A Story Slam is a competition of five-minute stories (approximately 1000 words). We pass the hat (suggested donation $5) and judges, recruited from the audience, hold up scorecards after each story with points deducted for going overtime. The top three stories take home the hat. The winning story each monthwill be published here in the new Arts and Entertainment section of Common Ground. So if you know anyone with some great tales (whether or not they ever write them down), then send ‘em down to Our Town to try one out on a fresh audience. Spots are limited, no advance sign-up, stories must be original and there must be a story-line--that is, events taking place over time. Story Slam is held on the 2nd Wednesday of the month from 9 to11pm. Sign up during Word Whips (timed writing exercises) from 7 to 9pm. Our Town Cafe is located at 245 East Broadway at Kingsway. The event is for raconteurs, actors, writers, comedians--yarn-spinners of all ilks. For information contact Johnny Frem at 604-254-0355 or via www.boltsoffiction.org
We recorded the following story at the event and then transcribed it.

The Wichita
A story told by Richard Wagamese
“Before I start, I do something a little bit different. I don’t come here with a written story. I come from an oral tradition that gave stories a specific life and when our elders were asked to tell stories to our people, they’d try to discern what it was that the collective needed to hear more than anything and would make up a story or a legend on the spot that would serve that need and part of the process that I work through is to try and put forward the principles of that oral tradition. So I come here and tell a story spontaneously with a trigger phrase. Could you give me a phrase to start with or to use in a story?”
“Buffalo.”
“Buffalo? Trigger phrase is: buffalo.
I’ll start when I turn back ‘round.”
* * *
They called it the Wichita. In the Ojibway language, Wi-chi-ta is the name that they give the wind that rises suddenly on the prairie, so suddenly and so fiercely that it blows the rain and the snow and the dust in long parallel lines across the land and that wind rises up so fast and so quickly that the old cowboys and the old rounders say that, well, a horse and a cowboy, they get soaked sideways.
It was a good name for the old hotel. There was narry a fair wind that blew around the Wichita. It was old, it was decrepit, it was dark, and it sat on its’ shadowed corner, sagging a little on its’ foundation--its’ walls bowed with the stress of years and years of soggy carpets and drunken parties and maybe a few bodies smashed too hard against the walls, so it was bowed and heavy, sitting there like a...a toad with baleful eyes waiting.
Not many strangers came to the Wichita. The hotel rented rooms upstairs. And the rooms they rented were for the railroad workers and for the oil-well drillers and for the roughnecks and the rowdyboys in that area. A flop-house. Strangers rarely came.
But he came that night and he came because the Wichita was a place to forget and he wanted to forget. He was going to leave home. He decided after months and months of agony that it was time to leave and to leave everything behind. The marriage wasn’t working. The communication just wasn’t there any longer. He wanted to forget. He stepped into the bar and ordered a beer and started to watch the ball game on TV.
He got a tap on the shoulder. He looked.
There was a ragged little man standing there with a box in his hand and he said, “You want to buy some baseball cards?”
“Now, why would you ask me that?”
“Well I...I saw you watching the game and I...I figured maybe you were a fan and that you might be interested in maybe buying these cards ‘cause things haven’t really been really too good for me lately and I could really use a...I could really use a break. I...I don’t like asking for hand-outs, so all I really have is this baseball card collection and maybe if you could buy ‘em I might make it through a little longer.”
He didn’t really want to be disturbed, but he thought maybe the conversation would lift him out of his funk and he said, “All right. Well let’s see them.”
The little man handed him one baseball card.
He looked at it and he said, “I can’t even see a name here. I can’t see. I can’t see anything.”
And the raggedy old man said, “It’s...it’s Rico Petriccelli!”
“You mean that...the old shortstop for the Boston Red Sox?”
“Yes.”
He said, “Why do you have this card that’s not even legible?”
He said, “Well, you know my Dad and I got that card. We watched the...the Boston Red Sox play the St. Louis Cardinals in 1967 and Rico Petriccelli made this diving catch across the infield. It was amazing. And my Dad got so excited he grabbed me and hugged me as hard as I’ve ever been hugged before. So special, because my Dad really...didn’t...do a lot of hugging. And Rico’s card got laundered. He got swam in and he’s faded over the years and...I don’t want that card anyway. Look at this one.”
And he held out another one and the guy looked at it and it was torn in half and he said, “Look, this card, this card is torn in half. Why...why would I want to buy this?”
“But...but it’s Bob Gibson!”
“You mean the pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals?”
“Yeah! And...and I ripped it in half because I got really mad at my Dad one day when he wouldn’t take me to the ball game. He wouldn’t take me to see Bob Gibson pitch his last game and I ripped it in half and I threw it at him. But he gave it back to me, gave me another one of those big hugs and we went for ice cream and we took a long walk in the...in the country and well, that was the last time I really spent any time with my Dad. He died about two months after that. Sudden coronary. Held on to the card ever since. ”
And one by one the little raggedy man showed him baseball card after baseball card--frayed and tattered and torn and worn-out--and with each came a story. And finally at the end of it, he said, “Well, do you want to buy my collection? Would you? Would you please give me some money for these cards? I really need it.”
He looked at him and said, “I can’t buy these. There’s no price in the world that could pay for these. Why don’t you just take this?”
He handed him all the money from his wallet, drained his beer, got up and turned to go home--buffaloed by the fact that he would’ve been leaving things of more value than any wallet could contain.
* * *
Richard Wagamese is a traditional storyteller, a former National Newspaper Award winning columnist and author of three novels and a memoir with Doubleday Canada. His newest, Ragged Company, arrives later this year. His free story-telling circle, Deh-bah-juh-mig (Telling Ourselves), sponsored by Companion Books in Burnaby, will be held at Panne e Dolce, 3615 E. Hastings (near Kootenay Loop) beginning Jan. 31 and continuing every Monday.
“There was once, for all of us, a fire in the night... To talk, to tell our stories, to teach each other, is as necessary to our growth as water. We’re all storytellers. We always were. But most of us have forgotten that... Beginning with learning to tell oral stories and building a foundation of necessary skills, participants will progress to the principles of good writing, to preparing manuscripts, to getting published (and we) will become a community of storytellers/writers telling ourselves about ourselves.”
Email mushkotay@yahoo.ca for info.