he reality is, Bigfoot just died.” This simple statement, I call it?” he asked. which was issued last December by no less than Bigfoot’s “How about ‘My Pal Foot Foot’?” I replied, referring to an obscure song by own son, hit me like a tree falling in a distant forest. the afore-mentioned Shaggs. Obscure as it The person letting the ape out of the they leave hanging on the passenger-side was, I figured Ben would remember hear- bag was a man named Michael Wallace door handles of innocent smoochers? ing the song in the musty confines of my (where is 60 Minutes when you really And what about the haunted railroad Brooklyn apartment in the early 80’s. need them?). Wallace and his family and tracks of Chapel Hill, Tennessee? How (Nobody ever forgot that song once they friends had been sworn to secrecy by exactly did they manage to have the head- heard it.) Bigfoot himself, a.k.a. Ray L. Wallace, the less brakeman swing his lantern from one Ben’s response was quick and strange. family patriarch. When the big man side of our stranded-on-the-tracks station- When he emailed me his Bigfoot story, he wagon through the gaggle of had also sent a copy to his former room- hysterical teenagers trapped mate in North Carolina, both for his feed- inside to the other side of the back and because he had referenced him car and on down the tracks? in the article. Here is how his former And did he ever find that elusive roommate replied: “Great stuff. I thought head? for sure you might call it ‘My Pal Foot And, more important, what Foot,’ though the homage to The Shaggs about the strange and incredible would likely be lost on many.” legend of The Shaggs of New I told Ben that some things were meant England and what really hap- to be. Although we elected to use a differ- pened to their pal, Foot Foot? ent head, the “Foot Foot” subhead would When my friend Ben Greene be perfect for this issue’s article about The (who lives north of our great Shaggs. Northwest, the assumed “And by the way,” I added in my return “stomping” grounds of the email to Ben, “I finished the Bigfoot cover recently departed) mentioned illustration one day to the minute before I passed last November at the age of 84, the that he, himself had a story of a Bigfoot read the article with Michael Wallace’s decades-old veil of mystery was finally sighting, this issue of SouthernReader “Bigfoot is Dead” statement. lifted for the Wallace clan. began to move in a certain direction. Sometimes truth is stranger than myths. And even though I never met the man Ben’s essay, however, like the poor, or the legend, I felt a wave of sorrow. If misguided Chapel Hill brakeman, arrived Bigfoot was truly gone, what does this headless via email. “What the heck should [email protected] mean for our other favorite myths? For example, what about the crazy Hookman of Nashville’s Percy Warner Park? I later learned that he had dozens of copycat cousins. Just how many hooks did Me and My Big Foot Southerner-turned-Canadian Ben Greene takes a look at the myth of Bigfoot with a special eye on the alleged Southern connection . page 3 Philosophy of the Shaggs An account of the rise and fall (and rise SouthernReader is a bi-annual E-publication. and fall) of the obscure late-’60s girl group created from scratch by All rights reserved. SouthernReader reserves three sisters from New Hampshire . .page 6 the right to reject or approve all advertise- ments. The ads that appear in SouthernReader The Girl Next Door Ron Burch’s memoir of eloping with his next- do not constitute an endorsement for products door neighbor in the early 1960s of the American South . .page 8 and services as advertised. Letters can be sent to SouthernReader, Post Office Box 1314, The Children of the Sun Steve Batson posts a touching tribute to the Norcross, GA 30091-1314. E-mails can be fallen men and women of the space shuttle, Columbia . .page 13 sent to d.skinner@SouthernReader. All con- tents are ©2003 SouthernReader and David The Crow Stands for Law Georgia writer David Clark explains why Ray Skinner except where noted. being a good neighbor means always taking responsibility . .page 14 2 SouthernReader Spring 2003 think I might have seen a Bigfoot one drizzly spring night at As soon as they connected, Jim’s not immodest Southern accent would take on a ribs joint in Memphis, off the beaten path. I was heading a slab or two of country, evocative of corn- to the men’s room down a corridor