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.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 