From the WNIN Tri State Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James, and this is Two Main Street.

Our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, a prolific storyteller, learning and listening to tales from family, friends and passers by while growing up in southern Indiana.

From the fence post to the fireside, young Abe absorbed the skills of spinning a good yarn.

Historians say Lincoln enjoyed telling stories and jokes throughout his life.

Historians say he fought his melancholy and depression by sharing a good laugh Lincoln, like the account of Ethan Allen's visit to England after the Revolutionary War, some Brits taunted the war hero, saying Redcoats hung a portrait of George Washington in the outhouse.

Well, Lincoln recalled, it was Ethan Allen who got the last laugh, saying nothing could make a Brit poop quicker.

Than the sight of General Washington.

I love that Lincoln story.

Of course, Lincoln also was was a dad.

Father of four boys.

Among his quotes about children, teach the children so it will not be necessary to teach the adults.

A child is a person who is going to carry on what we have started.

The fate of humanity is in our children's hands.

Tradition of Hoosier storytelling lives on and storytelling.

Arts of Indiana is a nonprofit that promotes the art of storytelling by creating opportunities to showcase these talented performers who both entertain and inspire us.

My guest is author, songwriter, early childhood educator and storyteller Mary Jo Huff.

So welcome to Two Main Street.

Mary Jo.

And I understand you always travel with a peeper in your pocket.

Is that correct?

I always have a peeper in my pocket.

So what is a peeper peeper?

Is a little set of eyeballs that you can put on your finger.

I use my tall man finger and I put them on there and your hand becomes a puppet automatically.

So when you put those on, it doesn't even matter if it's adults.

They'll look at you like, Oh, what is that?

And they'll ask, and then it opens the door for you to say, Oh my gosh, I'm a peeper.

Let me tell you a little story.

And children are fascinated by that hand puppet.

Like you're not even connected to it.

So you grabbed their attention right away.

Right away.

And that's that's the key.

And that's the key.

You got to start off, right?

OK. Now, storytelling, you say with a snap clap wiggle and giggle.

Is that correct?

Yeah, I do.

I have a CD.

I have several CDs.

But my last CD is called Snap, Clap, Wiggling, Giggle.

And in the early childhood world, probably CDs will go by the wayside because now they can get on CD-baby they can get on Spotify and all those places, iTunes and get a song and pick the song they want for $0.99 versus buying a CD.

But these were put together for early childhood educators.

The CD is full of just fun, bouncy things to do.

And I recorded that with a young lady who's a professor at Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Tennessee, who's now moving to Nashville to work at a different university.

So her background and mine have crossed for many years, but I'm her momma's age.

And so we did this with just a passion and we spread the word about that, you know, across the United States.

Mm hmm.

Now, you take this show on the road.

I know you've been to many states and workshops, conferences.

So what's your travel schedule like?

Well, now I've become a virtual queen.

It's like I have some contracts in 2022.

But in those contracts is a is a column that if they have to go virtual, I'm prepared to go virtual.

Mm hmm.

And so my January conference in Texas, which I've gone to for many years, it's just gone virtual.

So that means that I change things a little bit, you know?

Yeah.

How do you how do you do how do you rework that act?

Well, I have an office that has puppets in the background.

You know, I bought one of those.

Put them up on the thing behind you.

So you look intelligent.

Well, I didn't work.

I didn't look very good.

And they were hard to put up and took a lot of time.

So one day I looked in my office and I thought you know, this is me.

The colors, the books.

I have shelves of books and a puppet tree behind me.

And so I don't apologize for that anymore.

People that know me just that's what it is.

I love color.

And so I. I use that office when I do virtual I have a camera app on my computer.

I tried the laptop, but, you know, when people do the laptop, it's sitting down, and sometimes all you see is their nostrils.

When their mouth moves, it's kind of a little scary sometimes.

So I bought a I bought a camera and put it on top of my computer.

Even though I'm an older person, I have two big screens on my desk and a fast computer down there on the floor.

That wonderful man in Newburgh takes care of and keeps me running all the time.

So that camera scans the whole room and I make sure everything is accessible, that I can put my hand on it to the right, my hand on it to the left, or if it's on the floor, I can pick it up And most of the time, those workshops are anywhere from one hour to 6 hours.

6 hours has a lunch break and we're getting ready to do a two hour in Lubbock, Texas.

And my friend in Tennessee will be on the screen.

I will be on the screen and we won't be anywhere near each other, but we can pull that off.

We did.

We did.

I put together last night and then we'll do a practice and we'll run it tight and it's for 2 hours.

Who's the audience?

Well, this audience will be early childhood educators in Lubbock, Texas, in January.

They'll be early childhood educators in Harris County and in it's near Pearland, Texas, which is south of Houston.

And then we go to West Virginia.

And I have some other contracts that are sitting there waiting for me to decide, can I do that?

So they they're going to take some information from you and bring it to their classrooms.

Yes.

That's the plan.

We hope that they take the one we're doing in Lubbock will be all about books.

And it's a poll.

We put up three books that we love, that we know, work with kids.

And in doing that, we explain why that book is important.

And we touch through all the anything that we know is good in early childhood, like bears and gardens, and each section has three books in it, and we read five books in that 2 hours, that's all.

And so because the rest of the time we're explaining and then we put activities that they can do with those books so that these early childhood people can go to the library and get that book.

It's free, get a library card people telling me how expensive books are that librarians love for you to call and say, my librarian, Miss Linda in Newberg.

I say, Linda, I need ten books in Los Angeles, and I'll send her a list.

And she might say, We only have six, but I can get them in from the lending library.

Could take a couple of days.

So you have to be ahead of the game.

You can't wait till the day you want it.

Mm hmm.

