Were our forefathers liars? "You bet they were," says Roger Welsch, "and damned fine ones at that." From yellowed newspapers, magazines, and forgotten Nebraska Federal Writers' Project files, well-known folklorist and humorist Welsch has produced a book to be treasured. Here are jokes, anecdotes, legends, tall tales, and lugubriously funny poems about the things that preoccupied the pioneer plainsman: weather extremes; soil quality; food and whiskey; an arkload of animals, including grasshoppers, bed bugs, hoop snakes, the ubiquitous mule, and some mighty big fish.