Dad and Chester were growing 900 acres of peanuts west of Fairview Oklahoma right in the middle of rattlesnake country. Dad had a large dairy at Orienta Oklahoma where Chester and his family lived. Sometimes the rattlesnakes would grasp the dairy cows teats and drink milk from them. Thats why you needed to get the cows milked before they began dripping milk from their teats. We all had to wear high topped cowboy boots to protect our legs from snake bite. Chester and dad killed so many rattlesnakes that I had over two hundred rattles in my collection. One family living nearby had a seven month old baby die because his mother killed a rattlesnake in his bedroom. The snake had been sucking the baby’s bottle in the crib, leaving bits of venom behind on the nipple. The baby had become addicted to the venom, and after the snake was killed suffered from withdrawl problems. Often Lorinda and Charolotte, Chester and Irma’s daughters found rattlesnakes in the hen nests. The snakes would be so full of hen eggs, that they could barely move. I began catching rattlesnakes when I was eight years old, often catching the most rattlers during an organized snake hunt.

Prairie chickens had a mating ground behind our house in Fairview. Each morning before dawn the males would start struttin, dancing, and displaying their feathers. They would fill the orange sacs on the sides of their neck with air and expels it, making a sound similar to that of air blowing over the mouth of a bottles. This behavior is called booming. Males defend their territory and try to attract females to mate with them. During the summer they would catch grasshoppers out of mothers garden and eat hills of red ants. They were never very wild and let me and my siblings watch them. I took some prairie chicken eggs out of a nest and put them under a broody hen. These stuck around and lived with our chickens. I tried this with pheasants and they would eventually fly away.

When my brother was three years old he climbed to the top of our roof. Dad was putting up a new roof and Merle had climbed the ladder behind him. Mrs Koehn came over to the house and told dad Merle was sitting astraddle the roof behind him. Dad told her to go inside and tell Wanda where Merle was. He felt any sudden movement would cause Merle to fall from the roof. Mother had me climb up behind Merle and restrain him. For a few minutes I thought Merle was going to make both of us fall because he was a very fiesty kid. A few years later I saved Ken Shipp from falling to his certain death, from the top of the indian school dormitory in Colony Oklahoma. As a kid I loved climbing trees to rescue people’s cats, even though I received lots of scratches.

When I was five and six I got a job working for the Sigma Chemical Co. in St. Louis catching fireflies, which I usually refer to as lightning bugs. I was helping Ray Dow’s grandson catch bugs, and he got me a job working for the same people. They paid us a penny each and furnished the nets. Back then a penny was actually worth something because candy bars were five cents and soda pop was a dime. Usually I caught about 60 lightning bugs each evening. One day while catching the bugs, I became very scared because I came across a burlap sack rolling across the wheat field behind our house. I ran to the house and told my mother about it. She went to see what was in the sack, and it turned out being six cats that belonged to our neighbor Mrs Dow. She had forgotten about the cats, that she intended to drown in the pond. Mother took them to the next trades day and gave them away as pets. Trades day was a monthly auction held in Fairview where you could buy just about everything including chickens and registered dogs. Mother usually bought the antiques.

When I was still six years old we moved to the Colony Oklahoma area. Here I could go barefoot and wear shorts because there was no poisonous snakes around there. The first week we moved in, I was riding on the fender of dads Massey Ferguson tractor while he was discing a field. I fell off the fender and the heavy disc rolled over me. By some miracle I didn’t receive so much as a scratch. However it was a whole year later before dad would let me ride with him on the tractor again. We didn’t own a cotton stripper until I was ten years old. Until then I picked cotton into a bucket and dumped it into my mother huge cotton sack. The sack would hold about 150 pounds of cotton, as she dragged it down the rows. It was real cold when we picked cotton, because all the leaves had to be dropped off. Dads aunt by marriage Floy Bond would help mother, dad, and us kids pick the cotton. Back then we only had 160 acres of cotton, yet it took us three weeks to pull it all. This was the only time of the year, that we got to spend so much time with dad. The house didn’t have electricity which sucked. There was no television or radio to entertain us kids. Thats probably why we took to roaming the countryside. I recall eating so many mulberries that I would get a stomach ache. They would stain our fingers purple and sometimes ruin my shirts. Mother had to use a washing machine with a gasoline motor on it, because of the lack of electricity. She really hated doing laundry outdoors in the winter. Fortunately mom rarely got sick and has never been in the hospital all her 80 years. All four of us kids were born in the doctors office.

We had a hay barn a short distance from the house, where me and my brother would play. One day while climbing through the barn looking for hen nests, we started smelling smoke. I went to the yard checking to see if mother was burning the trash barrel. She wasnt so I headed back to the barn where my little brother Merle was. All the sudden the hay burst into flames, and I frantically began searching for my brother. Finally I found him and took him to safety. I thought Merle must have been playing with matches, however the firemen said the hay was baled too green, so it heated up and burst into flames. Luckily the Weatherford fire truck was in the area, and saw the smoke. They had just put out a kitchen fire a mile away. Dad knew he was taking a risk by baling the alfalfa so green, he did it because as it loses moisture leaves begin to drop off the stems. He never took that risk again.

One evening as I was returning home from the field a skunk had began to chase me. Each evening I brought dad his dinner to his tractor because he always plowed or cultivated very late. The skunk wasn’t very fast but it was persistent. When I finally made it home from the peanut field the door was locked at home. So I was running circles around the house, knocking on the door. If I stopped the skunk would surely catch up to me. I figured it probably was crazy from having rabies. Eventually my mother had looked out the window and opened the door for me. The skunk tried to come in behind me, however mother’s straw broom prevented this. She got my dad’s shotgun and walked outdoors to kill the rabid skunk. A few days later we were visiting a neighbor Curt and Rosa Strong. They told us their pet skunk Stella had got lost and they were worried because she had six babies to feed. They told us she was gentle as a house cat and loved to follow everyone. Right then we knew the skunk we thought had rabies was actually their pet. Mother told them the whole story and Rosa cried. Rosa and Curt bottle fed the babies and they had pet skunks around their farm for years.

One day I was riding home from school by myself, because my sisters stayed after school for a basketball tournament. I stepped of the school bus and was on my way to the house, when a normally gentle white leghorn rooster ran up and began to spur my legs. So I ran from the yard, thinking he would probably not follow me in this direction. I had lots of experience with mean roosters and predicting what they would do. He kept chasing me as I ran up the road, which was highly unusual for a rooster. They generally don’t wander very far from home. All the sudden I began hearing cries for help and smelling smoke. So I left the road and looked in the tall johnson grass along the roads shoulder. I came upon two cars that were smashed together and eight people who were on fire. I was so scared I wanted to run home and hide in my bedroom. Instead I dropped to my knees asking God to give me the courage to save these people’s lives. I was ten years old and without the Lords help, this was more than I could handle. I ran the short distance to my house and grabbed blankets to put out the people’s clothes. Our telephone was out of order, so I couldn’t report the accident. Very few people drove this road, so I worried the Riggs family would all die before help would arrive. About ten minutes later the Kings and their hay truck came roaring down the road, and I wasn’t able to flag them down in time. All the sudden that same leghorn rooster flew into their windshield which brought them to a stop. They jumped out of the hay truck thinking they must have hit a hawk or owl. I ran up to them telling about the car wreck. Mr King sent me to the house to gather up eight clean sheets to wrap the burn victims in. Then him and his sons loaded them aboard the hay truck and they roared off toward the Weatherford Oklahoma hospital. After arriving ambulances took them to the Baptist Burn Center in Oklahoma City. All eight recovered from their major burns eventually, thanks to a six pound leghorn rooster. I didn’t have much respect for my school bus driver, because he didn’t stop and help. He started crying when I told him that the following day on the school bus. My parents didn’t much believe my story until the insurance investigators arrived a few days later.

