Donald Davis

The "home theater" will never replace the drive-in theater in America's imaginary landscape. Donald Davis recalls a summer working under the lax supervision of Daff-Knee Garlic, owner and operator of the Sulpher Springs Big-Screen Drive-In Theater in...

Braces hurt. Braces are embarrassing. Braces are inconvenient.Many get fitted with them at the very time of their life when their self-confidence is lowest and their self-consciousness is highest.This coming-of-age story, created and performed by...

This is a double set of double stories. The first set is made up of a story my Grandmother told me about when my mother broke her arm...twice! The second story in this set is my story of when we broke my little brother's collarbone...twice! It is...

Who doesn't remember the holiday sights and sounds and smells of Grandma's house? The living room aglow with a tree that touches the ceiling, the clatter of silverware and kitchen pans, the banter of relatives, and especially Grandma's bright...

For 16 years, Donald Davis has performed during the Christmas season at Fearrington Village, a unique destination community near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Hundreds of people fill the seats in this historic barn, now converted for use as an events...

In rural North Carolina in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing...

Joe Davis was in his mid-40s when he became a father, and the experience he was able to apply in raising his sons lent creativity to his parenting.The five stories here recall the wisdom of fathers with humor and rich detail: a visit to the...

The best friend of our youth has no replacement, ever.Though we may start out as "two peas in a pod", we often lose touch with one another. In this affecting tale of two adults who reclaim their childhood bond after 30 years apart, the comforts of...

There was a time during Donald Davis's college freshman year when he wasn't really sure if he wanted to claim his hometown of Sulpher Springs, North Carolina. But a boy by the name of Stanley Easter changed his mind."The year after that," he recalls,...

Old Man Hawkins was a larger-than-life character among deer hunters, or — more precisely — among tellers and hearers of tall tales. His self-proclaimed method of hunting deer by holding a mirror in one hand and his rifle in the other — pointing...

Most people who decide to take the mule ride through the Grand Canyon focus on the spectacular beauty around them. Donald Davis, however, found his focus trained sharply on the 48-inch-wide trail whose ledge drops 700 feet to the Colorado River....

The title story here is the story of my Mother's fear of snakes and of the way she eventually got passively even with me for making fun of her. She always came out on top. The second story we put on this recording is called 'The Red Coat,' as it is a...

We all know someone like them: women whose lives revolve around their cats. Here Donald Davis paints verbal portraits of two very different women in his life who shared a fiercely unshakable sense of priorities. It was simply understood that the cats...

Donald Davis was born into a southern Appalachian mountain world rich in stories. He grew up listening to his father and his Uncle Frank tell stories of their boyhood, all the while taking in the details of his own childhood experience. These stories...

Learning to drive occasions emotions ranging from reasonable caution to unbridled terror. Learning under the watchful eye of one's spouse is an added challenge; undertaking the task with anxious children in the back seat can only heighten the...

"It was the forty-second year she had taught fourth grade," and the A's through GR's were thinking that Miss Daisy had probably seen her better days. A mouse entered the classroom through an open door while the frail figure of a teacher stood before...

Some folks just prefer to stay home. You know them - whole families who politely decline invitations because they don't spend money on fancy clothes, don't care for "small talk". And they certainly don't dance.They're just not "party people". Meet an...

A winding highway; children fighting in the back seat; parents suggesting diversionary games and holding onto their own hopes and fears for the vacation ahead. It's not an uncommon scene. But it is Donald Davis's genius that turns a lackluster family...

Storyteller Donald Davis had a very sensible mother. She had a pretty good idea what boys would do, so she was always on the lookout. As Davis later learned, always being on the lookout is what mamas do. His vigilant but gentle mother gave her son...

If you have never ridden a mule along a 48-inch wide trail whose ledge drops off, in places, 700 feet to the Colorado River, straight down, you may have difficulty picturing the temporary insanity that leads otherwise responsible adults to sign away...

When Donald Davis walked into his 45th high-school reunion, he had two startling visions. The first was that the only signage he saw read, WELCOME HARLEY RIDERS.After discovering that he and his classmates would be sharing space with the bikers, Davis...

This is a set of three stories about trouble with little brothers, especially mine. One is the story of the haircut he badly needed, and so I gave it to him. One is the story of getting permanently fired as his babysitter. The third is the story of...