Sasquatch!

The 20th Annual Bigfoot Expo, Much Ado About Dayton, and other stories from Ohio

I flew into Dayton International Airport on a rainy Thursday night. The flight went quickly as I had a deep conversation with someone truly on my level. We talked about her stuffed animals, she kindly introduced me to an otter named Rico and I briefly met Cali, the bear, but he spent most of his time in the luggage bin. It’s not often you can really talk to someone on an airplane, so when you find yourself next to a 10 year old girl holding a stuffed animal, make the most of it.

We talked about travel, Kentucky, the touchdown Jesus, Chuck Norris (I just read his autobiography), and of course, animals. I feel like we’ve developed a good rapport, but I’m still not quite sure what to say when she asks about my pith helmet. Why a pith helmet? You see, I’m doing more than visiting a friend in Ohio, I’m also there to attend the 20th Annual Bigfoot Conference/Expo.

When the plane landed I said goodbye to my new friend and head up the jetbridge. A man passes me with the kid, must be her dad. I head him loudly say “Did you find out why that girl was wearing that pith helmet?” Duh! I pipe up, “I’m going to a sasquatch convention!” I make a show of putting the helmet on and chuckling my “ta da.” He doesn’t even turn around. I feel like even more of a dork.

Now is the part where I’m going to tell you about Dayton. The next day, Dr. M took me on a tour of the rapidly gentrifying downtown. Dayton is filled with art - did you know that? There are several realistic statues about the town. Some are performing chores like throwing away trash as if to serve as a permanent reminder that we need to clean up after ourselves. I also discover that Dayton has free clinics and homeless shelters. These are the important things you learn when your friend is a future doctor of America. I’d kind of like it if they had statues of some of the homeless people - don’t all of Dayton’s citizens have a right to artistic representation?

After the driving tour, which included the front porch of the Wright brothers’ house (why just the porch? Because that’s all there is!) and the cute neighborhood around it, we stopped for a delicious Thai lunch in another cute area of town - the Oregon neighborhood. Like Oregon, the state, Oregon the neighborhood in Ohio, also has its fair share of hipsters. It’s a good place for them too! I can’t even begin to tell you how many thrift stores I saw - and I myself only went to two. I was fortunate to find a Braveheart shirt - when I’m trying to make friends and influence people, I’ll just whip that shirt out.

Later that night, we’re joined by another of Dr. M’s friends and we learn what exactly makes up a jamboree, specifically, the “First Annual Bellbrooke Jamboree.” I’ll tell you what, one of the bands seemed to think it’s not a jamboree without a banjo and some jokes about Mexicans. Wasn’t paying too close attention to this but when you hear “something something Mexican something something” and then laughter, you tend to feel a little uncomfortable. Still he was no Michael Richards

Despite enduring some humor that would have gotten one run out of town in Madison, we stuck it out and got some good people watching in. Dr. M’s friend pointed out the interesting assortment of hippies AND hipsters. It was perplexing indeed. During the breaks we watched kids make a pile of grass, wished we’d had the foresight to bring a case of beer, and nudged eachother each time we saw the Jamboree’s headliner, Josh Ritter, walking around “backstage.” This wasn’t hard to do as the backstage was the other side of the fence and he seemed to be quite a social creature.

From here until eternity, I shall now refer to Josh Ritter as Josh “The Grinner” Ritter. I don’t think that guy knows how to do anything but smile. And even though I’m not a superfan, he was great as usual and even swayed me. I caught myself feeling thankful that I was sitting in the middle of a nearly empty fairground with some friends and that I could see the band from my lawn chair better than I ever could in a club. Those of us living in the Midwest may not get to see all the big acts, but we get to see the stars on a clear night and enjoy hayfever and we’re just so darn wholesome and for that I’m thankful.

Sasquatching Around: The Main Event

The next day we loaded up the car and drove to Columbus to rendezvous with more of Dr. M’s associates and piled in another car for the expedition to the Salt Fork Lodge somewhere in Ohio. We all got to know eachother real well and though it’s difficult to pick my favorite moments, one choice event was discussing how prions are the Chuck Norris of microorganisms - Hard to Kill, though that’s the name of a Steven Seagal movie.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at the Bigfoot expo. Actually, I wasn’t sure what to tell people when I said I was spending a vacation weekend in Ohio. Who goes to Ohio for the weekend? So I’d say, “Well, I’m going to a Bigfoot conference.” Then I’d inevitably hear, “You should go dressed as one.” Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, if I want serious experts on Bigfoot to hate me.

