It would be a century before anyone would make a call on his cellular telephone or play a video game. Nobody watched television, sent an E-mail message or used an I-pod. Nobody had to line up to be searched before boarding an airplane; there were no airplanes. There was not a shopping mall or a McDonald’s to be found in the Land. No need for them since automobiles were things of the future. Nevertheless, nearly every family had a horse and a wagon since most in southwestern Virginia where Preston lived were farmers. Children who were old enough helped with the farm work. They were allowed to go to school when the work slackened, so the school term was much shorter than it is now. Few kids went past eighth grade and very few were obese. By the way, they walked to school, played vigorous games at recess and brought their own lunches. The farms in the area were not big spreads as one might see in the flatlands, but patches of tilled bottomlands and the lower slopes of hillsides with some higher reaches cleared for pasture, so that the closest neighbor may have lived on the opposite side of a ridge. People living on these farms were thought of as poor, but they were rich, especially when compared with people in the rest of the world. They seldom went hungry and they were free to do as they pleased so long as they didn’t infringe on the rights of others.

Dusk caught up with Preston while he was enjoying a Sunday afternoon with friends. He had meant to be home by dark but there was no chance at this hour. He bade his friends farewell and headed home. Because of his good intentions he had no light for the road home, but it was to be a clear night and starlight would make the road plain. The road followed a meandering creek most of the way home.

“Hmm, I could cut a mile off this trip if I go through the woods. The path starts right yonder,” he told himself. He’d walked the path before, but never at night, but this young dude was feeling brave and forged ahead.

The path was seldom used and here and there a briar or a shrub overhung it. Preston moved up the path without much trouble, although it did seem a little darker than he had anticipated. His feet got tangled in a briar once but it didn’t trip him. As he drew closer to home the foliage of the trees became denser and starlight dimmed on the path. This slowed his pace to little more than that of a snail. He found himself needing to feel his way along the path by the shrubs alongside. By this time he heard sounds in the woods as something creeping through the fallen leaves, but he couldn’t tell if it were coming or going. When he stopped to listen the sound stopped. He went on and the sound came back. He stopped and so did the sound. Then he noticed a tug at his foot when he moved it and found he had been dragging a briar from his previous entanglement. With a sigh he freed himself from the briar and continued on. An occasional break in the canopy of trees showed the path by starlight.

Suddenly young Preston’s heart jumped up into his throat. The hair on his neck stood at attention. His bravery vanished; he stood frozen in his tracks. His breathing became silent for fear of being detected. He was sure that the thing he saw just ahead was watching him by the light it emitted. Its whole body glowed in the darkness and it was bigger than Preston. He stared at the glow and he saw it staring back at him. He stood motionless for a long moment, considering what to do. He finally realized his path was rocky. He ever so slowly squatted toward the ground and feeling around grasped a rock bigger than his fist. As he cautiously rose to his feet he reckoned his next move to be to ease on by the thing. Maybe it wouldn’t notice him, but if it did he would crush its head with the rock, provided that he could find the head. He tiptoed toward his nemesis very gingerly, his heart throbbing. Never taking his eyes off the thing, he moved on up the path, holding his rock ready to strike. It never made a move and he noticed it was not in the path at all, but a good way off to the side. It would have to charge to attack him. He breathed a little easier as he went past and hurried down the path. The glowing thing did not follow, and he breathed a sigh of relief. When he got home and related his horror story he was rewarded with howling laughter. Then he was told what he had seen was nothing but foxfire, a phosphorescent fungus growing in dead wood.

Preston Wells was a great storyteller who loved to tell stories, especially about Preston. He was also my great uncle, one of the few I ever met. I was five or six years old and don’t remember many of his tales. I do remember him telling ghost stories. There was one about him being awakened one night, sitting up in bed and seeing a dead relative at the foot of the bed and talking with him. I recall his claim of inventing the knuckle coupler for railroad cars. He had applied for a patent and was waiting for the patent to be issued. His description of the device described exactly the couplers used on modern railroad cars. He implied that once the patent was issued, the whole clan would become rich. I never found out what happened but nobody ever saw the money. Did another inventor beat him to the filing of a claim, or was it just a dream or a tall tale?

On one of his visits Uncle Preston was playing around with the kid (me) who happened to be eating a piece of bread with apple butter. I think he was teasing me and I threatened his moustache with apple butter.

“If you rub apple butter in my moustache I won’t get you a pony,” were his words. He was referring to his talk about getting a pony for me, but I had been skeptical all along. The apple butter made its way to the moustache. I never got a pony. Despite all his tall tales, I finally heard the unadulterated truth from Uncle Preston.