Smokey and the Fouke Monster: A True Story

By Smokey Crabtree

"Smokey and the Fouke Monster" tells a most interesting and unusual true story of how the town of Fouke, Arkansas became the center of attention for Monster hunters in the early and mid-seventies but also, how this one mysterious creature's unwelcomed presence lead to the making of the now infamous movie "The Legend Of Boggy Creek". The book tells of the risks and pitfalls sometimes associated with the business side of life and how it came to pass that he and the town folk of Fouke found themselves having to deal with forces far more sinister than that of an unknown creature inhabiting their surrounding bottom lands.

This is a true story. The author actually did live next door to the Fouke Monster for several years.

The main purpose of this book is to keep the history of the Fouke Monster on a truthful basis. The true facts are told of what really went on behind the scenes during the filming' of a motion picture entitled "The Legend of Boggy Creek".

The author tells how a country boy will fight, work and struggle for what he believes in and what his privacy means to him. He also tell how a large family survived and found real happinessdeep in the wilderness of Southwestern Arkansas. They had very little contact with the outside' world and the fast ways of life.

Smokey tells points of interest in parts of his life hoping it will be educational to you.

1. How a legendary' wild boar was outdone after seventeen years of terrorizing the river bottom people around Fouke, Arkansas.
2. How to catch a catfish with your bare hands.
3. How to catch an alligator gar that weighs over two hundred pounds.
4. How to outsmart your deer
5. Smokey's experience with snakes, all kinds of them, and many other things of interest.

This book has been in print since 1974, and is still selling many copies per year!

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456606237

Book preview

CORPORATION

Chapter One

Hello, my name is J. E. Smokey Crabtree. I am not a writer. I can't even spell very well, so this book is going to be an awfully big job for me. I feel like I have to do it.

I am not doing this for money alone. I don't have that kind of lust for money. I am trying to do several things. The largest one is to keep me from losing my mind. Another is to send a message to the world and another is to try and compensate my little town and friends for a wrong that I helped bring to them.

If this book sells it will help some of the people involved in helping with a movie named Legend of Boggy Creek, filmed here in Fouke. For you to understand how I feel I will try to bring you into my world for awhile.

The year was 1932 or so, I was five years old and I can still remember the scene well.

There was seven children in our family, three boys and four girls. We three boys were the youngest members of the family.

We lived in a small three-room house, the lumber was as it came off the sawmill, in the rough and unpainted, but clean. You could see the chickens under the house, at times, through the cracks in the floor. It was our home and we loved it, and people couldn't bother us much back where we were.

It was located seven miles southwest of Fouke, Arkansas, in the' edge of Sulphur River Bottoms. The water from the river's overflow came up in our yard. We often went swimming in. the yard when the water was up real high.

Dad caught fish and sold them when the fish were running. It was during this time two men came to buy some fish. Dad asked the men to come with him down to where the fish were in a live box, tied out in the river.

They went down to the water's edge where the boats were tied up. My two brothers and I followed them. We called my older brother Buddy, he was seven years old at the time. They called me Smokey, I was five and my baby brother was two years old, his name was Harold.

The river was not as high as it gets, but the overflow water was out in the bottom land between the house and river. There were large over-cup acorn trees standing all out in the water, then there were small trees and lots of underbrush farther on out in the water, where you could not quite see the river itself. There was a small crooked path leading out to the river in Which we traveled by boat.

We reached the water's edge where there were two boats tied up. Dad and the two men took one of the boats and told us to wait on the bank until they came back. All three of the men grabbed a paddle and soon they were out of sight, on their way out to the main part of the river. As soon as they were out of sight, Buddy took the other boat and Harold climbed in just for the ride. They got out about one hundred yards from the bank where the water was six to seven feet deep.

Harold was sitting on the front boat seat facing the back of the boat. Buddy was on the back seat doing the navigating. The boat bumped into a large tree. Harold toppled over backwards into the water. He could not swim so Buddy stood up and watched for a second and saw bubbles coming up in one place and dove in after him. For awhile both of them were out of sight, I began screaming for Dad to come, they were drowning. One of the men heard me hollering and told· Dad. At first Dad told the man that we were just playing. I hollered again and one of the men told Dad, Hell, he said, they are drowning. They turned around and started rowing back to where we were.

