The Legend of Juggin' Joe

The Legend of Juggin' Joe, Joseph Yakel, Lulu.com, 2005

Joe Jeckel was born tenth out of eleven children on a hardscrabble farm in the hills of upstate New York. His parents, Doc and Isabel, didn't have much, but they managed. Joe was one of those who had a real talent for getting in trouble.

One day, in his early teens, Joe gathers up some jugs to hold what comes out of the family still, a popular pastime. The only way to determine if a jug is empty or full is to blow across the top of it, which Joe demonstrates for Doc, who is totally blown away. To make noise from a jug is easy, but the breath control and lung power to make music come out of a jug, which Joe has plenty of, is a gift right from God.

At the local county fair, the jug band led by a man named Bug-Eye seems to have a lock on the title of Best Band. That is, until Doc's band, with Joe on jug, takes the stage. After the thunderous applause subsides, Bug-Eye himself declares Doc's band the winner. At the fair, Joe meets Florentine Sheppard, daughter of the local Parson. Many men have tried, and failed, to get her attention; now she only has eyes for Joe.

At a wedding celebration for one of Joe's older sisters, he and Florentine are caught behind the barn doing something that certainly looks compromising. Parson Sheppard angrily forbids any further contact between them, and it takes Doc and Isabel a long time to calm down enough to even listen to Joe's apologies.

A famous fiddle player, having heard about Joe's talents, offers to take Joe on tour with him. Joe becomes a national celebrity and appears on all the talk shows (three Gold Records certainly don't hurt). At the height of his popularity, during a home visit, Joe announces that he has joined the Army and will become a mechanic in Berlin. He meets President Reagan just before his famous speech in West Berlin. Having done his time, he comes home, but hasn't lost his love for Florentine.

This is a very interesting story, told with humor and real emotion. The unique thing is that the book is written in "country speak"; if it was set in the South, I would say that it is written in a Southern accent. The upstate New York "accent" extends to the biography of the author in the back and the information on the copyright page. Get used to the flow and style of the story, and this is short, and really worth reading.