Part of the fun of the Ronnyvous is listening to the fireside stories that are told.  Most of these stories are about true events (maybe a tad bit embellished) that happened to various people that we all know and love... As we always say... "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."   *grin*

  DISCLAIMER:  These stories are NOT fictional, and any resemblance to a real person, living or dead, is purely intentional... So... read and enjoy!!!  *grins*

NOTE:  If you have a good Ronnyvous story, and would like it put on this page, EMAIL me, and I will add it to the Stories...

  This first story is about a good friend, who insists on anonymity, however, witnesses may possibly recognize her or her various parts... *chuckles*

    It seems at the Prairie du Chien Ronnyvous, several years ago, it was hotter than all get out. The lows at night were in the 90s...  Well sir, one mornin', this woman got out of bed, wearin nothin but her chemise 'cause it was so hot.  She grabs her coffee cup and heads for the Hang Around Cafe, thru the back yards and drunk traps... thru the Barbarians camp, and several others...

    Stumbling into the Hang Around, she heads for the coffee pot.   Giant economy size mug in hand, she bends over and starts pourin her coffee... About this time, Jon Eldeen is flippin pancakes on the floor, and the tent gets suddenly quiet. She calmly walks over to a table and sits down. Cheri, the waitress, sidles up to this young lady and whispers... "Ummm... you might want to borrow a petticoat to go back to your tent..."  It seems that during the night, the "favorite chemise" (4 days older than dirt) had decided to give up the ghost, and had split dead down the back!!!  Now, this lovely chemise had been transformed into a "hospital version" of its former self... The lady calmly put the loaned petticoat on and headed back to her tent... None the worse for wear... (no pun intended)

    THE HOOTER STORY... (one in a series of which I am sure will be many)  This story comes to me from Laughing Carol.  I'll try to contact her and see if I can get a picture to put here... Ya gotta see this to really believe it!!!

    This story takes place at Belle Meade Plantation, in Nashville, Tennessee.  Now I'm here ta tell ya, this ain't no regular place... the used car lots in this suburb are full of BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus, and several versions of Cadillacs, etc... A low rent district this ain't!!

    Durin setup, the Hooter Man drove up to drop off the Honey Pots. We stood there with out mouths just hangin open...!!  We ain't never before set eyes on designer Hooters!!!  They was the dadburndest colors you can imagine... burgundy with grey trim, of all things.  Well sir... the inside was just as plush as any Las Vegas "ranch"... There were hooks, and shelves, mirrors, sinks, all tha lil goodies you could ever be wantin...  It even had a "gear shift" next to the seat. Sure was nice of them to put that thingie there to help people get up and down.  We were so amazed, we even took pictures.

    Well sir, after a couple of days, these things were gettin a bit full, and no one had been there to pump them out yet, since the event hadn't officially started.  Butch finally figured out that the "gear shift" wasn't a handle to help the handicapped, it was a flush lever!!!  Problem solved....

        In this next story, ya definitely gotta use a lot of yer visual imagination to really enjoy it.  This takes place at the I & M Canal, just outside of Chicago.  Laughing Carol had just come back from a RenFair and had a pair of HUGE six foot across "butterfly wings" that strap on your back, with sticks on the end to hold on to so's you can make them flap..  They were made of silk, brightly colored, and "fluttery"..  What they could possibly be used for, we still ain't figured out!!  Well, Steve had gone to a local fabric shop, and since it was near Halloween, the shop had various costume items, including pirate hats.  Needless to say, he bought one.  Anyone knowin Steve, knows he always wears a kilt... Well... here is Steve, a pirate hat on his head, and a pair of Butterfly Wings strapped on his back, wearin his kilt... flittin around all over the area.

        Up the "road" comes the Honey truck, to do his thing with the Hooters.  Seeing the truck, Steve flaps his wings and heads right for the truck.... SPLAT!!!... He plasters himself on the front grill of the truck... The driver is stunned!!... able to only sit there... eyes wide... wonderin what in the hell this persona in a "skirt", wearin a pirate hat, and flappin butterfly wings could possibly be doin!!

        Well, fer us it was entertainment... for the truck driver... the last we saw of him, he was speedin out of camp and could be heard mutterin various things under his breath... unfortunately, he neglected to clean the Hooters in his haste to depart...

