"Maybe we should hold off on the painting until the rain lets up a bit," I suggested as I relieved Hank of the heavy cans. Ding! The front door chimed its greeting as a girl walked in. She had dark dreadlocks pulled back off her shoulders and was completely soaked.
"Oh golly! Let me go get you a towel!" I nearly yelled from glee. This girl was our first customer in three days!
"Thank you! It really is coming down out there," she said as I handed her a fluffy, white towel. "I'm headed up to the Bigfoot conference in Portland and need a room for the night. Got any open rooms?"
"Of course! Room 4 is our best. Hank and I are having spaghetti in about half an hour if you'd like to join us. My name's Skylar by the way."
"Spaghetti sounds great! I'm Jade. Nice to meet you both." Jade flashed us a smile as she walked back out into the rain to find her room. I brought out some cheap wine to have with dinner, and soon enough we were chatting like old friends. I revealed all of my dreams for the motel to Jade but explained that there were no people to fill the rooms.
"You should join me at the conference, Skylar. There will be dozens of Bigfoot-lovers there overly eager to tell their stories. Maybe you could advertise your place." I was surprised by her offer but was strongly considering it over my third glass of wine.
"I would love to join you. Hank can handle things here for the week. Sound alright, Hank?" I asked him with the largest pair of puppy eyes I could muster.
"You're the boss," he grumbled with his mouth full of pasta.
The next morning, we were out by the highway with our thumbs high. How else would you get to a Bigfoot conference? Jade assured me that hitchhiking was the best mode of transportation. I was not about to argue with her. When we got to the conference, which was in what appeared to be the recreation hall of an old summer camp, there were hippies everywhere. I had never seen more tie-dye t-shirts and dreadlocks before in my life. We made it just in time for dinner. Jade picked a table right in the middle of all the action. There was a couple in their sixties and a young guy fresh out of college already chatting up a storm about their "encounters."
Once introductions were out of the way, the older man turned to me and asked, "Skylar, what do you want in life?" This question took me completely by surprise. What did I want? The first thing that popped into my mind was the motel, so I went into great detail about what I wanted for the property and the community.
"I want it to be magic. I want people to come from all over to share stories and enjoy the beautiful California landscape. I want it to be the greatest vacation memory." Everyone in my life had always laughed at me for putting so much hope into a plot of land with a run-down building sitting on it. But here at this table with these strangers, my dreams seemed more real than ever.
"Then we're coming out. Do you have many rooms open next month? We need a new place to have these gatherings anyway. We need a change of scenery. What better place than on the Bigfoot Byway?!" This man was my new favorite person. Word spread at the conference that a meeting was planned for next month, and soon enough, all of the motel's rooms were full. This was the moment I had been waiting for. My dreams were manifesting themselves into an old hippie with countless Bigfoot stories.
Author's Note
This story was adapted from The First Totem Pole from the Pacific Northwest unit. In this story, a chief is very upset because he doesn't have a dance. Frog and Raven notice the man's discontentment and take him on a trip around the world. The chief finally finds a group that teaches him a dance and even lend him props to take back to his village. The chief is elated at his new skill and can't wait to show it off to his people. Skylar, with the help of Jade, finds a group of people that offer her encouragement and plan to fulfill her greatest dreams. She is so excited to get back to the motel and be the hostess to storytellers. The setting of this story is in the Pacific Northwest in order to stay close to the original and because it's my favorite place in the world. There was actually a motel for sale in a Happy Camp a few months ago that I dreamed of purchasing... The most important thing in The First Totem Pole was that the chief traveled to find what he was looking for. I wanted that to be a key point in my story as well. Sometimes a grand adventure is necessary to get you to the next step of reaching your goals. It's always worked out for me.
Bibliography
The First Totem Pole. Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest, especially of Washington and Oregon. Katharine Berry Judson. 1910.
This is a great story. I really enjoyed the way that you wrote it and I liked it a lot more than the original. I like that the setting is in the Pacific Northwest as all because that is also one of my favorite places as well. The ending of this story was most definitely my favorite part. Good work writing this story and I look forward to reading more of your stories in the future.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed how you rewrote this story. This is a really good story!! I like how you wrote about the original story in your author's note. It really helps the audience know what you changed or kept the same for the people who haven't read the story. I found your story to be very interesting. Great job!
ReplyDeleteYour style of writing is so full of life! The dialogue makes the reader enter the story and almost escape from their outside surroundings. I thought this sentence really summed up your well-written story in a concise, and fun-loving way: My dreams were manifesting themselves into an old hippie with countless Bigfoot stories. You did a great job on the story!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your story for the week. It didn't seem like any of the stories that I have read before. You definitely took one story and made it into something entirely new, which was definitely a good thing. It's crazy to think that you can get the same point across with such drastic changes in characters. I really liked how you made it seem much more realistic.
ReplyDeleteHey, Skylar! So I definitely did not know where you were going with this story, but you were able to draw me into the story with your characters and situations. I like that you so drastically changed the original story to fit into a modern situation that reflects you, rather than simply changing minor details of the original. And you definitely put a bit of yourself in this story as well, which helps engage the reader and makes the story more interesting.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do feel like the ending was a little bit out of the blue. While it somewhat flows from the rest of the tale, it is also a bit abrupt. Your intro makes it seem like you are leading up to something bigger, more dramatic, and then it just kind of. . . ends. But the strength of your characterization and imagery helps cover up the abrupt ending, and contributes to an overall fantastic tale! Great work!
Hi Skylar, I totally loved this story! So easy to understand and relate to out of all the mythological stories we are flooded with. you did a great job! I love the parts about eating dinner drinking cheap wine and how that instantly bonded them. How true is that in real life. You had great little aspects like that thrown within. You painted a picture in my head the whole time of what was happening which i really enjoyed. I'm excited to come back and watch how your portfolio develops!
ReplyDeleteI was a little confused at first about where the story was going but I found myself really intrigued by it all. I love that Jade has so much heart and was so eager to live out her dream in a place that nobody thought was worth anything. You really made the character seem like a sweet and hardworking person. I also loved that she had such a great attitude towards everything, even though things weren't exactly going her way. I also liked the uniqueness of all the people that helped her. I enjoyed the love/hate relationship that she had with the handyman. They both needed each other but also you could sense the aggravation too. I liked how everyone in the story had a role in making the motel really turn out to be everything that she was wanting it to be. Overall, I think that your story was well written and I really enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great story, Skylar. What really drew me in was the title. I was looking at your portfolio stories and the title of this one really caught my eye and got me interested in what it meant. I like that you put yourself in the story. I recently did this with one of the stories I rewrote in weeks past. I was skeptical about telling a story this way when I wanted to do it because I thought it might sound cheesy, but your story is anything but cheesy. It's really well-written and I definitely sympathize with your Skylar narrator. I think lots of people have big dreams about running some form of their own business one day so your character is very relatable in that sense. Your descriptions of people and scenes are also excellent. I also like how you rewrote the story in such a unique way, not sticking so tightly to details of the plot but definitely keeping the spirit and the original message of the story. Overall, I think you did a great job.
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