How Rick Allen Bennett Turns a Lifetime of Mischief and Memory Into Laughter and Wonder in The Twisted Tales of Rick: Tales, Memories and Mischief
It is raining, there is nothing to do, and an owl is sitting on your doorstep. Better let him in.
That is how one of the stories begins in Rick Allen Bennett’s collection The Twisted Tales of Rick: Tales, Memories and Mischief. Between these covers are more than sixty tall tales, rhyming adventures, cowboy yarns, spooky ballads, heartfelt poems, and at least two recipes you should probably not try at home.
Bennett writes the way a favorite uncle talks on the porch after supper, with a grin and a habit of slipping in a little wisdom when you are not looking.
If you like a book that can make you laugh out loud and then sit very still, pull up a chair…
Every family has a storyteller who never lets the facts get in the way of a good time: Who in your life could turn an ordinary afternoon into an adventure?
An Owl, a Box, and a Rainy Day
In this rainy-day story, a bored boy stares at a gray sky when an owl strolls up the sidewalk carrying a box and wearing an umbrella for a hat. Once inside, the owl opens the box, and the world spills out. A steam train rolls out, followed by Big Ben. An ocean sloshes through the hall, a whole circus tumbles onto the floor, a rocket lands beside the wall, and an elephant settles onto the couch. The boy can only repeat that all of this is going to be very hard to explain.
When the house is finally too full, everything vanishes back into the box, and the boy peeks inside. The box is full of books. “Anything you want can be found in a book,” the owl tells him. “It’s easy and fun; just have a look.”
It is a lovely moment for young readers and a sly reminder for grown ones…
Bennett’s stories are boxes of their own, and you never quite know what twist will come rolling out next…
Tall Tales Told With a Straight Face
The tall tales are where Bennett’s comic voice runs wildest. In “A Trip to the Amazon,” a search for the fountain of youth ends with an army of ants, mosquitoes that seem to have trained with the Luftwaffe, a guide whose yellow BVDs do not survive the trip, and three men spinning down the river in a washtub with one paddle. In “And Rudolph Makes Nine,” a three-foot Santa barges in on Christmas Eve with a sack of dirty laundry, a pinch of snuff, and eight reindeer who flatten the narrator.
Then there is the old fisherman who has his boots nailed to the pier rather than let his catch get away and who, the story solemnly concludes, invented the very first water ski. There is Mr. Tubs, explaining to a weary judge how one shoe, a hog trough, a bed of fire ants, and his best friend BooBoo landed him in court. And there are two backwoods recipes, for fried possum and for armadillo in the shell with red eye gravy, told with such cheerful confidence that you may finish the page before you realize what you read.
Rhymes for Little Ones, Shivers for Everyone
Bennett promises that children like the book too, and the rhyming stories prove it. A boy begs to keep a moose that followed him home until the moose crashes through the bedroom floor and makes Mom’s point for her. Another boy wants to dig a hole but has only a cart, so a bird, a mole, a dog, a farmer, and a mouse pitch in until the hole becomes a home with a red door and a porch swing. And curious Malcom J. Fenny wonders about snails on ceilings, climbs a giant tree, dreams up a zoo, and sets sail.
Bennett also knows how to send a chill down the spine. In “A Halloween Tale,” trick-or-treaters named Freckles, Skinny, and Fatty spy on monsters chanting around a boiling cauldron and decide that Halloween must be saved, with results as funny as they are sweet. “The Shadow Prison” ends with a twist worthy of an old radio drama. “Rooster’s Grim Call” and the ballad “Dragon of Wren Knights” trade jokes for something older and darker, proof that a good campfire storyteller can make you laugh and then make you check the window.
And then there is the title story…
In “The Twisted Tales of Rick,” Erin, a cobbler’s son turned soldier, slips away from an endless war with four fellow deserters. The war is blamed on a winter custom gone wrong and a mysterious creature who rides the night sky and seems to know when they are sleeping and when they are awake. Readers who catch the clues early will grin; everyone else will get exactly the twist the title promises.
- What is the best campfire story you ever heard?
- Would you have let the owl in out of the rain?
Wisdom From the Trail and the Front Porch
Some of the most memorable pages are also the quietest. In “The Old Cowpoke,” a weathered rider leading a tired mare tells a young man named Zeke all the names life has given him, from Son and Boy to Hand, Deputy, Ranger, Barkeep, and Cookie, before resting by the creek at the ripe old age of “fifty and seven.” Elsewhere, a farmer watches his topsoil blow away in 1931, and a widow fishes with two poles beside an empty chair.
Through it all runs a grandfather’s gentle faith in people. In “A Grandfather’s Wish,” a granddaughter wishes for a camel sitting on a car, and when Grandpa questions it, she asks, “What do you want him to do, walk?” He concedes, then wishes for peace on earth. Bennett dedicates the book to four generations of family, hoping that even if they “may not always see eye to eye,” they will “always see each other.”
His author page simply tells readers to READ THE BOOK and make up their own minds.
An owl can knock on a rainy-day door…
A tale can take a twist you never see coming…
A storyteller can make you laugh, shiver, and remember…
In The Twisted Tales of Rick: Tales, Memories and Mischief, Rick Allen Bennett invites you to open the book and see where you are at!
Author Name: Rick Allen Bennett Book Title: The Twisted Tales of Rick: Tales, Memories and Mischief Published By: Visionary Book Publishers