        This story is dedicated to a friend of mine... The "Wookie"!! Honest, that's his camp name.... and he really does look like a Wookie... TALL, and has a big bushy beard and head of hair.

        One morning at the '99 Alafia Ronnyvous, we (Mouse, my son and daughter-in-law, and me) were in Marsha's having breakfast.  The night before we had been to Rick and Susan's for Dan Taylor's wake, and had had some GREAT Peach 'shine... here after known as Wookie Juice.  Seems that Wookie had brought a bunch of this mountain dew with him from home.  As we're sittin there talkin over how to make this elixir of the gods (yeppers, it WAS that good)... Wookie asked my son what line of work he was in... My son says, "Law enforcement..."  Wookie almost spewed his coffee across the table and was speechless for a few minutes.  "Ummm.... uhhhhh.... what kind of law enforcement?  We not gonna let this go past this table, are we?", says he, looking for a possible quick exit route...

        By this time, Mouse, Angela and I are laughing ourselves silly, and Casey, my son is managing to keep a straight face.  "Well, I don't know... we may have to discuss this...." (long pause)... "over a jug of the good stuff..."  I thought Wookie was gonna kill him!!!

The following isn't really a "story", its a letter posted to the Muzzle Loading Mailing List. I liked it, so I contacted poster, and got his permission to put it here.  Thank you, Snowdancer...

Pull up a keg to the cook stove old mates and let me bend your ear a might. You see I'm in the last stages of cabin fever, and the past few days have been unseasonably warm [ 32F ] by our standards and its got me a dreaming of yesteryears shinning times and those yet to come. Hard Luck Henry made it over the winter road with the mail, first one through again this year. Got our new Hudson Bay catalogue, a letter from Bedsore Bertha [ wife's side of the family ] says she'd like to get a new sheepskin for her rocker. Sat on the last one for three weeks,  before she realized it wasn't skinned.

Sometimes I wonder how the lord can be so chintzy when handing out brains. Got my Pelt cheque and most importantly some notices of Rendezvous for the coming spring. They set my blood to boiling and I
spent the last couple of days checking and fixing my gear. Fixed that pistol with the set trigger problems, made a couple of knife sheaths for my patch knives and a holster for my flinter pistol I like to wear,
while Roo-in. Weighed the balls I cast last fall, culled, sorted, packed and ready.

Tomorrow I'm going to check my clothes as I figure they might have shrunk in that closet, the way they did last year. I've got duds for a mountain man, a south westerner, Lord Selkirk's volunteers, and a new
outfit, North West Mounted Policeman, a bit late in the 1840's But should do. All I need is a Pith helmet. Anyone know of a supplier for these? One of these days I'm going to have to settle on a persona.

I got my tattered atlas out and have been plotting my summer jaunts. We will start with the Fargo Plainsmen's Roo in May. Then travel on down to Cairo Nebraska for The Red White and Blue, on your memorial day weekend. Haven't been there since 98. Then back north to Ft.Sisseton S.D. then
Home. A three week, three Roo journey. Home a short spell, feed the cat and head out for the Black Hills and The High plains for 10 beautiful days with the good people from the midwest. Any of you fellow list members attending any of these do-in's look me up,  I'm the good lookin canuck. Rest of them are like aunt Bertha.

Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I think I'll go down to the range and shoot some targets. Got a new rifle that I'd like to try. It'll be a good day as no one else should be around to see me,  cause its a,  its a, "Perc"  can't say the whole word,  gun.

Thanks for commin,  Please put you keg back when you leave and thanks for lending an ear.

"Geez you'd think people wouldn't smoke when there sittin on your powder stores."

Snowdancer,  I will dance no more forever.

Here is another "story".  It was sent to me by Bruce and Linda Jensen.  Its not a "true" story about a Vous, but a GREAT tale just the same...  Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

"Don't know which is dumber... a 12 year old indentured servant/farm hand, or my late 15 year old mule! Old Abe was his name.  We lived in an old one room log cabin... me, my spouse, and kids. Each year we plant three gardens for the balance of the food we don't raise or hunt.  We have some oxen, horses, chickens, goats, a pig, and til last summer, Old Abe, my favorite mule. We'd drag 'em all to Ronnyvous all over the damn country with no more trouble than a few poop shy traders makin a fuss.

