There's a Bigfoot in the Boysenberries

(Yes, the names have been changed, but it sure ain’t the innocent we’re protecting here.)

There has seldom been as grand a time as the early days of the tourist industry in Branson, Missouri.  These were the days when the “shows and attractions” were home grown and home staffed, and before the Nashville/Vegas glitz invaded.

Besides the colorful locals, the summer tourist season, basically Memorial Day to Labor Day, would see an influx of late teen, early twenties performers, musicians, ride operators, cave guides, and what have yous.  Mostly what have yous. And the primary aim of all seemed to be to finish the work day so the beer night could begin.  One such group, who at times styled themselves as a fictional Roller Derby team, “The North Elm Street Ass Busters,” was well into the evening International Crisis Seminar, Shakespearean Authority Discussion, and Poker Game, when two of the late arriving Ass Busters busted in.

Bobby Jim and Bud rushed breathlessly into the room. That in itself meant nothing.  They were both out of shape heavy smokers, so they did most things breathlessly.   They had just returned from a high speed pursuit of beer on Missouri State 248 from Reed’s Spring Junction to North Branson.  248 is a dark, winding two lane blacktop through woods and small farms—unlighted, and known as one of the most unsafe highways in the state.

“We seen him!” shouted Bobby Jim.  “Damn, he was right there hitch hiking.” A few lazy eyes looked up from the beer and cards.

“Bigfoot!” explained Bud.  “Leanin’ on a mailbox.”

“Did you pick him up?” asked someone.

“Oh, HELL no!” exclaimed Bobby Jim.  “He looked way too much like my prom date’s dad.  And that Old Boy ain’t forgive me for getting her home at 6 am.”

“Nope,” said Buckwheat.  “It was an insult to his family honor to get her home before 7.”

Bud jumped in.  “Well we talked about it, but it’s not a good idea to pick up your average Bigfoot.”

Bud was the group authority.  On any topic.  Whether he knew anything or not.  The group had heard him expound at length on everything from the theory of hydraulic power (“Now, you take your run of the mill hydraulic installation.”) to the proper ratios for mixing Kool Aid (“They have shown, if you mix Kool Aid wrong, it loses all nutritional value.”)  So, from atop his mountain of misinformation, he began to enlighten the assembled.

“Your average Bigfoot,” he continued, “is always hungry.  Now, we knew that this late, the Dairy Queen was closed, and we couldn’t get him to food quickly.  Those things will turn man eater.  Also,” he rambled, “we only had that one case of beer in the back, and we didn’t want him to break into it before we got back here with it.  Plus, a drunk Bigfoot is not easy to reason with.”

Just as he was warming to his topic, Harold’s cop walkie talkie squawked.  Harold was a full time banjo player, and a part time Sheriff deputy in Taney County.   A handy guy to have around when drooling-drunk musicians and performers gathered.  He played nightly, except Sunday’s, with a local hillbilly music show called, “The Baldknobbers Jamboree.”  The original Baldknobbers, back in the late 19^th, early 20^th century, had been a group of hooded night riders dispensing vigilante justice around the region.  Some said they modeled themselves after the Klan, but were especially cantankerous due to finding themselves living in a county with no black citizens to terrorize.  Why they became legendry folk heros, with a cornball music show named after them, is a monument of the fuzziness of the average American’s understanding of history.

The warning on Harold’s radio interrupted Bud’s dump of information about drunken ape-men.  

“Trouble at the Farm,” Harold said, and ran for his car, popping the cigarette lighter Kojac light on the top, and roaring off toward Highway 76, and out to the Shepherd of the Hills Farm—one of the large tourist attractions of the area at that time. They were a big employer and tax payer, and got the attention of local law enforcement if they called for it.

The departure of the only guy who was both sober and carrying a fire arm put an end to any thoughts of a Bigfoot expedition, and the house went back to the business of beer, cards, and solving international crises.

The “Farm” where Harold was headed was actually a complex of tourist attractions build around the questionable claim that it was the original location of much of the action in a sappy 1907 novel written by Harold Bell Wright called, “The Shepherd of the Hills.”

It included a huge “Gift Shop” full of tourist tacky, a couple of faux log cabins purporting to be the residences of the characters from the book, horseback rides through “The Shepherd’s hills,” and a large outdoor theater where in summer a nightly pageant of the book was performed, complete with a winsome Ozarks lass, horses, fist fights over the favors of the lass, and a cabin that “burned down” nightly.