After Buddy clove in, a short time passed that I could not see either one of them. Soon Harold came up and just stayed up, his head and shoulders out of the water and then went back under I found out later that Buddy went down and found him on the bottom and he was grabbing for everything. When he felt Buddy, he clenched to him and climbed up his body and was standing on Buddy's shoulders, so his head was out of the water.

Buddy tried to walk under the water with Harold on his shoulders and could not do that. He tried to get up for breath and Harold held him down. Soon, he collapsed to the bottom, letting Harold go out of sight again.

When Dad and the men came into sight Dad was standing up in the front of the boat paddling for all he was worth. They saw the other boat out there adrift with no one in it. I hollered that they were clown by that big tree and they went down by the tree. The boat was still going full blast when Dad dove off head first, clothes and all from the front end of it. He came up with Harold first, and just threw him over in the boat, and went back down for the other one. He was down for some time like he was hunting for Buddy When he came up with him the boy was a clark purple in the face. The men in the boat grabbed hole! of him and layed him across the side of the boat and drained a lot of water out of him. They worked with him until he started moving around. One of the men said that it was a miracle that he came out of it. He was completely unconscious. The baby was not in bad shape, he was out of the water for awhile during the time they were in the water

I want you to know it put the fear of God in me watching all of that.

Dad said to Buddy, Son, I told you to stay on the bank and walt for me to get back. Now it was wrong for you to take the boat after I told you not to and now you see what can happen when you do something wrong. I am not going to punish you; I feel like you have had enough already.

I was very young when I first realized that you may have to pay a dreadful price for only a small wrong.

Chapter Two

All my life I have drawn a wide line between right and wrong. I will not lie to a fellowman for my personal gain.

I have a temper and I am fast to take action on what I think is wrong. When I was raising cows, if I saw a cow with long horns haul off and hook another old cow that had no horns at all. I would take up the fight. I might run that old cow for five minutes or slam her upside of the head with something.

I cannot stand to see anything. man or beast, take away the rights of another I will fight for something else, or someone else's right as quick as I will my own.

I have always stayed away from politics because I am too strong for right and I could never turn my back on right for money and I know I would, at times, be required to do this. I Sincerely believe that right is right. regardless of who it belongs to, even if it belongs to a cow When someone takes away the rights of me and my family, the Lord and I will straighten it up between us. As a rule I let the Lord try it first, if it is a large job. If he seems to be busy I give him a little help.

I feel like I am stronger for right than any man I know I insist on treating a man right and I see that he treats me at least half way right. That is what this book is all about. I am trying to get back the feelings and what I had before this movie was filmed.

I will unfold parts of my life to you and what went on behind the scenes while this movie was being filmed. Everything I have to say will be the gospel truth and you can believe it. I will work hard on this story to make you acquainted with me. You will need to know me as I am in true life to understand what has been done to me, my family, and friends.

My father died soon after the time my brothers had their mishap. I can still remember things that he said and did. I have been told by many people that he had more friends than any man in this country, in his time.

Mother was left to raise us seven children. She was a school teacher by trade, when she had worked long before. She looked into going back to teaching school. The world had changed a lot by then and you had to have more college and things that she didn't have. She was told she couldn't qualify.

Our house was sitting on forty acres of land. Dad had it half paid for at his death. Mother went to the people we were buying the land from and told them it would be impossible for us to pay for the place. She told them we would get off it as soon as we could find a place to go.

The people were kind and told us to consider it paid for as long as we made it our home. We never forgot that.

Mother is a wonderful woman. She was forty-two years old when Dad passed away She devoted her entire life to us children. She never remarried or at any time dated or gave another man a minute of her time.

She told us that we were her life and that there was no room for anyone else.

She is the type of person who can make it with what she has. She would prove it to us, she wanted us to learn to make it with what we had.

She would say, Don't quit because you need something, you might set there from. now on. Just think things out, and make it with what you have. Don't give up because you need something that you can't have.

For an example, one time when I was a small boy, I wanted a small wagon.

She said, We will make you a wagon.

I said, Out of what? We don't have a thing to even start with.

She said, We will see what we have.

