(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 19th, early 20th 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.
