I love a good story teller. My Grandpa Little was one of the best. I never quite knew if his tales were one hundred percent accurate but I didn’t care because they were so darn good. They almost always included a bit of history mixed with a whole lot of humor. It was as though he could not stay too dark and serious even when describing a smallpox outbreak in his town. 

From my grandfather I learned a great deal about the last two decades of the nineteenth century. They were not quite the Gilded Age that some people like to believe unless you happened to be among the wealthy robber barons of the time as Grandpa liked to call them. He would insist until the day that he died that the good old days are in the present times. His boyhood was spent fighting cold, heat, insects, poverty, disease and ignorance. He much preferred the perks of modern day living.  

One of his oft repeated tales occurred when he was a young man traveling from one town to the next in search of work. He was in a bar one night when a man began ferociously beating on his wife. Being the gentleman that he would always be, Grandpa entered the fray like a brave knight intent on saving the maiden. Sadly his chivalry backfired and both the woman and her husband turned on him and bloodied him up enough to teach him a valuable lesson. From that day forward he never again got between a couple when they were feuding with each other and he warned me and my brothers to heed his advice. He would always end this little fable by winking and insisting that he at least was successful in bringing the two lovebirds back together.

That’s the way Grandpa liked to tell a story. Every single one spoke to his outlook on life. Somehow he found hopefulness even in the most dire moments. He never failed to notice that there were always far more good people around at any moment than bad ones and he marveled at the human ability to adapt. 

Grandpa was at this best whenever one of his old timer buddies came to visit. The two of them spent hours reminiscing and trying to top each other with their stories of Indians and the many times that they just missed amassing immense wealth. I could have listened to those two all day long even when they began to repeat tales that they had already told. 

I suppose that memoirs are my favorite kind of books. I love reading about people’s lives from their own words. Somehow they become more real than when another author simply attempts to describe and interpret their impact on the world. A while back I saw a post from Bill Gates in which he suggested the five best memoirs that he has ever read. They included a wide range of people from Katherine Graham, the once powerful editor of The Washington Post, to the comedian, Trevor Noah.

I ordered all five of the memoirs and immediately began reading the first one that arrived, Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah. As expected it is a fascinating read of his memories of living in apartheid South Africa as young boy. Trevor’s joy pops out of every page as he describes growing up with his mother, grandmother and aunties who instilled optimism in his very being in spite of grinding poverty that might have destroyed most of us. 

Trevor was literally a child deemed to be a criminal because his father was a white man from Switzerland and his mother was African. it was against the law for Blacks and Whites to engage in sexual acts together and if he had been noticed he would have been taken from his mother and sent to an orphanage where he would have been an outcast in a highly regimented society. Luckily his daring mother knew how to protect him and keep him in her care. It was her courage and faith that guided his childhood and helped him to develop the gift of comedy that he shares with the world.

Born A Crime is delightfully inspiring and instructive much like the old stories that Grandpa used to spin. They have a folksy charm that has a way of soothing the soul of the reader. Just as my grandfather’s stories used to tamp down my worries and stress, so too does Trevor Noah reach into my heart and show me how to calm any demons that might be there. His is a talent that harks back centuries to the bards who either orally or in writing captured the essence of different times and places with a skill that brings them alive.

Grandpa certainly appreciated modern inventions and conveniences and I suppose that Trevor Noah does as well but there are true pearls of wisdom in learning how humans overcome even the most difficult situations with joy and laughter. We should all pause now and again to hear or read such tales. The smiles that they bring just may get us through another day.