At seven years old, I learned of my first, but far from the last, Texas legend. The best storytellers and liars I ever knew were my two uncles on my mother’s side of the family, Uncles Bill and Jay Manley. They are the ones who told my cousins and me about Santa Anna’s “Mountain Boomers.” My mother believed the two ruined me and turned me into a liar and teller of tall tales, which is not such a bad thing.
The Mountain Boomers were giant lizards that ran on two legs and came down from their lair on Santa Anna Mountain in search of food. Anything would do, but they were partial to goats, wild pigs, small cows, chickens, and tiny humans. If you were caught outside in the wee morning hours, it was a sure bet a Mountain Boomer would get you. We, kids, were scared shitless of even going out of the farmhouse after dark. Now we had giant lizards and the dreaded Woolly Boogers to deal with.
With no air conditioning in the farmhouse, we were forced to sleep with the windows open and would lay in our beds shaking all night, waiting for the monsters to break through the window screen and carry us away. Our Granny was no help; her standard goodnight to us was ” sleep tight and don’t let the Mountain Boomers bite.”
Summer evenings on the farm were made for sitting on my grandparents’ covered porch, watching lightning bugs dance, listening to the crickets chirp, and catching the faraway howls of an occasional Coyote pack running the creek that passed through the pastures.
The sky was black as pitch, the Milky Way as white as talcum powder, and heat lighting in the West added to the drama of the evening. We kids were ripe for a big one, and my uncles never disappointed. First, homemade ice cream was eaten, then the cooler of Pearl Beer came out, and the stories commenced.
Already that June, my cousin Jerry and I had been to see the hero pig and the three-legged chickens and had learned of the dreaded Woolly Boogers. Hence, we needed a new adventure: our summer was losing air like a punctured tire: we were tiring of shooting chickens with our Daisy BB Guns, then getting our butts switched by Granny.
“Did you kids see that over there in the trees across the road? I think that might have been one of them Mountain Boomers,” says Uncle Bill, in between swigs of Pearl. Then, of course, we strained our eyes to see what he said he saw, but nothing. Then, a few moments later, “There it goes again, I tell you kids, that was one of them sumbitches running on two legs carrying a wild pig in its teeth.”
He had us firmly hooked and reeled in. Then he starts in on the story. Uncle Bill took a swig of Pearl and said,
” Right down this road here, about twenty years ago, a family’s car broke down, ran out of gas, I think. The daddy, a man I knew well, walked into town to find some help. He left his wife and small son in the car. It was late at night, so he figured they would sleep until he returned with some gas. The little boy got out of the car to pee alongside the road. His Momma heard him scream and came out of the car in a hurry: a 7-foot-tall Mountain Boomer was standing there with the little kid in its mouth. The poor boy was already almost chewed in half. His guts were hanging out and dragging on the ground. The big lizard took off running with the Momma chasing it. Another of them, Boomers, was hiding in the scrub brush and got her, too. A few days later, the sheriff found their bloody remains up on the mountain. They knew a Mountain Boomer had gotten them because they found their tracks. That’s why we never go outside after midnight around here.” My other cousins and I were almost pissing our pants.
When we stayed at the farm, I don’t believe any of us ever slept well again after that night. But, even after we were adults, my uncles swore the legend and the story were true. I still dream of them.
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Notes From The Cactus Patch 
Your uncles were master story tellers and successfully mentored you to be their expert yarn-spinning protege. I loved your description of this tall tale and how it impacted you and your cousin. 🙂
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Thanks, Nancy. Yes, they did influence me and passed on their skills. My mother, although she disliked their influence on me, finally admitted it was a good thing.
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(1) We, kids, were scared shitless of even going out of the farmhouse after dark. This is why a bathroom in the farmhouse is more desirable than an outhouse over yonder. And, should one’s pants be soiled, this is also why a modern washing machine is more desirable than an old washtub.
(2) I thought Mountain Boomers were people born in the Rockies after World War II.
(3) Wooly Mammoths were embarassed by their Woolly Boogers. But, fortunately, they could drag their trunk through the snow to dislodge them.
(4) When the skies are polluted, is the Milky Way only as white as eggnog?
(5) Back in Missouri, my parents lived for a number of years out in the country. There were lots of lightning bugs (what some people call “fireflies”) cruising around. For the most part, we directed our hands to “catch and release” them. However, we occasionally would temporarily incarcerate the bugs in a glass jar with holes poked in the lid.
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Yep, all that and more. The farmhouse had an indoor bathroom and an outhouse. I don’t know why they were called Mountain Boomers, but everyone in that area knew about them. Grandmother used a washtub, no washer or dryer, only a clothesline in her yard. We have fireflies in our backyard in the summer. I just watch them now, but did catch them in a jar when I was a kid. Wooly Boogers are about the size of a cat and mean as hell.
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Well, you didn’t directly say it, but if you were suggesting that uncles are no-good sons of bitches, I agree. My dad’s brother, Howard, was a mean bastard who used to fill me with so many horror stories that it’s a miracle I got any sleep at all through my ninth year.
His first dastardly act was taking me to see The Werewolf of London at the movie theater. I was five years old. I must have wet myself three or four times during that film — and I’ve never liked night flowers since. I was still dreaming about that crap when I joined the Cub Scouts.
Years later, when Uncle Howard died, I was sitting next to Dad during his eulogy. Suddenly, Dad and I looked at each other in amazement, and I said — not quietly enough — “Are we at the wrong funeral?”
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Ha, Mustang, yours was a real tough one. My two were not mean in any way, but were full of crap as far as tall tales and scaring us kids. They both served in WW2 and likely suffered from PTSD, later becoming full-blown alkies, but to us kids, they were magical orators. I’ve been to a few funerals like that, asking the same thing. I guess the only mean thing they did to me was give me a chaw of chewing tobacco without telling me I shouldn’t swallow. I was ill for quite some time and they got a big laugh out of it. My mother kicked their asses, but good.
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Hell those stories would scare me now. Can we let some The Mountain Boomers loose in California, Minnesota, and New York? Thin the gene pool. Great story Phil as always.
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Thanks, Max. You made a real good point, something to consider.
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Fill up boys…to your hearts content
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Ye gads. I had very dull uncles, by comparison. But those two would have had me terrified to go to sleep, too!
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GREAT story and even greater storytelling. The uncles taught you well.
and the soundtrack is obvious. This is a world made for Sam the Sham.
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Sam the Sham and the Wooly Bully, I didn’t think of it that way, but that’s a great soundtrack for this story. I knew Sam back in the day (60s). He and his band were from Dallas and Fort Worth, and they played the same clubs my band did. Nice guy, and who would have thought they would make it big on a silly song? Happy you dug the story. My uncles were right up there with Will Rogers and Mark Twain as orators.
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