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Texans love a good yarn, especially if it is about Texas and told by a talented stemwinder.

Mary Darden, the wife of journalism professor and freelance tale-spinner Bob Darden, is a storyteller herself in sharing her passion for the Lone Star State’s colorful past. This fall, she has produced and hosted a 30-minute radio documentary series for KWBU radio (103.3 FM) that she calls “Treasures of the Texas Collection.” It airs at 1:30 p.m. Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays.

Each episode features a different writer telling stories unearthed from the catacombs of the cavernous Texas Collection on the Baylor campus. The first episode, aired the weekend of Nov. 7, dealt with the history of the collection itself, which was born in 1923 when a local surgeon, Dr. Kenneth Hazen Aynesworth, presented Baylor University with his personal accumulation of Texana.

“Bob and I both do a lot of research over there,” Darden said, “and we know it’s full of a lot of really cool stuff. But we realize that there are probably a lot of people who don’t even know it exists. Wouldn’t it be nice to let them in on its wonders?”

John Wilson, associate director of the Texas Collection at Baylor University, said he’s never heard of any collaboration like it, between a university, its archives and the National Public Radio station of an area. His colleagues at George Washington University and Georgetown University told him, while he was in Washington, D.C., on a recent business trip, that they would like to explore similar projects of their own based on the Baylor model.

Wilson, the first featured interview on the radio show, waxed on about some of the eclectic holdings — from an original copy of the winner of Gov. Pat Neff’s 1924 contest for a new state song (“Texas, Our Texas,” by William John Marsh) to a 500-year-old letter from explorer Hernando Cortez.

The Nov. 14 show, Darden said, addressed the early days of Independence, Texas, the first home of Baylor University and home to Sam Houston as well. In the early days of the young republic it was a thriving center, she said, but now it’s a quaint and quiet village.

The Nov. 21 program addressed Texas’ role (and Waco’s in particular) in the U.S. Civil War. Subsequent episodes will deal with topics such as Texas in the Civil War, popular fiction about Texas, Texas poets, the Waco tornado, the missionary Bagbys of Brazil, Gov. Pat Neff, vocalist Jules Bledsoe, the Texas Cotton Palace and Cameron Park, which is observing its centennial next year.

Streaming audio of the shows will be available on KWBU, as well as transcripts of the previously aired episodes.

Her philosophy, she said, was to hire the best writers who follow the concept of storytelling and know how to convey the material into tales that would interest listeners. Although the project’s writers are paid through grant money for scholarly writing, Darden hastens to add these programs are not dull, dry recitations of facts, but the engaging human stories of Waco’ past. She selected the list of topics in consultation with the collection, which vets the scripts for accuracy before they are taped for broadcast.

The production season for a year’s worth of shows (15 original episodes, broadcast twice in one week, entered into a quarterly rotation) is five months. The first season, by necessity, was Waco-centric, Darden said. But if the series, which is being offered to other NPR stations in Texas, is picked up for another season, “We will need to move around the state a bit to broaden its appeal to other listeners.”

Plans call for the use of supplemental artwork and posting of the scripts at the KWBU Web site, she said. The steaming audio will include links to the other shows. Darden said she hopes that schools, especially those teaching Texas history, will tune in.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

757-5746

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The Waco History Project will have a free public presentation on the McLennan County Courthouse’s past, present and future at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Red Men Museum, 4521 Speight Ave. Judge Matt Johnson of Waco’s 54th State District Court will present a program on the history of Waco’s 107-year-old McLennan County Courthouse. After researching county records, newspaper archives, materials from the Texas Collection at Baylor University and other sources, Johnson is working on a multimedia documentary about the structure, built originally at a cost of $210,241.48 (or about $5.3 million in today’s dollars).