the voice in the book is my best imitation of Papa (which you can now hear below and judge for yourself where I hit it right on and where I fell short).

Hope you like!