And it's an awesome thing to work with the library and for the kids to know that that's a library book We had a basket at our center.

I had a center several years ago.

I've retired, and we had 115 three, four and five year olds.

So you better be on the ball because they could be in charge real quick.

So you had to stay ahead of them.

And I found that reading wonderful books with those kids led to telling a wonderful story.

So sometimes I would read, sometimes I would tell.

And I actually started doing that because one day I was reading "The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything" by Linda Williams.

I'd read it, I don't know how many times, and for some reason I put the book down and I finished the story and the difference and the children's attention when my body language showed that story was amazing.

That was the first story that I just told without any book in my hand that when the light bulb went off, that's it.

It was like, yes.

And I had a hat on that day.

I always wore a hat at story time.

I just have a straw hat and I buy those rings at the at the craft store.

When they're 75% off, you can get a fall ring, a spring ring, a summer ring, winter ring and just drop it over that hat and it changes the whole vision.

And I did it seasonal and so that's how I put things together.

I tell people that you don't have to do it by the month, by the week, by the day, do it seasonally.

So you're free to reach in that suitcase or that basket and pull out what you need at that given day.

And so when I when I told that story, I thought, boy, the next year I'm on tell that on my flannel board.

And I had a storytelling apron that I developed here in Evansville, Indiana.

And it was it's now sold for around the world.

I don't sell it anymore.

It was too much for me to deal with all that all that stuff, that selling and buying and all that.

And so the big catalogs have those things now.

And I just refer people to those.

But I've worked in 47 states and three countries telling stories, and if it wasn't for Covid, I'd have knocked off those other states.

I already had flights to two of them and had to get that all canceled.

So my goal is to be able to get to Montana and to get to Hawaii and to get to Idaho those are my three that are left.

I was a holdout.

OK, are you a native of this area, Mary Jo?

Born, raised here, raised in Darmstadt, married a boy from here, and we have three children and he was in the United States Marine Corps.

So that was that.

That was a shock to me because I lived in the middle of the United States.

And your husband was in the Marine Corps.

He was OK. And so we traveled a little bit those four years.

In fact, we moved 11 times in four years.

And and had three children in four years.

You know, I was good Catholic girl had those three children.

It was like, OK, God, you've put this on my plate.

We've got to go a different direction.

And because of Vietnam, he had been in Vietnam one session, 13 months, and I assumed if he signed over, we would stay in the States.

And we found out that wasn't true.

He had been shipped out within two months.

So we got out of the Marine Corps and came home and bounced here and there a little bit.

My mom and dad lived here, my sister lived here and my brother lived here.

And so it was home and I've never found another place I wanted to live.

I love to go to the mountains.

My children know that.

I go to the beach a lot, but I'm not a sand person, so I don't care if I'm down there in the sand or not.

But those mountains sitting by, those creeks rumbling through those mountains you can go there and write too.

I've actually rented a cabin there and stayed one week and wrote a book.

So it's a peaceful place.

But Evansville is home.

But I'm in Newburgh.

You know, the people on the west side.

I went to school at Mater Dei and the people on the west side, when I first told them where I was going to live, said, Oh my gosh, I had to pack a lunch to get there.

And I still laugh about that.

No passport.

Yes.

Yes.

And so now, you know, they get on the Lloyd and if they get rid of the few lights that are still on the Lloyd because I've told you how many states I've been in, I've driven in the worst traffic in Texas, in my opinion.

I've been to L.A. and I've driven in that traffic, too, and we don't miss that.

By much with our stoplights here.

You just stop and you think that person in front of you needs to go.

But they haven't pushed on the accelerator yet because they're looking at their phone.

So pet peeve there.

Yeah.

So where did you get your education besides Mater Dei?

Oh, I went to University of Evansville, actually.

I went to school for almost three years to be a radiologic technologist, and I got that little pin.

I worked at Wellman Clinic, and it was kind of an on the job training there.

You were just thrown into a darkroom immediately and learned how to dip those old films.

So when I go in now, I see the ads, I see the computers they get to use.

And, you know, there's your leg up on the screen already.

I'm amazed.

Oh, yeah.

But after having my three children to go back to work full time was not in in my wheelhouse.

I stayed home with the kids.

I didn't find any thing that was more important to me.

So I had many, many, many many jobs.

Paid my dues, though, as a rag tag for many 30 years.

I paid those dues and I did the training that you had to do to keep that little pin, and it actually paid off.

I graduated from modern day, then went to USI and got my early childhood degree at USI.

But that was after the kids were out of school.

In fact, my my son was in college.

My daughter was oldest daughter was in college, the other was in high school.

And I thought, I'm going to go back and take some of those courses and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

Since I owned the center and was grandfathered in, I already knew all the stuff they wanted us to know.

So I, I felt very comfortable doing that and had some wonderful, wonderful professors just we had lots of fun and they liked to pick on me because I was an alternative student.

That means I was older.

Oh, isn't that what they call no alternative?

Student?

Yes.

Co No.

Obviously, you read to your children.

Read to my children.

They all had library cards early.

They each had their own bag.

And yes, I took them to the library every week for storytime when it was down on the river in the Newburgh Library was down on the river then.

And it was just part of our our whole system at our house.

And when they became good readers, then they picked their own books and they each got to pick five books each time that we went and they had had their bags had to keep them in their bags.

So we didn't get mixed up in the household.

And, you know, I have, I have eight grandkids and one great grandson and every one of them get a book every year.

And I had my youngest up in Indianapolis.

He's ten.

Here's why you call me, because he doesn't have a phone to text me yet.

They call me Dodie, Grandma Dodie.

I found a book.

I'll say, OK, give it to me.

Yeah, but there's three of them.

