It’s every American’s God-given right to self-mythologize, even to the point of absurdity. Take the current president (please): Donald Trump has somehow managed to package and sell himself as a swashbuckling working-class hero who clawed his way to the top against all odds. Other folk heroes keep quiet and let the mythology come to them. There’s a scene in Disney’s 1956 cash-grab Davy Crockett and the River Pirates in which the King of the Wild Frontier meets the self-anointed King of the River, buffoonish keelboatman Mike Fink. The slovenly Fink looks strong-jawed Crockett up and down and says,
“You’re about a foot shorter than you oughta be.” Crockett only smiles, allowing his sidekick to answer on his behalf: “Don’t worry; he’s still a-growin’.”
That growth spurt is over. But however tarnished the real Davy Crockett’s legacy has been by our contemporary recognition of him as a participant in unspeakable massacres of Native Americans, his legend still outlives that of the all-but-forgotten Fink.
