“Pissing in the Snow”

The Ozark folktale “Pissing in the Snow,” as told to Vance Randolph by Frank Hembree in 1945. Hembree first heard the tale in the 1890s. From Randolph’s indispensable collection, Pissing in the Snow & Other Ozark Folktales

One time there was two farmers that lived out on the road to Carico. They was always good friends, and Bill’s oldest boy had been a-sparking one of Sam’s daughters. Everything was going fine till the morning they met down by the creek, and Sam was pretty goddam mad. “Bill,” says he, “from now on I don’t want that boy of yours to set foot on my place.”

“Why, what’s he done?” asked the boy’s daddy.

“He’s pissed in the snow, that’s what he done, right in front of my house!”

“But surely there ain’t no great harm in that,” Bill says.

“No harm!” hollered Sam. “Hell’s fire, he pissed so it spelled Lucy’s name, right there in the snow!”

“The boy shouldn’t have done that,” says Bill. “But I don’t see nothing so terrible bad about it.”

“Well, by God, I do!” yelled Sam. “There was two sets of tracks! And besides, don’t you think I know my own daughter’s handwriting?”

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