Midwest Book Review, Laurel Johnson, reviewer
Mar. 2006
Tales from Comanche County:
The Peculiar Education of Max Freeman
Max Yoho
Dancing Goat Press
3013 SW Quail Creek Dr., Topeka KS 66614
ISBN: 0970816014, $12.95, 228 pages
I'm always delighted when a Max Yoho book arrives in the mail because I know the reading experience will be fascinating. This is one writer whose brain I'd enjoy picking. Tales from Comanche County is humorous fiction, a hilariously skewed version of history, religion, science, and Kansas life in general. The Old West—of which Kansas was a part—grew up on tall tales such as Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe. I would not be one bit surprised if Babe and Bunyan lived in Comanche County.
These tales are told from the perspective of young Max Freeman, nephew to Jack and Tildy Freeman of Comanche County, Kansas. Max spent his summers with Jack and Tildy, soaking up Jack's considerable knowledge about life. Uncle Jack farmed a place where cockleburs and rattlesnakes were his most successful crops, in a time where praying for rain was their main entertainment. Well, there WAS that baseball game between Kansas and Oklahoma one year where Max learned everything a person needs to know about the game. Kansas came up a little short of players, though, so armadillos had to man the outfield and rattlesnakes had to stand in for first and third basemen.
Uncle Jack knew a lot about baseball, and even more about snakes, the birds and bees, the Civil War, and fossils. And he could explain the Bible in ways any layman could understand - mostly at the business end of a .45 Smith and Wesson, which he called St. Smith and St. Wesson. Max benefited greatly in later years from Uncle Jack's morality lessons straight out of the Bible. In fact, every belief Max held as an adult had been formed as a boy learning at Jack's knee. He was indeed blessed to have an uncle who was a noted historian, renowned scientist, and early developer of prosthetics. Readers will be greatly impressed by the leg prosthesis invented for Captain Jack O'Hare, Uncle Jack's loyal and courageous Aide-de-Camp. That O'Hare is a jackrabbit does not diminish his importance.
Life with Jack Freeman was often so nerve jangling that Aunt Tildy prayed for a migraine to ease the tension and aggravation. And in adulthood, Max has trouble convincing the hallowed halls of Academia that Uncle Jack's knowledge was soundly based on fact. For some reason, professors in the history department of an unnamed university flat refused to recognize Max's version of Kansas history. What a shame those professors had to be so closed-minded. The archeological, scientific, and historic knowledge Max learned from Jack Freeman would have been a boon to mankind and added greatly to university curriculum.
Luckily, that knowledge is not lost. Those wishing to enhance their education can do so by reading Tales From Comanche County. That big university's loss is your gain.
Kansas Libraries, Official Newsletter of the Kansas State Library
February 2002
"Kansas Books," by Roy Bird, Library Consultant
Tales From Comanche County: The Peculiar Education
of Max Freeman, by Max Yoho. Order from: Dancing
Goat Press, 3013 Quail Creek Drive, Topeka, KS 66614.
Softcover, 5" x 8", 228pp., 2002. $12.95.
Some new stars have been added to the literary luminaries of Kansas fiction, characters we might all have known in the past and who may live on into the future of storytelling. Uncle Jack and Aunt Tildy share their version of southwest Kansas in a folksy way that will appeal to many Kansas readers. Uncle Jack relates his version of Comanche County and Kansas history in a fractured yet appealing measure of cultural illiteracy; Aunt Tildy contributes a modicum of common sense mixed with a modest amount of cynicism. Together from their front porch, because they had no back porch although Uncle Jack always intended to build one, these two old timers imparted their take on history to their young nephew. Written from the point of view of Max as an old man, remembering his aunt and uncle many years later, this new book is a delightful romp through the faulty memories of people who were proud to be Kansans. Replete with rattlesnakes and cockleburs, according to Max the principal crops of his family, the Battle of the Wilderness, Oklahomans which Uncle Jack seems to consider one of the major problems of creation, all in a rich, earthy, sometimes even salty language, this story is sure to delight Kansas readers of adult fiction.
Only last year Max Yoho’s first book, The Revival, was reviewed in this newsletter. This second novel demonstrates the author’s versatility. Famous cowboy poet Baxter Black described the first novel as “my kind of lunacy,” but this one is not nearly as zany. Nevertheless, it reflects an incredibly rich sense of humor, an appealing, down-to-earth writing style, and deep appreciation of Kansas. Like his earlier novel, this one is highly recommended for adult fiction and Kansas collections in libraries of all types.
