Davy Crockett and the Three Little Pigs

A Children’s Story for Amateur Home Builders

Back when America was young and the buffalo roamed, Davy Crockett got voted out of Congress. Not being a sore loser, he stood up in front of his constituents and said “you may all go to hell, and I shall go to Texas.” So he packed up his belongings and just as he was about to leave, the Three Little Pigs came running up, shouting “Davy! Davy! Davy! We hear you’re going to Texas! Please, Davy, please take us with you! You see, Farmer John came and took our mama away, and they were headed out west in a big truck to The Place of No Return! Nobody ever comes back from The Place of No Return! Please, Davy, please take us with you, we’re lost and all alone without mama.”

Davy looked at the boys sadly and said “I never heard of The Place of No Return. Where do you suppose that is?”

The boys looked at each other and shrugged. The oldest and smartest of the little pigs, his name was Zeke, said “I don’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure a river runs through it.” The twins, Zeb and Zed, nodded and went back to playing their instruments, which were a flute and fiddle. Zeb played the flute, Zed played the fiddle, and Zeke played no instrument at all. He was the serious one, always worried about the future.

“Montana?” said Davy, but then he laughed and said “hop in, we’ll go find your mama.” And so they hopped into the back of his ‘57 Nomad station wagon and off they went, singing songs like “On the Road Again” and “Rolling Stone from Texas,” including the nearly impossible yodeling sections.

The miles flew by, and so did the tumbleweeds. They stayed in Best Westerns along the way, where the owners allow pets and serve you free breakfast, but not bacon for The Three Little Pigs.

When they arrived in San Antonio de Bexar, they could see that a river did indeed run through it. They drove around town posting flyers that said “Have you seen my mama?” on them, with a picture of mama that the twins, Zeb and Zed, drew using crayons.

All they could do now was wait. Davy felt bad for the boys, but he had some business back in town that didn't involve them. “Listen up, boys, I’ve got some business that shouldn’t take me more than a minute. Why don’t I drop you off here, and we can meet up later?” That sounded like a pretty good idea, so he let them out of the Nomad, and the Three Little Pigs waved goodbye and ran off, each going his own separate way.

Davy shook his head, thinking “God help ‘em.” But there was nothing he could do about it now.

The boys regrouped when they realized they had no idea where they were, then they followed a yellow brick road which would have led to Rome, had they been in Italy, but since they weren’t, led to the Alamo instead. They went around back to the manger, thinking they could stay there, but there was only room for Mary, Jesus, and the Three Wise Men, not Three Little Pigs from Tennessee.

The twins began to cry, “I want mama.”

Zeke said, “mama would want each of us to build ourselves a house, so let’s do that.” The twins looked at each other and laughed, then they ran off to gather building materials.

“This’ll only take a minute!” said Zeb. “And then I can go back to playing my flute!” He built himself a house as Zed rocked “Turkey in the Straw” on his fiddle.

“I’m going to build mine out of sticks!” said Zed, and that’s what he did.

Zeke groaned and shuffled off to silently build himself a brick house not too far from where the twins had built theirs. The sky was growing dark, and no sign of Davy. The twins were tired and hungry from all their playing, so they yelled “good night!” to Zeke and went to their respective homes for some rest and whatever they could scrounge up to eat on a little pig’s budget.

Just then what looked like the grandma version of Santa Anna but was really just a big, bad wolf dressed up like Santa Anna’s grandma slinked up to Zeb’s straw house and knocked on the front door. “Let me in, let me in!” said the wolf, his high-pitched voice not sounding anything like Santa Anna’s grandma. He was counting on the Three Little Pigs not being from around here to get away with his trick.

Zeb peeked through the keyhole. Something didn’t seem right. Nobody’s grandma looked like that. “Let me in, let me in!” repeated the wolf.

“Not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin!” Zeb shouted.

“Oh yeah?” said the wolf, ripping off his grandma costume.

“Yeah!” Zeb replied.

“Well then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your straw house down!” And the big, bad wolf took a big, deep breath, and he blew poor Zeb’s straw house down.

“Yikes!” said Zeb, and before the big, bad wolf could snatch him up and eat him, he ran down the lane to Zed’s stick house and started pounding on the door. “Zed, let me in!” he cried, and since they were twins and Zed knew his voice, Zed let him in and slammed the door shut. Zeb told him what happened, and Zed said “don’t worry, he won’t be back.”

“How do you know?”

“Because wolves hate the sound of flutes.” And so the twins picked up their instruments and started playing “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf” with their amps cranked loud enough for the neighbors to complain, but since they didn’t have any neighbors, there was nobody to complain.

