| Bigfoot
Encounters A Cry in the Wild |
by John Driscoll |
Bigfoot still stalks me Ever since that moment in the Trinity Alps when the ape came sauntering down into the meadow, out from the big timber and back again, I have been unable to shake him. Does it matter that it was a hoax, concocted by my nefarious brother and friends? No. If I thought Bigfoot's influence on my life was over when my friend Rick showed up to my wedding in a monkey suit, I was dead wrong. I've done radio interviews and stories galore since then. When Ray Wallace, the alleged original hoaxer died, I followed up on that story too. Of course, the Bigfoot elite always contend I get it wrong. Par for the course, I guess. The photos of those guys are telling. They are not unlike those I took of my brother and the crew who bamboozled me in the Trinity Alps. That is, you wouldn't trust them as far as you could throw them. Anyway, I'm known among the staff here as the Bigfoot reporter, a title I'm sure the experts would scorn. I'm not sure how I feel about it myself. Be that as it may, I'm the guy who fields e-mails and phone calls about Sasquatch, and I'm the guy impugned when the story comes out "wrong." So last week, I got a call from National Geographic Television. They were looking for photos of the original stories run in the Times and the Standard, two separate papers in those days. I was soon to learn that tracking down those original newspapers would be as difficult as finding the elusive Bigfoot himself. The Times-Standard has all of this on microfilm. That medium, unfortunately, is nearly impossible to reproduce with any quality. It only helped me track down the original dates. Next, I went to Michael Hughes, photo editor and de facto Times-Standard historian. He said all we have are clips, tightly folded up into negative sleeves. It turns out it's a limited supply, and the front page I really need is missing. So I checked with the Humboldt County Historical Society. Yes, they have some clips too, and when I visited their Eureka office, the few they had were in better shape. Try the library, Catherine Monroe Mace suggested. Joyce Johnson at the library was not only helpful, but optimistic, too. She'd check the basement, where piles of papers are held. But her message after looking was devastating. An entire decade of papers was missing. I'm guessing it may have been prey to the merger of the two papers, when staff started throwing away papers. I relayed that message to Catherine at the Historical Society, and she tried one more place. But the papers couldn't be found in the garage repository. Call Don Tuttle, she suggested, he has the key to another repository at the old airport. Tuttle, who'd help me if he could, is out of town. Come to think of it, a guy that indispensable shouldn't be allowed to leave town. Back to the library and the Humboldt Room. The reference room has plenty on Bigfoot, but no original copies of articles. Back to the Historical Society, to photograph one story clip in relatively decent condition. The whole thing is vexing. But I'm not writing this to air my woes. I'm writing this as a plea. If anyone out there locally has well-organized copies of the Times or the Standard from Oct. 1958, could you contact me? A piece of history is missing, and it's history you can't get anywhere else. Bigfoot has haunted me long enough. Maybe this could put him to rest. My e-mail address: jdriscoll@times-standard.com Portions of this website are reprinted and sometimes edited to fit the standards of this website under the Fair Use Doctrine of International Copyright Law |