Tonganoxie woman best tall-tale teller in Kansas
A story about her daughter’s lost cat helped Keyta Kelly become the best tall tale story teller in the state.
Kelly, a Tonganoxie attorney, won the Tall Tales Contest at the Kansas Storytelling Festival on April 23 in Downs.
The event usually draws about 250 people from across Kansas, Iowa, Colorado and Oklahoma.
Kelly and another member of First City’s Performers and StoryTellers, Laura Elkins, were two of four finalists who competed for the tall-tale title.
It’s Kelly’s second consecutive year winning the title, which comes with a traveling shovel that has winners’ names etched into the handle.
“It was about my daughter Kaitlyn’s cat running off,” Kelly said.
It started out innocently enough, but it grew and grew and grew.
And well, so did Tipsy, her daughter’s cat.
The story went that the cat went missing and the family continued to be on the lookout for the cat. Meanwhile, the feline met an unfortunate end at the teeth and claws of a coyote.
The cat had a chip identification, so the Kelly family thought the cat still was gallivanting throughout the area.
But the chip, well, transferred from organism to organism.
The coyote ate the cat, the coyote then left its droppings in the woods where a bear stepped in the coyote droppings. A hunter then shot the bear and made a coat out of the bear’s fur. Somehow, some way, the chip made its way into the bear’s fur.
And, it turns out, the hunter was in fact, tipsy, based on his alcohol consumption.
“It starts out as something that could be true or was true but then you stretch it to the point of it being absurd,” Kelly said.
Kelly was selected the winner against two other past shovel winners as well, Gary Kuntz, of Gladstone, Mo., and Allen DeBey of Osborne. Kuntz has won the shovel once, while DeBey has won it twice previously.
A third victory means that you’ve retired as a master storyteller and can no longer compete.
Kelly will be looking to do just that next April at the 2017 festival.
Fellow PAST performers Rachel Kelly and Vivian Ross also attended the festival and its workshops with Keyta Kelly and Elkins.
Keyta Kelly said the workshops good in just listening to the professional storytellers.
“We learn something every time,” she said.
First City’s PAST is a group of local performers that focuses primarily on cemetery stories.
Performers’ next cemetery event, titled “Peer into the Past,” will take place at 1:30 p.m. May 14 at Mount Olivet Cemetery, 31151 207th St., in Leavenworth. For more information, follow the group on Facebook at First City’s PAST.
Kelly said winning the tall-tale contests have been wonderful, but she also praised the festival in general.
“You can just sit there and listen to someone talking and be like ‘oh were did that hour go,'” she said. “They’re that interesting.”