Just then, a knock at the door, which the twins only heard because they’d reached the end of the song and hadn’t started up a new one yet.

“Knock knock,” said the big, bad wolf.

“Who’s there?” said Zeb and Zed, but they already knew.

“It’s Grandma,” said the wolf. “Let me in, let me in!”

The boys looked at each other and screamed, “not by the hairs on our chinny chin chins!” They hugged each other tight, scared half to death of what was bound to come next.

The big, bad wolf tore off his big, bad grandma costume and yelled, “then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your stick house down!” The big, bad wolf took a big, deep breath, and then he huffed, and he puffed, and he blew Zed’s stick house down.

“Aaaaaaagh!” screamed the boys, and they ran as fast as they could, away from the big, bad wolf before he could scoop them up and eat them. They ran and they ran without looking back, until they reached Zeke’s house and banged on the door. He could tell by their voices that it was really them, so he quickly let them in and dead bolted the door behind them.

Zeb punched Zed, who said, “OW! Why’d you hit me for?”

“You said wolves hate the sound of flutes!”

“Yeah, well, did you ever consider that maybe this wolf’s the exception that proves the rule?”

Zeke cut in. “Do you even know what that means?”

The twins looked at each other and shook their heads. Zeke was about to explain when the doorbell rang. “Ding dong, Grandma calling!”

“Go away!” the Three Little Pigs cried in unison.

“Let me in, let me in!”

“Not by the hairs on our chinny chin chins!”

“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease???”

“NO!!!!!!!!”

“Well then, I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your brick house down!” said the big, bad wolf. Then the big, bad wolf took a big, deep breath, and he huffed, and he puffed, but he couldn’t blow the brick house down. Zeke said “shhhh” so he could hear what that wily wolf was doing. Sure enough, the big, bad wolf was up to no good, only now he was no-gooding from up on the roof.

“Quick, let’s put the soup on!” Zeke lit the pile of hickory in the hearth, and the twins ran uselessly around as Zeke added vegetable stock to the biggest cauldron he could find. Soon, the vegetable stock was boiling, which is what you want for soup. The boys could hear the big, bad wolf pacing on the roof. You could tell he wasn’t used to it, because he kept slipping off and landing with a thud on the ground. Each time, he’d get back up, shake himself off, mutter an obscenity, and climb back onto the roof. Now, he tiptoed to the chimney and flung himself through, not realizing till it was too late that he was in the soup. “I’m melting!” he cried, as if he were a character in a children’s horror movie.

The boys took a moment to say a quick prayer for the soul of the big, bad wolf, then they sat down for a delicious wolf stew dinner. Davy showed up shortly afterwards, and there was enough to eat for him and all the rest of the Tennesseans who were also visiting San Antonio de Bexar at the time.

I’d like to say that this pig tale ends happily, and that the Three Little Pigs find their mama, but that’s not how real life works. You see, there are twists and turns in every tale, and in this one the twist and turn is that Santa Anna shows up with his army of sixteen hundred soldiers, leveling everything in their wake. He didn’t need to huff and puff to blow Zeke’s beautiful brick house down, just a battering ram and a handful of flashbang grenades. When the walls tumbled all around them, the boys ran and they ran, and who’s to say if they made it or not. Nobody else did, so why should they?

What we do know is this. You should always hire expert contractors, and you should always remember the Alamo.

Nobody Ever Joined Swim Team For the Scenery

One of those things dads never talk about when they force you to join the swim team at a young, tender age, is that you will be bored out of your skull going back and forth in the pool. Don't go in thinking you'll see something interesting. You won't. There's nothing to look at in the pool, or even around the pool. It's even worse if the coach hates kids, like ours did. But I went, because my dad made me, and listening to rock 'n' roll in the car between news on the hour and half hour made the whole experience not as awful.

One day, having had enough of the coach who hated kids, I came up behind him after practice and shoved him into the pool. In he went, fully dressed in his street clothes, which everyone thought was funny, except for the coach, who didn't. I ran, of course, in spite of the "no running, no horseplay" sign. Up the stairs and into the locker room. Coach scrambled out of the pool and chased after me, though I was young, small, and quick. I ran to the left. He ran to the left. I ran to the right. He ran to the right. I could feel his hot lone wolf's breath on my neck as I tried to avoid him, but then he cornered me after the most elaborate zigzag maneuver I'd learned back when swimming was fun, in Guppies.

He picked me up, kicking, swinging, and screaming (I was, not him), and dragged me down the hall and down the stairs and out to the pool. He threw me way out into the middle of the pool, where not even the US Navy could rescue me. But they didn't have to, because I knew how to swim.

