Jon TannerFollow

Date Collected

Fall 11-2017

Place item was collected

Logan UT

Informant

Jennilyn Tanner

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Informant: Jennilyn Tanner is my wife. She grew up in Tooele County in a new subdivision in a home that her father built during his career as a contractor. She is the ninth of fifteen children in the family and was raised in a Mormon household. Both of her parents were and continue to be devout Mormons. When Jenni was 17 she moved with her family to Logan where she graduated high school and then attended two years of school in Ephraim at Snow College. After getting her associates degree she returned to Logan where she attended USU and met me. She has always been interested in biology and the natural world.

Context

Jenni recounted this family legend while working on Christmas crafts in our living room. The background of the legend started when she was a young girl and continues today. It is primarily a family legend that has been kept within the family and retold at appropriate times, usually in good humor.

Text

All growing up my when something would happen at our house like an appliance breaking or an object falling without an obvious explanation, my mom would jokingly say that it was Grandpa Frank, her dad, messing with her. Over time this practice spread into our whole family so that when trivial unexplained things happened we got into the habit of saying that it was just Grandpa Frank getting our attention or playing tricks on us.

Texture

Jennilyn told this legend in a very light tone as if to suggest that the legend of Grandpa Frank was nothing more than a silly joke that her family passed around. Based on her word choice I also inferred that her mother shared the same light-heartedness concerning the legend and used it to prevent the kids from getting scared and cheer them up.

Course

Intro to Folklore

Instructor

Lynne McNeil

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G7: Revenants

EAD Number

2.1.6.8.14

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