JOEL VANCE - Humor Editor

Joel Vance, our humor editor, trying to relax with a backpack which is way too big for relaxing. He's written hundreds of columns and articles, humor books and humor tape , Outdoor Writers of America.

In his spare time he tries to justify ownership of six spaniels to his wife Marty.

GRANDMA AND THE BUCK DEER
and Other Tales of Youthful Disaster

Grandma and the Buck Deer takes a humorous look at growing up in small town America in the gentle kind of place that produced the humor of Johnny Carson and Joel Vance. Roles were clear. Men and boys worked, hunted, fished, and told tall tales. Women and girls took care of the home and children and tried to believe tales told.

It may not have been a better time -- memory edits out polio and Selma. It was certainly a more simple time that Joel Vance humorously presents with colorful characters like Uncle Al and odd adventures like "The Day the Durango Kid got whipped by a little girl".

BILLY BARNSTORM THE BIRCH LAKE BOMBER
and Other Tales of Youthful Disaster

Vance isn't saying whether Birch Lake really exists, but he talks about a recent high school reunion there as if it really happened. "I had to go, of course. Time to see if the beer still tasted as strange as it did when my cousins and I swiped it from the storeroom behind the bluegill or if the town still smelled like lake water, and the pines and road tar and summer dust."

Joel Vancehas far too many spaniels to feed so he keeps busy writing humor books and, now, audio tapes. The last contains two tapes, with four sides and is particularly nice when you're on a trip and the local music runs to nasal noise. How can you not want to hear the tales of someone who has either six or eight or some other immodestly large number of spaniels? Then, of course, there's the six foot black snake that lives in the sauna and sometimes falls from the ceiling to send visiting heat lovers out into the snow. These, like Vance's shotgun skills, are other stories.

The editors reserve comment on tales like: Prom Night, Knuckling Under to Romance or Anatomy Comes to Birch Lake, and what can you say about "the Four-Finger Chicken?"

Vance isn't saying whether Birch Lake really exists, but he talks about a recent high school reunion there as if it really happened. "I had to go, of course. Time to see if the beer still tasted as strange as it did when my cousins and I swiped it from the storeroom behind the bluegill or if the town still smelled like lake water, and the pines and road tar and summer dust."

Joel Vance
Box 1664
Jefferson City, MO 65102