September 19, 2025 • 36 mins
From eastern Kentucky comes a tale from a woman who describes the events that led up to what she calls a 'truce' between her and bigfoot; and it all started over some ham stealing from her smokehouse.
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If you've enjoyed this episode, there are hundreds more on the youTube channel.
Find us on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@BuckeyeBigfoot
If you have an encountery you'd like to share, email it to: Contact@buckeyebigfoot.com
If you've enjoyed this episode, there are hundreds more on the youTube channel.
Find us on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@BuckeyeBigfoot
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm an old woman and I don't type except with two fingers, quite poorly and quite slowly.
(00:15):
So my great niece is typing this up for me.
Now she's a real writer.
She's been published and she worked for a newspaper for over ten years and she can type
like lightning without even looking.
I'm talking and she's typing just so you know.
I am not the sort to gossip and watch it walk all over town.
(00:39):
So I'll say this simple.
I saw what I saw.
I know what bears look like.
I know what men look like.
I know what a trick of light or wild imagination can do to make a person think they saw something
else.
I now have nearly 80 winters on me.
(01:01):
Old enough to know what these old eyes are seeing.
And I also know enough to know when something's standing there looking at me and I didn't
invite it around.
And I know it's there because it's knowing where my food is kept and it doesn't care
one little bit what I think about it.
(01:24):
You can decide all the rest.
I'll tell you my name is June.
This happened in the foothills of Eastern Kentucky.
In an old farmhouse that my late husband Dale was raised up in and his daddy was raised
up in it before him.
The smokehouse outback came first right after the house was put up.
(01:46):
That's what I was told.
It was set with fieldstone and thick oak beams and iron latch holds the door.
A simple hand hook that was bent to catch close.
We hung our hands up to smoke in the fall.
We had fattened the pigs up all spring and summer and we weren't going to keep them for
(02:07):
the winter.
So that's the time you do it.
Even now in the cities I've noticed you find pork on sale in the fall more than any other
time of the year.
They still slaughter them before winter.
My husband knew exactly how to cure those things right.
My long memory of all my autumn's in my life are all rounded out with the smell of
(02:33):
hands and their hickory and sweet salt cure out on a frosty air.
I kept up the habit when Dale passed on though I really didn't need to.
It was just me, but I couldn't and I can't abide those awful store-hams covered in
sugar and honey.
(02:54):
When I was young I was taught.
When you saw a ham with glaze or sugar or anything on it you knew they were hiding bad
meat, bad cooking, or both.
If you've cured it right you don't need any of that on there.
The ham will be salty and sweet all on its own.
(03:15):
But what do I know?
I'm an old woman and things change.
So I kept the smokehouse going out of habit and to give myself a ham or two every year.
Intending that smokehouse came natural it was something I had done for 60 years.
(03:35):
I should tell you again this was early autumn, a September that had just learned how to
be cool again.
The maples were playing with color at their edges, but not ready to commit for full
color.
I was careful that year.
I was proud of the hams that I was getting ready to cure, too, from my nephews hogs, one
(03:56):
from the neighbors, all of them tied, wrapped up in paper and marked in my own handwriting.
My dogs, buster and cricket, they were what you call yard dogs, and they were good ones.
They'd spent their whole lives outdoor or sleeping out in one of the outbuildings.
(04:17):
First nights they slept on the porch.
That's just how they were.
They didn't want to come inside.
But those dogs were good judges of any behavior going on in the night.
I knew if there was a possum, that got a bark that really had no bite to it.
It sounded more like some humor than anger, like get out of here, you crazy clown.
(04:42):
Raccoons?
They got a bit more serious bark.
It was like, listen up, buddy, get out of here.
Foxes?
They got a half stand up from the dogs.
A lean forward and a serious warning bark.
Coyotes?
Well, that made them crouch.
They stiffened up their fur, bristling.
(05:03):
Bears?
That made them wild and furious.
The barking and snarling was nonstop.
And it had a real edge to it.
It was both a warning to the bear and a warning for us in the house.
Over the years, I had learned to read the differences in their barks.
(05:23):
But the night I'm meaning, I heard confusion in their barking.
It wasn't steady.
It was kind of half mad, kind of half scared.
I was in bed with the bedside lamp on low.
I was reading the day's newspaper.
I was late getting to it.
I had the windows open some for the cool night air.
(05:47):
Best sleep is in a cool room.
I suddenly heard the dogs.
Then they got quiet.
I looked up, but when it went quiet, I went back to reading.
Then I heard a thud.
I knew that thud.
I knew that sound.
The dogs started up again, but it was still a mix of confusion and something that I now
(06:09):
know was probably fear.
I just hadn't ever heard it from them before, so I didn't recognize it right away.
I got up and stepped over to the window and pulled the curtain back just enough to see.
Moonlight out in the country is very different than it is in the city.
It softens things.
(06:31):
Makes them dreamy looking.
But more than moonlight lighting things up, I had the porch light on.
And there was a light on at the peak of the smokehouse.
I have to go out there in the night to tend the fire, so there's really good light out there
so I can see.
I looked out and I saw the yard.
(06:52):
Everything looked fine.
I saw my wash line.
It was fine, not moving.
And across the yard area there was the smokehouse, sitting in its own fenced-in area.
Dale built that to keep neighbor dogs and want not out.
I saw everything clear.
Where the whole smokehouse should have been white.
(07:14):
There was a big black opening.
The door should have been closed, but it wasn't.
It was open and had swung back against the side of the smokehouse.
That was the black spot.
That was the familiar thud I had heard.
And then I saw something else.
(07:35):
I knew it wasn't a man before I was sure it wasn't a bear.
The height on that thing couldn't lie.
It was standing in front of my smokehouse.
The black of its shape was easy to see against the white smokehouse.
Shoulders were wide across.
The head shape wasn't at all like a bear or a dog's or anything else.
(07:58):
It wasn't narrow or drawn out to the front.
The face was mostly a dark shadow, but I knew where it would be.
And it was facing front, just like a person would.
It stopped for a second or two, and I had the idea that it was looking right at me.
Now it might not have been.
(08:20):
It might have been just waiting to see if someone was going to come out of the house,
like it knew I was in there.
Then the shape turned back to the smokehouse.
The movement told me it was reaching inside, and it didn't take long.
It had a ham down from one of the nails inside.
(08:42):
I couldn't see it clear, but I knew what was out there in the smokehouse, and I knew by
the stretch in the reach of the arm angle.