papered with faded bingo bread and sorghum. At the time, I thought cards, when I noticed a dull light glowing from the back of a clut- this vocal quick-change was a little bit of a put-on to mask his fledgling urbanity. tered storage room. Not so. I know that now. At a makeshift table fashioned from intoning that word that way, I can hear the These days, when I call home (people cases of Bud-bustin’ Barbecue Sauce sat subtle shading that draws the vowel out, so in my current habitat don’t “call,” they what I at first glance took to be a tousled, that the word has almost but not quite two “phone”), or home calls me, my voice thickly bearded gentleman in a liver-col- syllables. Folks don’t talk like that where sheds its sleeker coats right away, and gets ored mohair sweater. His down to something more low brow was mired in shad- wooly. ows, cast by a single oil- lamp. When I saw the yellow gleam in his eyes, I stopped. In Australia they call He had a sullen, rubbery Bigfeet “Yowies.” “Yeti” is face. The jaw was working, the Himalayan variant, piston-like, as he studied an though that one, of course, evangelical tract. This he is commonly referred to held in liver-colored mittens, as the Abominable or so I assumed. Snowman. In Florida, the Just then a waitress Skunk Ape, according to at brushed by me. The tray she least one web site, could lay carried bore a pitcher’s claim to being the “south- worth of Bloody Marys. Two ernmost Bigfoot.” The stalks of celery bobbed in name we know second best the thick red liquid. Flanking in North America is the pitcher were an “Sasquatch,” an anglicized unopened quart of malt version of the Coast Salish liquor and a heap of onion word “sesquac,” meaning rings piled on a checked “wild man.” The Coast cardboard tray already Salish Nation includes soggy with grease. bands on Vancouver Island, The waitress darted a look in southwestern Canada, not at me, then quickly drew the too far northwest of Seattle. storeroom door shut. She Vancouver Island in British leaned against it until I Columbia is where I now shrugged and sidled on down reside. the hall. I opened the men’s room door, she at the same moment opened the store- James Brown, with his room door, and as she rasp and his choked howl, slipped inside to deliver the sang, “Get on the good tray, I caught a distinct whiff foot,” and you just know of kerosene and wet dog. that’s got to be so. I doubt I could precisely articulate what Soul Brother #1 It’s been a long time since I heard any- I live now. intended when he exhorted us that way. body use the word “foot” as an exple- I had a roommate, in a North Carolina (In JB’s music, the bass guitar always had tive—“Ah, foot!”—and never outside of city, who would get phone calls from his the best elocution.) Brown’s title phrase the South. Imagining a Southern accent family back home on a Tennessee farm. calls to mind the notion of “getting off on 3 SouthernReader Spring 2003 the right foot” and of “putting one’s best only to be chased away by a six-man posse you’d rather, the myth, was my Memphis foot forward.” Given the heavy syncopa- including Sheriff Homer Davis. Later that encounter jarred loose from the fogs of my tion that accompanies it, though, “Get on month, again near Flintville, Bigfoot, memories of the 1970’s down home. the good foot” smacks pretty hard of danc- apparently uncowed by the likes of Davis ing, dancing, dancing—ungh!—all over and posse, jumped on a car roof and made what ails you. In James Brown’s case, foot off with the radio aerial. (All Southern people often cultivate a com- is foundation, pivot point for turning your these incidents are plicated attitude towards refinement or self around. “couth.” When we’re aware that outsiders are trying to come to grips with our Southernness, we might Apparently there are over four hundred take added pains Bigfoot sightings in North America each to help them year. These range across the continent. know that we’re The heaviest concentration, though, is in not backwoods the Great Northwest, in other words my rubes. An alternate current locale. Even a small sampling of strategy is to ungild Internet sites yields a wealth of investiga- the lily, deliberately tions into “Cryptozoology,” which has to aim for that vague be the coolest named of all the sciences. roughneck aura or that I limited my research on the tales of off-kilter mobile home Bigfoot sightings to those that park vibe.