Son of Ratman Reportedly Shares Drinking Water After Storm
Andy Karavitis Title: Son of Ratman Reportedly Shares Drinking Water After Storm Storyteller: Andy Karavitis Language: English Date of Telling: 2016-05-07 Location of Telling: Houston, Texas Duration of Story: 12:42 Source of Story: Original Location of Story: Southeastern Wyoming Subject Headings: Families ; Survival Notes: |
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Well, I suppose by now, most of you have heard the original story called, Ratman. But for those of you who haven’t, I will summarize it briefly. The story that I want to tell you today is about some recently emerged information about Ratman, things that happened to Ratman later in his life. Some things that have just come to light about the old Ratman story, which I found quite interesting.
See, when I first moved down to Texas about ten years ago I heard a story being told that had eerie similarities to a story about Ratman that we used to tell in Wyoming but with some subtle variations. There is a character in Texas known as La Llorona, the hollering woman. If you have ever driven Interstate 10 across Texas between San Antonio and Houston, there is even a sign on the exit for La Llorona Creek, which means the hollering woman creek.
Her story, which is similar to Ratman’s story, also involves a young girl who was swept away in a spring flood that came into the house unexpectedly during the night, and it tragically swept away her daughter. In the case of La Llorona there is not a brother in the story. But the story with La Llorona, was that after her daughter was swept away she began to go crazy. She would go down to the creek every night and begin hollering and howling for her daughter and grieving and yelling. Anyway that is how she got the name La Llorona which means hollering woman.
Now this story has some basis in fact and it is not actually that long ago that this event supposedly occurred. But a part of that story that is seldom told is that La Llorona became famous not only for her insanity but also for her great beauty which attracted men to her, as a prize. And in those days there were some tall men with some tall boots striding around Texas including such notables as Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie (who the Bowie knife is named after). A lot of these men tried their hand at La Llorona as suitors because she was famously beautiful and she was a known woman living in this part of the country where there was not a lot of that. Sometimes men are attracted to that crazy edge in a woman. (I can’t explain what happened with that.) But, it was not Jim Bowie or Davy Crockett who was a successful suitor, it was Johnny Appleseed.
Not a lot of people know this, mainly what we hear about Johnny Appleseed in his younger days he was roaming around the pacific northwest and sowing all the apple trees. However, he undertook an amazing journey when he was about to retire because he heard about a newly opening up place in Texas, the Texas Panhandle and part of the stuff that used to be Mexico, which he thought would be perfect for a new crop that he was going to try here. So actually Johnny Appleseed walked from Washington down to Texas, as the story goes. When he found out about the existence of La Llorona, the hollering woman, he did make a pass at her and they fell in love. For some years Johnny Appleseed lived there near La Llorona Creek, as it is now called. I don’t think he died there but he did live there and they conceived the daughter who was swept away there.
Anyway the La Llorona story ties into the Ratman story because of something that happened not that long ago along the Gulf Coast, There is a couple of events in the news that intersected. I don’t think most people in the country realized that these things happened at the same time and have caused conditions in this part of the country to revert to a very primitive state for a time. Because what happened was this. There came a summer where the energy prices spiked. There was price manipulation in California and there was a shortage of coal because of some kind of problems with the trains. I think it was something to do with the railroads not shipping as much as they promised. So, the prices spiked on electricity and parts of the country were undergoing rolling blackouts to cover up for the fact that the system was inadequate and it was being rigged. At the same there was a storm that hit part of Texas, it is not as well known as Hurricane Katrina, just because it hit a part of the country that is less populated. But in some ways that made it even more devastating. What happened is that a storm came through in the summer, in the heat of the summer. There was a family that lived out on the edge of a small town that is off of the interstate, off the beaten path, on the south side of the interstate.
The story goes there were two kids in this family and their parents had told them that they were not to go down and play in the drainage area. The area is a creek that flowed into a bayou and there was a big culvert pipe there. They said, “Why?” and they answered, “Because, Ratman lives over there.” Now these kids had not heard the story of Ratman which is set in Wyoming. They laughed because they thought their parents were making a play off of Batman, of course. But, they came to find out there was some truth to this story after all. Because, a hurricane hit in the middle of the summer and the area was under rolling blackouts.