I was always happy when the Labor Day indian pow wow rolled around each year in Colony. All the boys in my class would hunt box turtles to sell to the indians. They paid us a dollar each for them, and enjoyed eating them. They also combed the local towns looking for free puppies, which they made into soup. The Cheyennes and Arapahoes had beautiful costumes to dance in, many of which sported eagle feathers. When we lived by Ghost Mound we could hear their drums and chanting seven miles away. Sound carries for great distances when there is few trees and structures to block their path. Since western Oklahoma is so flat and dry, you can watch tornadoes in the distance twelve to fifteen miles away. We enjoyed watching them each year from our yard. Mother was really scared of storms, so we spent many hours in the root cellar riding them out.

Later we moved a short distance north of Colony to a two story house, which had electricity and running water. The farm had a large prairie dog town and it was close to many good fishing places. My parents built a fallout shelter while living here and stocked it with food and water. They were always afraid that the Soviet Union was going to bomb us. We even had drills at school, where we was instructed to get under our desks. That first year dad bought some sows from Richard Humbarger, that he was getting rid of because they were so mean. Dad made me carry buckets of feed to their feeder when I was eight years old. They would chase me over the fence, yet dad would keep tossing me back in. He said I must lose my fear of large farm animals. Finally I grabbed an electric fence post from inside their pen and began hitting them in the snout. The sows quit trying to bite me from that day forward. Dad said livestock must always understand who is the boss. Terry Don Humbarger was in my class at school, and wanted to sell me their Rhode Island Red chickens. He wanted me to go home with him, so I could see the chickens. I agreed and went home with him the following day. What a big mistake I had made. I went ahead and paid Terry Don’s mother the twenty five dollars for the chickens, because I didn’t have this breed yet. Even though the chickens were a bag of bones. That night me and Terry slept in a bed covered in chickens. The floors of their whole house was covered in hogs day and night. I didnt see how anyone could live in such filthy conditions.

When I was ten years old I got a beautiful and expensive gold wrist watch for Christmas from my great grandparents Oliver and Lola Herrian. The following week we were visiting my cousins in Oklahoma City, and they decided we would walk several blocks to the park. Me and my cousin Allen Shamblin decided to try out the teeter totter. We are about the same age so we got along well. While we were laughing and having a great time on the teeter totter, a 45 year old black man came up from behind me and cut my throat. Then he ripped the wrist watch from my arm. As the blood was pouring out from my neck Allen’s big sister Cloann, picked me up and ran the five blocks home. Dad had me applying pressure to my neck as we sped to the hospital. On arrival they sewed up my neck and gave me some blood. My mother had called the police from uncle Steve’s house and they soon caught up with the man. Seems my cousin Ronald Shamblin who was 13, three years older than me, had a big drug debt and offered my gold watch to his drug dealer. Because this ordeal almost killed me, I seldom went with my family to Oklahoma City. My cousins were always jealous of me, because I made straight A’s at school and could beat them at every sport.

When I was nine our school had math competitions. It boiled down to three people, me representing the grade school, my sister Malva representing the junior high, and my cousin Trudy Bond representing the high school. We had ten math problems and I won each of them easily. At county I was the winner, however I got beat at the state level. Several times as a kid I made it to the National Spelling Bee. Dad always sat on the back row, complaining loudly about how long the spelling bee was taking, which hurt my focus. I think if dad had kept quiet I probably would have won some of the National Spelling Bee’s. My sister and cousin Trudy never got over being beat by a little boy in a math competition. In the 4th grade me and my friends were approached by a clown on a unicycle during our lunch hour. Which was really creepy since Colony isn’t much of a town. He wanted us to join the circus with him, and gave us lots of candy. He invited us to go look at the monkeys in his van, which was parked up the street. Pogo the clown made me scared, so I went for my teacher Mrs Griffin. A few of my classmates went to his van, but didn’t see any animals. Mrs Griffin walked up to the van and told the clown to leave the school grounds. We never saw the clown again however Mrs Griffin told us he was from out of state according to his tag.

My 5th grade in school Colony and Corn schools became consolidated, which was nice because Corn had lots of cute german girls. Most people in Corn were Mennonites. At school the Corn kids would mock their grandparents who would run for cover every time an airplane flew over. It was very amusing at the time, that they were still so scared over the Germany war bombings that happened so long ago. John Denver would sometimes visit his grandma in Corn Oklahoma. He would sing for us kids sometimes. His grandma bought him his first guitar and paid for his tuition at what is now Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford. My dad gave John Denver his first guitar lessons when he was eleven years old. The professors treated John very badly in Weatherford because he was poor and didn’t party with the other students. He then dropped out and went to study at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Both my dad and grandpa John Franklin Shamblin played for famous musicians when they were young. Dad’s cousin Eldon Shamblin invented the first electric guitar and sold his patents to Mr fender and Mr Gibson.

In 1970 we moved to a different farm, a few miles northeast of where we were living. Ghost Mound was a mile southwest of us. I was twelve and started selling hatching eggs from more than fifty breeds of chickens, many of which dad imported for me. I always kept good records so I could improve my flocks. It was a big chore caring for chickens in so many pens, especially during the winter months. People came from all over america to purchase my rare breed chickens and hatching eggs. Some families brought their kids by just to look around, like spending the day at the zoo. Besides chickens I also had pheasants, ducks, guineas, geese, swans, rabbits, racing pigeons, horses, donkeys, sheep, dairy goats, and miniature cattle. When I was twelve I took up riding bulls at Little Britches Rodeos. My dad competed in rodeos until he was twenty seven. I quit when I was twenty, because I lost interest in it. The girls I was dating preferred jocks over cowboys. On my 12th birthday I was six foot two inches tall and could easily load hundred pound bags of grain and fertilizer. I first began filling the planter bins when I was eight years old and it was a struggle. Since I was so big everyone treated me like an adult. In the sixth grade dad let me drive the car and trucks to town. I also got to do most of the driving when we were going to livestock shows and rodeos. We sold Charolais bulls and heifers all over america, and I enjoyed delivering them with Bud Capps. Bud was married to my dads cousin Opal. Bud was the cowboy who got both me and dad into rodeo.

