Tag Archives: Roger L Welsch

The “Catfish at the Pump” by Roger L. Welsch, with Linda K. Welsch, is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.

Were our forefathers liars? “You bet they were,” says Roger Welsch, “and damned fine ones at that.” The proof is in “Catfish at the Pump”, a collection of the kind of humor that softened the hardships of pioneering on the Great Plains. From yellowed newspapers, magazines, and forgotten Nebraska Federal Writers’ Project files, the well-known folklorist and humorist Roger Welsch has produced a book to be treasured. Here are jokes, anecdotes, legends, tall tales, and lugubriously funny poems about the things that preoccupied the pioneer plainsman: weather extremes; soil quality; food and whiskey; an arkload of animals, including grasshoppers, bed bugs, hoop snakes, the ubiquitous mule, and some mighty big fish; and even sickness and the poverty that would inspire black laughter again in the Great Depression.

“The book is more than a collection of good tales and jokes; it is, in fact, a serious study about humor. . . . well documented and well written.”

—Nebraska History

TBBS borrowers can request the “Catfish at the Pump,” DCB02038 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.