I knew what it was getting after.
The cricket, the smaller of my two dogs, bravely went out into the yard.
It bade and held at the creature with a bravado little bark.
(09:04):
The creature turned, looked at cricket, and I heard a strange growl that I knew did not
come from either of my dogs.
Cricket flattened himself down to the ground, in a way I've only ever seen him do when
thunder came up fast, and he went silent.
It got what it came for.
(09:25):
I saw the extra-shape hanging from its hand when it pooled its arm out of the smokehouse.
There was no doubt.
It had one of my hams.
I heard the ham thump on the door or the door frame.
The creature was stepping back, and at the same time I leaned forward just a bit too far.
(09:45):
The knuckles from the hand holding the curtain began to tap the glass harder than I meant
to happen.
It wasn't much of a sound.
You might have heard it standing near the window outside, but you shouldn't have heard
it all the way to the yard across the smokehouse.
But the creature heard it.
I wasn't sure it knew I was there before, even when I thought it was looking at my window.
(10:11):
But there was no doubt.
It knew I was there then.
Its head and body turned toward my window, and it turned just right, right where the
light in the yard and the light above the smokehouse made eye shine from it.
It was red eye shine.
It stepped a foot more out from under the light, and I could see it better now.
(10:35):
Before it was too far gone, passed the light spread up against the house.
Now I had a full view.
There was the line of a brow bridge that kept the upper part of the face in shadow.
I saw the end of its nose, which looked like a flat wedge.
The jaw bones, they were wide and looked like they had power.
(10:57):
I could not see its eyes, and I don't remember the mouth if I did see it.
That's as neat of a description as I can tell you.
I dropped the curtain quickly, because, well, I am a frail human being.
I do not like being looked at by things that I don't know what they are, but look
like they could hurt me.
(11:18):
I thought of Dale's rifle in the closet, and then I thought of what could I do with it?
I stood at the doorway of my bedroom close to the closet for the rifle, close enough
to still see out the window some, and it made me feel safer being a little more close
to the middle of the house.
(11:38):
I waited in silence.
I don't know how long, maybe one or two minutes, but it sure felt longer than that.
After the long silence came another sound, light metal on metal.
I knew that sound, too.
It was the gate latch for the fence in the yard.
(12:00):
And I realized what that meant.
This thing could work out gate latches.
I guess because that fence was much taller, to keep out cattle.
Dale always over-engineered anything he put his hand to, and he certainly did with that.
There was a second away from calling the constable, and Kentucky, if you don't know, has constables.
(12:25):
Now through time we've had some really good constables, and we've had some lazy bums, really
bad constables.
At that time we had a very fine constable, good man, honest and strong.
And I heard another sound again coming from by the smokehouse.
Sounded like the door, thudding up against the jam.
(12:47):
I got brave and I walked over to the window, and I looked through my curtains.
The window was still half open, and while I'm looking out at the smokehouse, I hear the
strangest thing I ever did hear.
Chewing, bowed, sloppy chewing.
I see cricket is still on his belly in the yard.
(13:08):
I don't think he'd moved.
I'm looking all over for the creature.
And do you know what?
He was boldly sitting on the end of the old picnic table that Dale had built decades
before.
It's the kind you don't see these days.
Had a heavy metal scroll frame and really thick boards.
It's so heavy, I can no longer tug it around when I need to mow the yard.
(13:34):
He's sitting on one end with his butt on the tabletop, and his feet right on the ground.
Lordy, Lordy, he had long legs.
But he's still sitting there, and I can see from the different lights around that he's
eating that ham.
He must have torn the paper off.
I did find pieces of it the next day.
(13:55):
But he's holding that ham and eating it like we would maybe corn on the cob or chicken leg.
Right then, buster let out a low howl.
He was still on the porch.
I saw the creature look his way, then it bit off a chunk of ham thoughtfully, spitted out
onto the table.
(14:16):
Then he took the piece, and it was a big piece too.
And he threw it toward the porch where buster was.
And I'll tell you what, buster would not touch that piece of meat.
I found that the next day too.
I threw it over the fence line, even the raccoons wouldn't take it.
(14:36):
Buster had a foul odor from its mouth.
But after it did that, buster didn't stop howling or carrying on.
I guess Cricut thought brave them because he started in too.
I guess that was more racquet than the creature wanted to deal with.
He got up, walked across the yard, still holding the ham, unlatched the gate, stepped through,
(15:01):
and went on its merry way.
I went and got Dale's rifle.
I don't know why it just made me feel better.
I then went to the door and I tried to get my dogs to come in for the night.
I thought they might be scared enough to finally come in.
Nope.
They went under the porch.
I guess that's their safe space.
(15:24):
The bad thing was that I would need to go out and tin that fire at the smokehouse soon.
If you don't know, a smokehouse needs constant tending.
It's around the clock for days and sometimes weeks, depending on what you're smoking.
You cannot let that fire go out.
I had never worried about walking out there even in night before.
(15:46):
But I had a real worry that night.
I waited more than an hour.
I kept a good watch outside.
Then I took the rifle.
I fed the fire the fastest I've ever done.
All the while I'm doing that.
I keep looking up, expecting to see a large shape coming at me.
But nothing happened.
(16:07):
I did confirm with the flashlight when I was out there.
I was down a ham.
I saw that and I got spitten mad.
I tinned at the fire, then put myself back up in the house.
While out there, the dogs would only come mid-yard with me.
They would not follow me all the way, which they normally did.
(16:31):
Dawn finally came, but sleep did not.
I had spent hours thinking and when morning came around to a decent time, I dialed up my
nephew Clay.
I said, Clay, I'm asking you to come down here.
Bring your eyes with you son.
(16:51):
Bring your hunting dogs and a good rifle, would you?
I paused and then added.
Would you bring me a can of coffee if you've got any extra in your pantry?
Clay didn't pause a second, then he asked.
Aunt Juju, what's wrong?
You got a bear trouble in you?
Clay had called me Juju since he first learned to talk and tried out people's names on
(17:17):
his little baby tongue.
I was Juju.
One almost sixty years later I am still Aunt Juju to him.
I thought of what to say and how to say it, so I said, "Well, I don't rightly know what
it is.
I figure you and your dogs will know."
(17:39):
Clay arrived about twenty minutes later.
He knocked politely, being the well-meanored man that my sister had brought him up to be,
God rest her soul.
I had him sit at the table and I brood us up some of the coffee that he'd brought.
