Famed Storyteller Chess Lay Tells Tall Tales of Escalante

Different ones say that my ability to tell stories comes natural, for my father, Frank Lay, could tell tall tales from morning till night and never run out. Here's an example of one of the 'taller' tales he loved to tell: 'Why, the first time I come into Escalante, I wuz ridin a mountain lion, holdin a bobcat under each arm, and usin a rattlesnake for a quirt when some mean sombitch run me outa town!'

Or take the time that I hopped a ride with the mail truck and rode as far as Junction, where the Trailways bus made a stop. My end destination was potato country up in Idaho, where I was gonna make a bundle o' money sortin spuds. But discoverin all too soon that this job required makin far too many decisions, I spent what little money I'd made workin there and bought a return ticket down to Junction, from where I rode the mail truck back to Skyhoopie, a nickname we locals often use in place of Escalante. Having had a bit of time to come up with a statement to impress the folks, I entered the house as usual without knocking and found pa and ma sitting at the kitchen table sippin a cup o' coffee. Assuming the sorriest expression I could muster in the spur of the moment, I said melodramatically, 'I'm sick at heart and have come home to die.'

'The hell you have,' Frank said. 'You've come home to eat!'

Ma had just taken two apple pies out of the oven, and she and pa wuz a waitin for 'em to cool down enough so they could have a piece. When the tantalizing aroma of them pies hit my nostrils, I grabbed me a spoon and ate a round piece, which is to say I finished off a whole pie.

Turnin to ma, pa said, 'Well, Maggie, it looks to me like ol' Chess is here to stay for a while. As near as I can tell, he plans to get fattened up before he dies!'

Just in case you're not aware, Escalante (formerly Potato Valley) was founded in the late 1870s by Mormon pioneers. James Schow brought the first team and wagon over the Escalante Mountain, which is 20 miles west of town. His brother Andrew, who served as Mormon bishop for some 33 years, was a polygamist---actually a bigamist---for he had two wives at the same time, and these ladies got along famously. Quite a number of brethren and sisters wuz in this initial group, and of course others gradually followed. All of the older folks said that the grass was clear up to a horse's belly and that the Crik (actually the Escalante River) was narrow enough to jump across.

Long about 1886 another bigamist, Napoleon Bonaparte Roundy, otherwise known as N. B. Roundy or 'Pole,' brought the first sheepherd into the Escalante country. He also brought the town's first piano, and practically every evening young folks would head for Pole's place and congregate around the piano to sing.

Course, with the introduction of sheep into the country, it wasn't too many years 'fore the summer ranges up on the mountain wuz overgrazed, and this resulted in humongous floods that came barrelin down from mountain heights, dislodging thousands of tons of good top soil and creating a ghastly sight along the river's path. Consequently, the raising of sheep in the Escalante area had to be outlawed, so most of the sheepmen sold their stock and bought cattle instead. Cattle tend to be much kinder to the terrain than sheep, for sheep not only eat the grass per se; they also pull up the roots and eat them. Hence the erosion that caused the terrible floods. Years later a song that could pass as the sheepherder's theme song became right popular: 'There'll Never Be Another You [Ewe]!'

When the pioneers first came into the valley, they were astounded at the many 'tublers' (wild potatoes) growing on top of the ground. So putting two and two together, they called the place Potato Valley, which name stuck until some of the early brethren had a chance conversation with A. H. Thompson and his three partners from one of John Wesley Powell's surveying teams. 'Gentlemen,' Thompson said, 'we've just finished surveying the Escalante River from its starting point up on the Escalante Mountain to the west and all the way through its meanderings down to the Colorado River. And since the Escalante River runs right through your little community, why don't you do the logical thing by naming the town Escalante?'