After my encounter with Snake River Man (SRM) and realizing that my hermit friend had told me a fib (because SRM was not his brother-in-law who had died in one of our look-presidential wars), I decided that further investigation of SRM was in order. I decided on an expedition like they have up Oregon way for Sasquatch. To have an Oregon-type expedition you must have an organization. I ran the following ad in the Twin Falls News Paper: Announcement: Organizational Meeting for the Magic Valley Organization for Looking at Strange Stuff. First Federal Public Conference Room. 7:00 P.M Tuesday. The anagram is MVOLSS which sounds somewhat like Mavelous in Reformed Egyptian, a popular language here in the south of Idaho. In Egyptian languages, you place your own vowel sounds. I invited the gubernatorial candidates to the meeting. (Our governor was scooped up out of Idaho and sent to the Confusion of Washington DC. Here, he was a big frog in a little pond. In Washington he will be trying to save big frogs in little ponds.) I also invited the Mayor and City Council of Twin Falls since the very important organizational meeting of MVOLSS was to be held in their town. Even considering it being an election year, to my surprise they all showed up. Unfortunately, nobody else did. The meeting was adjourned at 7:00 P.M. for Lack of Attendance. I took the invited guest to the Golden Coral for dinner. It was the least I could do. To my surprise, all accepted my invitation. At our finest restaurant, featuring good service and good food, my usual waitress, Fanny, asked, "Who are your friends?" I stood and said as loudly as I appropriately could these words: "These distinguished gentlemen just attended the organizational meeting of MVOLSS which spells Marvelous in Reformed Egyptian. "Each of these gentlemen is a candidate for public office in our state including the office of governor. "They are here to meet all the folks in the Golden Coral and to sign autographs for the first fifty or so to visit us at our table." This caused quite a stir. They moved back to the food tables. Nobody came up to get signatures but while a server was poking a hot juicy steak on my third plate he asked, "What in the hell is Mavelous?" I said, "You heard of Sasquatch?" "Sure! Big Foot! You can have two steaks if you want." I said, "Well, maybe that little one there. "I saw a creature down on the River in the West End area. I'm calling him Snake River Man. I'm trying to get some folks together to watch for him." Anyway, one thing led to another and at the end of the next week I had quite a number of folks who were interested. We held a meeting to organize a Snake River Man Watch or SRMW. We decided at the first meeting that we would use only adjustable magnification 15X binoculars with 50mm lenses. That way we would have plenty of power and a wide field of view. Some of the bird watchers wanted to use their 8 x 30 mm binoculars and we conceded to them. There was no use starting the club out on the wrong foot. For military precision we decided to use only military 24 hour time. For those of you not acquainted with MT, 1200 is noon and 2400 is midnight. You should be able to figure out that 3 PM would be 1500 and such. People started looking for SRM immediately. We had a telephone hot line that could be used day or night. Every one in the club had a cell phone but me so reports came in as being observed. The log was an old answering machine supplied by no less than the Golden Coral steak server. The caller gave his or her identification, the day of the week, date, time and his or her report. The transmission is to end with "That's all." Following are some excerpts from the telephone log (I give only the Identification and Time for a particular day): Monday's Log: March 6, 2006 Miranda 18:35: I'm on the bridge below Buhl. Man, you should see those pelicans soaring above the river. It is absolutely beautiful. That's all. Cliff 20:13: Man, I'm fishing down here where the blue water from the springs turns white. Well, I just got a whopper. You've go to see this baby. That's all. Tuesday's Log: March 7, 2006 Sammy 06:30: Thought I'd get an early start looking for SRM. It's freezing out here. I'm going home. That's all. Maggie 12:15: I'm on my lunch break from the fish factory. Thought I'd take a look at the river from up here by the orchards. Saw a suspicious track. Then I saw old man Frederick walking along. It was one of his footprints. Frederick said he heard a suspicious noise out by his barn last night. He said he thinks it was a deer getting into some hay he had out there for Cody's horse. I took a look and sure enough there were deer droppings. I took a sample in my thermos so we can take a look at it and make sure that is all that it was. That's all. Harry 19:07: I took a listen on my telephone controlled answering machine. I hope Maggie washes her thermos really good. We got some good-looking steaks in at the Golden Coral. I hope to see you all down there on Saturday morning at our meeting. Of course, if you want steak, you will have to go down there tonight. That's all. Xrytspet 22:00: Taylor Jones, the hack writer, you are such a complete idiot. Oh, saw SRM tonight. It's our friend taking a spring break on his way back north from Florida. He's heading back up to Oregon early tomorrow morning. He said, "Tell Taylor Jones, the hack writer, to stop bugging me." He said he borrowed a black bear hide from the hermit and that he did have a skunk for breakfast the day you saw him. Tell your club that's all there was to it. He said he would have talked to you if it wasn't for the stink. He wants you and your club to leave him alone or he won't stop by next year. He said that for hundreds of years he has stopped on the Snake River without that much notice and then you came along Taylor Jones, the hack writer. After reading Xrytspet log-in I told my wife, "I think I know what happened to those 37 bottles of tomatoes from the basement." She said, "If you think I'm going to say, What?, you ARE crazy. |
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