I had been out of coffee for almost a week, but there was nothing else I needed from town,
(18:00):
so I wasn't going that far for just a can of coffee.
I welcomed his can of coffee like you can't imagine.
He politely waited until I poured his cup and then I sat down.
Then he was at it.
"Juju, tell me what's going on."
Clay was always a good boy.
(18:22):
Me and Dale had no living children by the time we got to old age, so Clay was a real godsend
to us.
I sit my coffee and then started telling him everything exactly the way I had rehearsed it
in my head for a couple hours before he got there.
He listened carefully.
(18:42):
His face all scrunched up and worried, then he said, "Aunt, Jum, you didn't call the constable?"
I shook my head and said, "No."
I thought about it, but I didn't.
I didn't think it was a human."
Then I said, "And I don't think we ought to call him either."
(19:04):
After our coffee, we walked outside.
We walked the yard first.
We found the paper wrapping pieces from the ham.
Then we found the chunk of ham that had been thrown for buster, clearly un-eaten.
Clay went and got his dogs out of the truck.
And they did the strangest thing ever.
He took them out to the yard and they acted like they got a scent.
(19:27):
They were hot on it, and then they stopped dead cold up by the picnic table.
They circled it a few times, then retreated.
No matter what, Clay couldn't get them to follow the scent.
It was the darnedest thing.
Clay was embarrassed, I think, telling me his dogs had never done that.
(19:48):
I told him, "I do believe that."
And I did.
I told him again what my own dogs did.
And I think there's something about this creature that dogs fear greatly.
We approached the smokehouse carefully, but not a dog would come with us.
The doors iron latch hung at an angle.
(20:10):
Clay touched it with his finger, and the latch wobbled like a loose tooth.
It had been pulled with great force.
He made a low noise under his breath that might have been a cuss word in it, but he kept
it low so he didn't offend me.
We stepped inside, and the sweet tang of hickory smoke lived in those stones after so many
(20:32):
years.
But there was another smell in it, an animal smell.
The first ham was gone.
The second and the third still hung on their nails.
Clay knelt down and pulled a little measuring tape from his pocket.
He measured a print we found at the door.
Then he measured another just outside the threshold where the dirt gave way to flatten grass
(20:58):
and beyond that the transition into the farm yard.
He put the tape beside it.
"Pretty inches," he said, "with about seven and a half."
He spoke softly then.
"That's not a man's boot."
He looked up at me with a strange look.
(21:18):
"You hear me?
That's not a boot, Aunt Jude."
"Well, I said, 'That's why I didn't call the constable.'
It wasn't a man.
I knew that, and I never said that it was.
I never said that it was a man out here."
We looked at each other for just a second.
(21:38):
The heel pad, if that's what we can call it, sat deeper than the four part of the foot.
There was a slope of weight that a man's print doesn't find, unless he's running downhill.
I could see where toes or what passes for toes were splayed forward into the dirt.
There was no claw, and it wasn't the half moon of a bear's nail.
(22:02):
It was pads, flesh, and there were lines, wrinkles, creases, the way you find in the palm of
your hand when you cup it.
"Lord have mercy," Clay said.
And I allowed him that because I was pretty sure the Lord knew that he really meant it.
(22:23):
He looked toward the trees.
"Yeah, it went back that way," he said, partly to steady himself, partly to steady me.
I said, "Yes it did, but we are not following it."
Clay looked at me and nodded, but he didn't move.
(22:43):
We stood there looking and talking for some while.
Right then I knew I had a choice to make.
Do I keep tending the smokehouse?
Clay was right in thought with me at the same time.
He said, "I can't juju."
I think the smell of the smoking meat drew it in, whatever it is.
(23:07):
I nodded and then I said, "Yeah, I'm done.
No more smoking meats.
I'm getting too old for this anyway."
The word surprised me.
I hadn't known that I had made a decision, but I guess I had.
I'll can up all the apples and peaches that I can.
I'll make some jams and preserves.
(23:28):
I'll dry some beans, but I'll trade with Shirley for her hams, even though they're not as
good as mine.
But no, I'm done.
I'm too old for this.
Clay said nothing for a long stretch, but he nodded.
Then he said, "I'll bring you meat when I smoke mine, Aunt Juju.
(23:50):
You will never be without.
I promise you that.
I let my hand rest on his forearm.
Thank you," I said.
Now it would be nice and neat if this all ended right here, but it didn't.
Clay and I told no one.
After that, Clay called every couple of hours to check in on me.
(24:14):
It was sweet, but after a day or two it got pretty annoying.
He was also in the habit of stopping by almost every day, sometimes every other day.
And he has kept that up to this very day.
Now, that's a lot on his part, seeing as he doesn't live exactly right up the road.
Like I said, Clay is a good boy who turned into a very good man.
(24:39):
My sister would be very proud.
I know I am.
And afternoon I walked to the smokehouse and I put a tube by four across the door.
I don't know what I thought that would do, but I just felt better doing it.
I locked the back door that night, too.
I locked every lock.
(25:00):
I locked it up extra tight.
The curtains in the house stayed shut, but in my bedroom I left the window half open
again for some air.
But I slept in the rocking chair with the rifle across my legs.
I don't know what I thought I was doing, but it made me feel better somehow.
(25:21):
The second night, nothing happened.
On the third night after it happened, the creature came back.
It knew where those hands were, and it was going to go for them.
I heard the soft and steady steps of something large moving across the grass.
I heard a light huffing woof from one of the dogs, dogs who, by the way, still would not
(25:45):
come in, no matter what I tried.
I got up, turned off the bedside lamp.
I walked to the window the same as before, pulling just a bit of curtain back so I could see.
All the lights were on outside.
I watched the creature at the smokehouse door, testing it, and realizing the wood was a
(26:07):
bit of a problem.
I couldn't see exactly what it did.
The bulk of its body blocked my view.
But in just a few seconds I heard the hollow, thunking clunk of wood hitting the ground.
It had figured out how to move that wood.
Then I heard the squeak of the door opening, and the familiar thud as it came to rest open
(26:28):
against the front of the smokehouse.
I marked the size of the creature again, wider than the doorway, taller than my husband
when he stood out there.
This thing was big, but it was not clumsy.
The hair covering it was not uniform.
It was longer on the forearm and the thighs, but shorter across the belly and the back, and
(26:53):
shorter still at the face.
It reached in, and in just a few seconds it pulled out one of the last two remaining
hams.
I knew it was going to take the other one too.