Ghost Mound had several motorcycle gang rallies each year. Sometimes two rival motorcycle gangs would meet there for a big fight. Me and my friends always enjoyed watching them from the safety of the surrounding trees. Usually they lasted only two or three days. One friday Ricky and Lendal Pugh dropped by our house, wanting me to help them climb Ghost Mound. I was in the 8th grade, Ricky was in the 6th, my brother Merle was in the 5th, and Lendal was in the 3rd grade I believe. Eventually I finally got everyone to the top of Ghost Mound. This was Lendal’s first time, so he was moving really slow. On top we ate a snack of cookies and soda pop. All the sudden we heard the roar of over a hundred motorcycles. I didn’t really like being stuck on top, however I doubted they would harm children. The bikers parked and then began making their way up the small mountain. While I was busy plotting a path down the back side of the mountain, Lendal Merle and Ricky were pissing over the cliff, into the faces of the motorcycle gang. When I scolded them they said, they didn’t know the bikers had made it that high up. They figured the urine covered rocks would halt their progress. The bikers became furious yelling death threats to us, and waving huge knives into the air. Lendal and Merle dropped a few small rocks on them, to slow them down to my dismay. I found us a path down the opposite side of the mountain. We counted 47 bikers coming up the face of the mountain, as we descended down the back side. After ten or fifteen bikers made it to the top, they began rolling large boulders down on us. So I had to locate ledges, with overhang above them. It was a good thing Ghost Mound was very familiar to me, or we would have died. I found a cave where we could hide, however the bikers began spreading out all over the mountain. It would only be a matter of time until they found us. After reaching the bottom, I decided we would all crawl through the weeds, until we reached the safety of the tree line. I knew the people on top of Ghost Mound would be looking for us to run across the pasture, after me made it down. When we just about made it to the trees, we were spotted. Marion Yearwoods house was just east of Ghost Mound a short ways, so I figure we could knock on his door for help. He wouldn’t answer his door due to fear. Him and his wife hid in their bedroom closet as the dozens of motorcycles poured into their yard. They knocked down his front door and tore apart his house looking for us boys. We were hiding in the flower bushes while they ramsacked the Yearwood house. We made a fast break across the road, and angled across the field to our own house. The trees in the shelter belt blocked us from view. The gang shot up all the hiding places around the Yearwood house trying to flush us out. That was the last time we ever climbed Ghost Mound, and Marion and his wife were never the same.

As a boy I went hunting just about every week of the year. There was always some uncle or friend of my dads wanting to hunt. Most of them lived in a city and we had lots of land and large ponds to hunt on. We always kept some good bird dogs to hunt quail and pheasants with, however when it came to retrieving ducks and greese from frozen ponds and lakes it was my job. I tied a rope around my waist so dad could pull me out, when the ice broke beneath my feet. Swimming in icy water wasn’t the worst part, everyone would hunt for hours. Sometimes the tips of my hair would freeze solid because it was only 12 or 15 degrees. I would go warm up in the truck and put on some more dry clothes. Often on friday night some coon hunters would stop by and pick me up, because they were too old to run down the hounds when they treed a raccoon. Dad got to selling dog food from our barn. Many coyote and coon hunters stopped by our house to buy feed. Dad got a contract to provide dogs for the Army, which made a lot of extra work for me, until he moved the kennel to Clinton. My dad loved bow hunting black bear and mountain lions in Colorado with his best friend Floyd Goss. I seldom went because I didn’t like seeing my Black and Tan hounds getting cut up. Deer were another animal I didn’t like hunting because they were so cute.

In the 6th grade I started going to school in Hydro, where I never did really fit in. Just about everyone in Hydro is a hater, and thats something that I will never be. The teachers and preachers tried to fill our hearts with hate, telling us that all poor and minority people were wicked and evil. At school five or six boys would get together and beat poor boys almost to death. The teacher and principal would say the poor boy deserved the beating, because all poor people are thieves, drug dealers, and lazy. If a black man or boy ever ventured into Hydro they would be dragged behind a pickup or hung in a tree. Tourists getting gasoline in Hydro often became raped, sometimes entire families if they were from a liberal state like California. As I got older I spoke out against this violence and went from teachers pet to, public enemy number one. Everyone at school was afraid I was going to report them to the state. In the basement of the Hydro skating rink they kept a dead negro in a coffin. The boys would all urinate on his body and the girls would spit on him. The teachers become very angry because I wouldn’t attend the skating parties at the roller rink, because of the dead negro. So one by one the teachers began punishing me for no reason. When they saw they couldn’t change me, they finally gave up. At Hydro just about every man and boy behaved homosexually, so I seldom used the restroom and spent very little time in the gym locker room. Because I didn’t want to be around that sort of behavior. Coach Stephens and coach Sanders didn’t like my attitude toward gay sex behavior so they started having boxing fights during our sports hour. Each day they would make me box six or seven boys, hoping to wear me down so I would lose. Sometimes while I was doing my push ups Coach Stevens would kick me in the side or walk on my hands. Then he would scream at me, I bet you think we are a bunch of dirty rotten queers, trying to make the other boys mad at me. During baseball practice coach Sanders would often hit me in the back with a baseball, then yell Dennis keep your eyes open, then laugh. Finally they gave up on trying to find a student who could hit me at boxing, because dad had taught me well on how to fight. So coach Stevens himself decided he was going to box me, and knock the hell out of me. Inside this made me feel scared because its against the rules to hit a teacher. And second he had huge muscles. All the sudden this poor kid from West Virginia who didn’t have a dad spoke up and told the coach why not let me box you. I was very afraid for Monty Mackey, knowing how bad Hydro hated poor kids. Also there was the fact that he and his brother Royce were both short and fat. Coach Stephens accepted his offer gladly, and they both put on the gloves to fight. It wasn’t much of a fight because Monty blocked every punch the coach threw for like ten minutes, and laughed while doing so. Next he went on the attack, and the coach stumbled around like a rag doll. All the sudden he spun around and with one strong punch knocked coach Sanders off his feet. That was the last day teachers or coaches every picked on me or the poor kids. I told Monty that was pretty amazing fighting you did here today. He said his grandpa taught him how to fight, and custom hay hauling every summer made him strong.

Every school morning and evening I had an hour long ride on the school bus, because I lived far in the countryside. When I was in the 9th grade we got a new bus driver named Gene Schollenberger and the kids on the bus nicknamed him wormy butt because he obviously had hemorrhoid symptoms. He was a friendly sort and wore eye glasses about an inch thick. One day on our way home me my brother and the Reynolds girls were the only ones still on. Gene began going 60 instead of his usual 50 on country roads. I was laying across the two back seats of the school bus sleeping. Cindy the 6th grader went to the back of the bus and shook me awake. She said he was driving the bus 60 instead of his usual 50, so I said go away and leave me alone. About ten minutes later both Cindy and her 5th grade sister Sandy came whispering in my ear, we think the school bus driver has gone crazy because he is now driving 70 miles per hour. I got to thinking to myself he probably just needs to take a piss or a dump, so he is in a hurry to get all us kids home. This was a good paved road, so I figured 70 would be okay. I didn’t mess with trying to get back to sleep, because the ride began getting real bumpy. All at once all three girls headed by little 2nd grade Dana pleaded with me to do something. When they said the bus was doing 85, I jumped up instantly concerned. The girls reminded me that the Entz were not riding, so Gene wouldn’t be slowing up for the curve and dirt road. As I walked to the front of the bus, wormy was now doing 90 and there would be no way, that we could make the curve. Right smack in the middle of the road was a deep canyon and we were speeding towards it, with only minutes until impact. We kids screamed for the bus driver to slow down right now. Gene totally ignored us. He just began gripping the wheel tighter and reciting the Lords Prayer. I ran forward elbowed him in the head, and took hold of the steering wheel and turned the wheels away from the cliff. I forced myself into his lap, and kicked his leg away from the fuel pedal and applied the brake. The bus barely made the curve and almost turned over at 60 miles her hour. He finally snapped out of his suicide wish, and I sat down in the front seat. The next day Gene quit as our bus driver before getting fired.

