National Story Project
With Paul Auster

Hear Paul Auster read stories by Steve Lacheen, Matthew Menary, Jim Furlong, and Frank Young.

Listen to more tales from J. Carl Brooksby, Steven Hageman, and John Keith read by Paul Auster.

December 1999 -- Steve Lacheen of Philadelphia reports that in 1961, on a visit to Provincetown, Massachusetts, he bought a hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind Star of David and chain. He put it around his neck, and for the next 20 years, he wore it every day. In 1981, while swimming in the ocean off Atlantic City, New Jersey, the chain broke and the star was lost in the surf. Another decade went by. During Christmas vacation in 1991, he and his 15-year-old son were poking around in an antique store in Lake Placid, New York, when the boy called his attention to a piece of jewelry in a glass case. Mr. Lacheen went over to have a look. It turned out to be the Star of David that had been swallowed up by the ocean 10 years before.

In 1949, Matthew Menary of Burlingame, California, dreamed one night that he was driving a truck down the Kansas Turnpike. "I have never driven a truck," he writes, "and though I lived in Kansas City at the time, I had never been on the Kansas Turnpike. It was night in the dream, and I could only see my hands on the steering wheel and what was illuminated by the truck's headlights ... Suddenly in front of me, shining in the headlights, was a human arm. Horrified, I swerved to keep from hitting it as I frantically tried to step on the brake. I could not slow the truck and as soon as I got around one body part, another appeared up ahead. This continued with the body parts coming ever more and faster until I finally hit one with a grisly thump. As soon as I did, I sat up in bed screaming ... I realized that I was having a nightmare ... I took a deep breath and looked at the clock, more to reassure myself than to find out the time. It was 4:05 a.m. ... I enjoyed my Saturday and forgot about the dream. Sunday, I bought the weekend paper and read it in my usual leisurely fashion. Near the end of the first section there was a two-paragraph article about a truck driver who had run over a body lying on the Kansas Turnpike. The accident had occurred on Saturday, at 4:05 a.m."

Jim Furlong of Springfield, Virginia, has been riding motorcycles for 40 years. Back in his high school days in the New York area, he became friends with a fellow cycling enthusiast named Andy Sanko. "Sometimes," Mr. Furlong writes, "Andy would show up at my house on a weekday morning and have a cup of coffee while I ate breakfast. My mother was never happy to see him, although she was gracious and hospitable. She especially disliked being addressed as 'young lady' when she met him at the back door on his morning visits. Although she could be abrupt and gruff, she classified him as someone in need of help and kindness. Andy was in his 30s then, and he had a kind of intent and crazed way of looking at you, and his voice had a blue-steel whine that made people turn their heads. After a few visits, Andy began giving me rides to school. I attended a Catholic high school eight miles away -- completely off his route to work. I was delighted on the school bus, even though Andy would take curves so fast that he dragged his foot pegs. One day, when we arrived at the high school, I realized that I had forgotten my bag lunch. Andy said, "That's too bad." I thanked him for the ride, and he left. Twenty minutes later, my mother heard a knock at the back door. When she opened it, Andy said,'Good morning again, young lady. Jim forgot his lunch.' My mother let him into the kitchen and found my lunch and handed it to him, thanking him for his kindness. Whereupon he sat down and ate it."

Frank Young of Exeter, New Hampshire has sent in a story that was told to him by one of his friends. It has all the force and primitive passion of an ancient folk tale. It concerns his friend's great uncle Charlie, a successful farmer who, as a young man, had planted a great wall of trees around his property. "But something happened to Charlie as he grew into old age," Mr. Young writes. "The trees that had once been his pride and joy became a source of irritation. He would rant that they were going to outlive him and that he would not stand for that, by God ... Within weeks, many of the trees had been felled ... Charlie's wife became frantic and spent her days at a neighbor's farm. She could not bear to see Charlie so distressed or to hear the sound of the axe or the moaning of the trees as they swayed and crashed to the ground." One evening, Charlie's wife returned home. The house was dark, and Charlie wasn't in his chair. She found him outside, lying on the ground, his skull crushed in by the weight of a tree that had fallen on top of him. "Friends from miles around came to the wake," Mr. Young continues. "Soon Charlie's wife moved into town. Neighbors hauled the best logs to the sawmill and cut the tops of the trees into cordwood. The farm was sold. Nothing remains of Charlie but the stumps cut close to the earth, now grown over, and the dozen or so surviving trees whose branches have long since spread -- so that the house stays cool all summer."

