Some thirty years ago I read a very short article about an old fellow who was quite a storyteller. In old age he lived with his son and daughter-in-law but he had a group of youngsters including his grandchildren eager to hear his stories of the old west, of battles he had fought, of rustlers and gunslingers, cowboys and Indians, and the children would hang on his every word. But one day, his son brought home a TV and placed it in the living room where his aged father would sit and the children would gather about him to listen to his stories.

In no time at all it was that TV that captured the attention of the children, and the old man found he had lost the audience for his stories. A few weeks passed as the old fellow would sit there, trying to get used to this “monster” that had stolen away all he had that made life meaningful to him and had left him alone with none of the children any longer interested in either him or his stories. But one day, the old man couldn’t take it any longer. Drawing out an old “Peacemaker” he had carried for years while actually living the events of the past he would describe to the children he took aim and fired a bullet right through the TV screen.

It is impossible to calculate the loss to children of the storytellers that used to be a part of their growing up. Due in large part to TV very few children today are growing up exercising their imagination the way children of my time did, and there are very few parents now that were blessed with storytellers during their own childhood. And not a few my age can relate to the old fellow shooting that TV, something George Lucas obviously understood in his “RadioLand Murders.”

Harper Lee was correct about the storytelling tradition of the South. The opportunities to visit theaters, art galleries, museums, opera houses, the things the cities of the North had in abundance were scarce in many southern states where the average populations of towns might consist of only a few hundred people and “big cities” were few and far between. Harper Lee called attention to this, emphasizing how important storytellers were under such conditions, of how children would become so imaginatively inventive in creating their own “theater” in the games they would improvise, and how important reading was under such circumstances. Sinclair Lewis and others could poke fun at the provincialism, but the great southern writers like Harper Lee knew the depth of literary riches the small southern communities offered those with imagination encouraged by the storytelling tradition she referred to during the interview by Roy Newquist that appeared in his book of interviews, Counterpoint, published in 1964.

Ms. Lee observed “There are people who write, and then there are people who must write.” And among the latter those who must write bend their efforts to learn how to write well, serving a very long apprenticeship mastering the discipline of writing while devouring the very best of literature that will help guide them in their own writing. And those who have served the proper apprenticeship have learned how important the mechanical parts of language are in conveying their often complex thoughts in written expression, things such as making sure a comma is not lacking or misplaced for example, as well as paying close attention to things like syntax and choosing their words with the utmost care.

But storytelling such as Harper Lee and I knew and experienced as children along with writing of much let alone great value has fallen on hard times throughout America, even in Harper Lee’s beloved South due to the proliferation of TV and electronic devices that do not encourage imagination, human contact and interaction. The stories are there amongst some of us oldsters with a background like that of Harper Lee steeped in the traditions of the South and the stories that come out of such a rich heritage. But children no longer gather around to listen to our stories; the electronic media cannot take the place of storytellers like that old man or those to whom Harper Lee refers. Along with the loss of children reading good books, the loss of a literary heritage is the loss of the storytellers that once meant so much to making America the greatest nation in history.