So far, we have been considering narratives that were given in response to a question asked by an interviewer. This chapter will examine narratives embedded in an extended conversation between two older men in a rural area of Utah, Cache County. It begins with the most casual remarks about the weather and gardening, and gradually proceeds to increasingly bitter disagreements among neighbors, and then to a community-wide dispute at the end of World War II about the proper honors for the dead. The reader will note that these narratives, and those to follow, are told by men. This is partly an accident (as in this chapter) and the nature of history (written for the most part by men). The expansive and defiant morality of the previous four chapters will give way to the terser male delivery, which, as we have seen by the “less said” maxim, follows its own route to eloquence.

The narratives in this conversation give us a panorama of several decades of small-town conflicts and long-held resentment. It may be helpful to read the conversation as a whole to begin with. As the text shows, Ken and El are long-standing acquaintances, but not neighbors: Ken is the main speaker; El receives the information and echoes Ken's opinions as best he can. El knows the people in Ken's neighborhood by name, but has no detailed knowledge of their history. In this text, “xx” indicates speech not comprehensible.