How serious were these people? Serious in the way that you don’t even get the real evidence by standing outside a packed conference room and looking at pictures of a dead deer that’s been strung up from a tree by a front leg. And those creepy noises that a couple in rural Pennsylvania heard outside their second story bedroom? No, for the real evidence, you’ve got to get your friend’s friend to strike up a conversation with a man named after a hair style and maybe, just maybe, that man will let you and 8 other girls, look at some pictures in his van on a dark misty night.

It’s difficult to put into words what exactly I learned. I’m not sure if I can adequately describe the evidence I saw. It started with the glossy photos. “Look, there is one. You see, they’re dark matter and we’re light matter. They can just disappear in front of your eyes,” he quickly shines a light on a photo, and then another. “That’s a female.”

Someone asks, “How can you tell?” “Look at the breast!” he says shining the light on a dark patch among some leaves and trees, “Plus she’s holding a baby.”

Oh! It was so obvious!

“One time I saw her reaching down, puts her hand out real slow and strokes its head. You know, just like when your petting a female dog.” Male and female dogs should be petted differently? Good to know.

“What do sasquatches eat?” we asked.

“What cows eat.”

How do they communicate?

“I dunno, like cows I guess.”

Later we receive some contradicting information when our expert imitates the call of a sasquatch. To me it sounds like the combination of a turkey and a purring cat. With a little Star Wars Chewbacca thrown in. (By the way, I just found out that Chewbacca is in the 2004 Microsoft Word for Mac dictionary). Even though he’s only heard one once, he knew just what it was. And who am I to argue? I grew up in a college town.

“Now, let me tell you, if you want to see one, the best time of year to see one is August 1 ‘cause that’s when they rut.” For those of you who aren’t hunters, that means mating season. Somehow, all of us agree this is the one time of year where the last thing we’d like to do is be alone out in the woods looking for a bigfoot.

“What you need to do is get a couple cameras - set them up 400 yards apart and have someone in a white t-shirt walk real slow. Soon enough, they’ll start to look. You just need to fill up a couple SD cards.” A couple? I never realized how much equipment was needed for this kind of research. Furthermore, when he recommends acquiring a 50” high definition monitor for viewing the blown up images, my curiosity vanishes completely.

Though I certainly learned more than I ever thought possible about Bigfoot from that visit to the van, I also had a good time at the auction. I narrowly lost out on a hand painted “winter squatch” tote bag but another member of our party took home a beautiful sasquatch painting and another nabbed a belt buckle with a picture of Bigfoot tromping through the woods. It’s true what Dr. M says, auctions make people crazy.

When we’d had our fill at the lodge, we headed back to camp to toast to ‘squatches everywhere and watch “Harry and the Hendersons” projected onto a sheet. Surprisingly no one seems scared after spending the day listening to creepy Bigfoot sighting stories. Clearly we need to hear more evidence.

In the morning, we wake up to wet everything. It’s rained all night. Someone says, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” So we do. We don’t even stick around for the Bigfoot hunt.

On my last day as a temporary Buckeye, we travel to the town of Yellow Springs, a small town near Dayton, for yet more research. This time I undertake an anthropological investigation of a closed liberal arts college. The presence of swings strung from the trees and graffiti sprayed inside dormitories leads me to conclude that a young hippie-like population once lived there and they were forced to leave. Some of the architecture is modern though the furniture (secondhand, though possibly 3rd or even 4th hand, furniture is prominently displayed on porches). Finally, I note that a transformer outside of one of the buildings is still humming leading me to believe they left suddenly, possibly due to climate change caused by global warming. Or maybe they just forgot to shut off the electricity completely.

The last few hours of my trip are spent on the main drag of Yellow Springs. I am in search of postcards and an ATM machine. While on this search, I see something even more rare than a sasquatch…

This is how it went down: I’m staring into the window of yet another head shop when I hear Dr. M call me. “Simone, I need to talk to you in this alley.”

“What’s up?”

“See that man over there?” I look, there is a tall man in a track jacket with a very small woman next to him. “That’s Dave Chappelle.” And it was.

Ironically, I’d been thinking about Dave Chappelle the day before. It had dawned on me that he lived on farm in Ohio and I caught myself thinking, “I wonder where exactly he lives.” While I don’t know his address, I now know where he hangs out. No, we didn’t talk to him. We didn’t stare. Well, not too much. We didn’t even wave hello. Nope, we chickened out and crossed the street. Then again, celebrities don’t move to the Midwest so fans can throw themselves at their feet. They live rural America so they can be left alone. Can’t say that I blame them, the middle of the country is a wonderful place.

If you don’t believe me, go to a Midwestern state and find yourself a jamboree, a place called Foy’s that sells Halloween stuff all year round and sour candies out of a paper bag, or a campground in a state park where people gather to share evidence of things that might not exist.

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