I have learned that Pecos Bill wasn’t a folk tale told by cowboys sitting around the campfire on trail drives. According to the program on TV, that story was fiction, and it made its way into folklore by the back door. Well, one morning I Zoomed into an online writing group, and I was challenged to write a folk tale. And here is the first draft of my folktale.
The Legend of Mindy O’Dair
By Rose Owens
Let me tell you about Mindy O’Dair. My great-grandmother lived in San Francisco back there in the early 1900[s. Boots, her cat was 4 feet tall—measuring from the pad of his front paw to the top of his right ear. His left ear was a little shorter. Mindy was a mite taller. From the top of her head to her foot way down below she measured 11 feet plus half an inch. There wasn’t nothing that those two together couldn’t do.
When sailing ships were trapped out at sea, lost in the fog, and they couldn’t find the entrance to San Francisco Bay, Mindy would call for Boots. First off, Boots would swallow that fog. It only took him three big gulps and the fog was gone. Then he would commence to swallow the water in the Bay. Sea Gulls and ducks would take to the air, I can tell you. Then Mindy would wade out and grab that ship and carry it into the bay. She’d set it down and watch while Boots blew the water back down.
Now Mindy could feel things. One morning in 1906, she felt a rumbling down deep in the ground. “Hold on,” she said, “it ain’t time for you to start shaking.” She started warnin’ people. “Git out! Git out of your houses!” It were dark and so people woke up in darkness to hear that voice comin’ out of the blackness of the night. Mindy stomped her foot down on that there fault line and it stilled itself below her foot, but then it commenced to shake the ground in another place. Mindy stomped her other foot down. A crack opened up between her feet and began to spread wider and wider. Boots jumped back and forth from one side to t’other.
Mindy looked at San Francisco. Parts of it were like a shanty town with wooden shacks. “I guess it really is time for a change,” she said as she lifted one foot and then the other. “I’ve given as much warnin’ as I could, Now I’m lettin’ that fault have its way.” Buildings shook. The ground rolled. Mindy plucked children out of their beds and dropped them in Golden Gate Park for safety.
She gathered the matchsticks that were once buildings into one huge pile and set it on fire. “Time to rebuild, San Francisco,” she said. I’ve cleared the buildin’ site.” She hauled timber from the mountains. Watching her was like seeing children build a city with building blocks. Thanks to Mindy, San Francisco rose again—better than ever.
Will I add more to the saga of Mindy O’Dair? Will she make it into folklore? Who knows? It has happened before. Irregardless, I had fun writing this story.
Writing a folktale in thirty minutes was a new challenge for me. My immediate reaction was to think I don’t know how to do this. I wasn’t sure when I began writing how the story would unfold, how it would end. But as I began to write, new ideas came. Life is like that sometimes. I am faced with a new challenge, and I doubt my ability to move forward. My thoughts and emotions seem to freeze. But I know if I can find one thing that I can do, I am able to move forward. Little by little I see progress and I accomplish things that I didn’t know I could do.