August 1974 we moved a house in from northwest of Colony, to southeast of Weatherford on Airport Road. The house sat for 80 years beside the Colony hanging tree. Because our house was near the hanging tree for so many years, my oldest sister and brother thought the house was haunted. Chester and Irma Classen russian immigrants lived in the house before we did. Dad put them there, when he returned to farm in the Colony area. The house had a really big iron woodstove in it that was antique. Chester’s entire family claimed that blood oozed out of the stove, the first week that they used it. Me and dad figured they had been watching too many horror shows on television. Their family attended the Nazarene Church in Weatherford because Colony didn’t have one. My junior and senior years at Weatherford High School was very good and I made lots of friends. Choir was my favorite class in school. I began attending the Hubert Street Baptist Church and quit going to the Fairview Church southeast of Ghost Mound a little ways. Its just a church and cemetary not a town. We moved to the new location so my sisters could be near to the college. My mother took a job managing the Kendall House Motel and Restaurant. Dad began building houses in Mustang Oklahoma and I would do the drywall and painting during the summers, when school wasn’t in session. The first new car I bought myself was a white Plymouth Duster my junior year. In high school I loved to drag race and went through a lot of cars. I quit driving fast in college and became more responsible behind the wheel.

The summer of my junior year mother forced me to take a job as a chauffeur for an elderly man, who often stayed at the motel she was managing. I didn’t really like getting mixed up with people I didn’t know, however he had been a regular at her motel for three years. I already had plenty of farm and construction work to do for my dad that summer, but mother didn’t give me any choice. The next day I arrived at the motel to begin my job as a chauffeur. The elderly man seemed nice enough and I was suprised to see that I would be driving a Rolls Royce. I became eager to get behind the wheel. The first day he had me take him to offices across Oklahoma City and he paid me $300, however I finally accepted that much money reluctantly. That was pretty steep wages back in 1975 for a kid. The next day I drove him to a meeting in Dallas Texas and back. This day he raised my wages to $400 a day. Now I began to worry that this guy was probably some kind of a criminal. I pleaded my case for quitting, however mother made me continue to drive this man to his destinations. I told this guy if he would cut back on his drinking alcohol, he could probably drive himself and save lots of money. The next day he had me drive him to the Weatherford Airport. He leased an airplane and tried to talk me into riding along. I figured if this drunk couldn’t drive a car, I darn sure didn’t want to be a passenger in his airplane. He instructed me to remain at the airport for three hours until he returned. By that time the airport was closed and everyone had gone home. When he finally arrived an hour late, he waved me and the car over to his leased airplane. Next he told me to raise the trunk, which I did. I figured he must have gone shopping for some new clothes. Instead he began loading the Rolls trunk with assault rifles, thirty in all. I noticed he was packing a pistol for the first time, in a shoulder holster. Thats why I didn’t make a run for it, and walk home. He told me to drive north of town and find a country road, where he could test fire, one of these guns. So I did as he instructed me. A few times I thought about leaving him behind while he was testing his weapon, however I didn’t know if the Rolls Royce was bullet proof. It was time I should be arriving back to the motel, to pick up my own car and head home. The elderly gentleman told me I wasn’t going home, instead I would be driving him to New Orleans. Next he put a thousand dollars in my shirt pocket and smiled. Suddenly I came up with an idea and told him, why don’t I take you by the bar so you can have a couple of beers, before we head out of town. He agreed so I drove him to a Weatherford bar on mainstreet. He couldn’t talk the bar into letting me come inside because of my age. So I told him that I would be waiting in the car. Just as soon as he was out of sight, I ran to a phone booth and called my dad and the police. My mother came and picked me up. Before the police got to the crook in the bar, my dad had got their first. The guys nose, jaw, arms, and ribs were broken and an ambulance was called to take him to the hospital. Seems the man was wanted by the FBI in many states.

Southwestern Oklahoma State University was the first college I attended. Before entering the university I already had some friends there such as Dr Buena Ballard. I fished with her and her husband often at Payne’s Lake while growing up. My third semester I took a class in news reporting for the school newspaper. One day I decided to write an article on financial aid. So I went to its headquarters in the library basement. The office was closed for lunch however about twenty Iraqi and Iranian male students were having some kind of a meeting. I sat down and listened in while taking notes. They were discussing many ways on how to do terrorist acts in the USA, such as shooting electric transformers, and spreading the cholera bacteria stored in the biology lab on campus. I inquired on where they learned to do these terrorist acts and they said Russia. They noticed me taking notes, and three of them ripped the notebook from my hands. Then all the rest began punching and kicking me. I broke loose and went back to news reporting class. My professor Dick Wilson then went straight to complain about these Iraqi and Iranian students. Before my interview was terminated, I found out all of them were computer science majors. The next day I had to visit several offices on the campus and be griped out. My run in with the arab students, made nearly all of the them go on the attack. They began shoving all the american students, tripping them, and shutting the doors in their faces. One day while climbing some stairs at the university, four Iraqi or Iranian boys tried to push me over the rail three stories up. I followed all four to the restroom and beat them very severely. So next day the university began the same old routine of telling me these people are guests in our country, and I must treat them with respect. They still wouldn’t listen to a single word of my explanation. Dr Wilson told me he did everything that he could do for me. Soon all the professors on campus began calling me a trouble maker, which gave the Iraqi and Iranian guys a big laugh. These guys noticed my cousin Vickie Mae Goss was attending the university also. They probably thought she was my girlfriend. They broke into her apartment and four of them attacked her. I changed my major the next semester however it didn’t help. Professor Ronald Segal was determined that I should be kicked out for offending the Iraqis and Iranians. So the next year I began studying at a different university. If SWOSU had reported this terrorist cell, the Twin Towers might be still standing. A few weeks later these guys tried to stab me in the parking lot, at a football home game.

Restoring old classic cars and trucks use to be a hobby of mine. At this particular time I was working on a 1952 International pickup. A wealthy woman from Oklahoma City dropped by our house and asked if I would restore the exterior of a historic church a few miles north of Corn Oklahoma. I agreed to do it, and she had a lumber yard drop of the materials at our house. I decided to drive the old International, because it had been sitting for a long time. I carried a few gallons of water along because the radiator had a small leak, I had not fixed yet. Driving that old truck was a lot of fun, like all old classics. I had my nephew Christopher Allen Brown helping me because it was such a big job. It took us four days to remove the old paint scales, and another three to replace the rotten boards. Chris and I begin noticing lots of automobile tracks all around this old church that had not been used for years. We began applying primer to the bare wood, and the guy who owned the farm kept spring toothing near us over and over. We decided to quit for the day, because dirt was sticking to the paint primer. The next day we started at day light and had the church primed before the farmer showed up to spring tooth once again. The dirt settled on the primer making it require two finish coats instead of one. I tried to wave down the tractor and ask what the problem was, but he wouldn’t stop. We noticed that one of the church windows had been opened three or four inches, and there were many more car tracks around. It became quite obvious that somebody was using the church. I called the Oklahoma City woman and told her that somebody was using the church. She said they probably used it for funerals, so that satisfied my curiosity. While we were applying the first finish coat the farmer let us alone. When we got the second finish coat of paint half finished, the farmer began applying pesticide spray to the bare dirt in his field still trying to run us off. I tried the church’s front door, so we could seek refuge from the poison spray. Fortunately the door was not locked. While inside the old historic church we saw mountains of all sorts of drugs. I thought this must be why the farmer was giving us such a hard time. After the farmer left, me and Chris was working very hard to finish the job, and get out of here. I was working so hard I didn’t notice the three pickups park in the road. Twelve year old Chris was working on the other side of the church, painting everything up to eight feet, using the old truck as a scaffold. He had noticed the three pickups and came over to my side, to see if they stopped. He got my attention by shaking the extension ladder. I looked around and saw three men wearing western clothes coming my way. Each of the three was loading a pistol, and yelling for me to come down and get my head blown off. Since I was near the top of the ladder, there was no place to run. If I jumped my legs would break and me and Chris would be at their mercy. I told Chris to run to the International and drive for Corn, so he wouldn’t get killed. He did as I said and jumped into the truck, with tires spinning drove down the road. All the sudden he hit his brakes and turned down the road in front of the church. This is where the three men had parked their pickups. He slammed the International into the side of the first truck, and backed up and crashed into the side of the second one. The men ran from the bottom of my ladder, to where there pickups were parked. My nephew drove up the road a short distance so they couldn’t jump into my pickup. He then turned around and drove past them at high speed, up to the ladder that I was climbing down. I jumped in the old International and we both headed to Corn as fast as that old truck could carry us. It was the closest town near us.

