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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Rappahannock Neva Staff Writer
In real life, he’s J. M. Cheatwood, title insurance agent with Central Title and Abstract, Inc. in Warrenton and Manassas.
But in his heart, he’s Smilin’ John, the story man.
Waiting for the children to squirm into their chairs and onto the mats at the Rappahannock County Library last Wednesday, he sipped coffee in the vestibule, looking every inch the rising young corporate executive in conservative gray suit.
“What! Should I be wearing bib overalls?” he asked, smiling disarmingly.
He didn’t need the overalls. The stiff propriety projected by the starched white shirt and neatly knotted tie fell away as Mr. Cheatwood told his tales. He became, in turn, the clever Brer Rabbit and his nemesis Brer Fox of Southern plantation lore, and that redoubtable giant killer who stuffed himself with fried chicken, beans and side meat, meringue pie and tall glasses of milk at the king’s table in Appalachia’s Jack and the Bean Tree.
It was a flash back to the times when children where mesmerized by the rise and fall of voices, not hypnotized by the flicker of the television screen. And the parents, too, were caught up by the magic of telling.
In 1974, as a student at Fauquier High School, John Cheatwood won the state’s prose reading championship in forensics competition. “I read Uncle Remus—that wonderful, marvelous story—in dialect. Then it took me five more years to realize I could have TOLD the stoxy instead of reading it,” he recalled. “That was the beginning. Since then, I’ve told folk tales in
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