Well, last year we grew a couple rows of popcorn, cause Ma likes it in the winter months, and when we harvested the stuff, I told the 12 year old young'n to go store it in the new barn. Well, he gits the bright idea that if he puts it up in the hay loft, it'll dry better, so up it goes. Now, he has to go and put it up over Abe's pen, which has something of a ceiling but there are big cracks in it so Abe could actually stand on his two hind legs and drag down hay if he was a mind to. Along comes the dad-burndest hottest August on record, and that hay lost heats up something fierce.  Pretty soon all of our popcorn is beginnin ta pop. Well, old Abe sees it coming through the loft boards, figures its a' snowin, and because he hasn't grown out his winter coat yet, crawls off into the corner and freezes to death!!!  Really... I wouldn't fool ya!!

    Here is another yer gonna love.... Giving credit where it is due, this was another post on the Muzzle Loading Mailing List... Any of you all who have done battle reenactments will relate...

    I've got a TRUE story to tell, well, at least as true a story as a buckskinner can tell without pullin' your leg more than a foot or two. Well, to be totally honest, Blue Cheek and Arley WERE there, and we DID hold the rendezvous at Ft. Parker, and rest might be a tad exaggerated in a place or two, just to make this a bit more interesting to the readers, but outside of that it's true...mostly.

Biggest priming charge I ever saw in my life was at the very first Ft. Parker blockhouse shoot we had when we started the rendezvous there some 7-8 years ago. This doin's was to raise money for the fort, and after all the regular shoots, hawk and knife throws, etc., we thought we'd stage a fake shoot from one of the blockhouses for all the pilgrims. Well this idea worked well in theory, and even through most of the first volley.

A fine young lady named Blue Cheek (due to the rifle recoil ya see) was up there amongst us men as we tried to recreate just what happened when the fort was overrun back in 1836.
 

Well, we had us a lot more volunteers than were really there when the Commanches overran the original fort. Fortunately we had a lot of gunports too. There were 25-30 of us up there firing blanks like mad for the flatlanders, and generally having a great time.

Well, Blue Cheek wanted to play too, but didn't think the .45 she normally fired would have sufficient 'umph' to impress the crowd. So she borrowed Wooden Hawk's 12 guage Brown Bess, never having shot something like that before. Fortunately the Bess was cut down, but she still had to stand on a
box to load it. Now, Blue Cheek is an experienced buckskinner who regularly kills a deer or two each year with her flinter. But she was used to shootin' lead, not blanks, and certainly never had much experience with smooth bores which were a foot or two taller than she was. So she reasoned that since there was no ball in that Bess, and it had such a BIG hole in it, she needed a good 500-600 grains of charge to make up for the lost mass and get a decent sound out of it for the flatlanders.

So she loaded up the critter with her usual load, substituting 500-600 grains of powder (this was FFg, not FFFg for safety's sake) for the missing 0.690 round ball, pounded down half a roll of toilet paper as wadding, and primed the weapon for one of her defensive shots. But it wouldn't go off.

I heard her cussin' up a storm after the second "klatch".. Seems she'd used so much priming powder (hey, this is a BIG lock!), she couldn't get the frizzen to close enough for the flint to hit it solid. Now, for those of you who don't shoot flinters much, ya need a word of explanation. The way a flinter works is that you pull the trigger, the hammer holding the flint comes down, hits the frizzen and scrapes off a pile off sparks. These land in the pan below the frizzen and ignite the powder in the pan. The fire
flashes through the tiny hole drilled through the barrel and sets off the main charge. When the main charge goes off, a lot of pressue builds up to push the ball out of the barrel. Some of this pressure comes back out of the touchhole in theform of extremely hot gasses with a bit of flame in them to
make it interesting to those who just happen to be in the line of fire, so to speak...

Now, understand that there's a bunch of us inside this solid wood blockhouse at this time, don't ya see, but I happened to be the only one to the right side of Blue Cheek and only about a foot away from the touchhole that constrained this black powder extraganza.

She yelled something like "This sucker is gonna go THIS time", or words to that effect, hauled that musket to her shoulder, and aimed at one of the firing ports. I had barely enough time to throw my powderhorn out through another firing port, hit the dirt and cover my vitals.

Lightening struck the blockhouse. But it may just have been Blue Cheek touching off her load. I distinctly remember seeing this white hot jet of flame about 6 inches over my head, that charred 4 or 5 logs some 10 feet away. You can see the scorch marks today in that blockhouse when you visit.
 

