In 1978, when I was 14 years old, I was sitting next to a campfire in Central Idaho listening to Vic Mann telling his tales. Vic was a storyteller who followed in the ancient traditions of tall tales passed down through the family generations. Vic’s ability to weave a tale was as artistic as Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

“So, there I was, smashing ice with my stub and dragging my friend along with my good hand, all while cussing and yelling and fighting to survive!” Vic was relating his experience of breaking through the ice on Cascade Reservoir while ice fishing with his friend.

His friend lost his will to live, as hypothermia set in. The two were a few hundred yards from shore when the ice gave way. Vic saved his and his friend’s life by sheer determination, not to mention the brute strength it took to claw his way back to shore with his friend in tow.

Vic only had one hand. His left hand was lost in a childhood accident that involved a dynamite cap. He needed the powder out of that cap for some use that only a kid could imagine. As he shoved a nail to the bottom of the cap to dig out the powder, it exploded and took his hand off right above the wrist.

My first memory of Vic was in 1968. He was in Boise, Idaho to play football against Boise State. He had a few hours to kill before game time, so dad, my brother, and I picked him up and took him home for a visit. I wouldn’t have been more excited to have Superman come by for dinner.

Cousin Vic was dressed in a dark suit and looked like a giant right out of one of my story books. Of course, I couldn’t wait to hear him tell the story of his stub. “Well, that’s what happens when kids play with stuff that explodes!” he said with a grin.

Ten years later, Vic showed up in Salmon to a family reunion. He was the cool guy driving a Willy’s Jeep. It wasn’t just any Jeep; it had a specialized air compressor system that regulated the tire pressure for hill climbing. He took us boys 4-wheeling up some steep, Idaho terrain that most rigs just spun out or didn’t have the power to pull. For that Jeep of Vic’s – no problem!

I think the funniest story I heard Vic tell was the time he and his buddy went on a survival camping trip. They packed into a remote Idaho lake; the plan was to live off the land for a week. Well, as Vic described it, “We didn’t catch a single fish that whole week; hell, we didn’t even see a rabbit or a squirrel – nothing!”

So, after three or four days of not eating a single morsel of food, they decided to return to civilization. After slogging the ten miles back to the pickup, they ran into a family of campers out for the weekend. The campers were just cleaning up breakfast but still had a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon sitting out. “Go ahead and help yourselves,” the guy said.

The way Vic described it, “We were so damned hungry, we didn’t even cook that stuff. I grabbed an egg – shell and all – wrapped a slice of raw bacon around it and gulped it down in one bite! The guy who offered the food just stood back with wide eyes and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.”

Vic passed away on August 8, 2023. The legacy that he left will be passed along in the form of memories and stories for the rest of time. One hundred years from now, my GG grandkids will be sitting around a campfire, and someone will say, “Hey, tell us some stories about great grandpa’s cousin Vic. And someone will say, “Well, how about the story about Vic clearing that bar in Idaho!” And for the next hour, all those old tales will be retold – the ones that have gotten bigger and better with time. That’s just how it is in the realm of storytelling.