Of course, to service all this “authentic” history, there were several disguised and hidden modern buildings housing kitchens, warehouses, maintenance sheds and machinery, and such.

Among the Ozarks food items sold and shipped out of the gift shop was a line of Home Made jams and jellies cooked up in the commercial kitchens, packaged in fake home canning jars, and stored in boxes of overpriced sugary product stacked ready for the store.

About 30 miles by road, and 6 miles as the crow flies from the site of Bobby Jim’s and Bud’s Bigfoot, we have the entrance, under cover of darkness, of a local character with his own set of fairly large pedal accessories.  Jerome was a freak of nature, perhaps, an intellectually pretentious hillbilly in a large scale body.  Tall, with a large thrusting nose which he kept pointed skyward, a chunk of a chin protruding from constantly quaking jowls, and feet a less weighty man could have water skied on.  He also supplied to the atmosphere a highly questionable regimen of personal hygiene and about a pickup truck load of constantly offended attitude.

Most recently, Jerome had been offended by the owners of the Shepherd of the Hills farm when they terminated his employment for having been found sleeping  his shift away in one of the log cabins.  Jerome felt that the unkind things they said to him about sleeping while collecting wages constituted, “A personal affront.” 

During the “get the hell out of here” portion of the exit interview, there came a great disagreement as to the amount of, or even the very fact of, severance pay.  The owner’s position could be summed up as, “Not one damn cent.”

So, a dull blue and rust Dodge panel van cut down to a pickup carrying Jerome and a couple of his cousins was crunching up the back gate gravel drive to the jelly-jam warehouse door.  Jerome had decided that he would collect his own severance pay in the form of cases of jellies and jams.

Earlier in his employment, he had stolen a set of keys to the padlocks on the warehouses, as a contingency plan for future requirements.  There would be no “breaking” part to this breaking and entering.  As Jerome saw it, he was just balancing an injustice that had been done him.

Our burglar was no cat.  Jerome was lacking in graces, both social and physical.  Therefore, he was stealth in neither voice nor lurching locomotion.  The noises, combined with the fact that this was not his first foray onto the Farm that week, managed to alert the night watchman.  A box on the company organization chart that Jerome had failed to notice.

This watchman, the great uncle of one of the managers, was official enough looking with his Khakis, black leather utility belt, and sewn on badge.  But the only weapon with which he was entrusted was a black 6-cell flashlight, and a large ring of keys.  Therefore, after a distant look at the invading forces, he retreated to his guard shack and called the Sheriff.

That’s the call that set in motion the walkie talkie squawk to Harold, and sent him and about five other deputy cars roaring toward the scene of the crime.

Six cars, both county and reserve-deputy personal, skidded through the gravel and pinned the thieves with headlights and spotlights in the doorway of the warehouse.  The Boysenberry Hill Mob was loaded down with cases of jam, and headed to add them to the several already in the bed of the wheezing truck.

The night was filled with calls of, “Stop, halt, and what the hell, Jerome.”  (This was not the first discussion of legal statutes Jerome had engaged in with some of the deputies.)

Jerome began bellowing, “I’m only taking what I got a right to.”

To which the head deputy explained, “Shut the hell up, Jerome, and get in the cruiser.”

Weeks later, when the “Great Boysenberry Caper” as it was known around the Sheriff's office, finally made it onto the docket of the Taney County court over in Forsyth, Jerome was dumbfounded to discover that the judge ruled, under Missouri Jurisprudence, “Avenging a Personal Affront” was not considered a sufficient defense for stealing cases of jam.

The judge knew Jerome, and all of his extended family.  He knew the young man was thick headed and obnoxious, but not dangerous, so he suspended the sentence.  One thing that did not come out at the brief trial was what accounting system should be used to figure the value of jam converted to wages.

As to the jam.  Sadly, by US food safety laws, once it had been out of the control of both the wholesaler and the retailer, it could not be certified as safe for human consumption. Any that Jerome and the crew had touched had to be destroyed.  Several jars met their fate as they were destroyed on the breakfast tables of the Prosecuting Attorney, the Sheriff, and the Judge.

With the wane the early days of Branson, and the big shows moved into the area, less and less was seen or heard of the Bigfoot of Highway 248.  Local rumor has it that at the turn of the century, he was allied with a motorcycle gang out of Kansas City, and running a meth lab up in one of the Ozarks hollows.