Synopsis:
“Other Voices, Other Towns” has, in reality, taken Caleb Pirtle III a lifetime to write. During the thirty years he has been writing about travel across this great land, he spent much of his time listening to those whose paths he crossed.
Pirtle collects people. He collects their stories. He is firmly convinced that everyone who has ever walked across the street has a great story to tell if only someone will take the time to listen.
Pirtle has recorded many of them in “Other Voices, Other Towns.” The sketches, the anecdotes, the tales they tell, the memories they have stored, their lessons of life make you feel better or make you want to cry.
Their stories are filled with disappointments and with inspiration: The blind man who tends his beehives in the Smoky Mountains and knows that someday “I’m going to where the mountains are higher and prettier and you don’t get bee stung.” The rancher who bought a whole town because it had a beer joint, and he could get a drink any time he was thirsty. The woman who built a major university on the strength of a dime. The grieving father searching for “the best little girl in the world.” The vagabond who became a great writer because he flunked grammar and could not enroll in college. The last man on the mountain, the last survivor on an island, the last woman strong enough to tame though not civilize the Okefenokee Swamp. The teacher who taught history in school by singing the lessons he had written as songs. The men who created “Lum and Abner.” The scientist digging for clues to prove a spaceship had crashed in the backyard of Aurora, Texas. The performer who rescued the abandoned remains of a crumbling theater. The actor who figured out that a theater ticket was worth a mess of greens or a gallon milk during the Great Depression. The old con artist and wildcatter who defied the odds and discovered a great oilfield. The politician who had one cause, passed it in the legislature, and went home because there were no other bills that concerned him. The fishermen who stumbled across pearls in a landlocked lake. The girl singer who rode in a small RV behind the star until she became the star. The sad journey down the trail of broken promises. And the greatest worm fiddler of them all.
For Pirtle, other voices in other towns, have all been joined together to form the traveler’s story.
Review:
Being a historical information junkie, I love filling my mind with information that cannot be found in textbooks that were written by one side or the other or that seem to be tainted by bias. These are real stories of real people in very real places, even if they do not exist anymore. While reading this book, you will learn fascinating things that cannot be learned except to talk directly to people who were there. Caleb has saved the reader the trouble of years of traveling and years of interviewing and I love that these stories were documented before they were lost by the death of the witnesses.
“Other Voices, Other Towns” contains chapters that are only a few pages long, and it allows the reader to read one, put it down, chew on it a while, and then read another. I loved this book because it allowed me to do just that! I don’t know why, and I am not even sure I could make a precise correlation, but I found it to be somewhat reminiscent of Paul Harvey’s radio show, The Rest of the Story. This book is clean and easy to read and it is also extremely informative about some of the historical idiosyncrasies of our great nation.
Recently, I was able to meet Caleb in person and I found him to be the kind of person that you wish you could sit and talk to for days. He is down to earth and you can immediately see that he is full of the history that bleeds from his fingertips. For more information on Caleb, you can find him here:
A Bibliophile's Persuasion 