In that moment I can't tell you what came over me.
I was mad as blazes.
(27:13):
I walked into the kitchen, rifle still in the hand, and I opened the back door, wide.
I was angry.
It was going to take my last ham.
I saw the creature under the smokehouse light turn quickly, prepared for something.
Fight or flight?
I didn't know.
His head rose higher, its body turned fully in my direction.
(27:38):
It saw me, and it made another strange growling chest sound, like a warning.
Go on, I said, loud enough I know it heard me playing.
Go on now, you've taken two of my hams.
Then I said, you best leave me one.
I said the last was some real heft in my voice, a little bit of a threat, but it was
(28:02):
steady and calm, but forceful.
The creature cocked its head.
I swear on Dale's grave it cocked its head the same way my brother's slow child used to
do when I would tell him, don't you dare drink from the creek.
Then it looked at the ham and its hand, then back at me, then at the ham again.
(28:25):
Then it reached into the smokehouse, and I heard a sound that I knew well.
It was the sound of creaking wrapped hams, spinning on its rope on the nail.
The whole time it kept looking at me.
But reached into the smokehouse, and it gave that hanging ham just a little bit of a push,
just to make it twirl.
(28:47):
It was telling me it could take it if it wanted, and what was I going to do about it?
The rope rocked.
The meat swung.
I could hear it all clear in the silent night air.
Then it suddenly pulled its arm out of the smokehouse, and it was empty in its hand.
(29:07):
It had the one ham in its hand, and then it did something that scared me to death.
It took a few steps towards me at the back door.
I can't tell you when, but at some point during all of this I had left the back door and
walked out onto the porch.
I saw it coming, and I had to put my hand out to steady myself on the banister.
(29:30):
What I was thinking through all of this, I can't tell you, I really can't.
The creature stopped and sniffed.
It lifted its head and pulled the air in, the way old timers and towns sniffed the air
for rain and snow.
It sniffed and waited.
And the whole time it was looking right at me.
(29:52):
It could see me I know because the porch light was on.
Then it looked over toward the trees, then back at me, then to the trees again.
I waited, and then it moved.
It was slow at first, then it quickened its pace, going straight across the yard, between
(30:12):
the oak and the old tractor that doesn't run anymore.
The dogs meanwhile stayed under the porch the whole time.
Every now and then I heard small whimpers from them.
I watched it, walked to the fence, straight through the gate again, and it was gone.
Trambling I went back inside and locked the door.
(30:35):
I leaned on my kitchen counter, shaking for several moments.
I went, and I tried to sleep in the rocker with the rifle across my lap.
Why I do not know.
I didn't take it out on the porch with me.
But that's what I did.
A year passed, then another.
(30:55):
I did not smoke more hams.
The smokehouse stood, door-braced with a new heavy-duty latch and padlock.
There aren't times I was of a mind to know that the creature was near because of the way
my dogs acted.
But nothing more ever happened.
It was as if a truce had been called.
(31:19):
Now sometimes, rarely, but it happened.
Sometimes, somebody in town would mention seeing prints down by one of the creeks.
Or they heard a howl out on the ridge that was like nothing they'd ever heard in their
life.
I listened and I said nothing.
Not because I was worried of what people think, but because somehow, whatever happened
(31:43):
between me and that creature on my land seemed to be a private thing.
Two winters after.
I walked out on a bright afternoon with a basket of apple peels to throw into the compost.
And I saw right there in the thin strip of mud between the wood pile and the path.
A clear print.
(32:05):
Not a full print.
But enough like the ones we had seen two years before that I was sure of what it was.
The size, even the part size of it, was wrong for any man.
I knelt down as best as my old bones would let me.
And I laid my hand across that half-print.
(32:25):
My palm could sit inside it with room left over.
I will tell you the last of this plane.
I'll explain why I think the truce worked if you can call it that.
Every fall I hung out meat for that creature.
Might be pieces of venison that someone had gifted to me.
(32:46):
I was politely ticket, but I was never a fan of venison, though I ate it in the hard times.
It might be strips of cured ham or part of a ham-hawk with a little bit of meat still on
it.
One time I had a side of bacon that unexpectedly went a little off too fast to cure.
I left that out for the creature.
(33:09):
I left food in the fall, always meat, and the meat was always taken.
I knew it wasn't raccoons.
I once caught sight of the creature taking the meat, while actually several different times.
I knew the creature was what was taking the meat.
It was hung where no raccoon or possum could have possibly gotten to it.
(33:32):
I never told clay.
I should not have called him that morning to begin with, but I was frightened that morning.
I needed the steady reassuring hand and voice of someone that loved me, someone that would
listen and take me seriously.
That was clay.
Now, if I had told clay what I was doing since then, he would have had bits, so I said nothing.
(34:00):
Now believe my story or don't.
I'm too old to argue with fools.
If you're looking for some moral to this story or thinking I made some happy friends with
this creature, you are dead wrong.
And I know darn well, that's what people call a big foot.
I'm not stupid.
(34:20):
I just prefer the word "creature."
Little more mystery to it, that's all.
Now soon, clay and his wife will be moving in here with me.
They're really good people.
We've already talked it out and worked it all out.
They'll be here before Thanksgiving.
(34:40):
Their oldest grandson will take on their old homestead, as he should.
It's a big place, bigger than mine, and it needs a strong back and a set of strong hands
and a parcel of youngins to help out.
And that grandson of theirs has all of those in abundance.
And that's the cycle we hear in Kentucky know.
(35:03):
Land gets passed on to the young ones, and they bring new life to the land again and again,
that's the same as the first homesteaders.
It's a good cycle, I think.
I'm sorry, I don't have any more children to leave mine and Dale's place, too.
We once had three children, but they're all gone now.
(35:25):
I won't go into all of that.
I'm just gonna say life is beautiful, and it's cruel, all in the same breath.
Me? I know Clay and his wife will be good to me, and they will help me.
My eyes are now failing.
I have more trouble walking on uneven ground in the yard.
(35:47):
My old bones and joints protest moving much these days.
But I keep moving anyhow.
My dear dog Buster has already passed on, and I am of the way of thinking that cricket
probably won't be here this time next year.
I would be all alone here more than ever.
(36:09):
I do not want to leave this place, and this way I can stay here to my last day.
Now what will happen when I'm gone with this big foot?
I don't know.
I will in time try to talk to Clay to explain it to him, and tell him, "You expect food,"
which by the way, I'm pretty sure it only comes through here in the autumn.
