My name is Jesse Budd. I am eighty-two years old. I ran the feed store in Mountain Home, Arkansas, from 1946 to 1986, which is forty years of selling chicken scratch and listening to men tell me what they caught. I have been secretary of the Liars' Club since 1979, because I am the only member who can spell and the only one who will sit still long enough to write anything down.

Every Saturday morning from the first of November to the end of March, when the fishing slows and the men get restless, we meet at Tuck's bait shop down on the river. Tuck fires up the woodstove at six. We come in about seven. Somebody brings doughnuts, the coffee is Tuck's and is strong enough to float a sinker, and one at a time we stand up and tell the biggest lie we can manage. When everybody's had a turn we vote by show of hands, and the winner takes home the can.

The can is a three-pound coffee can that was new in 1971. It has been dropped in the river twice, run over once, and used to bail out Hambone's boat in 1984, and it has the dents to show for all of it. The winner keeps it a week and has to bring it back the next Saturday with something in it. Usually that's cookies. Once it was shotgun shells. Once it was a live crawdad, and we don't talk about that.

My granddaughter put this page on the computer for me last spring. I write everything out on yellow paper and she types it. She says to tell you she fixed my commas. She did not fix my lies. Those are as told.

The Rules
Adopted 1971, amended 1984 (Rule 7) and 1992 (Rule 8)

1. A lie must hurt nobody. No lies about a living neighbor, nobody's wife, nobody's church and nobody's dog that can't defend itself. The man who breaks this rule buys doughnuts for a month.

2. A lie must be told with a straight face. If you laugh at your own lie before it's done, you forfeit. Laughing after is allowed and expected.

3. Every lie must hold one true thing. Somewhere in it there has to be something that's so, and the membership has to be able to find it. This is the rule that separates a liar from a plain fool, and it is the best rule we have.

4. No lie may be told twice for the can, unless it has been improved, and the membership agrees it has.

5. Time limit: one cup of coffee. Tuck pours.

6. Vote by show of hands. Tuck breaks ties. Tuck may not be bribed except with minnows.

7. The secretary may tell, but may not win, on account of he holds the pencil.

8. Ladies are members in full. (This rule was written the morning Miss Dot came in for crickets and stayed for the lies. It has cost the rest of us a great many cans.)

The Membership
We go by our club names. Most of us have had them so long our own children use them.

Minutes of the Winter of 1998–99
Every winning lie, retold as near as I can to the way it was told. After each one, the true thing it held, which the membership found and agreed on.

Saturday, November 7, 1998. Opening day. Eleven present, counting Tuck's nephew, who is not a member and was told so.
Winner: Tuck. "The Trout That Towed a Johnboat Upstream."

Tuck opened the season, which is his right as the man who owns the stove. He said he was drifting below the dam one morning in October with a nightcrawler on and four-pound line, and something took hold that did not care to be caught. It did not run downstream the way a sensible fish would. It turned and went up. Tuck said there he sat with his motor off and his anchor up and his mouth open, going upriver at a good walking pace, past every boat on the water. Men took their hats off as he went by. It towed him clear to the foot of the dam, and there it stopped and looked up at all that concrete for a long minute, and then it spit the hook and went home. Tuck had to drift back. He said it took him till suppertime.

The true thing: a trout holds with its nose into the current. Doc vouched for it. Ten hands to none, Tuck abstaining.

Saturday, November 14, 1998. Nine present; three off at deer camp.
Winner: Doc. "The Possum That Came to Its Own Funeral."

Doc said a possum got in his garage, and when he came at it with the broom it fell over dead on the spot, tongue out, the whole performance. Doc felt so bad he dug a little grave under the redbud tree and said a few words. Along about the second verse of the hymn he looked up, and there was the possum, sitting up on the woodpile with its head tipped, listening, like it was moved by the service. Doc said he has never been so complimented in his life. The possum came to supper twice that week, and then it moved in with the neighbors, who have a better garage.

The true thing: a possum really will play dead when it's scared, and it is a convincing show. Nine hands.

Saturday, November 21, 1998. Ten present.
Winner: Miss Dot. "The Meringue That Reached the Rafters."