One day while me and my brother Merle were playing with our next door neighbor Pamela Koehn in the backyard, two men in hats and dark sunglasses walked up and carried me and my brother away. They locked us up in a cellar in the country. When my dad paid the ransom to the mobsters, they gave directions to where me and Merle were stashed. Instead of letting the mobsters go, they received a little vigilante justice. Dad and the local business men from around Fairview decided the mobsters fate. They put them in an old electric chair that was on display at a insurance agency and fried them. My uncle John Warren Shamblin had taken me and Merle to the car, so we wouldn’t see the execution. Some of these men had been Nazi war prisoners, and the Nazi’s were tough on crime. I felt really bad for the men, because they didn’t harm us. Three times in my childhood I was kidnapped because of my dads and grandma’s business practices. Cars would sometimes try to run over me and my sisters up on the sidewalks, with out of state auto tags. Since I was young, I didn’t know enough to be scared.

For our safety dad moved us to a farm five miles northeast of Colony Oklahoma. My great grandpa James Shamblin had built it many years earlier, when he was in the brick business. He hired the local Indians to help him bake bricks, and he built most of the main street business’s in the area. At first I hated it because there was nobody to play with, until dad explained that living here would keep us safe from his business enemies. The house didn’t have running water, telephone service, or electricity. Mother and my big sisters would cry nearly every day we lived there. It was hard work pumping water to bathe, wash, and water the garden. That summer the wind seldom blew, so we spent endless hours pumping water, because the windmill didnt turn very often. In July a small tornado carried me and the outdoor toilet into the sky and deposited me into the road. Thank heaven the out house had a wooden floor, and a strong latch. I was unharmed thank goodness. This is when I first began roaming the countryside and exploring. We had many relatives in the Colony area, so I was able to watch my favorite show Tarzan on their tv. At the time we couldn’t watch television at our house, because of the lack of electricity. I started school here and had a great teacher named Mrs Risinger. She taught the first and second grades in the same classroom. Later when I was in the 5th grade Colony and Corn schools consolidated and became Washita Heights. Our school was leased from the Cheyenne and Arapahoe indian tribes. It was part of Seger’s Indian School. Here was the ideal educational and industrial school where children of the forest and the plains, who were strangers to civilized life, whose parents knew nothing but the chase and the warpath, and who had no conception of farming and industry, were taught to be useful, self supporting members of society. The work was done by the students who were given a share in all crops grown. The farming was planned and all work was done under the supervision of John H. Seger. Mr Seger was a good friend of my great grandpa’s and he built the indian school for him.

Riding the Colony school bus was terrible because the high school boys, would fist the little kids in the back and twist our arms. So each day I dreaded going to school. But just as soon as the school bus dumped me off, I would run across the peanut field while stripping off my clothes, so I could become Tarzan Lord of the jungle. I would pretend the fields and pastures were Africa. Gradually our bikes and toys become missing. Mother blamed it on, the retarded Ewy brother named Edmund who lived between us and Ghost Mound. His brother Alfred was his guardian and worked for the city of Weatherford. Neither one ever married, yet always managed to be happy. One day I went walking down the road looking for my bike and Army toys, and something big and hairy ran across the road, I didn’t know what it was, yet it scared me lots at the time. So I quit wandering around after dark. A few weeks later something began pulling parts from our chickens. Dad thought it might be an enemy sending us threats so he moved us a year later to a house, that was a mile and a half north of Colony. Dad taught us to always be aware of what was around us. Never walk any place looking at the street or road. Often me and my brother felt that we were being followed, yet me never caught anyone doing it. Once we had a softball size hail storm, and it killed all the cattle and horses in our pasture.

I was sure happy to live once again in a house filled with modern conveniences. Now that I was seven years old dad began dumping ever more responsibilities on me. Each morning I had to feed the livestock, and work in the fields for eight hours along with my sisters Malva Fay and LaDonna Gail. When I was eight I was expected to move irrigation pipe, along with my sisters, and then work ten hours in the fields. At the end of a hard day, there were always the heavy irrigation pipes to move across the peanuts and cotton. Me and my brother got to sleep in the upstairs part of the house. There were some of a famous Nazi’s old uniforms hanging in the closet, two pairs of his boots, his engraved rifles and swords, and a chest full of his personal effects. Mother wasn’t sure if they belonged to dad or Buell Lasley, the houses former resident. One of the two mom said probably brought them back from Germany as war souvenirs. My dads military records showed he got to watch as the first atom bomb was exploded in New Mexico July 1945, while he watched in the distance. He was one of the few survivors. I took the papers to school for show and tell, and the principal alerted the Army. They came to school and took the classified papers. Said they had sent them to dad by mistake. Now all his records have been sealed permanently. So as a kid I wondered if this famous Nazi had maybe survived and was living in America. Mom cleared the Nazi’s stuff from our room, after about two weeks. When I was eleven me and my brother found 47 sheets of gold coins, under each was a description in a language we could not read. There were about 20 coins on each sheet. Whoever brought the Nazi stuff probably stole these coins from a museum or a millionaires collection in europe. When we showed dad the coins, he zipped out the door with them, and said he was returning them to Buell Lasley the rightful owner. Me and my brother kept one sheet for ourselves and buried them in the backyard, after making a treasure map. When we moved from there in 69, me and my brother couldn’t find the coins. Of course we didn’t have a metal detector because I was only eleven years old. My great grandpa was the first white man, to settle in western Oklahoma among the indians. He bought furs and buffalo bones from the local indian tribes. We always enjoyed watching the indian pow wows in Colony Oklahoma every Labor Day weekend.

I was seven years old when I joined Cub Scouts in Colony Oklahoma. Our den masters were Herschel and Glen Rhoads plus Clifford Payne. They took turns having the meetings in their homes. Jack McLemore was in charge of the much older Boy Scouts. A year later the Cub and Boy Scouts had a joint camping trip to Paynes Lake. We all had a great time, until bedtime rolled around. Since there were twice as many Boy Scouts as Cub Scouts, they decided to put each Cub Scout in a tent with two Boy Scouts. I was having none of this because big boys beat me up on the school bus every day. So as the rest of the Scouts went to sleep, I wandered around the lake. Clifford Payne stayed up and fed the campfire. He kept a watchful eye on me and my flashlight. Every hour or so he yelled at me to go to bed. Before long he jumped in his pickup and went for my dad. He was so angry his wheels were spinning in the deep sand. Clifford died in his forties because acting as a deputy sheriff, he entered a drug dealers house in the middle of the night, and got shot. He should have identified himself as law enforcement.

