From: srw@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (steven.r.walk)
Subject: The Millet Chronicals
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 03:21:57 GMT
Keywords: Micheal Ferguson

I sent a paper copy of the recent sea survival story to THE Micheal
Ferguson.  Since he does not have net access he asked me to post the
story behind the story.  It appears that his ancestors are not as
virtuous as the first story implied.  Enjoy.

Steve Walk
srw@ihlpv.att.com

-----Snip-----

re:
>From att-mt!silver.ucs.indiana.edu!thomasl Mon Sep 21 22:56:06 1992
>Subject: It's a Long Story

So I see that "The Millet Chronicles" have surfaced again.  Perhaps the
story behind the story -- the REAL story as it were -- would be of interest
to the rec.juggling crowd.  (Or perhaps not ...)

The juggling tradition in our family traces its beginnings to 19th century
Ireland where members of the Fergus clan were known far and wide for their
prowess as potato jugglers.  During the great Irish potato famine of that
century (I've forgotten in what year that was.  It's been many years since
my father told me this oral history of our family, so some of the details
have faded from my mind.  [One detail that has not faded from my mind is the
correct spelling of the word "potato".   We Fergusons may misspell our own
names from time to time, but we damn sure know how to spell "potato".]) the
clan, facing starvation and having eaten their only juggling props, shipped
off to America to forge a better life.  The Atlantic crossing was quite
stormy and the stench of seasickness and human excrement in the crowded
holds below brought vows from the Fergus clan to never again leave the sod
for the sea.

But all survived and most of the clan made their way across country to the
eastern shore of Lake Michigan where they settled and, as many immigrants of
the time were wont to do, changed the family name.  The new "Ferguson" clan,
by and large, took up farming as a way of life.  The first Ferguson child to
be born in the new land was named Michael and when he married he used the
land given him by his bride's father to establish one of the first millet
farms west of the Appalachians.  It follows, of course, that it is from this
side of the Ferguson family tree that I am descended.  More specifically, I
am the great great grand nephew of Michael's eighth son Fergus.  It was
Fergus who wrote "The Millet Chronicles".

Now by most accounts, Fergus was the black sheep of our family, but I have
always had a great deal of fondness for the "Uncle Fergie" that I came to
know through the family stories.  Uncle Fergie was a bit of a rebel. 
Expelled from school for stoning a teacher (not just your ordinary stoning,
mind you, Uncle Fergie had developed a method whereby he could hurl multiple
stones from either hand -- kind of a multiplex stoning technique.), Uncle
Fergie ran off with a travelling circus that passed through his county one
summer.  Hired on as an elephant boy (or, in the jargon of the time, a "dung
boy") his potential as a juggler was recognized when he was seen employing
his unique stoning technique on a chronically flatulent Indian pachyderm
named Rhemba. Uncle Fergie's early career as a circus juggler has always
been something of a mystery to the family.  Few details of his actual
juggling ability are known.  Most of the stories of that period of his life
center around his return to his father's millet farm after a dispute with
the owner of the circus.  One story claims that he had refused to perform
after some wag in the crowd interrupted his act one night with a shout of: 
"Hey, let's see ya do cannonballs!".   A variation on that story says that
he actually charged into the crowd after the heckler.  Yet a another story
has it that he had to flee in the middle of the night after he was caught
teaching club manipulation techniques to the owner's daughter.  In any
event, in late 1916 Uncle Fergie found himself back on the millet fields of
Western Michigan.

1916, 1917.  World at War.  Soon Uncle Sam wants Uncle Fergie.  Uncle
Fergie, however, does NOT want Uncle Sam.  Perhaps it was the folly of human
wave assaults from the disease ridden trenches of Europe into the face of
mustard gas and machine gun fire or maybe it was the fear of the ocean
voyage that lay ahead and the remembrance of the Fergus vow never to leave
the sod for the sea that led Uncle Fergie to defy the draft.  Whatever it
was, Uncle Fergie soon became a resident of the Federal Penitentiary in
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.  It was there that Uncle Fergie wrote "The Millet
Chronicles".  Using scraps of paper purchased from corrupt prison guards and
penning the final entries on the inside of his own prison clothing, Uncle
Fergie wiled away his prison years writing his fictitious journal.  (The
family has always referred to these journals as "The Millet Chronicles".)  I
think you can see from my account of the Fergus/Ferguson family tree that
much of "The Millet Chronicles" are derived from our early family history. 
The really great part of it is that ol' Fergus made it seem that the
journals were actually written by a seaman.  Hah, a Ferguson at sea!  Hell,
most of us don't even swim! The irony is so cool.

So, that's the REAL story.  But not the WHOLE story...

Seems like every ten or fifteen years or so another hand written set of
these "journals" are discovered in someone's attic someplace and are soon
hustled off to some literary agent in some large city somewhere in hopes of
making some hopefully large sum of money for the finder.  Of course it never
pans out.  The journals are, after all, somewhat poorly written and the
market for sea stories featuring millet eating jugglers has never been very
large.  However, their existence and reappearance over time has become
something of an underground legend in the literary community.  Myself? 
Well, I've always felt that the really interesting story to be told here is 
how all these hand written copies of this same journal came to reside in so
many different seaman's trunks in so many different attics across this
country.  I've pieced most of that story together and it's quite
interesting.  But I have a great deal of Fergie Props business to attend to
today -- many orders to be sewn and filled and soon the millet truck will be
arriving with its weekly delivery -- so THAT story will have to wait until
another day ...

MICHAEL FERGUSON
Newsgroups: rec.juggling