Peter B and Uncle Corey

And Other Short Stories

The only way I can think of to tell you, the reader, what this book is about would be to tell you about why it is. So here we go. As a Texan, I grew up surrounded by world-class storytellers. Whenever we camped out as a family, or just some of the men folk hunkered around a campfire after the hunt was over, there would always be a story to be told. Add to that the family gatherings when a barbecue pit always filled the air with warm smoke and the lifelong remembrances of a dozen or so chickens halved, slathered in my familys secret sauce, and you had the perfect setting for a story to be told. Some asked for, while others usually started with something along the lines of Yall aint gonna believe this, but . . . and out of all of the stories I heard as a young boy, all the way up well into adulthood, one fact stood out above all others. It was the passionthe look in the storytellers eyes and the way they would lean in on those listening, be it around a campfire or at the counter of some random truck stop, they all seemed to have the same ambition: the telling of the tale. This book is about me trying my best to keep your attention the way my forefathers kept mine for all the yearsthose past and those yet to come. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.