PIERRE BOYER SPECIALIZES IN TALL TALES AND WHOPPERS

In 1989, Pierre "Pete" Boyer's ability to tell tall tales and whoppers finally got him what he deserved -- an invitation to perform at the Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian gave him an award.

"I just made people laugh more than anybody else," he says. "They didn't have any giddyup on them."

At 87, Boyer has plenty of giddyup left for one who bills himself as "Vieux Homme Francais." The musician, storyteller and folklorist will share some of it from 1-4 p.m. Monday when he entertains at the Reynolds House on Main St. in downtown Cape Girardeau as part of La Fete Francaise.

The three-day event is a celebration of Eastern Missouri's French heritage. It starts with programs in St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve before ending Memorial Day in Cape Girardeau.

Being able to play many instruments and tell fish stories and weather stories and getting married stories is nothing extraordinary to Boyer. Everybody played the fiddle or guitar or something in Recollet, the small French Lead Belt village where he was born.

"We didn't have radio and television so we would tell stories at night and have dances," he says.

The French twist in Boyer's voice is a result of speaking the language exclusively until he enrolled in school. "We were isolated in that area ... Nobody ever came in there," he said. "We were all French and we intermarried."

The stories he tells about the French in Missouri are "the real truth," says Boyer, who is writing a book about the history of the area.

Most histories don't go back far enough, he says. "The French history is a lot earlier than American history."

He is a member of the Missouri Folklore Society and helped found La Fete Renault, held each year in Old Mines.

He began performing in the 1960s and has traveled across the U.S. telling stories and playing the fiddle in his French voyager outfit. He frequently appears at the annual reenactments at Fort de Chartres and Fort Massac.

Boyer, who pronounces his name the way the actor Charles Boyer did, lives in Potosi, where he was a watchmaker for 45 years and fathered 10 children.

"I'm the world's richest man," he says in response to that last fact.

He lists the broom dance among his many talents but hasn't performed it since falling on ice last year.

But he now tells a story that begins with falling on the ice and ends with a talking frog.

"I see something that appeals to me, I start making a story," he said.