It Didn’t Make Me Sound Like Me

I’m always looking for ways to enhance my storytelling.

My younger son thinks it might be too late. “Dad, maybe your well has run dry. You know, they eventually put those old horses out to pasture.” He pondered a second as if he might have been too harsh. “Have you thought about trying A.I.?”

My heart cringed. Artificial Intelligence. If that is not a contradictory term, I will eat my hat!

You can’t “fake” intelligence. Unless, of course, the folks standing across from you don’t have much.

Now, Skeet McElhinny used to talk like he knew a lot more than he actually did, but we all saw through that quicker than you could say “Lash LaRue loves leafy lean leftovers.” He wanted to be an expert on everything, but ole Skeet didn’t have the noggin power to pull it off.

Jess cranked a few buttons on the computer. “Dad, what do you want me to ask it to write for you?”

I leaned over real close and whispered, “Tell it to write a humorous 900-word story about the time your uncle Leon saw that Tarzan picture show where he jumped off the bridge in New York City and Leon was so enthralled he went out the next morning to the high bridge over the Tennessee River and leaped off and near ’bout drown before we could pull him out some half mile or so downstream.”

People, before you could say “Lash LaRue loves….” that machine spit out a two-page story about Leon jumping off that bridge. It was pretty amazing. Astounding even! All I could think of was, if I had had this machine in high school and college I could have passed more courses than I failed.

I would tell that thing to make me sound like John Steinbeck….

EXCEPT, there was something amiss. The story was there alright. But it didn’t have one ain’t in the whole thing. It didn’t have any misspelled words. It didn’t have no double negatives, nor one dangling participle. It didn’t “picture” Leon waving his arms and yelling like Tarzan on the way down like it really happened.

And it described how Leon came to rest with a “less-than-graceful plop” on shore. Sounds like an unathletic dolphin landing to me. The truth is Nicky Joe Stafford and Jackie Burns waded out into the swiftly moving river and half dragged him upon the bank.

It was still better than anything I could have written for sure. It has phrases that were so logical and orderly, they would have made Ernest Hemingway take notice. But it was a bit too antiseptically clean. It had words that I could not pronounce or had no clue as to their meaning, and would have never put them into any kind of tale I was recounting.

I’m sure this story would make perfect sense….to another machine.

The closest thing we had to A.I. back in my day was Gus Radford. Gus was too smart to have a regular job. Mostly he hung out up at the Texico Station, telling stories or commenting on the scientific and political news of the day. He’d talk about those two cousins from Memphis getting pulled under the water “by something” in that big swamp down at Jarrell Switch Bottom and my hair would stand on end!

His voice would rise an octave when he got to telling about the Kennington brothers unloading the moonshine one dark night at the Chief of Police’s backdoor. Somehow, they had gotten the wrong address. Or Rake Kennington (who might have been sampling his merchandise) just backed up to the wrong house!

They realized their mistake when the chief appeared with his big beam flashlight and a drawn Colt 38 Police Special in his hand. He knew the boys by sight….and had long felt they flashed around more spending money than they could have legally obtained.

By the time he got the gun into a firing position, the Kennington’s were racing their Dodge pickup through the middle of the next-door neighbor’s hedge. Gus went up another octave when the chief leaped into his black and white 1962 Ford Galaxie and took off so fast that big police antenna on the back was fanning the air as he followed the boys through the hedge.

The chief, according to Gus, had the red light flashing and the siren blasting. Jake, in his haste to vacate the scene, had failed to put the tailgate up and gallon jars of moonshine were bouncing out of the back of that old Dodge.

By now, Gus was waving his arms and shouting as he described how the police car was swerving to miss the bursting moonshine jugs. He was completely immersed in his own story as the chief narrowed the gap between “pursuer and pursue-ees” as the whole “kit and kaboodle” roared out of town.

I don’t pretend to know much about writing, storytelling, life, A.I., or Lash LaRue. But I do know, with all my heart, there ain’t no machine in the world that could “tell it” like Gus Radford!

Respectfully,
Kes