She got out the crosscut saw and some tools, We went down in the woods and cut down a tree about eight inches in diameter Then we cut some cuts off the tree about one and one half inches long which formed the shape of a wheel. She used four of these and drilled holes in the center with a brace and. bit. She then got some hickory limbs for the axles. She actually built a wagon, that worked, right there in front of our eyes. We used the wagon for a long time. There was no limit to what she could do.

I inherited a lot of her Ideas and they are priceless .to me. They save me money every day, even now.

I would not take a million dollars for being raised back in the woods on the river or for the knowledge I gained.

I have worked very hard to make it possible for my boys to enjoy some of the things that I did as a boy I think it puts something into a boy that he needs badly to make a real man out of him.

I see people that have not had that opportunity and I feel sorry for them. They are helpless and cannot enjoy life.

Things shaped up and Mom got a job working in a government sewing room.

It was a relief project of some kind like the W P. A. that President Roosevelt established to help poor people.

The job site was in Fouke, Ark., our small town seven miles away. The closest grocery store to our home was in Fouke too.

Mother walked fourteen miles a day through dense woods with only a wagon road most of the way Her wage was $29.00 a month. In time she gained enough to get her a small horse and saddle and she rode to work horseback.

When it was raining she would put on a slicker coat and ride fourteen miles in the rain and cold to supply our needs.

We children were walking three miles one way, barefoot through the mud and cold to school.

We were eating out of bucket lids for plates but as a rule we had plenty of food to eat. It came out of the woods and the river Our budget allowed us $5.00 a month to spend on food. Five dollars a month was feeding Mother and seven of us children, so we only bought what we could not raise or catch. As a rule we only needed sugar, flour, and coffee from the store.

We had twelve of our forty acres in cultivation. We milked two or three cows, for milk and butter We usually had a hog or two to kill in the winter We never owned an icebox. We salted the meat down and cured it out to keep it from ruining.

Most of our meat carne out of the woods or the river. We never had money to buy shells or fishing tackle. We had to make it with what we had.

At the age of seven I could dive off the river bank and come up with a fish in my hand. I have done that for money and. guaranteed to come up with a fish in each hand. I can still do just that.

There is a real art to this. I will spend a little time on it with you.

A long time ago the timber people had no roads or any way of hauling the large logs to the mills.

They cut the logs and dragged them by mule teams to the river's edge. There, they would dump them into the river, crib them together to make a raft of a sort. They put plates, with the owner's name and address on them. They turned the raft of logs loose down the river

It was fifty miles or so down the river to Shreveport, La. to the mill. They had crews working down there that would catch the logs, pull them in, mill them up, and mail the money to the owner

Thousands of these logs did not reach their destination. They would hang up and sink for some reason or other In the bottom of Sulphur River these logs are bedded up in clusters and some are scattered out by themselves.

The catfish wallow out holes under these logs and den up under them. Some of the holes are big enough for a man to actually go under the logs himself. Some of the holes are only big enough to get your arm or leg under them. When I first started catching fish with my hands, was to live.

Things were very serious and I had to figure out ways of outdoing the fish. Practice and experience will payoff. You will never catch a catfish like that until you gather some experience and knowledge.

First of all you need to know the habits of the catfish.

The catfish will not let anything but his own kind live under the log that he's claiming for his home.

When you find his home you can forget sticking your hand in a turtle's mouth when you are feeling around. There will not be one with the catfish.

Turtles and catfish live in two entirely different kinds of places. The catfish will not live in a place that a turtle likes to bed up and the turtle does not prefer the places where a catfish will live.

The bad turtles that can ruin a man's hand or leg are usually living in shallow water, where trash and debris has settled and filled in places.

They have a built-in worm-like tongue. He will bed himself down in the trash, disguising himself. He holds his mouth open and only moves the worm like tongue. When the small fish or crawfish come in close trying to get the worm for his own food, he is in trouble. The snapping turtle is very fast, and he snaps out catching the food he has lured to his location.

The catfish will be in a hole wallowed out under a log in the deepest part of the river The ground around and under the log will be as smooth and slick as glass. Most of the time you can tell how big he is or if there is more than one living there by the size of the hole and the condition around the log. Check to see if there is another hole where he can come out, before you feel under the log. You might need someone at that hole. Don't disturb the fish until you plan your strategy There will be only one successful trip under