The St. Louis Storytelling Festival (SLSF) kicked off its 40th year Sunday, Oct. 7, at the Treloar Mercantile.Master storyteller Brian “Fox” Ellis helped visitors to the event visualize steamboats making their way down the river and imagine the bustle that would have caused at a little country store like the Treloar Mercantile.Ron Turner, founding chairman of the St. Louis Storytelling Festival, said what better place to start their season than at Treloar, where the history is so rich.Dan and Connie Burkhardt, who own the Treloar Mercantile and Bank, made their decision to purchase the building so that it would be saved from “slowly disintegrating.” They believe storytelling is another way to conserve and preserve the past.Ellis, who has been a “teller” for 40 years, said storytelling is all about making connections. His goal was to help visitors make a personal connection with the Treloar Mercantile.“Steamboat comin’,” he sang, “Steamboat comin’, black smoke fill the sky.”Ellis described the activity that would have surrounded the delivery of goods on the steamboat coming down the Missouri River. He described the activity in the general store, using the descriptions from Chapter 5 of Burkhardts’ book “Growing Up on the River.”“1903 was one of the worst floods the valley had ever seen,” he said.He told of a fictional girl, Katy, who could chase fish across the field where floodwaters created some of the richest soil in the world. The little girl may have also seen now almost extinct carrier pigeons and long-gone Carolina parakeets that may have rested in the elm tree next to the mercantile.To learn more about the St. Louis Storytelling Festival, visit www.stlstorytellingfestival.com. Sponsors of the event include Missourian Publishing, the Missouri Arts Council, the Katy Land Trust, Edward Jones and the Missouri University Extension.

The St. Louis Storytelling Festival began its opening season at the Treloar Mercantile Sunday, Oct. 7. Master storyteller Brian “Fox” Ellis recreated stories from the book “Growing Up With the River,” written by Dan and Connie Burkhardt.

Record photo/Cindy Gladden