Showing results by author "Donald Davis" in All Categories

Before 1910 the American chestnut was one of the most common trees in the eastern United States. An important natural resource, chestnut wood was preferred for woodworking, fencing, and building construction, as it was rot resistant and straight grained. The hearty and delicious nuts also fed wildlife, people, and livestock.

As the oral tradition takes root in the hearts of each new generation of children, compelling folk rhymes and irrepressible folk stories such as these play a role in the transmission of our cultural wisdom - be wary of strangers, honor your elders, work hard - but play hard, too. Donald Davis has a gift for story; these stories have a gift for your child.

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

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.

Kyle Swanson, once the top sniper in the Marine Corps, has become the key member in a secret special operations team known as Task Force Trident. When Juba tests the new weapon by killing hundreds of people at a British royal wedding in London, Swanson is assigned to hunt down his old special ops rival. The birth of a new reign of global terror can be stopped only by a confrontation between the two best snipers in the world, a duel in which the first shot wins. Usually.

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.

Veteran Radio Personality Eric “Hollywood” Davis joins Double D’s Classic Hip-Hop syndicated radio show (“Double D’s Classic Hip Hop”) as Co-Host. “Hollywood and I did radio together in Baltimore. He brings many years of on-air experience to the show. Blending us together makes the show sound so much better,” said Don Davis aka, host and creator of Double D’s Classic Hip Hop. “Since the show began I have been very excited about it. In the past 3 years it’s grown by leaps and bounds” said Eric “Hollywood” Davis. “Double’s production abilities simply take the...

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.

Joe Davis was in his mid-40s when he became a father, and the experience he was able to apply in raising his sons lent creativity to his parenting. The five stories here recall the wisdom of fathers with humor and rich detail: a visit to the Smithsonian inspires father's memory; father "cures" a boy's impulse to try cigarettes; Santa Claus learns an important lesson; and someone plays a trick on a visiting preacher.

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...

Growing up in North Carolina, Donald Davis heard stories that came to America through Scots-Irish immigrants about a fellow named Jack who was so real that young Davis thought he was a distant relative or otherside-of-the-mountain neighbor. Now Davis knows that Jack is a universal legendary figure who, by various names, is found in nearly every culture.

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.

The drive-in is dying. People can blame the demise on cable television, luxury theaters with sound systems so technical NASA engineers are needed to install them, or on a host of other modern conveniences and distractions. In reality, the drive-in operator of the Sulpher Springs Big-Screen Drive-In Theater hired a young Donald Davis to work his high school summers there.

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.

This coming-of-age story employs storyteller Donald Davis' trademark descriptions and humor to address the question - are braces worth all the pain and embarrassment?

In this hilarious epic tale, our young hero learns three valuable lessons: avoiding pain only heightens it, a mother's wrath can hurt worse than a shot, and growing up sometimes involves choosing the lesser of two evils.

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."

Old Man Hawkins was a larger-than-life character among deer hunters, or, more precisely, among tellers and hearers of tall tales. His self-proclaimed method of hunting deer by holding a mirror in one hand and his rifle in the other, pointing backward over a shoulder, was, he said, "to be fair to the deer". It was a story, Davis tells us, that would occupy his father on the drive to Grandma's house.