Miss Dot said she made a lemon pie for Homecoming dinner at church, and she beat those egg whites so long and so faithful that the meringue went on rising after the pie came out of the oven. It rose past the top of the pie safe. It rose past the light fixture. By the time the blessing was said it had reached the rafters of the fellowship hall, and the deacons had to get a stepladder to cut it, and they served it by the yard. She said the youngest deacon climbed up after the last of it and is up there yet. They send his supper up in a bucket. He says he likes the view.

The true thing: egg whites beat up higher if you let the eggs come to room temperature first. Dot says so and nobody here is going to argue. Ten hands.

Saturday, November 28, 1998. Thanksgiving weekend. Six present, all six full.
No winner. The can was held over.

Slim got up and started a lie about a turkey that ran off to join the Air Force, and partway through the second cup he sat back down in his chair to collect his thoughts and fell sound asleep with his hat on. The membership voted, five to nothing, that this was the most honest thing Slim has ever done at a meeting. We let him sleep. Tuck put a blanket on him.

Saturday, December 5, 1998. Ten present.
Winner: Preacher. "The Mailbox That Followed Me Home."

Preacher said that on his old route there was a mailbox at the end of a long gravel lane that got so attached to him it started meeting him at the road. Then a little ways up the road. Then at the post office in the mornings, waiting by the door. By spring of that year it was riding along with him on the seat. When he retired, he said, it moped. The family had to put up a new one. He said every so often, of a Saturday, the old one still turns up at the end of his own driveway with its little flag up, hopeful, and he puts a letter in it so it won't feel bad.

The true thing: Preacher carried that route thirty-one years and never once missed a day for weather. Ten hands.

Saturday, December 12, 1998. Nine present.
Winner: Two-Bit. "The Okra That Outgrew the Fence."

Two-Bit said his okra did so well last summer he couldn't keep up with it. He'd pick at sunup and by dinnertime it was over the fence, and by supper it was over the clothesline. One morning he came out and a pod had grown clean through the open window of his pickup and was sitting behind the wheel. He said since it seemed set on going, he let it drive to town. It got a parking ticket in front of the courthouse. Two-Bit paid it. "That's the kind of man I am," he said.

The true thing: okra grows like the dickens in hot weather, and if you don't pick it young it gets as tough as a broom handle. Eight hands. Slim voted for himself.

Saturday, December 19, 1998. Christmas meeting. Eleven present. Miss Dot brought fudge.
Winner: The Kid. "The Night I Fixed the Sleigh."

The Kid said he was driving home late one Christmas Eve, years ago, and came on a sleigh broke down on the shoulder of the highway, one runner off, and the driver in a red coat standing there looking at it and scratching his beard. The Kid fixed it with baling wire and his fencing pliers, the way he fixes everything. The driver said he could have anything he wanted. The Kid asked for a new pair of fencing pliers, because he had bent his on the runner. He said every Christmas morning since, there has been a new pair of pliers on his front porch. He has thirty-one pair now. Anybody who needs pliers knows where he lives.

The true thing: the Kid really can fix anything with baling wire, including, one time, Tuck's minnow tank. Unanimous. Merry Christmas.

I told one myself that morning, about Ledger, the cat who kept the books at my feed store and was the only one of us who could make them balance. The secretary may tell but may not win (Rule 7). For the record, the true thing was the cat. Ledger was real, and he was a better bookkeeper than I was, and that is not a lie.

Saturday, December 26, 1998, and Saturday, January 2, 1999. No meetings. Christmas and New Year's. Tuck goes to his daughter's in Springfield.

Saturday, January 9, 1999. Eleven present.
Winner: Hambone. "The Winter the Words Froze."

Hambone tells it slow, so I'll go slow. He said the winter he was courting Opal was so cold that every word anybody said out of doors froze solid the second it left their mouth and dropped on the ground. You could hear it land, tinkling, like ice off a wire. Folks went around the square kicking through other people's conversations. Hambone stood under Opal's window one January night and asked her a question, and it froze and fell in the snow, and she never heard it. So he swept it up and put it in a coffee can (he looked at our can when he said this) and kept it in his daddy's springhouse. Come April the can thawed out. The question came out all at once, at the Easter egg hunt, in front of the whole congregation, and Opal said yes before it was finished asking.

