Annie Christmas

Annie Christmas was a keelboat pilot on the lower Mississippi, a strong women and bully killer. She was six feet eight inches tall, and weighed 250 pounds. Her mustache was blonde and curled, the finest and widest on the river. Just let her hear a man say," I'm the bully of the town!" and he never said it again. Read more to find out about this strong, fearless women.

 
This is an example of a part of the story, Annie Christmas. You can tell this at your storytelling festival:  

Annie was a three-barrel flatboat unloader. She could walk a gangplank with a barrel of flour under each arm and one on her head. Once in a fit of impatience she towed a keelboat all the way from New Orleans to Natchez, ". . . and it sure skimmed along fast," the people said. "As strong as Annie Christmas" was a saying in the river towns.

Her necklace was something to tell tales about.  Annie had a bead necklace which she wore to parties.  Every bead in it represented an eye she'd gouged out in a fight, or an ear or a nose she had chawed off.  When she died, the necklace was thirty feet long-a true momento-and it could have been longer, only some of the fights were so easy Annie didn't feel it was honorable to record them.

Annie was a wonderful fighter. She could lick any bully on the river ( and did ). She too had the right to wear the red turkey feather in her hat which was the badge of honor of the river champions. She even scared Mike Fink off the lower Mississippi; if he ever showed up there, she said, she'd pole him home lashed to the bottom of a keelboat. She would have, too.

  

 

 

 

 

 

When you say this, show your muscles and emphasize it.

 

 

Say gouged and chawed slower, and louder.

When you say thirty feet long, open your arms as wide as they can go, and say it with expression.

 

 

When you say (and did) say it with an assuring voice.

 

 

When you say she would have to, say it with an assuring voice too.