Animal stories continue to pour in. Many of them are interesting, but for sheer nuttiness, I doubt that anything can top this one from J. Carl Brooksby of Mesa, Arizona. "One day when I was a young CPA," Mr. Brooksby writes, "I visited a client at his farm near Higley, Arizona. While we were talking, we heard something scratching on the screen door, and he said, 'Watch this.' He went to the door and opened it to let in a rather large bobcat. He had found this bobcat in an alfalfa field just after it was born, and the animal had been part of the family ever since. When he opened the door, the cat ran into the bathroom, where he jumped up and squatted on the toilet 'to do his job.' When the bobcat had finished, he jumped down to the floor, stood on his hind legs and reached up and flushed the toilet."

Steven Hageman, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, did his post-doctoral work at the University of Adelaide in South Australia in 1994. There he met a fellow American named Mike. One night, as they sat in a pub discussing the mysteries of life and the universe, he learned that Mike had spent a season working as a national park ranger in the Apostle Islands, which are located in southern Lake Superior and are accessible only by boat. As it turned out, Professor Hageman had also been to the Apostle Islands. He had once camped there in a remote site on the far side of the main island with a group of about 20 friends. "For some reason," he writes, "neither Mike nor I could exactly remember when each of us had been to the Apostle Islands. Then I recalled that it was during the time of the coup in the Soviet Union (August 1991). I told Mike that I knew this because one night a park ranger had come into our camp by boat to check on us and had asked if we had any news about the coup. The ranger had a small radio and was receiving local news broadcasts. Our party had been isolated for several days, so the news of the events came as quite a surprise to us ... Three years later, in a pub on the other side of the world, Mike took a sip of his Tooey's Old, smiled, and said, 'That park ranger was me.'"

Finally, this one from John Keith of San Jose, California, writing about his boyhood in the Bronx during the Depression. It was just after Christmas, 1937, and Mr. Keith was 12 years old -- the youngest and one of the smallest boys in his eighth grade class, which was set to graduate at the end of January. It was a big moment for him. Not only was he about to enter high school, but he was going to be given his class's First Prize Medal. The only problem was that his mother still dressed him in knickers and short pants -- which was standard for boys his size during those years -- but for the graduation ceremony all the boys were required to wear white shirts, navy blue knitted ties and dark blue wool serge pants. In other words, long pants. The 12-year-old John Keith put off telling his mother about this until the week before graduation, and when he did, her answer was the one he had been dreading. "We haven't got the money for new pants right now," she said quietly. "You know that." "Okay," he burst out. "Then I won't go to my graduation. And not only that, I'm running away from home!" "If I were you, I wouldn't pack my bags just yet," his mother said. "We'll solve the pants problem somehow." And the following Saturday, when his mother told him to get ready to go out shopping, he knew that she had found an answer. "We bundled up against the bitter cold that had settled over the city," Mr. Keith writes, "and took the trolley along Westchester Avenue to Southern Boulevard, a highly concentrated shopping area in the East Bronx. Our pants shop was just a couple of blocks off the boulevard. We had been getting my pants there from Mr. Zenger ever since I could remember. I liked Mr. Zenger, and I enjoyed hearing him say, as he always did, 'Trust me, sonny, I'll give you the best. And with these pants, you'll look like a million dollars.' But first we walked a couple of blocks down the boulevard and stopped at a place I had never noticed before. My mother said, 'Wait here." She opened the door and entered the storefront, which looked a little like a bank. The sign over the door said, HOME THRIFT LOAN. She came out about 10 minutes later, and we went on to the pants store. There, Mr. Zenger fitted me with what were surely the greatest pair of one 100 percent pure wool navy blue serge trousers ever to be had in the whole wide world. The cost was $3.50, including the alterations. I had my new trousers neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string tucked tightly under my arm as I watched my mother go to pay Mr. Zenger. She took a tiny brown envelope from her purse, tore back the sealed flap and removed the contents. Then she carefully unfolded the four brand new one-dollar bills that the envelope had contained and handed them to Mr. Zenger. He rang up the sale and gave my mother the 50 cents change. Sitting next to my mother on the trolley, I had the window seat and looked out of the window for most of the ride. About halfway home, there wasn't much to look at rattling over the Bronx River Bridge and, as I shifted around in my seat to face forward, I glanced down at my mother's hands folded across her purse, which was resting on her lap. It was then that I saw that the plain gold wedding band that had always circled the ring finger on her left hand was no longer there."

The National Story Project can be heard the first Saturday of every month on Weekend All Things Considered.