After Clifford left, I felt it safe to climb twin mound, which is located beside the lake. It was easy because there was a full moon. As I was scanning the lake and pastures around me, I noticed movement near the lakes drain below the dam. It looked as if two tall bears were noodling catfish from under the streams banks. After a while I hurried to the road as dads pickup pulled up. He scolded me and said I could sleep in the truck that night. When I got back to camp, Clifford insisted that dad use his belt on me for being a spoiled baby. Dad got shamed and beat me so bad, I had welts on me for a week. He said no Shamblin in history ever showed any fear and I was a miserable little coward. From that day forward I fought vigorously anyone who hurt me, no matter how big or old they were. Never wanting my dad to feel ashamed of me again. That’s how I got my nickname Rooster, ready to swing my fist at a moments notice. And to fight long and hard until there was nothing left in me. Riley was so furious because he thought I made the bear story up, to cover up for not minding him. The next week I went to the encyclopedia and found our bears only live in forests. Trees are in short supply in western Oklahoma. Windbreaks or shelterbelts were planted in a variety of settings, such as on cropland, pasture, and rangeland, along roads, farmsteads, feedlots, and in urban areas. They were established to protect or shelter nearby areas from troublesome winds. They were put in after the Dust Bowl and trees growing around lakes creeks and rivers, and that’s about all. This was my first Bigfoot sighting, unknown to me at the time. Between 8-14 I called them bears, like the ones I had seen at the Oklahoma City zoo. The hairy animal that crossed the road when I was six, most likely was a Bigfoot. It also probably stole our toys and hurt our chickens.

The next year when I was nine years old my mother hosted a family reunion. After just about everyone had done gone home, me and my cousin Cheryl Renee Goss continued to play under the huge native elm tree, which was about a quarter mile north of the house. I was the first one to notice the bear looking animals running towards us from the west. They probably had been dining on prairie dogs, just over the hill I figured, because there was a bunch of them. I didn’t scream bears or my cousin would not have moved, just begin arguing with me, since she knew bears weren’t in these parts. So I yelled pack of wild dogs at the top of my lungs. This sent Renee racing up the tree, and me following behind, just to make certain she climbed high enough and out of reach. As the bears came running at high speed under the tree I covered Renee’s mouth and eyes to shut her up, or else they would know our location in the heavily leafed tree. Because of the tree branches I couldn’t get a good look at the bears who ran on two legs beneath us. After they crossed the road, they began eating on Richard Humbarger’s peanut vines, and later went into his creek. Renee was crying hysterical as we walked back to the house, and soon both my big sisters came running, to see what was the matter. When I was nine dads mobster friends began hanging around, trying to catch a few words with him. My dad was really rude and seldom said a word to the mobsters, mom ignored them entirely. It was awkward watching television in silence with people who had come so far to do business, knowing they were going to be disappointed. So I decided to entertain them, when they came knocking. I took them fishing at Worth Richmond’s lake about a half mile north of us, and a quarter mile east. The men seemed to enjoy our fishing, and I enjoyed hearing about far away places like Chicago, New York City, Boston, Houston, Moscow, London, Paris, and Berlin. They were ever so anxious to take part in my dads business enterprises. However dad didn’t want any more business partners he said. Dad made contracts with companies to deliver goods, the goods never got delivered and he would split the money with top management. I figured this out from reading dads mail. He also forced people to sell him their mineral rights, refineries to buy stolen crude oil, and ranchers to sell him their cattle and tractors for cents on the dollar. At one point dad had over two hundred oil wells. Some of the locals got to calling him JR Ewing, like the tv show Dallas. Mother wasn’t much different she would beat up everyone who wouldn’t agree with her, or let her move to the front of a line. Thats why I hated going to dog and horse shows with her.

Ever since I was small I raised many breeds of chickens and sold hatching eggs. My goal has always been to save the rare breeds from extinction. Dad only cared about his fighting cocks which he fought in countries throughout the world. I was in charge of the breeding program for all of the chickens. It was a huge responsibility because dad wagered a huge amount of money on them. He sold his brood cocks for $10,000 -$25,000. And the battle stags sold for $2,500-$4,000. Over the years I got better at selecting breeding stock and our roosters almost never lost in the gaff. In the long knife luck plays a large role, so the better rooster can lose, because the weapons are so lethal. Dad fought lots of mains for between one and five million dollars. I never attended the fights because dad didn’t want me taking up gambling. When dad died basically cockfighting died because he was the most powerful lobbyist. We moved to the Ghost Mound area when I started the 6th grade. Men who were forced into being business partners with my dad soon became broke. So they began mailing threatening letters to the house. Mom and dad felt the move was the My mothers parents Melvin and Alta Simpson were mostly into importing cocaine from Columbia and heroin from Karachi Pakistan by the tons. Alta sponsored these poor kids through church organizations. When they became old enough she turned them into mules around the world. Both sides of my family were heavily into organized crime. I think on the Herrian side of the family in Corsica, they have been crooks for generations. Grandpa Simpson killed my mothers boyfriend, so she would marry my dad instead. He was a very horrible person.

In the 6th grade I bought an oval 20 gallon galvanized steel tub to use as a boat in the creeks. It worked perfectly in the shallow waters, as me and my brother floated along catching turtles and frogs. Sometimes we could hear the grinding of teeth and heavy breathing of the bears, as we drifted by unnoticed in the dense foliage. Their breathing seem to have a harmonica like quality to it. We carried spears that we used to push ourselves along through the water. I charged boys I knew five dollars to take a creek tour in my boat. I used all the money I made to purchase more breeds of chickens. I had 64 pens to keep my 53 breeds of chickens and jungle fowl. People driving by my house often stopped and bought chickens or hatching eggs. I did lots of advertising so I had people coming from all over. Each year I would also graze 4000 geese on pasture, and make 20,000 dollars. It was time consuming and meant sleeping in a tent three months until the flock was sold. Otherwise the coyotes and bears would eat them.

Me and my siblings could all read and write by the time we were five years old. We all represented Hydro schools in competitions. Starting school at Hydro in the 6th grade was okay at first. None of the high school boys on the school bus wanted to fight us younger boys like at Colony. Had a great teacher Mrs Opal Hargrave. Besides school work, she had us growing plants and making ceramics. My dad tried his best so that we kept a low profile, so nobody would report him to the feds. In the seventh grade he quit letting mobster associates visit. We were required to attend church every Sunday and Wednesday, so we wouldn’t turn out like my dad. However many people in the area still knew about my dads wicked ways. Many Sundays we had to hear the sermons about my dads sinful ways. It was in 1970 that I learned about my dads other marriages, from a friend at school. Seems he had five wives prior to my mother, and never messed with divorcing any of them. He was 30 and mother 19 when they married. I kept the information secret from mother until dad died in 1999 from lung cancer. Living one half mile east, and a half mile north from Ghost Mound was a blast. Each day nearly me and my brother would climb it, and look over the countryside. Sometimes we would see the bears walking upright across the cotton and peanut fields. This didn’t keep me from playing tarzan and running nude along the creeks fields and pastures. Animals got to know me from my roaming and leaving food for them. Each day I chopped up five gallons of fruits, vegetables and meat, and scattered them along my paths. Soon some of the animals began following me, and I felt just like Tarzan. I carried a long spear as I ran, just in case any mean cow or bull, wanted to chase me. Near Thanksgiving of 1970 when I was twelve years old, me and my brother just go off the Hydro school bus, and was putting our school books away. When through the front door a man walked in carrying a pistol. He told me and my brother to get into the deep freeze. It was a new one, mother had just began to use. So there was plenty of room in the chest freezer. The keys were still in the lock. Guess he wanted to have my parents discover two frozen sons. We tried very hard to break the lock using our legs and back. When we ran out of oxygen, we took breaths through the drainage hole, which I cleared by pushing the pencil I found in my pocket through. Eventually the lock broke, and we escaped. That was the second time we had almost been killed by dads enemies. I prayed he would quit cheating people. Rex Bottom told my mother, that I had been running the creeks like a wild boy, not even wearing any clothes. I thought I was careful not to be seen by the neighbors. So August 1970 my days of pretending to be Tarzan ended with shame. Dad made me any my sisters practice using the guns every Tuesday night. He was always afraid somebody would harm us, while he was away on weekends. I made friends with Ben, who was the Betche family slave. Him and his brother were found escaping from a japanese internment camp during the last world war, and sold as slaves to the Betche’s. One of the men died from the heavy work load. After Martha Betche’s husband commited suicide, she removed the chains from Ben in 1971. He was in chains 26 years. He remained a slave until his death, because Martha would have shot him for trying to escape.