If you lose electricity in Texas you lose three very important things. First of all you lose the lights, so you can’t see around you at night. Second, you lose the ability to cool yourself off, which is a pretty serious emergency in some situations. Just as serious as freezing to death; you can overheat in this part of the country. A third thing you start to lose is access to drinking water. So that is what was happening. The power was out already when it hit. Then the storm brought in a storm surge that inundated some of the power plants in the area that were connected to the natural grid normally but all those switches were off because of the rolling brown outs. So when the hurricane passed, the power was out for one day, then it was out for two days, now it was out for three days. All the ice in everyone’s refrigerator had completely melted. At this point when people could get back into the power stations and the substations they couldn’t turn it back on because it had all been filled up with sea water. It was going to take a lot of time to get everything back online. Meanwhile the communities did not have any more gas for their generators to pump water into the town water supply. It is just a simple matter of budgetary considerations, right? You can’t store so much diesel because you have to change it out every year or so. You can’t keep that much on hand. So when the roads washed out of course the government came out, FEMA, and they did restore access to the main highway. But this is a little town south, an hour off the main highway.
So it just so happens that these two kids were starting to get thirsty and desperate for water. They were talking about what to do while their parents were taking a nap in the heat of the afternoon. They decided to go down by the culvert in the bayou where they had heard they were not supposed to go. From the edge of their backyard they could hear the trickling sound of water. I guess it was an attractant to them because they knew they had to get water and they followed that sound. They went down there and what they saw was something floating in the flood waters. It was a rounded sort of shape that was grey, about 2 feet tall and 4 feet around, and scaly like the back of an armadillo all around. It was anchored in such a way to the culvert pipe that was draining out into a bayou there and it was floating gently and bobbing in the bayou as the water slowly receded from the hurricane.
As they approached it, they could hear the sound of a person playing the guitar. So this is brackish and/or polluted water it was floating in, but what they found out was there was a person inside and that person claimed to be the son of La Llorona and Johnny Appleseed’s daughter who ended up married to Ratman. So this man, this son of Ratman, was floating and bobbing in the water and the kids met him. They called out to him. He stopped playing guitar and they yelled out, “Is there someone in there?” They started communicating with him. He came out and told him this story.
This thing he was on was his raft made of sticks and mud. He would bake the mud over a campfire in sections. I don’t think it weighed over 500 pounds, it was just a small nest that one person could be in. But the top of it was made of cast-off water bottles. He had cut the water bottles, like butterfly folded them, so that it would cause condensation on the inside and then water would drip down that was drinkable. So even though he was floating his nest over polluted, brackish salt water it didn’t matter because the water he was drinking was coming from the water vapor that is purified through distillation. That is how these kids found out about what had happened to Ratman. I don’t know the story of how he ended up with La Llorona’s beautiful daughter, but that is probably a tale for another day. Interesting as it may be, it uncovers a little bit more of the story of Ratman and what his family is doing now.
I hope you enjoyed the story and have a pleasant afternoon.
See, when I first moved down to Texas about ten years ago I heard a story being told that had eerie similarities to a story about Ratman that we used to tell in Wyoming but with some subtle variations. There is a character in Texas known as La Llorona, the hollering woman. If you have ever driven Interstate 10 across Texas between San Antonio and Houston, there is even a sign on the exit for La Llorona Creek, which means the hollering woman creek.
Her story, which is similar to Ratman’s story, also involves a young girl who was swept away in a spring flood that came into the house unexpectedly during the night, and it tragically swept away her daughter. In the case of La Llorona there is not a brother in the story. But the story with La Llorona, was that after her daughter was swept away she began to go crazy. She would go down to the creek every night and begin hollering and howling for her daughter and grieving and yelling. Anyway that is how she got the name La Llorona which means hollering woman.
Now this story has some basis in fact and it is not actually that long ago that this event supposedly occurred. But a part of that story that is seldom told is that La Llorona became famous not only for her insanity but also for her great beauty which attracted men to her, as a prize. And in those days there were some tall men with some tall boots striding around Texas including such notables as Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie (who the Bowie knife is named after). A lot of these men tried their hand at La Llorona as suitors because she was famously beautiful and she was a known woman living in this part of the country where there was not a lot of that. Sometimes men are attracted to that crazy edge in a woman. (I can’t explain what happened with that.) But, it was not Jim Bowie or Davy Crockett who was a successful suitor, it was Johnny Appleseed.
Not a lot of people know this, mainly what we hear about Johnny Appleseed in his younger days he was roaming around the pacific northwest and sowing all the apple trees. However, he undertook an amazing journey when he was about to retire because he heard about a newly opening up place in Texas, the Texas Panhandle and part of the stuff that used to be Mexico, which he thought would be perfect for a new crop that he was going to try here. So actually Johnny Appleseed walked from Washington down to Texas, as the story goes. When he found out about the existence of La Llorona, the hollering woman, he did make a pass at her and they fell in love. For some years Johnny Appleseed lived there near La Llorona Creek, as it is now called. I don’t think he died there but he did live there and they conceived the daughter who was swept away there.
