DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every good tall tale needs a teller, and Calhoun County's got one worth knowing about. His name was David Edward Bell — Ed Bell to just about everybody — and he came into this world on January 10, 1905, near Leakey, Texas.
Born near Leakey. Keep that in mind, because this is a man who was going to end up telling stories for the whole country. Life had a sense of humor about where it started him.
Ed and his wife Mary Alma — she was a Smith before she was a Bell — they made their way to Indianola. And once they got there, they did what sensible people do when they find a good stretch of water: they bought land along Powderhorn Bayou. Now, they didn't name it anything grand themselves.
No, it was the customers who gave it its name. They just started calling it Ed Bell's Fish Camp, and that name stuck the way a good story sticks — because it fit. See, folks would come out to that fish camp expecting to maybe catch something worth talking about.
What they didn't expect was Ed Bell himself. The man was a virtuoso storyteller — and that's not me being fancy, that's the word people used for him. A virtuoso.
Over the decades, word spread, and Bell gained notoriety performing at storytelling events across the country. A fish camp boy from Powderhorn Bayou, standing up in front of crowds from one end of this nation to the other. Back home in Indianola, he wasn't just entertaining people — he was contributing to the town's economic growth and, through every tale he told, preserving its cultural history.
That's the thing about a truly great storyteller. The fish might get away, but the story never does.
What the marker says
Famed story teller David Edward "Ed" Bell was born on January 10, 1905, near Leakey, Texas. After moving to Indianola, Bell and his wife Mary Alma (Smith), bought land along Powderhorn Bayou where they established what his customers called "Ed Bell's Fish Camp". Visitors to the fish camp were charmed by Bell's tall tales and over the decades he gained notoriety as a "Virtuoso Storyteller" performing at story telling events across the country. Locally, Bell contributed to economic growth of Indianola and, through his stories, preserved its cultural history. (2012)