Can you write a story at Great America?

Yes, you can!

Back in the summer of 1996, I took my 10-year-old daughter and two of her friends to Great America, a 112-acre amusement park in Santa Clara, California. While the girls lined up for rides, I found little spots not far from them where I could keep an eye out and be available if needed.

I found the little waiting areas with refreshments, shaded tables and fake small-town flourishes surprisingly relaxing. The sunshine and heat, which weren’t in great supply in San Francisco where we lived at the time, as well as the laughter and shrieks of the children, brought back memories of summers in the Midwest, where I grew up.

I had a journal with me, and thinking of playing at Uncle Tom’s with my sisters, I began to write. He was our stepmother’s uncle and owned 27 acres in a town near where we lived. We’d visit about once a week during our long, luscious summer vacations, which back then, didn’t end until a few days after Labor Day.

My sisters and I didn’t really visit anyone. The adults did that while drinking coffee and eating homemade cake and cookies at the dining room table. We were allowed inside only briefly for a snack. It was clear we belonged outside. But what a magical place it was with hills and gullies, marshes, meadows and forested areas. We were never bored. There was so much to imagine.

At Great America, I pictured Uncle Tom’s environment as I wrote. I used bits and pieces of reality and wove a fantasy that, when I was more active in the storytelling community, I used to tell live without written text to refer to. It's my recent return to storytelling that brought the story to mind.

My daughter illustrated the story at the time, and we made a little book together. I looked for it recently and couldn’t find it. But I know I didn’t throw it away, so it will turn up at some point. And I do have the text handy. Here it is:
And here's the text:

The Doonlobber Pesterfill
By Laura McHale Holland

If and then, in a time of tuggle doodles and whatever wherefore to now considered, there lived a graphnel swapfnicker sort of thing. Yes, colorful indeed was this graphnel swapfnicker sort of thing, with iridescent turquoise eyes, purple-silver snout, and red nostrils.

Of course, that was long ago now, for I was almost six years old when I saw the thing slithering beneath the leaves — brown, red and gold — that had already fallen to the ground, though it was mid-July, and the grass was high, and the baby frogs were not yet jumping across the meadow, Uncle Bill's meadow, that is.

The grapnel swapfnicker sort of thing appeared while I was avoiding as long as possible a trip to the outhouse with its daddy long legs crawling, hungry horse flies buzzing, lizards lurking, and other creepy things mucking about.

All morning I was a knight in shining armor ordering rows of pansies to their doom at the hands of my sister, Ruthy-Bea, who was a sorceress, only until noon though, when she became Elvis Presley, and I had to be Marilyn Monroe swooning on the nearby maple stump—unless we found an arrowhead along the way, which would change everything, you see. Then I would be Elvis, and she would be Marilyn, and we would argue down by the tool shed. But instead of an arrowhead, I found a rusty dagger, which must have fallen from a lost pirate ship, and I swaggered off with my treasure down the hill to the dry creek bed, for Ruthy-Bea and I had no rules about daggers.

While I played suave swashbuckler dueling a crew of mutinous grasshoppers, Ruthy-Bea cornered a baby rabbit up in the peach orchard, put it in a cardboard box, and began instructing it in the esoteric beauty of the times tables. The graphnel swapfnicker sort of thing snorted at my feet, cleared its throat with a great rickety-rumble-bumble and said, "She's got the wrong idea there with the times tables. Rabbits like the ABC's, nothing more, nothing less."

I looked down at its nail-file sharp claws emerging from the leaves, and I said, "How would you know? You're just one of those graphnel swapfnicker sort of things sticking your snout out for some air."

"How do you know I'm not a doonlobber pesterfill?" it sneered.

"Uh, I studied them last summer, and everybody knows doonlobber pesterfills live in the dirt mounds in the dense woods over there. They never come out."

"Oh, yes they do, every year in mid-July, and they eat sweet little girls like you."

"Like me?" I was suddenly shrunken in spirit, for I had not really studied about doonlobber pesterfills, and I suspected this graphnel swapfnicker sort of thing knew that. "Oh, no, they don't like girls like me," I said. "I'm sneaky and sly and not at all good tasting."

"Who, then, would be good tasting?" the thing queried.

“I'm sure Ruthy-Bea up in the peach grove would be, for she is good, sweet and kind. She tastes better even than chocolate ice cream, if you like to eat people, of course."