Grandma Dodie, you got enough credit card money to get three of them?

I'll say, yep, and I'll have them delivered.

And I love it because they know if there's one thing I will do for them, it is order a book, and they're prolific readers.

They're awesome kids and awesome students.

So it has paid off.

And the great grandson at my house when he comes, the book fairy came.

So there's always books for him to take home.

He gets to keep them.

But then I found out if I put eight books up on the table and he can only pick two, it is a half an hour.

He goes around the table and he touches them and he looks at them and he can't decide.

And he'll say, Could I please have three?

I'll say, No, just two.

Oh, and it's hard for me I have to turn my back because I want to laugh.

But you know what?

He finally picks out whatever two he wants to take home, you know?

So it's it's fun when he walks in the door because he knows.

Has the book very been here?

I say, Yep, the basket's over there now.

I as an educator, have you noticed the impact of COVID-19 on early childhood education?

Well, I think the restrictions that the caregivers have and the teachers have with the kids is hard because wearing a mask and not being able to see a facial expression when you're speaking or when you're talking I think that's very hard for the kids.

I don't know if the masks have really bothered them or not because they put their mask on and go to the grocery.

They put their mask on and they go wherever mom's going to go.

They go to Chuck-E-Cheese put it on, go in, take it off.

I think for them, it's just part of their life, you know, when they don't have to do that, if that comes in our world, that be a surprise to them.

I think learning has changed so much because people rely so much on electronics.

And I love electronics.

Don't get me wrong.

I, I, I love it all.

I have a smartphone down here.

It's got six camera holds on the back.

I don't even know how to use three of them right now, but I'll learn the other two.

There's an advantage for that sometimes.

Like on whiteboards, they can actually push a button and pull up a book and read that book, and the page turns on the whiteboard, but it's not the same unless they put a book in their hands.

And they turn that book.

For example, "Chicks Go Wild".

I read this weekend to my great grandson, and when you got ready to turn the page, it says, "chicks go wild!".

He got so excited.

So when I got all done, he said, Read it again.

I said, Well, Grandma has to do something first.

And I just turned and walked away and I watched him.

He opened that book.

He went "chicks go wild!"

and he can't read.

He can't read words yet.

Then he turned the rest of the pages till he found another page.

It said, "Chicks go wild", "run wild".

I think it is.

So I don't want people to lose that one on one personality.

Between you and the kids, and I want them to anticipate what you're going to do next.

It's hard to say sometimes to that new generation.

You better be one step ahead of those kids, because if you're not, they're going to get ahead of you.

That's right.

Because they're very smart today.

They're smart always.

But there's a different kind of smart today.

These kids can get a phone and they can get on that phone and do things at a very young age.

So, yeah, it has to affect families and kids and our whole world's affected.

So now tell me about storytelling.

Indiana sounds like a very interesting group of folks who who belong to this group well, Story Arts of Indiana is handled by a lady named Ellen Munds.

She's the director there, and it's actually national and international.

They bring tellers into the Indianapolis area that once a month there's a new teller that comes in.

And, you know, there's some famous storytellers.

Donald Davis is probably one of the oldest, smartest, famous, most famous storytellers.

And Bill Lapp, he's funny.

He's he's out of West Virginia.

And he just he's an old preacher guy, and he just lays you on the floor.

And there are people that I've actually gotten in my car with a friend and driven up there and listened to and came back home since 69 is in.

And there are new tellers all over.

But that story, Arts of Indiana keeps storytelling alive.

In the state of Indiana.

And very important, almost every state has a liaison and they moved from Jonesborough, Tennessee, to Kansas City, Missouri.

And now the main storytelling hub is out of Kansas City, Missouri.

And it was difficult for them to make that move, but they did, and we support them in that they have a conference every year, which is powerful.

There is a professor, Margaret Reed MacDonald, Dr. Margaret Reed MacDonald from North Vernon, Indiana.

Mm hmm.

And so we became buddies because of our Indiana connection but she lived most of her life in the state of Washington.

And she is a famous folklorist with a degree from Indiana University.

And she says that very proudly, she has told stories in more countries than anybody I know.

And just a sweet, sweet, fun lady.

Any time she's talented, Mary Jo, I'll sit there and listen to her.

So you pick up some tips when you listen to these famous storytellers.

Oh, absolutely.

You get you get body language you get outfits.

Some of them wear wild outfits, and some of them are very plain kind of things.

You just see their stage presence.

You see how they can move with a mic.

I don't use a hand mic because I'm too active and I have to have a I have to have a lavalier for me to get anything done because I'm busy.

I'm always busy with stuff.

So.

And you appeal to audiences of all ages.

A recent example, a trip to the Indiana History Center where you premiered "50 Yard Line Mama in Row 20", a football mom watching her son play for the Indiana Hoosiers and of course Bill Mallory the that was the coach of the Hoosiers from 1984 to 1996 the late Bill Mallory is I guess he was a a featured protagonist in this presentation yeah kind of a big part yeah.

Tell me a little bit about the "50 yard line mama".

Well when I was accepted to do a story in Indianapolis for the story arts it is funded by a gentleman who it has to be a story from Indiana.

And they preserve, they want something that is real.

Well I had a lot of stories from Indiana that are real from you know driving a boat on the Ohio River and not really knowing how to drive it.

And they were police were looking for me and I had to hide that boat because I didn't know what I was doing to lots of stories.

But this one was close to my heart.

And so I sent it up there, a 50 yard line.

Mama wrote 20 best seat in the house I didn't know that people didn't know about football.

I watched football on Saturday and Sunday.

I watch it when I'm cooking.

Now we have it on two TVs because I know what they're doing on the field.

And most of my friends that we were acquainted with for all those years, they also knew about football.