Well, Sir, I learned a couple of things real quick. The first of these is that when you have a blockhouse shoot you want the muzzle of the firearm on the OUTSIDE of the building you're standing in. This is important to note whether you're using a 60 or 600 grain charge, but I'll give you a hint. It's a LOT more important when it comes to a 600 grain charge.

Ok, now I'm congratulatin' myself for being alive, although smoldering in a few places and be'in a tad deaf at the time, since most major body parts still seemed to be roughly attached, and some even still working. I could barely hear the screams and yells going on, and the only thing I could see due to
all the smoke, other than all the pretty spots left over from the muzzle flash, is some dark gray patches in a field of black. Those dark gray patches were the open gunports looking out on a cloudless, sunny day.

So about this time I can rock back up to my knees and am starting to sort out which way is up, Arley (one of the few re-enactors who was following the script) screams something like "They've broken into the blockhouse, Boys. Draw yer knives and fight for your lives!!!" Have I mentioned that this
blockhouse had a wood roof on it, and that the walls were made of hardwood logs? Some folks call these "echo chambers".

Well about that time, Arley emptied both barrels of his 4 guage down the stairs (can't ANYBODY in this group stick the barrel out one of them slots!) to clear them of 'hostiles'. Well, he succeeded. It sounded like a 4 guage anyway, but I was a little deaf at the time, and it might have been a double barrelled 12 guage. And I think he also added powder to compensate for the lack of a solid projectile. Made no never mind. T'weren't a hostile left on the steps.
 

However, we did note burnt hair and pieces of the smolderin' uniform of the Park Superintendent who apparently had been coming up the stairs to find out from the booshway (me), just how long this ruckus was gonna continue, when Arley cut loose.

Arley then dropped the shotgun and proceeded to pull two horse pistols from under his frock, yelled again, and charged down the steps firing both of those 300 caliber horse pistols loaded with what sounded like a quarter pound of powder, evidently trying to put the coup de' gras on what little living
matter might still be trying to survive in corners of the now smoldering stairwell.

People outside later told me that that when Blue Cheek touched off her load, the roof of the blockhouse lifted 6-7 inches, and that every time Arley pulled the trigger, you'd see powder fumes spurt out about 10 feet from all 30 firing ports in that blockhouse.

They also thought it was a tad undignified for a Park Superintendent to rip off his burning hat and hairpiece and run screaming from his own blockhouse. He leapt head first into the horse trough to extinguish what little was left of his flaming uniform, exposing his burnt and scorched skivvies (well, we
assumed those were scorch marks anyway) in the process. After all, this was a public doin's, and the Park Superintendent is supposed to be the model of decorum.

After we'd discharged another 20-30 firearms down the stairwell, just to make sure the stairwell was indeed clear of any potential enemies, and also to make sure there was not a one of us who could hear or see anything, we made our charge to freedom to end the demonstration and all dropped into the
courtyard gasping and somewhat subdued. "Vacant looking" was the phrase one onlooker used to describe our expressions.

I went looking for the Superintendent to give a full report on the successful defense of the blockhouse. I found him layin' in the horse trough sloshing water across some of the worst powder burns, and lavin' it in his eyes to try to take away some of that wild-eyed look pilgrims get when they've been blown up for the first time. I glanced at the half-burnt, smolderin' clump of hair wafting a soft trail of smoke
into the sky from just a couple of feet shy of the trough , and immediately tried to make him feel better by offering my utmost buckskinner sympathy. "Sorry about your dog," I said in my most sincere manner.

We held a couple other rendezvous up there before the state backed away from the site, and the locals took over organizing the 'rendezvous' at Ft. Parker nowdays. I don't go there much anymore. I mean, poodle stylin' and cotton candy are just not a part of the rendezvous scene as I see it. That, and
the fact all them locals (including the now-retired park superintendent whos new hobby seems to be walking around with a twitchy eye and one of them 45 caliber suppository type handguns, askin every chubby fella he meets if their name is Muffin) have threatened to lynch me if I ever showed back up there, has kinda put a damper on my interest in the event.

My hearing started to come back after about three weeks. But even these 7 years later, I still get this nervous twitch when I'm on the range with Blue Cheek and she mutters "This sucker is gonna go THIS time..!".