And then with a bam-boom-schram-a-flam, the grapnel swapfnicker sort of thing rose up from the leaves in the creek bed, and he tore off his head, which wasn't his head at all, but a mask, and beneath was a foul smelling critter with slimy scales on his lumpy skull and sunken eyes oozing what looked suspiciously like cherry jello.

It grabbed me with its steely claws, threw me into the creek bed. I landed in a cloud of dust, and the thing zip-zipped and bip-bipped like the wild mouse carnival ride up to the peach orchard.

"Ruthy-Bea, watch out!" I screamed. "It's a bona fide doonlobber pesterfill heading right toward you."

Ruthy-Bea picked up the box with the bunny inside and she ran, but she didn't watch where she was going, and she ran smack into a peach tree. The box flew into the air, across the meadow, and through the open rear window of my father's Ford Galaxy, as he drove up Uncle Bill's driveway on his way back from a run to the Foster Freeze. 

The doonlobber pesterfill grabbed Ruthy-Bea. Its slimy fingers closed in around her neck. I ran as fast as I could. I had to save her. She wasn't really good, sweet and kind. She was sneaky and sly just like me.

I touched the rusty, trusty dagger to my leg — I hoped it would magically speed me up the hill — and cazoom-varoom-daploomb, there I was right at the pesterfill's big, stinky feet. I bit his bristly legs, pulled scales off his back, pried his fingers loose from Ruthy-Bea's neck.

But then he whop-glopped me with his triple-jointed, rubber-tire tail. The tail stretched and wrapped around Ruthy-Bea and me. Ruthy-Bea bit down hard on the creature's wheezing nose. He lost his balance, and the three of us rolled down the hill into the dry creek bed — fists, scales, twigs, and hair flying everywhere.

The doonlobber pesterfill landed on top of me. He wrenched the rusty dagger from my fist and he held it right above my heart.

Then water, sweet cool water, rained down upon us. The doonlobber pesterfill moaned and groaned and melted right into the leaves, winking one of his turquoise eyes at me before he disappeared. I looked up, and there was my father spraying us from above with Uncle Bill's garden hose. How did he know it would melt the doonlobber pesterfill, I wondered.

Ruthy-Bea and I jumped to our feet and raced up to hail him, our hero, who had just saved us from yet another near-death experience. We each grabbed one of his legs and kissed his trousers right at the knees. 

"Look at the two of you," he growled, "a couple of hooligans. Why, I can't take you anywhere before you start fighting and making a mess."

"But there was …" Ruthy-Bea began.

"Please, no excuses," he said. "And what about this thing?" He brought a hand from behind his back. By the ears he held the baby rabbit dressed in melted butter-pecan ice cream, chocolate fudge, and whipped cream “You know when you come to Uncle Bill's you're not supposed to catch the animals. They're wild. They don't like it. Why don't you ever just play with dolls?"

I took a big gulp. "We can explai—"

"I don't want any of your far-fetched explanations. We're going home right now."

"Aw, Daddy," Ruthy-Bea and I lamented.

"Oh, and Shrimp." He pointed right at me. "Go to the outhouse before we leave. It's a long ride back to the city."

So I approached the rickety-wooden shack of foul smells, opened the door, and to my surprise, there were no daddy long legs crawling, no hungry horse flies buzzing, no lizards lurking, and no other creepy things mucking about.  And I knew it was the doonlobber pesterfill who had gotten 'em all, for it was mid-July, the grass was high, and there were no sweet, little girls to eat, not at Uncle Bill's anyway.

More notes on the story

As you’ve probably noticed, I changed the uncle’s name from Tom to Bill. And the main character has just one sister in the story. I have two. But the fictional sister’s name is derived from my real sisters’ middle names. Also, in the story, the girls catch a bunny, and my sisters and I did catch a bunny in real life—and got in trouble for doing so, but not the same kind of trouble the girls in the story get into.

And then there was the outhouse, which plays a role in the story. We, the real girls who were relegated to the outside, did use an outhouse at Uncle Tom’s, and it did have daddy long legs crawling, hungry horse flies buzzing, lizards lurking, and other creepy things mucking about.

Did you enjoy this look into how I created this story? If you write stories, do you include details from your own experience? I will welcome your comments.