Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

The Story of James McCone

Nationality: Bohemian, 1/4 German
Age: 74
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Benson, MN
Performance Date: 3/18/2013
Primary Language: English

My informant for this story is the same as my entries about the world’s smallest church and Smorum. He is “Bohemian but technically 1/4 German” as he puts it. The context is the same; living room of my informant in Benson, MN. My informant is very interested in family history, so he visits people in various towns and looks up archives to collect the family stories. He has been accumulating more stories and more details of the stories since my mother was a young girl. This story is about James McCone and how he came to Iowa from Ireland. My informant’s wife is related to James McCone, but my informant is an active bearer of the story.

Informant: James McCone came over from County Dairy, Ireland as a 6 year old orphan

Me: James McCone was Great Grandma’s grandfather?

Informant: yes. And his father died. And his mother went to the poor house.

Third Party: No she wasn’t, they turned her away.

Informant: Well they turned her away, she wasn’t poor enough, but she died, maybe she wasn’t healthy enough. Anyway, she died and so the priest, Father Duvont put him on the boat to come to this country. So he went to his cousin Sarah fall Holand in upper New York. So then he worked for the Civil War taking care of horses and then he followed the Railroad when they were building that, taking care of the horses, coming West. And Landed in Lawler as the blacksmith.

I think it is interesting that my informant is the active bearer of this story because he is not even related to James McCone. James McCone is related to his wife. My informant is very invested in our family tree and family history, even on the side of the family that are not technically related to him. As I discussed in my other entry, my informant is an active bearer of family stories. I looked online for more information on James McCone, and I found an obituary online that cited my informant as a source. Other people go to my informant to get these stories. My informant tells them because he thinks they are interesting, like putting a puzzle piece together with all of the parts of the story coming together, and he likes them because they are within the family. I find this story interesting because it is family lore and shows insight on how my ancestors came to this country.

Black Eyed Peas for Good Luck

Nationality: Western European / Mexican
Age: 18 / 20
Occupation: Student / Student
Residence: USC - on campus housing / USC - off campus
Performance Date: 04/28/2013
Primary Language: English

Patrick

It’s just like really quick, but um, first dinner after New Year’s you have to eat black-eyed peas, um for good luck. Um and it’s my grandma, every New Year’s makes this big pot of black-eyed peas and you have to eat at least one. But usually I’m just like, “this is my year”! And I like shovel them in and it’s like kind of a normal year.

 

Does all your family do this?

Mhm.

What happens if you don’t eat a black-eyed pea? Has anyone, not eaten a black-eyed pea?

No.

 

They just go by it? It’s just always what your family’s done?

Mhm.

 

Do you know where your grandma got it from?

I think it’s just a tradition. I’m assuming it must be a known tradition because Austin—

  •  — Context: Patrick and Austin were in the same room together as I was collecting folklore from them. When I went to record my interview with Patrick, as soon as he started talking about his family’s New Year’s black-eyed pea tradition, Austin, sighed jokingly because that was exactly what he wanted to share with me. I did collect Austin’s variation on this so I could see how this tradition differed between their two families. –

 

Is it specific to a race or nationality?

I’m a European mutt, I don’t know what I am, or where this came from.

 

Austin

My family is Mexican and for ours it is actually, like, on the day of. You have to have it on New Year’s. And it’s black-eyed peas and you have to have like at least one. And my grandma passed it on to my dad, who like does it most of the time and I haven’t done it in a while. But it’s like supposed to bring you like good luck and make you stronger.

 

Does you family really abide by this?

My grandma does, but she’s also like really superstitious about a lot of things, but like, stubbornly weird about thinking about superstitions.

 

My Reaction:

I’ve never heard of this tradition before, but I’m curious as to the origins of it because I heard it come from two very different nationalities.

Microwaves and Pregnant Women

Nationality: White
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC - off campus housing
Performance Date: 04/28/2013
Primary Language: English

So when my mom was pregnant with me, my grandma was extremely paranoid about my well-being, so she wouldn’t let my mom go near the microwave while it was on. Cause ]my grandma saw on the news that microwave radiation would somehow seep into the womb and would hurt the baby. But I think this was like something she heard in the 60s-70s cause my mom knew nothing was going to happen to me, but my grandma was worried anyway. [My grandma] was and is addicted to the news. Every single superstition she has about anything, she gets from the news.

 

Do you know of anyone else who had that fear of microwave rays hurting babies in the womb?

Actually, maybe not like an explicit story from someone, but I do remember that at some point during my life I heard quite a bit about people’s paranoia surrounding microwaves. So I guess this microwave legend or whatever has been around for sometime. But also, I know that my grandma had an abortion at one point because the doctor told her that the baby was going to be deformed, so I kind of always thought that her microwave slash overall overprotection with babies in the womb must have stemmed from that.

 

My Reaction:

Like cell phones, there are a ton of superstitions and urban legends regarding microwaves. It makes complete sense that someone would suspect that the rays would be harmful to  baby.