So "50 yard line Mama" came about because my son was a walk on and I knew it was Bill Mallory's first year.

You know, they had every accolade they could have for him about him coming on board and what he was going to do for the Hoosiers.

And the first year we were 0 and 11.

So you know, there are people including our family wondering what are we doing here?

Well, he came to you from Colorado.

Well, he'd been, he'd been in Illinois, he'd been in Colorado.

And we went to many schools that had contacted Joe his senior year.

We didn't expect to have to go hunting, but the ball got dropped.

I'll be gentle with that.

The ball got dropped and we didn't drop it.

So we decided Joe did that.

He said, I'm going to play football somewhere.

I said, OK, well, where are we going to do that?

So we hauled off to UK nice, nice people, met us there, sat me in a chair, took him off.

When they came back, they said, We're really surprised that Joe is as big as he is and as fast as he is.

We were told he couldn't play at this level.

Well, that fired me up just a little bit.

Got Mama mad.

Yeah, yeah.

Got me determined, probably more than anything else.

So then we went to we went to Murray State.

That's where we went next.

Nice, nice.

People down there too.

In fact, he told me to go over and sign Joe up.

UK had made to go sign Joe up and I wrote a check about the schools.

Now my husband worked in a factory and writin' those checks was not a smart thing to do because I was going to have to go get a loan for 90 days.

Now.

Marsh Plan Marsh Plan's gone now.

But I got that loan for 90 days.

Same as cash.

And so we came home and Joe said, Mama, I don't want to go down there.

But my parents had a camp at Barkley Lake and I thought, Oh, how cool we just stay at the camp?

But that didn't work.

And then a D2 school did come to our house and offered him a full ride, but that coach said to him before he left, I would love to have you on my roster.

I've watched you play, but you can play better than what I can offer.

You didn't sign those papers then we went to Ohio State because Joe had been to camp there and they had contacted us a couple of times.

They contacted the school too.

So we get in the car and in this story I had an old yellow mercury that I had to put oil behind my seat because it burned oil all the time.

We went to Ohio State again, write a check, get that boy register.

We want him over here as a walk.

On.

Nobody had any scholarships left.

By the time we did this in June, they already popped scholarships early on.

So on the way home, Joe says to me, I think I'd like to go to IU.

Well, I screamed at him, What do you mean?

We've gone to all these schools and you can't decide what you want to do.

I said, You're going to have to contact them.

He did Monday called him.

They said, Come up on Wednesday.

So we did.

Now, we'd never been to a big college except the ones we drove to on this little run.

And so we got to IU and parked on the west side of Assembly Hall, and we walked up the steps and when we went in the door, there was a man coming at us and he said, Can I help you?

And Joe said, I'm here to see Coach Bill Mallory.

He said, Well, here, boy stuck his hand out and shook his hand.

And then he shook my hand and I'm very particular about the way people shake my hand and the way I shake back.

And that was a special handshake.

So anyway, he took us on a tour of the campus, and a little white snub-nose bus, and there were two other kids and parents there.

And we rode in this bus and they went around telling us what the buildings were and all this.

And then they stopped.

There was a football scrimmage up on the hill, and when they stopped, the parents all got out of the bus and so did the kids.

And I thought, I am not going to walk up that hill.

And so I said, It's OK, I'll wait right here.

And I did wait.

But when they came back, this daddy got on the bus.

And in the story I tell you all about the britches he had on because they were them loudest plaid pants with yellow stripes I've ever seen.

And he gets back on the bus and he said, Are you Mrs. Huff?

And I said, Yes, well, how did that coach up there know Joe?

I say, Well, I don't know.

I wasn't up there.

I didn't know who it was.

I said, Ask him when he comes back.

He did.

And Joe said, All right, he knew me because we played them and we beat him.

And that's how he remembered me.

And the man just looked at him.

Then he looked at me and he put his head down he never said another word on that little trip.

Well coach had told us that we were going to go across to the football stadium and meet Coach Andy Kincannon who was still is a friend, a good friend.

And we went down those big steps.

It was like they went down two blocks.

I had to hold on to the rail and we got there and the little girl showed us down to Kincannon office.

He shook Joe's hand.

He shook my hand, and he had the longest fingers, his hand wrapped around my wrist.

And he had a beautiful, beautiful smile.

And he was an Afro-American man.

And that smile took up his whole face.

And we sat down and they talked.

And I can tell you to this day, I don't even know what they talked about because I didn't understand a lot of it.

And at the end, he said, Joe, look at that chart right there on my wall.

Where do you think you can play on that chart?

And Joe stood up and put his finger there and he said, I can play right there.

He had coach laugh so hard to come out of his chair.

He was just laughing and laugh.

And he said, You think you play Apache for IU?

He said, You're too skinny.

Joe looked at him and said, "But I'm fast" and so he stood up and he said, I'll talk over talk.

Talk to Coach Mallory and talk.

Talk this over and we'll let you know.

He didn't have me write a check.

He didn't offer him to be a walk on.

And I thought, well, this was the bust.

We're going to be going to Ohio State.

We went home and three days later there was a letter came in the mail, and coach Bill Mallory's return address was in the upper left hand corner.

I wanted to open that thing so bad it laid there for about 4 hours and it was killing not to steam it open.

I know how to do that, but I didn't.

I left it there and Joe opened it, and they offered him to come as a preferred walk on there.

There were no scholarships left.

He said, That's where I'm going to go to school.

I said, OK.

So then a letter came and told us what they had to be there, told us what to bring, et cetera.

ET cetera.

So we go up there and that's when where Brewster's ice cream is today in Bloomington.

There was a hotel there with a big restaurant, and that's where they housed the freshmen when they came in.