(36:33):
But I have to explain to him, "This is part of the truce."
I hope Clay understands.
Until then, I'm planning to get food out there every fall without him knowing if I have to.
Because I have to.
It's part of the truce.
Signed Aunt Jude.
.
I'm an old woman and I don't type except with two fingers, quite poorly and quite slowly.
(00:15):
So my great niece is typing this up for me.
Now she's a real writer.
She's been published and she worked for a newspaper for over ten years and she can type
like lightning without even looking.
I'm talking and she's typing just so you know.
I am not the sort to gossip and watch it walk all over town.
(00:39):
So I'll say this simple.
I saw what I saw.
I know what bears look like.
I know what men look like.
I know what a trick of light or wild imagination can do to make a person think they saw something
else.
I now have nearly 80 winters on me.
(01:01):
Old enough to know what these old eyes are seeing.
And I also know enough to know when something's standing there looking at me and I didn't
invite it around.
And I know it's there because it's knowing where my food is kept and it doesn't care
one little bit what I think about it.
(01:24):
You can decide all the rest.
I'll tell you my name is June.
This happened in the foothills of Eastern Kentucky.
In an old farmhouse that my late husband Dale was raised up in and his daddy was raised
up in it before him.
The smokehouse outback came first right after the house was put up.
(01:46):
That's what I was told.
It was set with fieldstone and thick oak beams and iron latch holds the door.
A simple hand hook that was bent to catch close.
We hung our hands up to smoke in the fall.
We had fattened the pigs up all spring and summer and we weren't going to keep them for
(02:07):
the winter.
So that's the time you do it.
Even now in the cities I've noticed you find pork on sale in the fall more than any other
time of the year.
They still slaughter them before winter.
My husband knew exactly how to cure those things right.
My long memory of all my autumn's in my life are all rounded out with the smell of
(02:33):
hands and their hickory and sweet salt cure out on a frosty air.
I kept up the habit when Dale passed on though I really didn't need to.
It was just me, but I couldn't and I can't abide those awful store-hams covered in
sugar and honey.
(02:54):
When I was young I was taught.
When you saw a ham with glaze or sugar or anything on it you knew they were hiding bad
meat, bad cooking, or both.
If you've cured it right you don't need any of that on there.
The ham will be salty and sweet all on its own.
(03:15):
But what do I know?
I'm an old woman and things change.
So I kept the smokehouse going out of habit and to give myself a ham or two every year.
Intending that smokehouse came natural it was something I had done for 60 years.
(03:35):
I should tell you again this was early autumn, a September that had just learned how to
be cool again.
The maples were playing with color at their edges, but not ready to commit for full
color.
I was careful that year.
I was proud of the hams that I was getting ready to cure, too, from my nephews hogs, one
(03:56):
from the neighbors, all of them tied, wrapped up in paper and marked in my own handwriting.
My dogs, buster and cricket, they were what you call yard dogs, and they were good ones.
They'd spent their whole lives outdoor or sleeping out in one of the outbuildings.
(04:17):
First nights they slept on the porch.
That's just how they were.
They didn't want to come inside.
But those dogs were good judges of any behavior going on in the night.
I knew if there was a possum, that got a bark that really had no bite to it.
It sounded more like some humor than anger, like get out of here, you crazy clown.
(04:42):
Raccoons?
They got a bit more serious bark.
It was like, listen up, buddy, get out of here.
Foxes?
They got a half stand up from the dogs.
A lean forward and a serious warning bark.
Coyotes?
Well, that made them crouch.
They stiffened up their fur, bristling.
(05:03):
Bears?
That made them wild and furious.
The barking and snarling was nonstop.
And it had a real edge to it.
It was both a warning to the bear and a warning for us in the house.
Over the years, I had learned to read the differences in their barks.
(05:23):
But the night I'm meaning, I heard confusion in their barking.
It wasn't steady.
It was kind of half mad, kind of half scared.
I was in bed with the bedside lamp on low.
I was reading the day's newspaper.
I was late getting to it.
I had the windows open some for the cool night air.
(05:47):
Best sleep is in a cool room.
I suddenly heard the dogs.
Then they got quiet.
I looked up, but when it went quiet, I went back to reading.
Then I heard a thud.
I knew that thud.
I knew that sound.
The dogs started up again, but it was still a mix of confusion and something that I now
(06:09):
know was probably fear.
I just hadn't ever heard it from them before, so I didn't recognize it right away.
I got up and stepped over to the window and pulled the curtain back just enough to see.
Moonlight out in the country is very different than it is in the city.
It softens things.
(06:31):
Makes them dreamy looking.
But more than moonlight lighting things up, I had the porch light on.
And there was a light on at the peak of the smokehouse.
I have to go out there in the night to tend the fire, so there's really good light out there
so I can see.
I looked out and I saw the yard.
(06:52):
Everything looked fine.
I saw my wash line.
It was fine, not moving.
And across the yard area there was the smokehouse, sitting in its own fenced-in area.
Dale built that to keep neighbor dogs and want not out.
I saw everything clear.
Where the whole smokehouse should have been white.
(07:14):
There was a big black opening.
The door should have been closed, but it wasn't.
It was open and had swung back against the side of the smokehouse.
That was the black spot.
That was the familiar thud I had heard.
And then I saw something else.
(07:35):
I knew it wasn't a man before I was sure it wasn't a bear.
The height on that thing couldn't lie.
It was standing in front of my smokehouse.
The black of its shape was easy to see against the white smokehouse.
Shoulders were wide across.
The head shape wasn't at all like a bear or a dog's or anything else.
(07:58):
It wasn't narrow or drawn out to the front.
The face was mostly a dark shadow, but I knew where it would be.
And it was facing front, just like a person would.
It stopped for a second or two, and I had the idea that it was looking right at me.
Now it might not have been.
(08:20):
It might have been just waiting to see if someone was going to come out of the house,
like it knew I was in there.
Then the shape turned back to the smokehouse.
The movement told me it was reaching inside, and it didn't take long.
It had a ham down from one of the nails inside.
(08:42):
I couldn't see it clear, but I knew what was out there in the smokehouse, and I knew by
the stretch in the reach of the arm angle.
I knew what it was getting after.
The cricket, the smaller of my two dogs, bravely went out into the yard.
It bade and held at the creature with a bravado little bark.
(09:04):
The creature turned, looked at cricket, and I heard a strange growl that I knew did not
come from either of my dogs.
