As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Now this all happened before I was born, but this is the way the old man used to tell it. God's honest.
They were sitting in a bar in Glendive Montana, when in walked a man who looked like he did not belong, and sure enough, he was from Ohio. He started loosening up after a few shots of Gukenheimer and soon was regaling the old man, my uncle and the bartender with a tale of a great train robbery in Washington, where bandits made off with gold bars, sunk them under the muck, and were all shot before they could return.
The Ohioan was the great grandson of a whore, who was working the stalls of the American fort there and provided an advance to several of the robbers and in pillow talk they spilled where it was all sunk.
The Gram whore made a map, but was kicked in the head by a mule the next day and got killed.
Thus the map languished in the Bible where it was drawn all them years and was only discovered when the family had run out of smoking paper for their weed, and started rolling up the King James.
The Ohioan swore that there was so much gold there that it would make dishonest men of them all, but he needed help getting that gold out. The old man not missing an opportunity to get rich quick, signed on with my Uncle and the bartender.
So they hoofed it off to Washington, about the same area that DB Cooper later lost his fortune in jumping out of a jet, and got to the end of the logging road and made a start for the bog.
The Ohioan had it all worked out. Had this new nylon space age suit that NASA would be sending to the moon and all sorts of things, including these big rubber feet he had moulded up by Firestone, so as to have them all walking on water, as that damn gumbo would make a mud pie out of anyone in two steps.
Well things were not quite as bountiful as promised. The swamp was big, and had bigger mosquitoes. The old man said they ate one the second night, and it tasted allot like chicken.
So any way, the dude's high tech suit was not much competition for the wilds, and about day three when eating mosquito was wearing thin, the nylon was ripped to shreds and the Ohioan was being eaten alive.
Only thing he could do was put on a skin of muck, is the way the old man told it, as he looked like he was about three pints down. He was having a hell of a time on this stilts in poking around for that gold in the deep water.
So there they were, men in bluejeans, and an Ohioan in muck, when a vote was taken that went 3 to 4, that it was time to find an easier way to make money which involved drinking beer and not being drank by mosquitoes. The hold out was the bartender as he had had enough beer.
They started off the Lost Bog, and there was a disagreement where they were, as 3 out of 4 believed the sun sat in the west, while the guy dressed in the muck suit thought it rose in the west. Any way, there was no time for the parting of ways, as up on the side of this mountain the muck man was jestering about sun directions when he sort of fell off the mountain.
The old man said he fell quite a long time, and then started a bouncing and rolling, and came to rest in a pile of dead moose hair that the bugs had rendered out.
He was a sight to behold really. All mucky, stinking like muck skunk, and now covered in a coat of hair. That man was madder than Judas in the Sanhedrin and got up and stomped off in big long strides, and that is when the old man said they noticed this cowboy and his horse acting up on seeing the Ohioan striding off, and for some reason the cowboy was off his horse and filming it all.
Seemed sort of impolite really, in a man naked, covered in muck and moose hair, having his picture took, but it was California after all. Yeah apparently they sort of got turned around and walked a bit further south than they thought, and had a longer walk back to the Ford.
Dad said they never thought much about it, until they seen this big foot movie, and Uncle said, "Hell fire, that is that Ohioan who took us on a wild gold chase out west!"
Sure enough it was.
Any way that is the way the old man told it, every time I started whining about going out into the dark at camp, with those god damn big foot howling in the trees.
God's honest.
agtG
