Old Stormalong - A Great American Hero (part I)

When Stormalong was still just a lad, he was already 5 fathoms tall – that's about 30 feet (give or take a yard) to us landlubbers. He strolled down to the wharf and got a job on a ship. He was hired to stand watch – after all, he could see much farther than anyone else. Not long after the ship set sail, Stormy spotted something on the horizon – a pirate ship approaching! He warned the captain and they tried to outrun the pirate ship, but it got closer and closer and closer. Finally, Stormy got an idea: he had the crew pour molasses on the deck, so when the pirates came aboard, they got stuck in their tracks and were captured easily. For his cleverness, Stormy was promoted to First Mate.

Then one day the ship was attacked by a humongous kraken –that's a mythical sea creature that is half octopus, half sea-serpent and half something else. It hacked at the hull, crunched at the keel and slurped at the sails, and generally did a lot of damage to be so mythical. Well sir, Old Stormy knew that it would take one legend to defeat another, so he jumped into the water with a mighty splash that started a tidal wave in China. And he swam down, down, down to battle the fabled monster. For hours, the crew stared anxiously at the water, watching the bubbles rise to the surface. Finally, Stormy came back up, looking mighty serious. "I've failed", he said at last "he got away". He went straight to his cabin and stayed there for many days, without talking to anyone. The cook tried to cheer him up by bringing him his favorite meal: a whole schooner full of clam chowder, twelve dozen ostrich eggs (a truly GROSS snack) and a barrel of coffee. But for once, Stormy had no appetite.

Finally, he came out of his cabin and said, "I guess I wasn't cut out to be a sailor. I'm going to dry land to try something new." So, he went to Michigan – it took him a couple of hours to walk there from Boston – and he tried his hand at farming. He got along just fine until the winter came, and the snow fell up to his knees.

He didn't like snow too much, so he headed south to Texas where he tried his hand at ranching. For a while he was quite at home on the range – he even made up a little song about it.

But one day, a twister came, a rip-roarin', rootin-tootin', snip-snortin' tornado that leveled everything in its path. It ripped up huge trees by the roots and turned them upside down. It picked up houses and set them on top of those upside-down trees. It tied Old Stormalong's hair in knots.

"Hey neighbor!", said Stormy to a friend, "What do you do around here when a twister comes?"

"We just hold on tight", was the response.

So Stormy hung on to a barn for dear might. But that twister lifted the barn up and sent it flying through the air. Stormy took his 20 foot bandana and used it like a sail, guiding his air boat until it landed with a splash in the gulf of Mexico. It was then that he decided that things weren't working out for him on land and maybe he was meant to be a sailor.

go to Part II >>