Celebrating 100 Years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009 Page: 80
xi, 420 p. : col. ill.View a full description of this book.
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80 WHAT'S THE POINT? WHY THE FOLK COME IN THE FIRST PLACE
told me-mostly.9 Tom had been to two or three meetings, but he
didn't know anyone too well, which was okay with him, he says,
because he went to hear the papers, not to socialize. Little did he
know about how the Texas Folklore Society pulls people in. He
says he was in "the tail end of a marriage that was going down fast"
when he attended the 1996 meeting in Abilene. It snowed that
year, as anyone who was there will recall, and Tom said he couldn't
even go across the street to a shopping center. This is where Janell
broke into the story, saying that everyone at the meeting that year
got to know one another better.
Janell met Tom as they were both looking at tapes on the
tables at the back of the room. They started discussing their inter-
ests, and Tom suggested a tape he thought Janell would like. How-
ever, when she went back for it, the last one had been sold. Tom
mailed her his copy after the meeting, and he says he was a little
surprised when he received a letter from her thanking him. Janell
had been attending meetings for years with Sarah, a neighbor of
hers in Gilmer, and she already understood the personal nature of
the Society. However, even she admits that she did not expect to
find romance at a conference. They laugh as they tell about the
note they received from Ab after they paid their dues (for a family
membership) for the first time after getting married in November
of 2000: they say Ab wrote something like, "If you all are still
together at the next Folklore meeting, I'll see you there."
I can give other examples of how people in this organization
have become family, and not just ones who have become romanti-
cally involved. Kenneth Davis first got me started in this whole
business. He was my professor at Texas Tech University long
before I ever heard of the Texas Folklore Society. I was taking his
course on the Western novel when my friend Buddy had an unfor-
tunate experience with a research paper. Buddy needed to see "Dr.
Davis" about his grade, but for some reason he was worried about
going to his office. As a side note, it was a scary place, where
rumor has it that some cleaning personnel may have gotten lost in
the debris, and were never heard from again. I agreed to accom-
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Texas Folklore Society. Celebrating 100 Years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009, book, December 15, 2009; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271470/m1/93/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.