Orville Hicks entertained over one hundred faculty, students, and folklore aficionados at the Willis Building Auditorium at the corner of First and Reade Streets on April 9 at 7 p.m. Sponsored as a free program by the ECU English Department, the North Carolina Humanities Council, and the North Carolina Folklore Society courtesy of Dr. Karen Baldwin, Hicks spun tales about mule eggs posing as pumpkins and about Jack and his Jack-tale adventures involving a wild, bizarre array of heifer hides, thousands of dollars, and the significance of counting one hundred head of sheep. His thick Appalachian drawl captured the authentic echo of mountain folkore culture. Introduced by Appalachian State University's Thomas McGowan, Hicks appeared as "himself" -- unassuming, shy, self-effacing, and subtly understated in his oral delivery. Hicks, while working at the local recycling center in Watauga County, practices his enduring tale telling art for the people who must and need to come by to rid themselves of what is no longer usable.

According to the Orville Hicks website, "Hicks grew up the youngest of eleven children in a farm family in western Watauga County, North Carolina. He remembers his boyhood as hard but happy times and works these memories into his storytelling. Growing up featured storytelling as an important entertainment, work incentive, and expression of family and community unity. Orville's creative carrying on of tales and his reworking them in changing contexts represent a singular development of Mountain folk narrative tradition. This recording assembles a storytelling session by Orville and a selection of other stories that illustrate the repertory, style, and bright engagement of one of the best of the new traditional tellers in the Southern mountain--the newest bearer of the famed Hicks-Harmon Beech Mountain Jack Tale tradition." See http://www.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/hicks.htm.