So we delivered our kids and there were lots of parents there, but he wasn't recruited, so I didn't know anybody.

These mamas were a boo hoo and and a crying in the parking lot and a holding on to these kids.

And I thought, goodness gracious, that wasn't my way of doing things.

I was tickled to death.

He's going to get an education.

Sure.

So we did all the things we had to do, and then we went to drop them off at the restaurant and went in the door, and there was a little alcove.

And Bill Mallory was standing there slap Joe on the back and said, Glad you're here, boy.

They turned around, shake my hand, and he gave me that shake again.

And this is the true story.

I turned his hand over and I said, You take care of my boy or I'll take him to Ohio State.

Now, I had no idea that he had been at Ohio State as a coach, and he had an avid desire to beat them.

I had no I had no oh.

So for many years he told that story in the Big Ten Network all over the Big Ten Network.

I was asked one time if it bothered me.

I said, nope, it helped him get a recruit.

Nope, I don't care.

Now, Mary Jo Hough is my guest.

You're on Two Main Street.

You watched your son play high school ball.

Castle played at Castle he played in 1982 and they were the state champs and beat Hobart.

And I was, I was told after I told that story I got an email that they didn't call it Hobart, they called it Hobart.

Well, it spelled Hobart.

So down here we called it Hobart.

It might be Hobart at North, but it's Hobart down here.

So he had the credentials.

Definitely a state champion.

Well known across Indiana, playing in IU Bill Mallory.

Of course, he's been kind of, kind of like a complement to Bob Knight.

I've heard him described that way because Bob Knight, of course, you know, Bob Knight is Bob Knight.

But now Mallory was a bigger than life character too very much so he walked into a room.

Everybody knew he was there.

Definitely he was the winningest coach, I think, in IU football coach went to six bowl games.

Now, when you might say, oh, yeah, your son was there, he had a good career, I guess, and IU, he had a wonderful career at IU.

And, you know, talking about Bill Mallory, the one thing I think about him all the time is lock your jaw.

And I say that sometimes and I think about him.

He's gone now, but a big a big influence in our lives.

In the lives of probably most of the kids that played for him.

And Joe's Joe is there five years.

He had a leg break in his sophomore year.

A guy from Navy landed on him, but they dressed him the rest of those games with that spiral fracture.

And at Michigan, which is 106 people in a stadium and believe me, we don't get to sit on the 50 yard line.

We're stuck down on that five yard line.

And he told me, Mom, take your binocular if I take my tape off at my hands at halftime, you'll know I got my fifth year.

So, boy, I had them binoculars out.

He came and he moved to the end and he put his hands up and he took the tape off of his hands.

And I knew we had a fifth year and he didn't, he didn't play after that.

In fact, I had to go to Ohio State and scab me a ticket out of the parking lot to get in the game because he couldn't dress for that game.

It was they.

His group beat all Big Ten schools in their time there.

They're the only football team that's ever done that.

Wow.

And so they brag on that all the time.

Sure.

I think one of the the things that hangs really tight with me is when those boys, they're called mouse men, when those boys will get together and they do in a in a group where they lean over and they sing Indiana, Indiana, Indiana, we're all for you.

It's just I have goosebumps right now that will never, ever leave their lives.

And so, yeah, he was important.

Now you're you're talk to this group, the Indiana History Center Group.

How was it received the 50 yard line.

Oh mama row 20 my compliments that have come back that the gentleman that sponsors that scholarship there has sent me a couple of emails with comments from people.

It probably was a very different kind of story than they normally do but the the report that I've gotten with people that were there and the compliments have been good and so I will have that story will be written and they actually publish the stories from this year through the Indiana storytelling arts.

It's a it's a big deal too.

It's a big deal to get to do that.

I've been doing this a long time with three, four and five year olds and not just them, but with the people that work with them.

That's who I like to get to.

I like to get to their gut, you know?

So this for me was a change, and I did it in four quarters.

And so each quarter, 15 minutes but the last quarter on a real football game can be 2 hours and so I promised them I would be 15 minutes and I have something in front of me.

This is mine.

This is a necklace.

You see this many people from our time there have this necklace.

I knew no one.

So when I was talking to somebody, I didn't know if I was a coach's wife and I would say something wrong.

I didn't know if they were on offense or defense so when I made this, the coaches wives had cream colored strings and the defense had red and the offense had maroon.

So when I gave these out free, I took them in Ziploc bags and put them up and knew I was talking to offense coaches wives.

Oh, but you see, I cut these out with bandsaw and then I cut out a football and a helmet right there.

So we started out with three pieces.

And then when we beat Purdue 52-7, I had to make a Purdue bucket then I needed to balance it.

So I did a stadium then.

These are two of our bowl games, the all-American Bowl in the Peach Bowl.

And then this was Joe's last game, the Liberty Bowl, but he was MVP of the Liberty Bowl and for the football team that year.

And so and then these were two other bowl games that I got to go to because Bill Mallory said I could come.

No, my son didn't play in those, but Bill Mallory said I could come.

So I went, Now you're sitting on the 50 yard line and this presentation highs and lows and you talk about those well highs when you lose a game that's a low and that first season 0-11 that is a low.

So that was a tough, tough season for you sitting on the 50 yard line very tough but you know when we beat Ohio State at Ohio State you know what the headline was next day "The Darkest Day" and actually a little tiny story I was many years later in Columbus for early childhood thing and we were at a little restaurant, a German restaurant and we heard a radio show.

Well, I went around the corner and it was the radio show before the I.U.

Ohio State game that Saturday.

This was Friday.

And I stood there for a minute and I listened and they were just jabberin back and forth.

And when they took a break, I said, but there was "The Darkest Day".