Johnny Mays had a farm pond a quarter mile up the canyon from ours. We enjoyed fishing there and catching frogs and camping. Often we would see “bears” east off at a distance with their young “cubs”. Now I believe they were actually Bigfoot families. We would be scared and climb the trees, figuring the tree branches couldn’t support their weight, and home was too far to run to without getting caught. My brother was two and a half months younger than me, born December 8th 1960. When my brother Merle was in the 5th grade he invited Dennis Dick to come spend the night at our house from school. Merle had already been to his house several times. I recall this day very well. After getting off the school bus, Merle and I took Dennis Dick to climb Ghost Mound. At the top of the peak the height and high wind terrified my brother’s friend. Fearing he would be blown off, he clung to a large boulder on the top. I had to drag him down several hundred feet, as he kept grabbing the boulders on the way down, and I had to pry his fingers loose. We spent the next few hours fishing at the pond behind the house. I didn’t want to share our room with my brothers friend, so I suggested he and Merle have a campout. Telling them it should be loads of fun. We had a Rambler station wagon parked under a huge cottonwood tree, that we didn’t use any longer. Dennis refused to sleep in a tent, because he heard the coyotes off in the distance. But I convinced him sleeping in the station wagon would be safe, he could even roll up the windows and lock the doors, if he got scared. I made a bed for them in the station wagon, then retired to my bedroom. At about 3:00am I heard muffled voices coming through my open bedroom window. I climbed through the window, so I would not awaken my cranky dad. As I walked up in the bright moonlight, I could see the station wagons windows were rolled up, and it wasn’t even raining. The car was rocking back and forth, so the boys must be playing inside. All the sudden I saw some tall dark shadow flee from jerking the door handle. So I ran across the yard for a baseball bat. The boys were badly shaken up and didn’t want to leave the safety of the car. So I decided to sleep in the front car seat for the rest of the night to protect them, from whoever it was. About an hour later, while I was fast asleep. Someone began jerking on the doors, and hitting the windows hard with their fists. The car was under the tree, so its shadow kept the moonlight away. The flashlight my brother and his friend were using lost its charge, and the car wouldn’t start, so I couldnt drive away. Because the battery was low. The light from the inside car lights didn’t help me identify the attacker. And I was only thirteen years old, no match for a big criminal. Finally I thought to honk the horn, and out came my dad with a 45 Colt automatic pistol in both hands. We yelled it was only us, then he cussed and sent us to bed. The next day we looked over the station wagon and it was covered in scratches and the entire top of the car was caved in. Dad then sold it for junk to the Hydro Salvage Yard. Before he sold it the bears left gifts of black walnuts once and catfish once in the dented car roof.

It was on a windy hot scorching day in mid July 1972, that I finally laid eyes on Bigfoot up close. Dad had requested that we help Richard Waters out with chopping weeds from his cotton. The day earlier we had chopped the weeds from the farm, in which he lived on. He had a hippie couple working for him from California. They were middle aged and used drugs while they worked. They were suppose to meet us the next day, at Richard Waters cotton field north of Hydro on the South Canadian River. His son Rodney Waters has later since built a home there. When we arrived at 1:00pm the small foreign car was parked next to the field and a small table was set up with sandwiches and potato salad. Only a bite or two was taken from the sandwich and salad. We looked around for the couple but couldn’t find them, in this remote area. Mother said they probably got too hot and walked down to the river for a swim. There was an old farm house on the property, that nobody had lived in for decades. Next to the house was a big peach tree, full of big ripe peaches. Me, my oldest sister LaDonna, and little brother Merle headed up our rows, in the baking heat. My mother Wanda and sister Malva went over to the tree, to get a peach. We just had lunch so the rest of us, were not hungry. After me Merle and LaDonna were about four city blocks down our rows, we began wondering what was taking mother and Malva, so long to start up their rows. Suddenly mother came rushing from behind the old house and was waving her arms frantically. We all figured they got into a nest of yellow jacket wasps, and was trying to fend them off. A few minutes later Malva went running for the car. We thought she got stung several times, and was wanting to go home. All the sudden one of the bears, like what I have seen while growing up, was walking along the barbed wire fence north in our direction. Mother went dashing to the car, and was trying to get Malva to unlock the doors, so she could drive the car to us. The bear moved forward until it was across from us. The car was too far away to make a run for it. I was 14, but my little brother was just 11 at the time, and couldn’t run very fast. I tried to talk my brother and sister into making a run for it, while I kept it busy chasing me, by running close to it. LaDonna decided our best chance was to stick together. So I came up with the idea to charge the bear, and yell while swinging our heavy steel hoes. As it crossed the fence and got closer, it became quite obvious that it wasn’t a bear. It looked like a big hairy human with huge jaws and bright golden eyes like a lemur. If you look up Homo Erectus, it will give you a good idea what the Bigfoot looked like. It looked very angry and I figured we were all dead. However we charged the beast and it stopped dead in its tracks. We began shouting and charging once again and the Bigfoot turned and walked over to the fence and crossed it. It stood and looked at us for about three or four minutes, doing what appeared to be sign language with its hands. Then it turned and ran, like nothing I had ever seen. Its running stride must have covered 30 feet. And it ran as fast as a cheetah. It kept its body perfectly 90 degrees as it ran, Its head could turn and watch us ,as it ran away without stopping. Several minutes later some Army helicopters flew over, probably from Fort Sill Oklahoma. They were flying low and in the same direction that Bigfoot went. I thought maybe this beast was something that belonged to the Army. Some type of remote controlled robot. So my fear went away. I just couldnt get a grip on what we just saw, because it made no sense to me. The couple never came after their belongings from Richard Waters house, and he eventually had the car towed away. I guess the Bigfoot must have killed them before we arrived. I dont believe Richard ever reported the couple as missing.