El Chupacabra

Nationality: White / Mexican
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Rowland Heights, CA
Performance Date: 05/1/2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

So when I was in 6th grade, I moved to a new school and I had to take this Spanish class and my teacher’s name was Ms. Riley. She was absolutely not Spanish or Mexican or any other Latin nationality at all, and she even told us this. Not that a Spanish teacher has to be Spanish, but this lady was really bizarre and for some reason, the fact that she chose to teach Spanish just really added to her strangeness. So I remember during class, she’d get distracted a lot and would tell us these really, really weird stories, that were apparently all true – but even my 6th grade knew she was full of shit. That or she was just like, a psychopath or something. Like she said this dentist she had would perform surgeries on her and she’d wake up during the procedure and the anesthetic would have run out and he would keep doing the surgery while she was awake and later on she found out that this guy was like actually a criminal that the FBI was hunting and he would go around posing as a dentist and would basically just torture his patients. Just like weird stuff like that. So that kind of like sets you up for all the stories that she told us in class. Just like based off of that, I never, ever believed what she said. So in her class was the first time I ever heard about “el Chupacabra,” which is Spanish and when translated loosely means like, “the goat sucker.” And like, it basically did just that, well, more or less. Like the Chupacabra was supposed to be this like alien/vampire/wolf-looking creature thing that would suck all the blood out of farm animals mostly. And that was about it. And like this is something that people like actually believed in cause I’ve seen tv specials where they interview people who had farms and like would go into their barn to find that one of their animals was drained completely of their blood and they would have two puncture wounds. I mean, it seems like a pretty viable thing, because I’ve heard a ton of stories where people said their animals were drained of their blood, but the way my teacher described the Chupacabra, she kind of ruined any possible belief I could have had in this creature. So like, she told us this story about how she was driving in her car down a road in a forest, and like all of the sudden, she saw this like glowing, neon green creature thing fly in front of her car. And for some strange fuckin’ reason, she decided that It would be a good idea to stop her car and get out and look around for God knows what. So when she got out of her car, she saw that on the side of the road, next to her car were like three crows or some other bird, and all of them were dead and all of them apparently were drained completely of their blood. And then, to apparently corroborate this story, she told us of this time she found this alley cat and decided to take care of it, then one day, she heard this cat have a grissly fight in a tree outside her house. And when she went outside to see what the fight was, she just saw this glowing thing fly out of her tree and away somewhere and then the cat fell to the ground and smelled really bad and then it got sick and died in the next couple of days. Her claim was that for both of these scenarios, the Chupacabra was the flying thing, and ya.

 

So did you ever tell people about the Chupacabra?

Yeah, tons of people, but I never tell them about my teacher’s crazy variation on the myth.

 

Do you believe in Chupacabra, or did you ever believe in it?

No, but sometimes when I’m driving down a dark road, and I’m the only car, I always get paranoid that something is going to fly in front of my car, and in the back of my mind, I think it’s going to be Chupacabra. Like not actually, but you know, the thought is there.

 

My Reaction:

I too have seen the specials on this creature, and while I know it’s not real, I have seen some convincing evidence for something that is sucking the blood from animals.

El Cucuy

Nationality: White / Mexican
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Rowland Heights, CA
Performance Date: 05/1/2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

So in Mexican culture, there’s this thing called “El Cucuy,” (pronounced, koo-koo-ee) which is basically like the boogeyman. Like when you’re a kid, and you’re being bad, it’s something that parents will tell you about to make you behave. Like if you’re not eating your dinner, or you were told to clean your room and you aren’t, you’re mom might say like “you better eat your dinner or clean your room or el Cucuy is going to eat you.” And it works. That shit was the scariest! I was so afraid that he was actually going to eat me. Literally like every single time they pulled the “cucuy” card on me I did whatever they wanted me to do.

 

And where does the Cucuy live?

Uh, I knew some other kids whose parents told them about “el cucuy” too and for them, he lived under the bed like the boogeyman, but the way my Nina told it to me was that he hid in the closet and he only came out if I was misbehaving.

 

Did this ever make you afraid of going into your closet?

Only if I was doing something I knew I wasn’t supposed, otherwise it was just a closet, cause they told me that [el cucuy] would only come out if I was being bad or wasn’t listening to my mom or something.

 

And this is a Mexican thing?

Well, ya like any Latin country really. I don’t know who like actually made it up, or started the el cucuy thing, but it’s definitely spread throughout Latin culture.

 

When did you stop believing in El Cucuy?

I mean, I don’t know the particular date or year or whatever, but just at that like age you get to when you start thinking you’re too cool for things. And nothing triggered my disbelief in him, but you just figure it out at some point, you know?

 

My Reaction:

I have a bunch of friends who come from Mexican families, so I’m very familiar with the cucuy. Parents do things like this all the time. They threaten kids with a creature so that they will do what their told, however, cucuy is particularly scary because he is supposedly something that will eat children.