Well, this man came down off of that podium he was at and he said, How did you know that?

I said, cause number 35 was there.

He said, Joe Huff, I said, how did you know?

He said, I don't forget em'.

And that things like that are just, at Michigan.

Joe Michigan was at IU, would not beat Michigan.

Bill Mallory's kids went to Michigan.

We didn't beat Michigan.

And going up there and sitting in that huge stadium, you know, IU's not that big, but that night it was pouring down rain.

It was dark outside.

They turned on the lights for the first time at the IU stadium.

And we were ahead of Michigan.

And Joe got that quarterback three times and pulled that towel off at quarterback's belt and he waved it in the air I can still see it.

Mallory used it for recruiting for many years and it today he get a penalty, I'm sure.

But, you know, then it was like and we beat Michigan on our own turf and, you know, tailgating was and friends just got together.

We just all brought stuff and we met and parents, we met very nervously before many games and we would tailgate and talk about a game or talk about anything.

It was the camaraderie of those people that the whole team, the offense, the defense, the people from California and Hawaii and New York, they weren't just from Indiana.

There were very few of us from Indiana.

I think there were three on the team at that time, maybe four at that time.

And and there was a wonderful lady from Chicago.

And when I first saw her, I thought, Oh, dear God, I have to figure out how to not be her friend because she would holler, Get that quarterback.

Did you hear me?

Get the quarterback?

Not exactly in those words.

She was very, very vocal.

And I found out her son was on the offense.

So if they got the quarterback, then the offense got to go back on the field.

So she was always hollered.

But after she met me, she'd hollar Huff.

She's hollar, Huff get the quarterback.

But, you know, she's passed on, but I can still see her in that red sweatsuit that she wore in her red high tops shoes and her red scarf and her red hat.

And so you just do those things.

How did you learn to be a puppeteer?

Well, I'm not really the normal puppeteer.

I belong to Puppeteers of America and and I've done workshops for them, but I play with puppets versus being a marionette or and I cannot "vent" I cannot I'm not a ventriloquist.

I took classes.

I went to Ohio, drove home I cannot swallow the B and the D, so I you know what?

I work with the little kids, and they don't care for my mouth is moving, because they believe that that puppet is actually talking to them.

And if that puppet knows their name, oh, my goodness, those kids just light up, even though it's connected on my hand and even though it's me saying the words, they really believe that that puppet is talking to them.

Who's your favorite puppet or do you have a favorite?

We have a lot.

Who's in your cart?

There.

That's Gerti.

Gerti.

Gerti's a goose.

Well, let's see.

Let's meet Gerti.

Gerti gets to go with me just about every place and Gerti has about 25 outfits.

Oh, she does?

Yes.

I got on my favorite today.

You see, I like to get dressed up.

Well, Gerti, you look very nice today.

What are you.

What are you wearing?

Gerti?

Well, I just got on a little, little green outfit and I got me a flower.

You see that flower?

I love flowers.

So we put sunflowers and roses and all kinds.

I even got dandelions.

I like dandelions.

There's a book about dandelion.

So I use that book.

So, Gerti, what do you do for fun?

I hang out with Mary Jo.

Oh, you do?

When did you guys meet?

Well, she found me?

You found me in a store, and she told em', I'us too expensive, but I don't know what she did, but she got out a piece of plastic, and I went home with her, so it's wonderful.

You know, I got some cousins out there somewhere, but we lost track, and they don't have me in ancestry.com.

I tell you, I tried.

Now, do you like little children, Gerti?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.

I do.

And I tell them stories most of the time.

I tell them, "Mary Jo's going to tell stories."

You see, she wears hats and glasses and carries peepers in her pocket and dresses those papers up.

And so I go sit back down while Mary Jo tells that story, but I introduce it, and then I come back out and say, "WHOOH!

there's a good one."

Now, Mary Jo has other friends besides Gerti who who are some of her other friends?

Well, I tell you what, I brought Gerti with me because she's my main.

puppet.

Gerti kind of get the show going.

Gerti gets it going and she closes it down.

She always says hello and she always says goodbye.

OK, once you get that routine, the children are they're not ready to go until she says it's time to go.

OK, so if you're really if you're really having fun with them and teaching them, you know, the visual literacy is a big deal.

And she is visual.

And so everything she does connects to literacy with these kids.

We sing songs and that's oral literacy.

And so people get into all these big line items that they want to test these kids on instead of doing the things that kids can connect with.

You know, these three, four and five year olds, they don't need to be tested.

A good early childhood educator knows immediately if a child's having a problem and can guide them.

In my lifetime here in Evansville, Easterseals has been a godsend for us.

We would be able to contact them and get children tested there and figure out what a problem might be.

And then they would tell us what we could do to help that child in our situation.

And if we had a situation that we couldn't handle or wasn't educated enough and they would guide us through that.

So everybody has to work together.

And that is a key that everybody works together.

But I have puppets, I have frog puppets, I have Caterpillar puppets.

I have in fact, I own about 83 puppets on a puppet pole at my house.

And if it's a season that I in the, in the fall when the Monarchs actually are late summer, early fall, people think they're going to do it in the spring.

I tell those early childhood people, you better be reading your science and that today, look, Google Google.com there's no reason anybody doesn't know this stuff.

You just ask Google and Google will give you an answer.

We didn't have that back in the old days.

We did books in fact, I got two of my books with me.

And books are outdated.

People aren't going to buy books anymore.

And the last one I did, I did in 2019.

So guess where that went on the shelf at my house and I'm actually giving them away.

I sent 500 to Houston, Texas, to a puppet guild and I'll give them away to anybody else that does something with puppets or storytelling because I'm not going.

I closed the store online basically, so I'm not selling them.