Dad was farming partners with forty or more farmers. He provided the tractor machinery and seed, and they provided the land labor and irrigation if needed. We were not allowed to report the Bigfoot sighting because dad didn’t want the extra attention. In fact he never allowed us to call the law. He always preferred taking care of problems himself. When I was sixteen we moved from Hydro to Weatherford, which was okay by me. Just about every man and boy in Hydro is bisexual, so I never wanted them as friends. The coaches liked to kick me and walk on my hands while I was doing push ups. Some of the other teachers beat me with the paddle for no reason. It made them feel really big beating up on Bud Shamblin’s son. They didn’t have the courage to stand up to him, so they took out their frustration on me. It was weird because I was the teachers pet until the 9th grade I never told dad about it because I knew they would end up hospitalized or in an accident. Many of the local farmers had lost farms to dad in poker games so they took their anger out on me. From the first day we moved to south airport road the trouble began. In 1974 we moved in a house from Colony, to a location a mile and a half south on Airport Road and a quarter east. Our address was Rt 5 Box 164 Weatherford Oklahoma 73096. The first day the house was moved in somebody knocked out the windows. A week later somebody stole all the power tools. So we built a shop which had a strong lock. After a few months of remodeling we moved in. However the bad stuff kept happening such as moms veggie garden would get raided, and the fruit trees would get pulled out of the ground. Eventually we got everything established in the garden and in the orchard. We built a barn and chicken coops to house my 50 breeds of chickens and jungle fowl. It was a constant battle stopping the thieves and vandals from stealing our things and destroying our automobiles. Even though I stayed up all night long sometimes, I never caught the vandals and thieves. We kept a big chest freezer in the shop full of steak to eat. One night somebody ripped off the entire lid and stole all the meat. We then had dads best friend Floyd Goss install lighting all around the property. I loved watching wildlife so I always spread peanut butter and honey on our back fence posts. So I could watch the deer raccoons and opossums. This may have been what first attracted our unwanted guests. Vandals would drive steel fence posts through our car tires, drive wooden spears through our car and truck radiators, hurl bricks from the canyon near to us, send waves of homemade arrows at us. And many more wacky things. We had no idea who the crazy people were. Why didn’t they just puncture our tires with a cordless drill, or shoot store bought arrows at us.

A few years later when I was 22 years old the puzzle began coming together. Ripe strawberries, currants, and blackberries began disappearing, before mother had the opportunity to pick them. The sheets that she put on the clothes line would be ripped to pieces, while she was indoors cooking meals. One Friday morning when dad was on his way, out of town for the weekend as always, he found a pickup that was totally destroyed, and the seat had been torn out and was missing. This sent my dad into a rage, and he went door to door in the neighborhood, trying to find the guilty person. While he was gone, I threw all of his guns into the pond behind our hous. Dad never really forgave me for that, although I knew it was the right thing to do. I had a pen of really huge Poland China sows, where the vegetable garden use to be. Mother finally gave up having a garden because seventy percent of it would end up get stolen. These 800 pound sows were really mean from being tormented by the vandals. I was selling show pigs to kids in 4H and FFA club. Most of the sows had already farrowed and were suckling pigs in the garden. Mother went to check on the last sow to farrow one morning and came running back to the house yelling one of the sows is eating a gorilla leg. As I began to dress, I thought what she was seeing was probably a large dog or coyote being eaten. I did know pigs love the taste of meat. Once there was a car wreck by Carnegie, where the car landed in a pig pen. By the time help came the people were already eaten. If a chicken ever got caught in the pig pen, it was quickly devoured. As I rushed upon the scene I found a sow with a large leg in its mouth. The leg was covered in short brown fur. The calf of the leg was just as large as the thigh. The sows kept trying to bite me because of the baby pigs, so I had to keep kicking they away with my cowboy boots. The sow wouldn’t release the leg, so I could take it to my college for inspection. I was a senior at SWOSU. I went into the house and got the pistol mother kept in her purse, to shoot the sow, so I could retrieve the leg. When I returned two sows had began eating on the thigh portion of the leg. It looked like I was going to have to shoot three sows to get at the mysterious leg. Mother came up behind me with a stick of firewood, and it was lights out. By the time I came to, the leg had long since been devoured. So now I began to figure it was the Bigfoots that had been tormenting us. Like the one we saw in the cotton field eight years earlier. We must live near their village I thought, or a place special to them. Why else would they spend six years trying to run us off. I told mother it was just a cows leg the dogs had drug up. The truth would have made her too scared to sleep at night or leave the safety of the house. Mother apologized for hitting me over the head, with a stick of firewood. She said the neighbors would have called the law, if I began killing all three sows.

I bought three male Old English Mastiffs to protect us from Bigfoots and thieves. Each of them weighed over 200 pounds and were lean and strong. Lots of chickens were getting stolen, and I wasn’t certain Bigfoot was the blame for all of it. Because our gamefowl was very expensive, so cockers who couldn’t afford them, might be inclined to steal them. Many of my rare breed chickens were European and Asian imports and I had a small fortune invested in them. The dogs did a great job protecting the acre of land ,we were living on. Rottweilers and German Shepherds we had died from a broken neck or broken ribs. So finally we were having no problems here. Some of my friends brought over their trail hounds and we scoured the local sections for signs of Bigfoot. They lost several dogs to wooden spears and primitive arrows, so they called off the hunts. They figured some psycho must be livng on the local creeks. I don’t think I ever convinced them there were Bigfoots. My friends tend to believe only what they see, with their own two eyes. It wasn’t long before cattle and horses near to us, began getting mutilated. Their legs being bound with heavy gauge barbed wire, and meat cut from their body, with them still alive and writhing in agony. Knives were always getting stolen from our tackle boxes, in fact all the fishermen in my area were losing hunting knives and fishing equipment from their fishing camps. Seems ole Bigfoot likes to steal what he can use.

It was Christmas 1984 and many relatives were joining us for Christmas. We were busy opening the presents, when my brother looked out the kitchen window and whispered Dennis somebody is carrying away your chickens over the back fence. It was beginning to get dark and the yard light couldn’t illuminate the area because of the barn. I sprang to my feet and ran to the fence and climbed over it. It just struck me. I hope this thief isn’t armed. The thief came into view with the chickens in each hand. I grabbed his arm and demanded he release them. All the sudden this huge fist struck me in the jaw, and drove me back six feet into the small cedar trees. This made me terribly mad because I wasn’t being hostile towards him. In a few seconds I responded with four quick jabs to his stomach, and heard him lose his wind. I was a scrappy 6ft6 300 pound kick boxer who hammered his thick skull and hairy body. All the sudden he began biting and scratching me with these huge finger nails. Next he flung me into the cedar trees, where my brother had built a tree house. I yelled for my brother and cousin to get back across the barbed wire fence, because we were no match for this giant of a man. It clamped its huge hands around my throat, I knew this guy was planning to finish me off. So I screamed at the top of my lungs to release the dogs. We had them in pens because of the relatives being here. My mothers cousin Dorthy Nelson from Tonkawa Oklahoma was running our way, she had pulled her revolver from her purse, planning to rescue me. In the darkness she could accidentally shoot me by mistake. When she heard me scream for the release of the dogs, she stopped and opened their doors. The dogs were already foaming at the mouth, ready to bite my attacker. They hit Bigfoot like a freight train, pushing him into the ground. I was terrified they would bite me by accident. The Bigfoot screamed in pain as the punishing jaws tore at his flesh. From the scream, I knew it was not human. Soon Bigfoot was up and running with the mastiffs on his heels. When they took me to the emergency room, I was covered in bites and scratches. I have no idea what the emergency department thought about all my unusual wounds. Dad said I looked like a bear had attacked me. It fractured my skull and bruised me from head to toe.

My family moved from here in 1992. I moved a girlfriend in, and we stuck it out until 1994. Eventually all my dogs died at the hand of a Bigfoot, wooden arrows, wooden spears, cement blocks, and beaten with a fence post. Even electric fences didn’t stop them. Meth makers began taking over the area, so my family moved away. It seemed every place I moved the Bigfoots would soon follow. Neighbors complained that someone was trying to scare them in a gorrilla or bear suit. We would have the same pounding on our walls at night. I contacted the Bigfoot research people, and sure enough Bigfoots were being spotted in my vicinity. I have no clue why these creatures are attracted to me. Finally I moved so far away, that they might never find me.