"More than corn grows tall on the American Plains. Here for the delectation of amateur folklorists is a collection of country whoppers from the frontier of Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa-funny and fantastic yarns and anecdotes of pioneer vintage that belie the erroneous notion that the men and women who settled the Plains were 'grimly serious' forerunners of Grant Wood's farming couple."-Publishers Weekly Roger Welsch is a well-known folklorist and essayist. He is the author of nearly thirty books, including It's Not the End of the Earth, but You Can See It from Here and the coauthor of Cather's...

Were our forefathers liars? "You bet they were," says Roger Welsch, "and damned fine ones at that." The proof is in Catfish at the Pump, a collection of the kind of humor that softened the hardships of pioneering on the Great Plains. From yellowed newspapers, magazines, and forgotten Nebraska Federal Writers' Project files, the well-known folklorist and humorist Roger Welsch has produced a book to be treasured. Here are jokes, anecdotes, legends, tall tales, and lugubriously funny poems about the things that preoccupied the pioneer plainsman: weather extremes; soil quality; food and...

Roger and Linda Welsch matched references from Willa Cather's writing with recipes they collected from Cather family recipe files, from other period cookbooks, and from old-time ethnic cooks still living in the Bohemian tradition. Cather's Kitchens comes as close as possible to the precise recipes Cather had in mind and memory as she wrote. Roger L. Welsch is a television personality and is the author of nearly thirty books, including It's Not the End of the Earth, but You Can See It from Here and Touching the Fire: Buffalo Dancers, the Sky Bundle, and Other Tales, both available in Bison...

Plains folklorist Roger L. Welsch has edited a lively collection of stories by some master yarnspinners-those old-time traveling horse traders. Told to Federal Writers' Project fieldworkers in the 1930s, these stories cover the span of horse trading: human and equine trickery, orneriness, debility-and generosity. Roger L. Welsch has written numerous books. He delivers a "Postcard from Nebraska" on CBS Sunday Morning.

When he was out playing Indian, enacting Hollywood-inspired scenarios, it never occurred to the child Roger Welsch that the little girl sitting next to him in school was Indian. A lifetime of learning later, Welsch s enthusiasm is undimmed, if somewhat more enlightened. In Embracing Fry Bread Welsch tells the story of his lifelong relationship with Native American culture, which, beginning in earnest with the study of linguistic practices of the Omaha tribe during a college anthropology course, resulted in his becoming an adopted member and kin of both the Omaha and the Pawnee...

One day Roger Welsch ventured to ask his father a delicate personal question: Why am I an only child? His father s answer is one of many examples of the delightful and laughter-inducing ribald tales Welsch has compiled from a lifetime of listening to and sharing the folklore of the Plains. More narrative than simple jokes, and the product of multiple retellings, these coarse tales were even delivered by such prudish sources as Welsch s stern and fearsome German great-aunts. Speaking of cucumbers and sausages in a toast to a newly married couple, the prim and proper women of Welsch s memory...