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Jeff Whitten: Bigfoot and rocket science
editor's notes

From the rear lines of the pandemic, volume 8-3/4: Never talk about Bigfoot with your wife.

I found this out the other night while we were watching a Bigfoot show – correction, I was watching the show. My wife was watching me watch the show, which at that particular moment featured a dude with a backpack and laptop wandering through the Alaskan woods smacking trees with an aluminum Bigfoot bat.

“That’s how you communicate with Bigfoots,” I explained to my wife, who had the kind of look on her face she uses when I tell her I want to get a motorcycle. “You smack trees with an aluminum Bigfoot bat. Then you run to a safe location and the Bigfoot come out to see who’s knocking on the door.”

If you haven’t already figured it out, Bigfoot knowledge is something us dudes come installed with. It’s in our DNA, just like sports, beer, and not asking for directions and getting lost in Strathy Hall.

My wife wasn’t having any of it.

“You’d think with everyone having a cell phone capable of shooting video,” she said, “someone by now would’ve gotten a clear picture or video of a Bigfoot by now.”

Oh, she went on for a while, talking about satellites and Google Earth and all these people tramping about in the woods and how we would have sent out the Army and caught a Bigfoot or two by now if one had been out there to catch, all while I spent a good half hour pretending to listen and trying to find definitive proof of Bigfoot’s existence on Youtube. Note: There are some weird humans on Youtube.

I finally had to remind my wife I’m not the only one in the family with an open mind when it comes to Bigfoots. Her brother-inlaw Knot from Glennville, a great fellow in a lot of ways, claims to have seen a Bigfoot somewhere in the vicinity of James Brown Park in Hinesville while he was surveying.

Clarification: Knot was surveying, not Bigfoot. Bigfoot was just there. And then he was gone, as Bigfoots are prone to be. It’s a talent.

That was only about 40 years ago, and since your average Bigfoot or “Squatch,” (it’s short for Sasquatch, which is a kind of yankee Bigfoot), probably lives at least that long, that particular Bigfoot might still be in the neighborhood and amenable to relocating to Bryan County where property taxes are lower and there’s a Unified Development Ordinance in the works.

If so, I have an idea to put Bryan County on the map. Just call it Bigfoot-O-Rama, a weeklong celebration of all things Bigfootian, from bowling – Bigfoots like to bowl – to badminton, another pursuit at which Bigfoots should excel. Add in some stock car racing, wrestling, flag football (think a Bigfoot Bowl), competitive cheerleading, and a literary competition in which Bigfoots write essays or one-act plays on what it’s like to be Bigfoots, with the winners getting recognized by city council at special called meetings. There should be arts and crafts, and cooking, and an oyster roast, and blacksmithing, and a pie eating contest. And free trampolines for everyone! Bouncing Bigfoots! Bigfoot Reenactments! Bigfoot Book Tours! The Friday Night Bigfoot Blitz!

Subdivision HOAs would surely line up to get involved, just to get on WSAV. And given there are 372 subdivisions in South Bryan alone, the possibilities are endless. I can see Ford Plantation holding a Bigfoot Ball! Buckhead sponsoring a Bigfoot-themed Bake Sale featuring Henry Ford’s World Famous Bigfoot Brownies! Belle Isle sponsoring the Bigfoot Belly Flop at somebody’s pool! Think Bigfoot Bass Fishing in Waterways at Bigfoot Beach and Boat Ramp! Get your Bigfoot where it’s going by way of the Belfast-Bigfoot Roundabout!

Anyhow. I obviously haven’t worked out all the details yet. We might need some tax exemptions and other incentives to convince a Bigfoot or two to come here and be chased around by people from Cleveland, but think of the joy it will bring.

In the meantime, I need to get with Ewell Seymour and see if we can include a Bigfoot Brigade in our pitch to NASA and the Pembroke Downtown Development Authority to open up a Spaceport in Pembroke. As Ewell said, “if Camden County and U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter can have a Spaceport, why can’t Pembroke?”

We figure we can put the spaceport somewhere over there near the high school, and I’m the perfect guy to run it for about $500,000 a year, since I not only used to have model rocket kits when I was a kid, and some of them blasted off, but I also served in two (2) Lance missile battalions in Germany back in my Army days.

Maybe they’d let me wear a uniform.

Something with epaulets and a big hat, and a swagger stick. And a Bigfoot bat.

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