What ever happened to Big Foot?

By Staff
Leada DeVaney, Editor
As a child growing up in the 1970s, there were two things that scared me to death.
The first was the Bermuda Triangle. The second was Big Foot.
I don't know how I came across the tales of either, but for some reason, thoughts of either were enough to keep me up at night, shaking in my Barbie pajamas.
As a small child, I had seen a television show about the Bermuda Triangle, an area between Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Florida where planes and ships had supposedly been disappearing for years. The show talked about the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, and how people didn't know what mysterious force was sucking people down into the murky depths.
Then, the rumor went around my elementary school that, when you were in the eighth grade (admittedly still a way off, at least in my first grade prospective) you had to take a field trip to the Bermuda Triangle.
A field trip? The Bermuda Triangle? Wouldn't my parents have to approve something like that? They won't even let me go to the traveling carnival that's parked in front of K-Mart so surely they won't let me travel in a helicopter over the Bermuda Triangle, right?
Hearing the rumor, our first grade teacher put our young minds at ease. There would be no field trips to anything more exciting than Birmingham's Children's Theater. No one was going to the Bermuda Triangle.
If I wasn't forced to travel to the deadly triangle, I certainly wasn't going to seek it out. I was safe.
Big Foot was a different story, however. You didn't have to go to Big Foot, he could come to you, walking on those big feet of his.
Watching television, I saw the grainy images of the big hairy beast walking around in some woods. We had woods near our house. Maybe the film was shot near our house and Big Foot was walking around out there, just behind my yellow-and-brown playhouse and my silver swing set.
"Where is Big Foot?" I asked one day. "Does he live here?"
"No," my parents said. "That's just a made-up story. Big Foot doesn't exist. Now go outside and play."
I did, safe with the knowledge that since Big Foot was as real as Mickey Mouse, I was OK.
Life was good. And then…
Fast forward 30 or so years. The headline in last week's Clanton Advertiser said it all. "Big Foot sighting reaching silver milestone." Apparently, there were Big Foot sightings some 25 years ago in Clanton, only about 80 miles from where I grew up. Eighty miles is nothing to Big Foot. Maybe Big Foot and the Bermuda Triangle were true. Maybe I was right to be afraid. Maybe my parents were wrong.
I knew I should have gone to that K-Mart carnival.