QUOTE
Who says the Abominable Snowman doesn't exist
By CHUCK ROGERS - Last Updated: March 27, 2005, 05:33:35 AM PST
The rarely seen Abominable Snowman, also known as Bigfoot, was on the move again in Tuolumne County, with sightings close to Twain Harte and Mi-Wuk Village.
It was 40 years ago, a time for seeing flying saucers and sharing love-ins within the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, where the pall of marijuana smoke was often mistaken for smog. Almost anything seemed possible in the early 1960s, not the least of which was the Abominable Snowman.
So the sheriff's deputies in that mountain county were busy chasing down reports of Bigfoot, glimpsed slipping through the trees or scurrying across a road or creek under cover of darkness. The local media jumped on the story, of course, including The Modesto Bee's Sonora correspondent, John Sinor. Then the big city papers and the new medium, television, pounced on the story and suddenly Tuolumne County was famous all across the country.
Well, no one was happier with this sudden fame than Miller Sardella, truly the last two-gun sheriff in the West. Some of his public relations work had resulted in movie companies shooting Western extravaganzas all over Tuolumne County, including the greatest of all, "High Noon," mostly shot in Jamestown. Now the challenge would be to keep the Bigfoot story alive with enough sightings to keep the media and tourists coming back.
At this point, I became involved, although I didn't realize it at the time. I had started parachuting as a result of a story I had written on a Modesto skydiver and had managed to scrape together most of the equipment needed for the emerging sport.
The only problem I had was finding jump boots in my size, an ongoing difficulty most of my life, because I have worn a size 15 shoe since I turned 16. The only footwear I could find without a dangerous heel "catch" was a pair of surplus coral assault boots designed for the Pacific campaign during WWII. They cost me $3.50, and with extra protective soles, they measured 16 inches in length. Equipped with a small parachute and such generous footwear, I had been dubbed "The Bomb" by my fellow skydivers in Stockton, who claimed they could hear me hit the drop zone from the airfield a half mile away.
My friend and fellow newsman Sinor soon heard of my new footwear and came to check them out himself. In fact, he asked if he could borrow them for a few days. Since the weather had turned too cold and wintry for comfortable skydiving, I told him he could take them back up to Sonora providing I got them back when the weather warmed up.
Now, among his close friends up the hill was Sheriff Sardella, already known for his great sense of humor, even playing an occasional prank on his fellow officers.
I'm not saying exactly what happened, because I wasn't there, and I certainly wouldn't accuse a lawman (or newsman) of any such trickery, but shortly after a light snow fell in the Columbia area, a resident discovered giant tracks crossing a meadow there. The snow had melted somewhat, and the tracks measured almost 20 inches long, according to the deputy who answered the call.
Well, the media once again grabbed the story and ran with it, and Tuolumne County was back in the national news. The hills were once more alive with the sound of reporters and TV cameras.
More than 20 years later, working as a cameraman for KOVR-TV, I covered the funeral of Miller Sardella. As I filmed the horse-drawn hearse bearing his coffin to the cemetery, I also thought of Sinor, long gone from The Modesto Bee and by then famous as a nationally syndicated columnist with a San Diego newspaper. John had mentioned the boots just once, many years after Bigfoot had disappeared from the West.
"You know," he said, one evening in San Diego after we had been toasting some important, but unlikely, occasion with great enthusiasm, "those darned boots were big enough that we could get into them with our shoes on ..."
By CHUCK ROGERS - Last Updated: March 27, 2005, 05:33:35 AM PST
The rarely seen Abominable Snowman, also known as Bigfoot, was on the move again in Tuolumne County, with sightings close to Twain Harte and Mi-Wuk Village.
It was 40 years ago, a time for seeing flying saucers and sharing love-ins within the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, where the pall of marijuana smoke was often mistaken for smog. Almost anything seemed possible in the early 1960s, not the least of which was the Abominable Snowman.
So the sheriff's deputies in that mountain county were busy chasing down reports of Bigfoot, glimpsed slipping through the trees or scurrying across a road or creek under cover of darkness. The local media jumped on the story, of course, including The Modesto Bee's Sonora correspondent, John Sinor. Then the big city papers and the new medium, television, pounced on the story and suddenly Tuolumne County was famous all across the country.
Well, no one was happier with this sudden fame than Miller Sardella, truly the last two-gun sheriff in the West. Some of his public relations work had resulted in movie companies shooting Western extravaganzas all over Tuolumne County, including the greatest of all, "High Noon," mostly shot in Jamestown. Now the challenge would be to keep the Bigfoot story alive with enough sightings to keep the media and tourists coming back.
At this point, I became involved, although I didn't realize it at the time. I had started parachuting as a result of a story I had written on a Modesto skydiver and had managed to scrape together most of the equipment needed for the emerging sport.
The only problem I had was finding jump boots in my size, an ongoing difficulty most of my life, because I have worn a size 15 shoe since I turned 16. The only footwear I could find without a dangerous heel "catch" was a pair of surplus coral assault boots designed for the Pacific campaign during WWII. They cost me $3.50, and with extra protective soles, they measured 16 inches in length. Equipped with a small parachute and such generous footwear, I had been dubbed "The Bomb" by my fellow skydivers in Stockton, who claimed they could hear me hit the drop zone from the airfield a half mile away.
My friend and fellow newsman Sinor soon heard of my new footwear and came to check them out himself. In fact, he asked if he could borrow them for a few days. Since the weather had turned too cold and wintry for comfortable skydiving, I told him he could take them back up to Sonora providing I got them back when the weather warmed up.
Now, among his close friends up the hill was Sheriff Sardella, already known for his great sense of humor, even playing an occasional prank on his fellow officers.
I'm not saying exactly what happened, because I wasn't there, and I certainly wouldn't accuse a lawman (or newsman) of any such trickery, but shortly after a light snow fell in the Columbia area, a resident discovered giant tracks crossing a meadow there. The snow had melted somewhat, and the tracks measured almost 20 inches long, according to the deputy who answered the call.
Well, the media once again grabbed the story and ran with it, and Tuolumne County was back in the national news. The hills were once more alive with the sound of reporters and TV cameras.
More than 20 years later, working as a cameraman for KOVR-TV, I covered the funeral of Miller Sardella. As I filmed the horse-drawn hearse bearing his coffin to the cemetery, I also thought of Sinor, long gone from The Modesto Bee and by then famous as a nationally syndicated columnist with a San Diego newspaper. John had mentioned the boots just once, many years after Bigfoot had disappeared from the West.
"You know," he said, one evening in San Diego after we had been toasting some important, but unlikely, occasion with great enthusiasm, "those darned boots were big enough that we could get into them with our shoes on ..."