Cricket flattened himself down to the ground, in a way I've only ever seen him do when
thunder came up fast, and he went silent.
It got what it came for.
(09:25):
I saw the extra-shape hanging from its hand when it pooled its arm out of the smokehouse.
There was no doubt.
It had one of my hams.
I heard the ham thump on the door or the door frame.
The creature was stepping back, and at the same time I leaned forward just a bit too far.
(09:45):
The knuckles from the hand holding the curtain began to tap the glass harder than I meant
to happen.
It wasn't much of a sound.
You might have heard it standing near the window outside, but you shouldn't have heard
it all the way to the yard across the smokehouse.
But the creature heard it.
I wasn't sure it knew I was there before, even when I thought it was looking at my window.
(10:11):
But there was no doubt.
It knew I was there then.
Its head and body turned toward my window, and it turned just right, right where the
light in the yard and the light above the smokehouse made eye shine from it.
It was red eye shine.
It stepped a foot more out from under the light, and I could see it better now.
(10:35):
Before it was too far gone, passed the light spread up against the house.
Now I had a full view.
There was the line of a brow bridge that kept the upper part of the face in shadow.
I saw the end of its nose, which looked like a flat wedge.
The jaw bones, they were wide and looked like they had power.
(10:57):
I could not see its eyes, and I don't remember the mouth if I did see it.
That's as neat of a description as I can tell you.
I dropped the curtain quickly, because, well, I am a frail human being.
I do not like being looked at by things that I don't know what they are, but look
like they could hurt me.
(11:18):
I thought of Dale's rifle in the closet, and then I thought of what could I do with it?
I stood at the doorway of my bedroom close to the closet for the rifle, close enough
to still see out the window some, and it made me feel safer being a little more close
to the middle of the house.
(11:38):
I waited in silence.
I don't know how long, maybe one or two minutes, but it sure felt longer than that.
After the long silence came another sound, light metal on metal.
I knew that sound, too.
It was the gate latch for the fence in the yard.
(12:00):
And I realized what that meant.
This thing could work out gate latches.
I guess because that fence was much taller, to keep out cattle.
Dale always over-engineered anything he put his hand to, and he certainly did with that.
There was a second away from calling the constable, and Kentucky, if you don't know, has constables.
(12:25):
Now through time we've had some really good constables, and we've had some lazy bums, really
bad constables.
At that time we had a very fine constable, good man, honest and strong.
And I heard another sound again coming from by the smokehouse.
Sounded like the door, thudding up against the jam.
(12:47):
I got brave and I walked over to the window, and I looked through my curtains.
The window was still half open, and while I'm looking out at the smokehouse, I hear the
strangest thing I ever did hear.
Chewing, bowed, sloppy chewing.
I see cricket is still on his belly in the yard.
(13:08):
I don't think he'd moved.
I'm looking all over for the creature.
And do you know what?
He was boldly sitting on the end of the old picnic table that Dale had built decades
before.
It's the kind you don't see these days.
Had a heavy metal scroll frame and really thick boards.
It's so heavy, I can no longer tug it around when I need to mow the yard.
(13:34):
He's sitting on one end with his butt on the tabletop, and his feet right on the ground.
Lordy, Lordy, he had long legs.
But he's still sitting there, and I can see from the different lights around that he's
eating that ham.
He must have torn the paper off.
I did find pieces of it the next day.
(13:55):
But he's holding that ham and eating it like we would maybe corn on the cob or chicken leg.
Right then, buster let out a low howl.
He was still on the porch.
I saw the creature look his way, then it bit off a chunk of ham thoughtfully, spitted out
onto the table.
(14:16):
Then he took the piece, and it was a big piece too.
And he threw it toward the porch where buster was.
And I'll tell you what, buster would not touch that piece of meat.
I found that the next day too.
I threw it over the fence line, even the raccoons wouldn't take it.
(14:36):
Buster had a foul odor from its mouth.
But after it did that, buster didn't stop howling or carrying on.
I guess Cricut thought brave them because he started in too.
I guess that was more racquet than the creature wanted to deal with.
He got up, walked across the yard, still holding the ham, unlatched the gate, stepped through,
(15:01):
and went on its merry way.
I went and got Dale's rifle.
I don't know why it just made me feel better.
I then went to the door and I tried to get my dogs to come in for the night.
I thought they might be scared enough to finally come in.
Nope.
They went under the porch.
I guess that's their safe space.
(15:24):
The bad thing was that I would need to go out and tin that fire at the smokehouse soon.
If you don't know, a smokehouse needs constant tending.
It's around the clock for days and sometimes weeks, depending on what you're smoking.
You cannot let that fire go out.
I had never worried about walking out there even in night before.
(15:46):
But I had a real worry that night.
I waited more than an hour.
I kept a good watch outside.
Then I took the rifle.
I fed the fire the fastest I've ever done.
All the while I'm doing that.
I keep looking up, expecting to see a large shape coming at me.
But nothing happened.
(16:07):
I did confirm with the flashlight when I was out there.
I was down a ham.
I saw that and I got spitten mad.
I tinned at the fire, then put myself back up in the house.
While out there, the dogs would only come mid-yard with me.
They would not follow me all the way, which they normally did.
(16:31):
Dawn finally came, but sleep did not.
I had spent hours thinking and when morning came around to a decent time, I dialed up my
nephew Clay.
I said, Clay, I'm asking you to come down here.
Bring your eyes with you son.
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Bring your hunting dogs and a good rifle, would you?
I paused and then added.
Would you bring me a can of coffee if you've got any extra in your pantry?
Clay didn't pause a second, then he asked.
Aunt Juju, what's wrong?
You got a bear trouble in you?
Clay had called me Juju since he first learned to talk and tried out people's names on
(17:17):
his little baby tongue.
I was Juju.
One almost sixty years later I am still Aunt Juju to him.
I thought of what to say and how to say it, so I said, "Well, I don't rightly know what
it is.
I figure you and your dogs will know."
(17:39):
Clay arrived about twenty minutes later.
He knocked politely, being the well-meanored man that my sister had brought him up to be,
God rest her soul.
I had him sit at the table and I brood us up some of the coffee that he'd brought.
I had been out of coffee for almost a week, but there was nothing else I needed from town,
(18:00):
so I wasn't going that far for just a can of coffee.
I welcomed his can of coffee like you can't imagine.
He politely waited until I poured his cup and then I sat down.
Then he was at it.
"Juju, tell me what's going on."