I reached the ladder, climbed out of the pool, and I walked slowly to the locker room and got dressed. When my dad picked me up and asked "how was swimming?" I said "horrible," but by then he'd already unplugged his hearing aid so he didn’t have to listen to my rock 'n' roll in the car.

I don't know what happened to Coach. Next time at practice he growled a lot more nicely, but the next time after that he was gone. Quit, fired, who knows? When you're a kid, you learn not to ask questions, you just come to accept that people come and go, and hopefully the next coach doesn't hate kids. Maybe he got drafted and shipped off to Vietnam to force those kids to swim laps against their will.

My dad, several years and swim teams later, let me give up swim team, because my mom said I could, and that was the end of discipline for me, other than a couple of years of cross country and track that nobody forced me to do. I also managed freshman and two years of sophomore in college before dropping out, though I did (after two and a half years crashing on people’s couches and floors on the pointless road of the western US and British Columbia) drop back in and graduate eight years after starting, having accumulated two Bachelor's degrees and three colleges. I did it with Honors, because by then I was older and wiser.

In spite of post-YMCA trauma, I still love the smell of chlorine in a swimming pool. It smells like victory.

When I First Stepped Onto the Moon, I Had No Idea I’d Be Featured On a Ten Cent Stamp

Imposter Syndrome is something we can all relate to, especially if we’re not good at what we do. But even if we are good at what we do, most of us still suffer from bouts of imposter syndrome, unwilling to accept our own legitimacy. But what about actual imposters, like Frank Abagnale, Jr., portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2002 film, Catch Me if You Can? Did he suffer from imposter syndrome, too?

There are lessons we can learn from the movie, such as “don’t be an imposter, and especially don’t be a check forger.” You’ll eventually get caught. For me, though, I drew a different lesson, reinforced by a recent experience at Story Story Night, where I got paid to pretend I was once a veterinarian. It was part of Story Story Night’s 16th birthday celebration, a reinterpretation of the classic game show, To Tell the Truth. The lesson I learned from Catch Me if You Can is that if you don’t make the same mistakes as Frank Abagnale did, for instance calling Carl Hanratty every Christmas Eve, and if you do it for entertainment rather than profit, you can probably get away with your scheme for much longer.

After impersonating a veterinarian for no more than eight minutes, along with two other veterinarian imposters, one of whom was the actual veterinarian, the audience voted to determine who the real veterinarian was. Anyone who donated at least $16 to Story Story Night could come up and ask us questions, like “what’s the best kind of drug to tranquilize a large animal?” And based on our answers, the audience could make a more informed vote.

Audiences are smart. They knew at least one of the imposters was me, and they were right. They were even able to tell who the real veterinarian was.

Between my new found love of impersonating veterinarians and watching Leo DiCaprio in his role as the imposter Frank Abegnale, Jr, I concluded that I could be wildly successful as an identity thief, but not the criminal kind. The on stage kind.

What that would look like is that I would perform as the character I’m impersonating, tell a story, then have the audience guess if the story really happened to me. Or if it happened at all. I’d throw in true stories from my past just to mix things up. I think it could be fun. I could even do a corporate version, where I’d get with a company beforehand and tell an employee story as part of a “let’s see if you really know who you work with” team building exercise.

I can also see this working as part of my wedding officiant duties, telling tales from the point of view of old girlfriends and boyfriends, family, and friends. I told you about being a wedding officiant, didn’t I? And notary? In service of the grand vision of one day selling out Madison Square Garden as a storyteller? I can never remember who I told what.

I’m calling this new offering CATCH ME BUT YOU CAN’T, in tribute to the movie, but with more built in confidence since I won’t be breaking any laws, so what are you going to do about it? I told the real veterinarian I wanted to use his story but that I can’t afford to pay him, and would he be all right with that? He said he’d let me know, but so far he hasn’t. I’ll take that as a “yes” and keep going till the cease and desist arrives. Besides, it was me, not him, who wrote the part about the she elks smoking cigarettes out in the pasture after the bull elks were done with them. He had nothing to do with it other than being the real veterinarian, which, as far as I’m concerned, entitles him to nothing.

Around the same time as Frank Abagnale’s imposter career was coming to an end at the hands of French police, of all people, the United States was landing astronauts at a makeshift studio on the moon. Neil Armstrong was the first of the space men to get lunar dust up his nose, but there were others. As far as I know, nobody’s impersonating Neil Armstrong any more, but I’m willing to give it a shot. What I like about being Neil Armstrong’s imposter is that I’m old enough for my target audience to believe I really did walk on the moon, and that lunar dust makes you sneeze even worse than earth dust, because of all the carbon in it.

You don’t have to be entirely believable to be a successful imposter. Just believable enough to make it through a one-hour show.