I just give them away it's out of my pocket, but they're important.

And so again, Google's their Pinterest.

Oh my goodness, these people don't have to have a brain anymore to figure out what to do.

Go to Pinterest and you can figure out an add to what you see there.

You know, I know you shared a story.

You went to a school or a center or something, and there was a teacher that told you all this.

This child just not going to not going to engage is not going to take part, just this person's this child's always off in the corner and doesn't get involved.

And you go, that's that's not going to happen here.

That's a challenge.

And you can get all these kids going if a teacher and this happens a lot.

This happens a lot here in Evansville, I wrote a grant and it was with the Indiana Arts Commission, and I wrote it because I've never written a grant.

And I'm sitting there and Covid and it went across one of my screens and I thought, I wonder what that is.

And River Towns Storytellers is a 501-C3 So I wrote that grant and we got $3,000.

So we did 21 storytelling events in Evansville through the On My Way Pre-K with Terry Green.

And we were at Culver and a group of the kids that came in Culver I knew were going to have a hard time sitting, but he put a pair of peppers on your hand and you just go and talk to that child personally.

And I said, I'm so glad you came today.

Oh my goodness, we're going to have a good time.

I got some music, you're ready and you got them because you talk to them and I start every program off with with some music.

And I have a song called "Children Fun", and I wrote the song and we, we sing that but you know what it does?

It crosses midline.

So when we cross that midline nine times in that song, we're activating both sides of their brain.

And so then they're going to sit for what's coming next because I've got them ready.

So doing those kinds of things, and that's what I want teachers to do.

Don't just expect because you said sit down they're going to sit down.

Give them a reason to want to sit down.

And, you know, early childhood educators,say this, they use that phrase, "criss-cross applesauce".

Well, you know, I eat applesauce.

I don't crisscross applesauce.

And I tell them all that and I'll say, think about what you're saying to them.

It just because it rhymes doesn't mean that that's what you should say.

And I know where that came from.

And so I find just telling the kids to sit on your bottom and row your legs up works just fine.

So that child that that teacher told you about, if you're animated and then I can direct things that direction where that child is I can if you got a whole group of them, but you could direct it right there.

And I have had teachers I'll never forget one in Pennsylvania.

She said, I can't believe he sat there.

I absolutely cannot believe it.

I said, You saw it, didn't you?

She said, I don't know how you did that.

I said, Did you see what I did?

I mean, it's common sense for me.

It's common sense, yes.

Now, some of your favorite stories that you tell are kind of different takes on some classics.

You got Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

You got a new take on that.

I had to take on that.

I guess my favorite is that that three billy-goats, though, because because the kids all look at me like, what are you saying?

But they don't say a word and and mine happens in a family room.

I don't say that it's under a bridge.

But when the goats get ready to go across the bridge, that old troll's says that the goats are going trip,trap,trip, trap across that bridge and that goat goes, I'm going to eat you for lunch.

And the first goat says, "Oh, well, why don't you wait?

My brother's coming, and he's right behind me.

He might taste better".

And so you let him go.

So it's a takeoff on that done in a different way.

And then at the end, of course, that that troll is bucked into the creek and they have to call 911 and the ambulance comes and picks up this goat and the kids laugh.

It doesn't matter.

You say 911, they laugh, pick it up, a goat and them and it's just again, it's a take off, but you can fracture those fairy tales.

There was a gentleman that wrote one a long, long time ago and I do it all the time.

"Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating an ice cream cone along came a spider and sat down beside her and she said, Hey, big boy, go get your own."

And so those things are funny for the kids.

Sure.

You know, but what's happening you're introducing language.

You're introducing all these things.

And I have a song called "Chicken Fun".

Paid my bills.

That song paid my bills for a while.

And then a professor got a hold of it in Doctor Pam Schiller down in Texas.

And she said, Oh, my gosh, Mary Jo, you've got the left to right correlation.

You got pathological connections, you got double sets, two numbers.

And she went, I said, and I did it for fun.

So you see all of those things.

If you know the educational benefit of that, fun what about the chicken story?

What is that all about?

The "Chicken Fun".

"Chicken Fun".

Is it "Chicken one and chicken two?

Let's I'll do the chicken chew" and then the kids have the motions that go with that.

And we do ba,ba,ba,bah,ba,ba,ba,ba,bah.

And we do that repeatedly.

It's repeated after each one and they have to have chicken wings so they have their thumbs in their armpits and they're involved with that.

And that one also crosses midline.

Everything that we do crosses that midline and and the kids love it.

I put a chicken head on my head.

I have chicken socks and chicken shoes and a chicken apron.

So I look ridiculous, seriously, to an adult I look ridiculous.

But to the kids, I don't it's like, OK, and and how do I get all that stuff?

Well, somebody sent me an email said, Mary Jo, there's chicken socks on sale.

Da da da da da da.

That.

And lady made me a chicken apron from Nashville, Indiana.

Mm hmm.

And that chicken hat, I was on the highway in Ohio.

And I pulled it up online.

This man sold these chicken hats.

So I and fortunately for me, I bought 100 chicken hats.

So then I got to sell chicken hats.

So I sold them for what they cost me.

I don't make any money.

Were you inspired by the chicken dance at the Fall Festival?

Oh, yeah.

I was funny.

Anything?

The word chicken?

Yes.

And there's an agent that was just on on a webinar that I was on, and he loves chickens.

He would never publish the book I would love to have published, but I'm going to send him that anyway because he loves chickens.

Now, do the kids do they make their own puppets?

Sometimes.

Do they come up with their own ideas of what they want to see?

Or do you if you give them that time, if you put the stuff out on the table today, they have a new word for this.

It's called Loose Parts.