Clay was always a good boy.
(18:22):
Me and Dale had no living children by the time we got to old age, so Clay was a real godsend
to us.
I sit my coffee and then started telling him everything exactly the way I had rehearsed it
in my head for a couple hours before he got there.
He listened carefully.
(18:42):
His face all scrunched up and worried, then he said, "Aunt, Jum, you didn't call the constable?"
I shook my head and said, "No."
I thought about it, but I didn't.
I didn't think it was a human."
Then I said, "And I don't think we ought to call him either."
(19:04):
After our coffee, we walked outside.
We walked the yard first.
We found the paper wrapping pieces from the ham.
Then we found the chunk of ham that had been thrown for buster, clearly un-eaten.
Clay went and got his dogs out of the truck.
And they did the strangest thing ever.
He took them out to the yard and they acted like they got a scent.
(19:27):
They were hot on it, and then they stopped dead cold up by the picnic table.
They circled it a few times, then retreated.
No matter what, Clay couldn't get them to follow the scent.
It was the darnedest thing.
Clay was embarrassed, I think, telling me his dogs had never done that.
(19:48):
I told him, "I do believe that."
And I did.
I told him again what my own dogs did.
And I think there's something about this creature that dogs fear greatly.
We approached the smokehouse carefully, but not a dog would come with us.
The doors iron latch hung at an angle.
(20:10):
Clay touched it with his finger, and the latch wobbled like a loose tooth.
It had been pulled with great force.
He made a low noise under his breath that might have been a cuss word in it, but he kept
it low so he didn't offend me.
We stepped inside, and the sweet tang of hickory smoke lived in those stones after so many
(20:32):
years.
But there was another smell in it, an animal smell.
The first ham was gone.
The second and the third still hung on their nails.
Clay knelt down and pulled a little measuring tape from his pocket.
He measured a print we found at the door.
Then he measured another just outside the threshold where the dirt gave way to flatten grass
(20:58):
and beyond that the transition into the farm yard.
He put the tape beside it.
"Pretty inches," he said, "with about seven and a half."
He spoke softly then.
"That's not a man's boot."
He looked up at me with a strange look.
(21:18):
"You hear me?
That's not a boot, Aunt Jude."
"Well, I said, 'That's why I didn't call the constable.'
It wasn't a man.
I knew that, and I never said that it was.
I never said that it was a man out here."
We looked at each other for just a second.
(21:38):
The heel pad, if that's what we can call it, sat deeper than the four part of the foot.
There was a slope of weight that a man's print doesn't find, unless he's running downhill.
I could see where toes or what passes for toes were splayed forward into the dirt.
There was no claw, and it wasn't the half moon of a bear's nail.
(22:02):
It was pads, flesh, and there were lines, wrinkles, creases, the way you find in the palm of
your hand when you cup it.
"Lord have mercy," Clay said.
And I allowed him that because I was pretty sure the Lord knew that he really meant it.
(22:23):
He looked toward the trees.
"Yeah, it went back that way," he said, partly to steady himself, partly to steady me.
I said, "Yes it did, but we are not following it."
Clay looked at me and nodded, but he didn't move.
(22:43):
We stood there looking and talking for some while.
Right then I knew I had a choice to make.
Do I keep tending the smokehouse?
Clay was right in thought with me at the same time.
He said, "I can't juju."
I think the smell of the smoking meat drew it in, whatever it is.
(23:07):
I nodded and then I said, "Yeah, I'm done.
No more smoking meats.
I'm getting too old for this anyway."
The word surprised me.
I hadn't known that I had made a decision, but I guess I had.
I'll can up all the apples and peaches that I can.
I'll make some jams and preserves.
(23:28):
I'll dry some beans, but I'll trade with Shirley for her hams, even though they're not as
good as mine.
But no, I'm done.
I'm too old for this.
Clay said nothing for a long stretch, but he nodded.
Then he said, "I'll bring you meat when I smoke mine, Aunt Juju.
(23:50):
You will never be without.
I promise you that.
I let my hand rest on his forearm.
Thank you," I said.
Now it would be nice and neat if this all ended right here, but it didn't.
Clay and I told no one.
After that, Clay called every couple of hours to check in on me.
(24:14):
It was sweet, but after a day or two it got pretty annoying.
He was also in the habit of stopping by almost every day, sometimes every other day.
And he has kept that up to this very day.
Now, that's a lot on his part, seeing as he doesn't live exactly right up the road.
Like I said, Clay is a good boy who turned into a very good man.
(24:39):
My sister would be very proud.
I know I am.
And afternoon I walked to the smokehouse and I put a tube by four across the door.
I don't know what I thought that would do, but I just felt better doing it.
I locked the back door that night, too.
I locked every lock.
(25:00):
I locked it up extra tight.
The curtains in the house stayed shut, but in my bedroom I left the window half open
again for some air.
But I slept in the rocking chair with the rifle across my legs.
I don't know what I thought I was doing, but it made me feel better somehow.
(25:21):
The second night, nothing happened.
On the third night after it happened, the creature came back.
It knew where those hands were, and it was going to go for them.
I heard the soft and steady steps of something large moving across the grass.
I heard a light huffing woof from one of the dogs, dogs who, by the way, still would not
(25:45):
come in, no matter what I tried.
I got up, turned off the bedside lamp.
I walked to the window the same as before, pulling just a bit of curtain back so I could see.
All the lights were on outside.
I watched the creature at the smokehouse door, testing it, and realizing the wood was a
(26:07):
bit of a problem.
I couldn't see exactly what it did.
The bulk of its body blocked my view.
But in just a few seconds I heard the hollow, thunking clunk of wood hitting the ground.
It had figured out how to move that wood.
Then I heard the squeak of the door opening, and the familiar thud as it came to rest open
(26:28):
against the front of the smokehouse.
I marked the size of the creature again, wider than the doorway, taller than my husband
when he stood out there.
This thing was big, but it was not clumsy.
The hair covering it was not uniform.
It was longer on the forearm and the thighs, but shorter across the belly and the back, and
(26:53):
shorter still at the face.
It reached in, and in just a few seconds it pulled out one of the last two remaining
hams.
I knew it was going to take the other one too.
In that moment I can't tell you what came over me.
I was mad as blazes.
(27:13):
I walked into the kitchen, rifle still in the hand, and I opened the back door, wide.
I was angry.
It was going to take my last ham.
I saw the creature under the smokehouse light turn quickly, prepared for something.