The true thing: Hambone and Opal were married in May of 1939 and are married yet. Eleven hands, and Opal sent cookies the next week.

Saturday, January 16, 1999. Eight present.
Winner: Judge. "The Catfish That Swallowed the Alarm Clock."

Judge said he ran his trotline one morning and heard ticking. A flathead catfish, forty pounds (Judge says forty pounds about all his catfish), had swallowed a wind-up alarm clock somebody pitched off a bridge. It went off at six every morning, regular as a rooster. Judge didn't have the heart to clean it. He let it go, and he said now every man fishing that stretch of river sets his watch by it. He said it does run ten minutes fast in the summertime, and he will hear no complaints about it, since it is not his fish anymore.

The true thing: a catfish tastes with those whiskers. Doc says they're called barbels. Seven hands.

Saturday, January 23, 1999. Ten present.
Winner: The Kid. "The Mosquito That Registered to Vote."

The Kid said the mosquitoes were so big last summer that one of them flew into the courthouse and registered to vote. The clerk asked for proof of residence and it gave her the Kid's address, since it had been living on him since June. Come November it went to the polls, and they let it in because it was polite and wiped its feet, all six of them. The Kid says he doesn't know how it voted, and it's none of his business. But he did hear it got called for jury duty in February, and it hung the jury, eleven to one.

The true thing, and Doc backed him up: only the lady mosquitoes bite. "So she voted," the Kid said. Ten hands, and Miss Dot clapped.

Saturday, January 30, 1999. Nine present.
Winner: Doc. "The Hen Who Kept Her Own Hours."

Doc said he had a Rhode Island Red hen who did not care for winter. When the days got short she quit laying, and Doc hung a lightbulb in the henhouse to fool her. She saw through it. She went out to the barn and got a lightbulb of her own, screwed it in next to his, and laid two eggs a day out of pure spite. Then she figured out the switch. Doc said she took to turning the henhouse light on at four in the morning to wake the rooster up early, and the rooster has never forgiven either one of them.

The true thing: hens do lay less in the short days of winter, and plenty of people hang a light in the henhouse to keep them going. Ten hands.

Saturday, February 6, 1999. Ten present.
Winner: Miss Dot. "My Grandmother's Biscuits."

Dot said her grandmother made biscuits so light that on a windy morning she had to tie them to the table with sewing thread. One March morning a biscuit worked loose and went out the kitchen window and up over the ridge, and the last anybody saw of it, it was headed north toward Missouri. Dot said a farmer up there found it in his pasture, and it was such a fine biscuit he built a little fence around it. It's there yet. People come from three counties to look at it, and nobody has ever had the nerve to eat it.

The true thing: Dot's grandmother made biscuits every morning of her married life, sixty-one years, and Dot has her biscuit bowl. Ten hands. Slim asked if there was gravy in the pasture. There was not.

Saturday, February 13, 1999. Valentine's meeting. Nine present.
Winner: Preacher. "How I Proposed by Trotline."

Preacher said he was too bashful to ask his wife to marry him, so he tied the ring to a hook on her trotline, where she'd be sure to find it, since she ran her line every morning and was the better fisherman. She pulled up a two-pound channel cat wearing that ring on its whisker. She looked at the cat and she looked at the ring and she looked at Preacher up on the bank, and she asked him was this from him or from the fish. He said it was from the both of them. They've been married fifty-two years, and she is still the better fisherman.

The true thing: she is still the better fisherman. Every man in the room has seen it. Unanimous.

Saturday, February 20, 1999. No meeting. Tuck closed for his grandson's wedding in Springfield.

Saturday, February 27, 1999. Ten present.
Winner: Two-Bit. "The Pickup That Won't Pass a Bank."

Two-Bit's pickup is older than some of our grandchildren. He said it was raised in hard times and it remembers. It won't go past a bank without slowing down to see if it's still open. It parks itself in the shade to save its paint. It saves string. One day it ran out of gas a mile from home, and Two-Bit walked to get a can, and when he got back it had coasted the whole mile on its own, downhill and up again, out of thrift, and was sitting in the yard with the motor off, waiting on him.

