Daydreaming about Bigfoot

Today on my way home from work I was daydreaming about Bigfoot and drove 15 miles past my Exit. 15 miles!!!  All of these wonderful stories I heard growing up, my dad was an original 1920's mountain man, he grew up, way up in a little valley high up and between two mountain tops in Andrews, North Carolina.  It is the most beautiful place on earth and between stories about growing up in the hills and all stories about World War Two...Well, I got an delightful preschool education.  Stories of Monsters and mountain men and of driving a tank down the Champs-Elysee.

Anyway..Today I kept driving thinking about a story daddy once told...(We call Dads, Daddy down in the Carolina's.  At least if you were brought up here.)  

He told me of long walks he had to school.  Back in the sharecropper days of the 20's in the North Carolina mountains you lived SPARSE and Mama and Daddy only had Mules and if lucky a Horse.  So you had to walk through the woods for miles in the cold winter to get to school.  Daddy, being the Rebel kept a knot hole full of chew.  Every morning he would pass the "chew" knot and more and more would be gone.  He said, "Son, there were a million trees as far as you can see and knot holes staring at you everywhere, who'd be taking my chew?  Squirrells don't like chew!"   So time passes and summer comes and daddy being 12 years old in the mountain went to work in the fields planting and hopefully feeding the family for the winter.  Every other day he would slip down the trail about 2 miles from home and grab some chew.  And I remember daddies eyes getting as big as quarters and tearing up when he told me what he saw:  He said, "Son, there were three 11 foot tall giant hairy men.  One was pulling an old 20 foot high stump out of the ground, spinning it over and plunging it down into the earth like a knife into the ground. Then came what he has never got over... "The other two monsters were fighting over something when one got the advantage of the other and had him in a head lock and snapped his neck!!"  He told me he had never ran so fast and even though he was 20 feet away watching this happen, none of em ever paid him no mind.  Said they didn't even look up from their carrying-on's.  He told me he never looked back....  

Now the road signs start pulling me out of this memory that I heard first time way back when I was 5 years old.  My fascination with these creatures has carried on through-out my life.  I wholly believe what my daddy said.  The story never changed.  There would be details that came about here and there but the story remained the same, so I've never had to look because I've always believed.

I will say this...and I'll leave this as a story for next time.  One came to me.  I thought it was a young, idiot, hunter trying to scare me at first.  Then the smell wafted over me.  I was so excited and scared to have what I've heard about all of my life standing in front of me.  I will say this, it charged (Bluff Charge). But that will be for next time.

Gary Coleman