The stories we tell shape us, they express the limits of our hopes and disappointments, and they can even encourage and inspire us. These folk tales were collected mainly from people who lived in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky and North Carolina. Many of the tales have been handed down for generations. Some are newly conceived. Laughter, especially, tickles our minds and lets us take a look at our feelings--at inconsistencies, at impossibilities, and then at surprise solutions to what seemed impossible. No matter where you live, it is important to know that there may be solutions. As to explanations, where theologians seriously study life's situations, these tails provide wags