The true thing: that truck has not left Two-Bit on the side of the road one time in twenty-two years, which is more than any of the rest of us can say. Nine hands.

Saturday, March 6, 1999. Eleven present.
Winner: The Kid. "The Trout in the Fog."

The Kid's third can of the winter, which tied him with Miss Dot and made for a tense month. He said that last June the fog lay so thick on the river below the dam that the trout got turned around and swam up out of the water into the fog. You could see them going by at about eye level, in schools, turning all together like swallows. The Kid caught three of them in the parking lot with his granddaughter's butterfly net. The game warden came over to see his license, and the Kid said the warden couldn't decide whether to write him up for fishing without a boat or hunting without a gun, so he let it go.

The true thing: the water that comes out from under the dam is cold all summer long, and on a warm morning the whole river smokes with fog. Ten hands.

Saturday, March 13, 1999. Ten present.
Winner: Miss Dot. "The Garden Hose That Took Up Egg-Stealing."

Dot said she left her green garden hose coiled up by the henhouse all summer, and a black snake moved in next to it, and the two of them got to be friends. By August the hose had learned the snake's whole trade. She'd go out of a morning and find her eggs gone, and the hose lying there in the sun with a lump in it, looking innocent. She said she cured it of the habit by turning on the water. "Scrambled," she said, and sat down.

The true thing: a black snake will get in a henhouse and eat the eggs. Ask anybody's grandmother. Ten hands, and the Kid said it was rigged.

Saturday, March 20, 1999. No meeting. Tuck was having the new floor put in. We stood in the parking lot twenty minutes and agreed it was too cold.

Saturday, March 27, 1999. Closing banquet. Catfish fry at the shop, wives and widows welcome. Twenty-six present.
Liar of the Year: Miss Dot.

The year ended in a tie, Miss Dot and the Kid with three cans apiece, so it went to a vote of the whole room, wives and all. Miss Dot carried it by four votes. It is her third Liar of the Year (1994, 1997 and 1999). The Kid took it like a gentleman and said he would see us all in November. Slim finished the season with no cans, which makes five winters running, and the membership presented him with a trophy made out of a soup can, which he says he will treasure. I believe that may be the one true thing Slim said all year.

The Hall of Fame
The best lies ever told around Tuck's stove, as voted by the membership at the 1998 banquet. Old Tuck's is first because he started all this, and because none of us would dare leave it off.

1972. Old Tuck, "The Lake That Came to Supper." The lake got lonesome one winter and followed him home up the hollow. He fed it cornbread. The true thing: the farms and little settlements that went under the water when they built the dams. Old Tuck knew families from every one of them.

1977. Hambone, "The Road Grader That Wanted to Be a Plow." It kept wandering off the county road into people's bottomland, and one spring it put in forty acres of corn on its own. The true thing: Hambone graded every gravel road in the north end of the county at one time or another.

1978. Yours truly, "The Mule Who Read the Almanac." He wouldn't plow if the signs were wrong. My last can before I took the pencil. The true thing: my daddy planted by the signs, and so did half this county.

1986. Preacher, "The Letter That Delivered Itself." It had been addressed so carefully, in such a fine hand, that it got impatient waiting on him and walked the last mile. The true thing: a man's handwriting tells you a lot about him. Preacher has read more envelopes than anybody alive.

1994. Miss Dot, "The Cafeteria Gravy." So thick that the principal used it to patch the gym floor, and the floor is better for it. The true thing: Dot made gravy from scratch for twenty-six years for six hundred children and never once used a mix.

1996. Judge, "The Squirrel Who Sued." The squirrel sued Judge's bird feeder for discrimination, represented itself and won. The true thing: a squirrel will get into any bird feeder ever made. Judge has bought eleven.

The club meets again Saturday, November 6, at seven sharp. Visitors are welcome to tell a lie but not to win the can (Rule 9, which we just made up, but it's the truth). If you can't come down to the river, send me a lie by e-mail and I'll read it out at the stove. You can see what other folks have sent on the next page.

Lies Sent In by Mail, and the Club's Verdicts

This page has been read

times since April 1999, and that is no lie.


Send your lie to the secretary: [email protected]
Mind Rule 1.

Last updated September 18, 1999