Before losing yourself in the following pages, dear Reader, allow me to say a few words about them. The story of this book begins in June, 1989, immediately after Blood Lake, the final adventure of the Original Friends. They met at the Super Secret Meeting Spot, chanted their Anthem, performed the Sacred Handshake, and said farewell. Thus the first chapter of their story came to a close.

But happily, this ending was a beginning in disguise, for soon enough, a sprightly and tenacious oral tradition was born. Storytellers everywhere began to suck nourishment from the Adventures, and the exploits of the brave Friends were saved from oblivion by their traveling tongues. It is always thus. Homer was only the last in a long line of bards whose pedigree began, no doubt, the day the well-greaved Achaeans stepped upon the sandy hem of old Ilion’s gown. King Arthur’s exploits employed a thousand trouping troubadours, and raconteurs from France to Fiji have stubbornly kept alive stories worth remembering. Chad Gracia, for instance, gave the first full oral account of Holy Hill less than four hours after this adventure occurred. (It was, unfortunately, to Deputy Riebe of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department.) So it was, that by the time scholars in my circle began to whisper about the possibility of writing the book you now hold in your hands, a wealth of Original Friend tales already existed, told throughout America, India, Russia, and Europe.

We knew, of course, that much of this body of lore was apocryphal, that it had been tainted by the creative faculties of countless storytellers. But we also realized, like the great Troy-seeker Schliemann, that a core of truth is preserved in every myth. As all of the Original Friends, and those who knew them well, were still alive, we set to work at once with interviews and questionnaires.

The quotes herein are from discussions and individual interviews I conducted from January to October of 1995. I flew to Wisconsin and for six summer weeks remained in close contact with the Friends, sleeping on their couches, sifting through their personal papers, trailing them with a tape recorder, and studying their habits. All conversations have been printed verbatim, excepting minor grammatical alterations, and certain abridgments which do not affect the substance or the flavor of the passages. Ellipses are not used, although I have often truncated redundant sentences or dull paragraphs. Any remarks or additions to the quoted material is enclosed within brackets [ ]. You will find that I have quoted extensively, for the words of the Original Friends are often more eloquent than anything a mere world renown scholar and amateur epic poet like myself could conjure up. Also, each of the Friends speaks with his own distinctive voice (Chad is bombastic; Greg highly liberal in his use of neologisms and malapropisms; Lance magniloquent; and Sam is simply esoteric), and I think these particular speaking styles reveal something about those who employ them. (For the intrepid scholar, the full, unaltered transcript of these conversations is available from our offices.) This material was supplemented with historical and archaeological data, and woven into a comprehensive whole. In the end, we were able to piece together an account of the first 25 years of the Original Friends’ lives. We are quite proud of the result, and believe it will stand as the definitive work in this field for many generations.

In order for the reader to make his own analysis of the relation between fact and fiction, we have included a near complete set of tales from the oral tradition. The stories are transcriptions from the most famous Original Friend storyteller of all time — Augustus Mothburger. This sage was already an ancient man of ninety-three when he began recounting the tales of Lance, Greg, Sam, and Chad. He sported a single foggy eye, and a mottled head sparsely covered with stray white hairs, which jutted out from it in all directions. When he told these tales, he would lean forward on his staff, squint up his solitary oculus, and with a toothless mouth captivate crowded amphitheaters. He was doing just this, during a performance at Carnegie Hall, in December, 1993, when the end came. The stories included in this edition are from that final performance. Just minutes before his death, Augustus was bringing to a close the legendary performance of the Skylark of Carcasses. He threw back his head, began his famous rendition of Greg Branger’s silent cackle, and then fell over backward, provoking astonishment, admiration, and finally a standing ovation from the crowd. When the applause finally ceased, and Mothburger remained prostrate, the crowd renewed their clapping, this time thinking him a thespian of no little merit, who could feign death so long. After an awkward silence of some four to six minutes more, the chubby master of ceremonies hurried across the dark stage and stooped over the motionless figure. After a few moments, he looked up to the crowd, and exclaimed: “Here dies a noble man! But the far nobler memory of the Original Friends lives on!”

There are several ways to read this book. One of the most interesting is to begin with the tales alone (which are found in Part III), skipping Parts I, II, and all the commentary. These sections can be studied after the entire cycle has been digested. Another possibility is a topical perusal (possible through the aid of an index), which will also yield much fruity insight.*

Finally, custom and conscience force me to beg forgiveness for the shortcomings within. Many nights have I lain awake, Sam’s haunting admonition echoing in my head: “Mumford, by writing this book, you’re being a little bit naive. As if you could just write some really cool stories, these embellished stories. That’s a false assumption and presumptuous. You’re writing about us, and we represent the whole spectrum — ROY G. BIV.” Keep this in mind, and demand nothing more than I offer, which is only their unpolished words and my simple interpretation, in the hope that somewhere in between you will catch a glimpse of what they did and who they were. Perhaps, in the end, you will even find some affection for them.