Anyway the La Llorona story ties into the Ratman story because of something that happened not that long ago along the Gulf Coast, There is a couple of events in the news that intersected. I don’t think most people in the country realized that these things happened at the same time and have caused conditions in this part of the country to revert to a very primitive state for a time. Because what happened was this. There came a summer where the energy prices spiked. There was price manipulation in California and there was a shortage of coal because of some kind of problems with the trains. I think it was something to do with the railroads not shipping as much as they promised. So, the prices spiked on electricity and parts of the country were undergoing rolling blackouts to cover up for the fact that the system was inadequate and it was being rigged. At the same there was a storm that hit part of Texas, it is not as well known as Hurricane Katrina, just because it hit a part of the country that is less populated. But in some ways that made it even more devastating. What happened is that a storm came through in the summer, in the heat of the summer. There was a family that lived out on the edge of a small town that is off of the interstate, off the beaten path, on the south side of the interstate.
The story goes there were two kids in this family and their parents had told them that they were not to go down and play in the drainage area. The area is a creek that flowed into a bayou and there was a big culvert pipe there. They said, “Why?” and they answered, “Because, Ratman lives over there.” Now these kids had not heard the story of Ratman which is set in Wyoming. They laughed because they thought their parents were making a play off of Batman, of course. But, they came to find out there was some truth to this story after all. Because, a hurricane hit in the middle of the summer and the area was under rolling blackouts.
If you lose electricity in Texas you lose three very important things. First of all you lose the lights, so you can’t see around you at night. Second, you lose the ability to cool yourself off, which is a pretty serious emergency in some situations. Just as serious as freezing to death; you can overheat in this part of the country. A third thing you start to lose is access to drinking water. So that is what was happening. The power was out already when it hit. Then the storm brought in a storm surge that inundated some of the power plants in the area that were connected to the natural grid normally but all those switches were off because of the rolling brown outs. So when the hurricane passed, the power was out for one day, then it was out for two days, now it was out for three days. All the ice in everyone’s refrigerator had completely melted. At this point when people could get back into the power stations and the substations they couldn’t turn it back on because it had all been filled up with sea water. It was going to take a lot of time to get everything back online. Meanwhile the communities did not have any more gas for their generators to pump water into the town water supply. It is just a simple matter of budgetary considerations, right? You can’t store so much diesel because you have to change it out every year or so. You can’t keep that much on hand. So when the roads washed out of course the government came out, FEMA, and they did restore access to the main highway. But this is a little town south, an hour off the main highway.
So it just so happens that these two kids were starting to get thirsty and desperate for water. They were talking about what to do while their parents were taking a nap in the heat of the afternoon. They decided to go down by the culvert in the bayou where they had heard they were not supposed to go. From the edge of their backyard they could hear the trickling sound of water. I guess it was an attractant to them because they knew they had to get water and they followed that sound. They went down there and what they saw was something floating in the flood waters. It was a rounded sort of shape that was grey, about 2 feet tall and 4 feet around, and scaly like the back of an armadillo all around. It was anchored in such a way to the culvert pipe that was draining out into a bayou there and it was floating gently and bobbing in the bayou as the water slowly receded from the hurricane.
As they approached it, they could hear the sound of a person playing the guitar. So this is brackish and/or polluted water it was floating in, but what they found out was there was a person inside and that person claimed to be the son of La Llorona and Johnny Appleseed’s daughter who ended up married to Ratman. So this man, this son of Ratman, was floating and bobbing in the water and the kids met him. They called out to him. He stopped playing guitar and they yelled out, “Is there someone in there?” They started communicating with him. He came out and told him this story.
This thing he was on was his raft made of sticks and mud. He would bake the mud over a campfire in sections. I don’t think it weighed over 500 pounds, it was just a small nest that one person could be in. But the top of it was made of cast-off water bottles. He had cut the water bottles, like butterfly folded them, so that it would cause condensation on the inside and then water would drip down that was drinkable. So even though he was floating his nest over polluted, brackish salt water it didn’t matter because the water he was drinking was coming from the water vapor that is purified through distillation. That is how these kids found out about what had happened to Ratman. I don’t know the story of how he ended up with La Llorona’s beautiful daughter, but that is probably a tale for another day. Interesting as it may be, it uncovers a little bit more of the story of Ratman and what his family is doing now.
I hope you enjoyed the story and have a pleasant afternoon.