There's people making a fortune on the words loose parts.

And I get tickled because we had boxes of loose parts and if you put stuff on a table and let them go, don't do it for them.

Don't tell them what to do.

Don't tell them what color the marker is and you give them a shape and you say, We're going to make a puppet today.

If you can find anything on this table you want to glue down, will glue it on there and we let them do it.

And most of the time for them, I put them on a stick versus I have done footie puppets with them.

Not socks, but puppets.

The footies give better and that put not putting a thing on a stick, a bird on a stick.

We you can make up anything about a story if the kids put that on a stick and letting them tell you what that is.

Now we got language development.

So you're learning from the kids too sometimes.

Oh yeah.

Sometimes they say things that mom dad might not want them to say.

And I always went ahead.

I had so many kids, but I knew every parent, every grandparent, anybody picked the kids up.

So we didn't have video back then and we didn't have my camera on my phone that I could just real quick today, there's a lot of communication between early childhood people and the families because they can put it up on a website, a private website, or a private Facebook place, and they can communicate with the parents.

Some of the fun things that happened.

We didn't have that I had to call them.

And I'd have to say, You're not gonna believe what Sarah said.

Today.

But listen, I got to tell you, just so you know that we now know and it was Mama was pregnant and nobody else knew but that little girl knew and she told us.

And so the mama said, I guess I have to tell the world now, is it probably because Sarah's in here blasting it?

Just those things that knowing all those parents, you know, and it comes back to you, for instance, three weeks ago, I was invited to a 60th birthday party for a lady that worked with me for a long time.

Her daughter invited me.

Her daughter went to our preschool.

I get their way out the country, and the daughter pulls up to this table and she said, I want to introduce this lady to these people that I didn't know.

And she said, this was my principal at preschool.

And I said, I wasn't a principal.

I taught class.

She said, I know, but I thought you were and she looked at me.

I said, Do you still know our school song?

I said, Well, of course I wrote it.

She said, Let's sing it far.

Well, she knew every word to kindergarten to preschool.

She knew every word.

And here she is.

She's a graduate of Purdue University.

I just loved on her that "P" word is hard for me to say because I'm from IU, but she's so brilliant.

It's going to be such a good little momma.

But here she is an adult, and she remembered that another boy at Wesselman Woods, I used to take the kids twice a year.

We went in the fall to see how the words was going to go to sleep.

We'd go back in the spring and I would wake that woods up.

And so I did my own talk.

I lived in the country.

I knew how to do that.

So I did that every year.

And one year we're walking out and we're seeing in our school song we marched, marched, march, marched.

And this tall, tall adult boy was singing that school song and came up behind me.

And I looked at him and I said, Oh my gosh...I knew his name I said, it, it was Mike Brickhouse, and he knew every word to that song.

And the guy that was with him just looked at him like, You're crazy.

He said, No, I went to preschool here.

See those little shirts?

I had a shirt just like that.

If they can remember that from pre school, to remember that.

Wow.

That well, that had to be it is very rewarding.

It's an amazing thing.

And, you know, they I had a puppet back then.

His name was Varmint and well, he was just a cool, cool dude.

He wasn't very pretty.

It wasn't he wore wild clothes, but he had a mouth that had a split in it.

And you could put a cookie in there and three or four people stopped me over the last years and asked if I still had that cookie eating puppet.

I still have him.

But it was a lady in Virginia that made him for speech people, because you could stick your finger through there and do that up in the roof and down on the bottom thing.

And she retired and so he's not available anymore.

So I try not to show people things that like Bruce is not available.

You can't find her with her leather beak and her leather suit anymore.

Is there a favorite story among all the stories that you've told yeah, I used to tell it a lot called The Incy-Wincy Spider, but it's a version and I heard a gentleman tell this in Jonesborough, Tennessee, in the tent and I was rolling on the ground.

And at that time I did not know a thing about copyright nothing.

And so I recorded that story my version at Vincennes University on actually on a training CD that I did.

And then I found out about copyright.

So I had to go backtrack that.

And then I paid dearly to tell that story.

But it's about an incy-wincy spider that, you know, just gets up that spout and gets washed out and it's just awful.

Just Just stayed home that day.

And I've told that for years and years and it was on the DVD that one and I wrote I've written a lot of stories, so a lot of my stories are in my books.

And right now I've been in the writing world I'm going to publish "Chicken Fun" because it's in a book and the company will not release that, but I can self-publish it.

And so we're going to do "Chicken Fun", how I'm going to get it out there.

I don't have a clue, but I have a story about the the honey jar and the bear and I tell that all the time.

It's just like who took the cookie from the cookie jar where ours is?

"Who took the honey from the honey jar?

Possum took the honey from the honey jar, 'who me' 'yeah you' 'not me' 'Then who took the honey from the honey jar?'"

You can add as many forest animals as you want to add.

And then at the end, after all, the animals said no, bear said, "well, who took the honey from the honey jar" and that crowd always hollers, "Bear took the honey from the honey jar" and bear say (laughs)"who, me?"

And they say "Yes, you."

"Yeah, me."

I took the honey from the honey jar(slurps"YUM!YUM!".

And so I have a bear puppet.

And of course that bear puppet of course, of course all right.

And now you have a Facebook page so people can learn more about your activities.

All your all your materials here.

You're very prolific and in your storytelling adventure.

Definitely.

Mary Jo Huff, thank you so much for being my guest on Two Main Street.

You've been inspiring young and old for many years, and who knows what's next when Mary Jo reaches into her peeper basket, you'll just have to wait and see there Mary Jo, thanks a lot.

Thank you.

I'm David James.

This is Two Main Street presented by Jeffrey Berger.

Berger will services at Bayard Private Wealth Management...