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Our editor, Mr. Lee James, suggested that I start off my column writing in this publication by explaining to all of you fine people just what I am going to write about. This presents a problem. I never quite know what I am going to write about.
I try to write about events and happenings most people can relate to. Perhaps the best way to explain this is to relate a true story. By the way, all my stories are true. I learned long ago that there is no reason to embellish the truth.
Some years back I got talked into writing a couple of stories for one of those sleazy tabloid publications. You know the ones I mean. Supermarket sensationalism. Writing for these tabloids is generally considered the tail end of journalism and no ones does it under their real name - but they pay remarkably well so good journalists keep writing for them.
I wrote the true story of the Hearne, Texas porch monster. The year was 1973, if my memory serves me correctly, when a family over on the West side of Hearne (in Robertson County) called the police department to report a "monster" that had chewed the porch off their house during the night just past. Sure enough;, when the police and the newspaper arrived, there was a big chunk of the porch missing, tooth marks on the remaining wood and pile of wood slivers on the ground two feet tall.
Something sure enough did eat that porch right off the house. The residents described it as seven or eight feet tall, with a face like a snarling dog or bear, hairy, foul smelling and ill tempered. This report sparked a week or two of monster sightings in the area. Usually the monster was seen jumping from roof top to roof top on the West side. It always seemed to have departed when the police or the newspaper photographer arrived.
Things quieted down after about a month, as they tend to do after a story like this hits the front page. Then, a farmer out on the Brazos was in his corn field and came upon, you guessed it - a seven foot tall hairy monster that resembled an ape. The police were called, tracking dogs were rounded up, and a search ensued on what turned out to be an incredibly hot August day. Two of the tracker hounds had heat stroke. The hairy creature was never found, but the dogs did track something for some distance. The Robertson County Sheriff declared the whole thing a hoax, which it might well have been. However, friends of the farmer recall how he never went back into that field and let it lay fallow until the place was sold.
I thought the story was just the type that was routinely run in the tabloids. I wrote and submitted the story of the porch eating monster. About ten days later, it came back in the mail, with a curt note saying it wasn't the type of story the tabloid was looking for. They sent some editorial guidelines which mentioned the story had to be within the realm of reason.
Next week their headline was "Bat Boy Found Hanging Upside Down in Cave." I have to admit that bat boy story tops my porch monster story by a mile. But, about that realm of reason thing. I just about went nuts trying to figure out what kind of toes the bat boy had that allowed him to hang upside down in the cave. And how he got on the ceiling in the first place. And did he have a headache from hanging upside down all the time. And since he couldn't fly, how did he get down. What were his parents like.
I don't think the bat boy story qualified in the realm of reason category. But, it sure was thought provoking.
I promise to give you thought provoking stories that are within the realm of reason - informative and humorous.
Cowgirls of the Brazos will follow in a day or two. Feel free to spindle, fold or mutilate any of this at will.
Gracia
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