Showing results by narrator "Donald Davis" in All Categories

In the hills of Appalachia, humor and wisdom are mixed up forever in funny, wise stories that seem to grow more lustrous with each telling. Here are two of the best.

For 16 years, Donald Davis has performed during the Christmas season at Fearrington Village, a unique destination community near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Hundreds of people fill the seats in this historic barn, now converted for use as an events venue. Recorded live at Davis's December 15, 2007, performance, this audio captures the familiar and special relationship between a skilled and beloved storyteller and the audience that has sustained him year after year.

When the Southern Bells brought the telephone to rural North Carolina, it looked like a "big black daffodil." What the telephone company had not counted on in conceiving its eight-party line service was a pair of "past-middle-age, unmarried sisters" - the chatty Misses Lucy and Lena Leatherwood.

There was a time during Donald Davis's college freshman year when he wasn't really sure he wanted to claim his hometown of Sulpher Springs, North Carolina. But a boy by the name of Stanley Easter changed Davis's mind.

Four Jack Tales from the Appalachian oral tradition - recorded by a nationally accalimed storyteller. In this collection, Jack has a little trouble adjusting to the workaday world and to personal financial management...

The best friend of our youth has no replacement, ever. Though we may start out as "two peas in a pod", we often lose touch with one another. In this affecting tale of two adults who reclaim their childhood bond after 30 years apart, the comforts of friendship are affirmed with humor and wit.

If you have never ridden a mule along a forty-eight-inch wide trail whose ledge drops off, in places, seven hundred feet to the Colorado River - straight down - you may have difficulty picturing the temporary insanity that leads otherwise responsible adults to sign away the remainder of their natural life expectancy just for the chance to see the Grand Canyon's natural beauty close-up.

These stories of growing up in Appalachia in the 1950s are funny and true, nostalgic and bittersweet.

There was a time during Donald Davis's college freshman year when he wasn't really sure if he wanted to claim his hometown of Sulpher Springs, North Carolina. But a boy by the name of Stanley Easter changed his mind. "The year after that," he recalls, "I did go home from college for Thanksgiving. In fact, I had now become so proud of where I was from that I could hardly wait to get home. I no longer had to lie about where I was from. The world of childhood was quickly becoming a dear place to visit."

Traditional values abound in these hilarious stories from Appalachia: friendship, family, orderliness, humor, and delight in an especially inventive practical joke.

Sibling rivalry. Sometimes, a kid just isn't ready for some little squirt to come along and invade his space, his own room. So what if there's an extra bed in the room; isn't that where the stuffed animals are supposed to sleep? How could a couple of otherwise sensible parents just bring a new kid home without even consulting their very own son? Still, a younger sibling can be in need of a big brother's guidance.

An eccentric schoolteacher and a widow-lady babysitter are the heroines in these new digital studio recordings of Donald Davis' two all-time most-requested stories.