Fight or flight?
I didn't know.
His head rose higher, its body turned fully in my direction.
(27:38):
It saw me, and it made another strange growling chest sound, like a warning.
Go on, I said, loud enough I know it heard me playing.
Go on now, you've taken two of my hams.
Then I said, you best leave me one.
I said the last was some real heft in my voice, a little bit of a threat, but it was
(28:02):
steady and calm, but forceful.
The creature cocked its head.
I swear on Dale's grave it cocked its head the same way my brother's slow child used to
do when I would tell him, don't you dare drink from the creek.
Then it looked at the ham and its hand, then back at me, then at the ham again.
(28:25):
Then it reached into the smokehouse, and I heard a sound that I knew well.
It was the sound of creaking wrapped hams, spinning on its rope on the nail.
The whole time it kept looking at me.
But reached into the smokehouse, and it gave that hanging ham just a little bit of a push,
just to make it twirl.
(28:47):
It was telling me it could take it if it wanted, and what was I going to do about it?
The rope rocked.
The meat swung.
I could hear it all clear in the silent night air.
Then it suddenly pulled its arm out of the smokehouse, and it was empty in its hand.
(29:07):
It had the one ham in its hand, and then it did something that scared me to death.
It took a few steps towards me at the back door.
I can't tell you when, but at some point during all of this I had left the back door and
walked out onto the porch.
I saw it coming, and I had to put my hand out to steady myself on the banister.
(29:30):
What I was thinking through all of this, I can't tell you, I really can't.
The creature stopped and sniffed.
It lifted its head and pulled the air in, the way old timers and towns sniffed the air
for rain and snow.
It sniffed and waited.
And the whole time it was looking right at me.
(29:52):
It could see me I know because the porch light was on.
Then it looked over toward the trees, then back at me, then to the trees again.
I waited, and then it moved.
It was slow at first, then it quickened its pace, going straight across the yard, between
(30:12):
the oak and the old tractor that doesn't run anymore.
The dogs meanwhile stayed under the porch the whole time.
Every now and then I heard small whimpers from them.
I watched it, walked to the fence, straight through the gate again, and it was gone.
Trambling I went back inside and locked the door.
(30:35):
I leaned on my kitchen counter, shaking for several moments.
I went, and I tried to sleep in the rocker with the rifle across my lap.
Why I do not know.
I didn't take it out on the porch with me.
But that's what I did.
A year passed, then another.
(30:55):
I did not smoke more hams.
The smokehouse stood, door-braced with a new heavy-duty latch and padlock.
There aren't times I was of a mind to know that the creature was near because of the way
my dogs acted.
But nothing more ever happened.
It was as if a truce had been called.
(31:19):
Now sometimes, rarely, but it happened.
Sometimes, somebody in town would mention seeing prints down by one of the creeks.
Or they heard a howl out on the ridge that was like nothing they'd ever heard in their
life.
I listened and I said nothing.
Not because I was worried of what people think, but because somehow, whatever happened
(31:43):
between me and that creature on my land seemed to be a private thing.
Two winters after.
I walked out on a bright afternoon with a basket of apple peels to throw into the compost.
And I saw right there in the thin strip of mud between the wood pile and the path.
A clear print.
(32:05):
Not a full print.
But enough like the ones we had seen two years before that I was sure of what it was.
The size, even the part size of it, was wrong for any man.
I knelt down as best as my old bones would let me.
And I laid my hand across that half-print.
(32:25):
My palm could sit inside it with room left over.
I will tell you the last of this plane.
I'll explain why I think the truce worked if you can call it that.
Every fall I hung out meat for that creature.
Might be pieces of venison that someone had gifted to me.
(32:46):
I was politely ticket, but I was never a fan of venison, though I ate it in the hard times.
It might be strips of cured ham or part of a ham-hawk with a little bit of meat still on
it.
One time I had a side of bacon that unexpectedly went a little off too fast to cure.
I left that out for the creature.
(33:09):
I left food in the fall, always meat, and the meat was always taken.
I knew it wasn't raccoons.
I once caught sight of the creature taking the meat, while actually several different times.
I knew the creature was what was taking the meat.
It was hung where no raccoon or possum could have possibly gotten to it.
(33:32):
I never told clay.
I should not have called him that morning to begin with, but I was frightened that morning.
I needed the steady reassuring hand and voice of someone that loved me, someone that would
listen and take me seriously.
That was clay.
Now, if I had told clay what I was doing since then, he would have had bits, so I said nothing.
(34:00):
Now believe my story or don't.
I'm too old to argue with fools.
If you're looking for some moral to this story or thinking I made some happy friends with
this creature, you are dead wrong.
And I know darn well, that's what people call a big foot.
I'm not stupid.
(34:20):
I just prefer the word "creature."
Little more mystery to it, that's all.
Now soon, clay and his wife will be moving in here with me.
They're really good people.
We've already talked it out and worked it all out.
They'll be here before Thanksgiving.
(34:40):
Their oldest grandson will take on their old homestead, as he should.
It's a big place, bigger than mine, and it needs a strong back and a set of strong hands
and a parcel of youngins to help out.
And that grandson of theirs has all of those in abundance.
And that's the cycle we hear in Kentucky know.
(35:03):
Land gets passed on to the young ones, and they bring new life to the land again and again,
that's the same as the first homesteaders.
It's a good cycle, I think.
I'm sorry, I don't have any more children to leave mine and Dale's place, too.
We once had three children, but they're all gone now.
(35:25):
I won't go into all of that.
I'm just gonna say life is beautiful, and it's cruel, all in the same breath.
Me? I know Clay and his wife will be good to me, and they will help me.
My eyes are now failing.
I have more trouble walking on uneven ground in the yard.
(35:47):
My old bones and joints protest moving much these days.
But I keep moving anyhow.
My dear dog Buster has already passed on, and I am of the way of thinking that cricket
probably won't be here this time next year.
I would be all alone here more than ever.
(36:09):
I do not want to leave this place, and this way I can stay here to my last day.
Now what will happen when I'm gone with this big foot?
I don't know.
I will in time try to talk to Clay to explain it to him, and tell him, "You expect food,"
which by the way, I'm pretty sure it only comes through here in the autumn.
(36:33):
But I have to explain to him, "This is part of the truce."
I hope Clay understands.
Until then, I'm planning to get food out there every fall without him knowing if I have to.
Because I have to.
It's part of the truce.
Signed Aunt Jude.
.
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