NOTES FROM COOPER'S TAVERN

Johnson: You wouldn't probably think that all that many people would have tales of the bizarre and supernatural, and especially here in Iowa City. Well, in my bar here on Hagenback Street, I've heard some pretty tall tales.

     Just the other day, Phil brought up his story about the sasquatch again. He claims his uncle shot and killed one of the hairy beasts back in the '60s. This time when he began to tell his story to some college kids, Stan piped up and said that sasquatches live in western Canada, and that only Bigfoots and werewolves live in Iowa. Phil didn't appreciate that too much, and gave Stan the one-fingered salute.

     Apparently, Phil's uncle Herb was quite the avid hunter. A friend of his owned some land along the Iowa River here in Johnson County, and they'd drive out there a couple of times a week to try and nab whatever was in season. It's beautiful land, too, from what I've heard. It runs for three or four miles along the river, has an extensive wooded area with some homemade deer stands and a wide meadow with small copses of trees scattered about. There's even a little stream that runs through the meadow.

     One winter day in 1968, Herb and his buddy Lester were out on the land hunting pheasant. After several hours of slowly hiking about the field and failing to hit even one of the many birds that flew up from the little groves of trees, they decided to go gaze at the river for a while. Well, that and drink some more beer, I figure.

     According to Phil, the sun was going down as the two men entered the woods that would eventually lead to the Iowa River. They had only been walking for a few minutes when Herb heard something rustle up ahead. He motioned to Lester to keep still. Herb was still thinking about trophy bucks, even though this wasn't the season. He crept cautiously closer, thinking that he was probably downwind from whatever had moved in the brush. Then he saw some bushes wave in the late afternoon gloom, and raised his shotgun. That's when he saw the beast.

     It was only some thirty yards away, but Herb still thought we saw a deer when he fired his gun. The creature went down. The two hunters ran over to the body, and by the time they got there, the creature was dead. But it was no deer. It was a five-foot tall, humanoid body, covered in hair. The face was vaguely human, but the mouth was filled with sharper teeth than any Homo sapiens ever possessed. Herb and Lester were baffled. They had never heard any legends of an apeman in Iowa, and wondered what the heck they were going to do with the thing. Neither hunter particularly wanted to touch the creature, so they decided to cover it with a tarp and bring back the police to make a full investigation. But first Herb lopped off a swatch of the thing's fur and put it in his pocket. They left the scene and drove into nearby Columbus Junction to fetch the authorities. By the time they arrived back in the woods with the police, the body had mysteriously vanished, thought the tarp was still there.

     Occasionally, Phil will show us photographs of his uncle Herb holding a clump of hair in his hand. I suppose it could have come from a sasquatch, but whenever I ask Phil what happened to the clump of hair and was it ever analyzed, he changes the subject to Jimi Hendrix or something.

     Some stories I hear don't have as much of a plot as Phil's sasquatch story, but are nice little gems of wonder nonetheless. Little old Catherine told me last week that when she was a girl growing up in Irish Grove, a strange thing happened to her next door neighbors' house. She says that one morning the family (the Sorensens, Catherine believes they were) awoke to find that their house and lawn was covered in a brownish goo. The residue was up to an inch thick in spots and covered most of the house and about half the lawn. Both houses adjacent to the Sorensens' were unmarred, including Catherine's family's. The stuff appeared to be decaying vegetable matter, and had an acrid smell. No one in the neighborhood could come up with an explanation, and the local authorities were likewise baffled. Did somebody paint the house with rotting vegetation as a prank? Or did the stuff somehow fall from the sky? We may never know.

     Next time I write in, I'll give you some more of Stan's conspiracy theories. You'll never see a glass of water the same way again....