Renaissance Redneck: A rather brief interview

John Bazemore/The Associated Press
Many moons ago, I went on a deer hunting trip in the Great State of Maine. The day before the season opened, I decided to scout the area I wanted to hunt that year for deer sign. It was unseasonable warm, the thermometer was in the mid-60s, so I dressed lightly, carried no gun, and proceeded into a large tract of wilderness. I walked in a northerly direction, in as straight a line I could, looking to see if I could cut across any sign of the white tails. About a mile into the woods, I came upon a babbling brook dotted with deep holes which distracted me from my deer sign hunting endeavors. Instead, I began looking for any trout that the brook night hold.

As I followed the brook uphill, I was ruing the fact that I had no fishing pole, I had seen dark flashes of trout backs in the stream. At one point, I looked ahead of me and noticed what seemed to be a large pile of grayish, steaming, mildewed hay that had been plopped onto a boulder in the middle of the stream. A cloud of black flies and mosquitoes surrounded the mound of hay. I then realized that the hay pile was undulating rhythmically, when a secondary tuft of mildewed grass rose on top of the bigger pile. This was no pile of hay, it was a huge beast, not a Maine black bear for it was the wrong color. My back to the wind, the beast scented me and turned. Upon seeing me the critter, I said, “Well, there goes my ‘Me’ time.” The creature was sitting on a rock, soaking its feet in the babbling trout stream. I was frozen in a state of catatonic awe, when it startled me back to reality, by ordering me closer. I obeyed. Here at last was Bigfoot, plumped onto a rock enjoying a leisurely foot pedicure by a bevy of crayfish nibbling away at its size 25s, clad with toenails the size of quahog clam shells.

The beast then stated, “You’ve caught me with my britches down, what are you doing on my land?” Startled, I thought, who knew that heretofore mythical beasts could wax so metaphorically? I meekly explained that I was looking for deer sign. I, out of respect, well maybe it was abject fear, asked how he wished to be addressed? I had made the presumption it was a male due to the britches reference. He said that he was totally over the Bigfoot moniker due to the fact that he was a bipedal, in a surprising professorial tone, using the long “E,” as in “bipeedal,” to stress the fact that his race walked upright. “If anything, we should be referred to as ‘Bigfeet,’ as we have two, but you can call me ‘Sass,’ not that I expect any, or you can call me “Mr. Squatch.’” I had noticed a grapevine wrapped around his neck and around his left wrist, so I asked, “Mr. Squatch, is that a sling on your arm.” He sighed nostrils flaring, and explained that yes, he had been hurling rocks at some remote human campers to scare them off, which worked, but that he had thrown his shoulder out in doing so. In an effort to question him further, I began my second question by using the more familiar term “Sass,” thinking that after all, we were getting along so very swimmingly. Apparently, I had committed some type of cultural faux-pas by switching to the more informal first name, “Sass,” after addressing him formally as mister. Upon committing this Bigfoot Bozo no-no, I noticed that the pedicuring crayfish were backing off their intended tootsie target. It should have been an omen for me, but I guess, as a human, I lack the extra-sensory abilities afforded to the lowly crustacean. I was suddenly snatched into the air dangling by my left ankle, in the grip of Mr. Squatch’s burly right hand. He bellowed, “I wish you humans would leave me be!” and reached for my other ankle in an effort to snap me asunder like a Thanksgiving turkey wishbone. He howled in agony due to his injured left arm and tossed me through the air with the greatest of ease, whereupon I landed on a tuft of swamp grass. As the Sasquatch lumbered off into the forest in anguished humiliation I yelled, “You don’t get your wish if you say it out loud, you know!” I also wanted to inform him further that you don’t get your wish if don’t actually break the wishbone, but thought better of it, discretion being the better part of valor.

I have taken the liberty of naming that babbling trout brook, “Wishbone Creek”, after becoming so familiar with it on my three-day crawl out of the forest, back to safety and civilization.

And if you don’t believe that one, I could tell you about the time I caught a lake trout so big that I had to hire a logger to twitch it out of the woods with his Percheron draft horse, or was it a Clydesdale? Come on, it was an uphill pull to my truck!

David Kittredge is a regular Lifestyles contributor to the Eagle Times. You can send comments to him via the editor at [email protected].