The Legend of the McCleary Coulda-Been Crater

From Olympia Power & Light, September 7-20, 2011.

I still have the old fellow's fishing pole and a little stand he made.


The Legend of McCleary

Bezango WA 985 #8

1st ed., December 12, 2002. 40 copies, blue cover.

1st Danger Room Reprint Ed., June 2005, five copies (1 red, 1 green, 1 blue, 1 pink, 1 yellow).

This was the final issue of the series, meaning there are only 45 complete sets of Bezango WA 985.

The "Conspiracy" theme issue includes wild Russian boars, which truly do run around this county.

"Grover" was a nod to Grover Krantz, who I was acquainted with when I lived in Pullman, Washington, home of Washington State University.

The GHC on a t-shirt is for Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, Washington. And here we find another disturbing mascot, Charlie Choker.

Most of the world probably doesn't know the local meaning of "choker." It is a highly dangerous job in the logging industry. But to the outside world, they probably react with as much shock as they do to the previously mentioned Orofino Maniacs.

Uriah is based on the elderly gentleman I referenced in Phone photo 59. "Impeach Earl Warren" signs used to be a very common sight in neighboring rural Lewis County.

I was about halfway through Bezango WA 985 #9, but my computer crashed and all the text went with it. I took that as a sign to stop the series and move on. Several of the drawings I had in store for #9 were used later in Cranium Frenzy #10.

Phone photo 59

This little stand was built by a guy who was the previous resident of a house I owned here in McCleary from 1986 to 1994. He was a World War I veteran and had lived here many years.

By the early 1980s he was a long time widower and had apparently been included in a circle of old fellows who had been befriended by a white supremacist nutjob. This young fellow must've thought McCleary was a nice place to hide out and do whatever sort of illegal thing he was doing. They say he made himself useful to several oldtimers by doing carpentry oddjobs.

The story goes that this young racist left town in order to stay at some compound filled with others of his ilk out in Missouri or Arkansas. But before he left he asked if our old guy would let him use his upstairs as a storage unit. So the elderly vet agreed.

Shortly after this junior Nazi departed town, the old fellow went to the Post Office and fell dead as the result of a heart attack. His nephew inherited the house and found some interesting things upstairs, chiefly explosives, firearms, napalm detonators, etc. The FBI and Fort Lewis came and cleaned the place out. The neighbors told me Feds told them that if that house had caught fire half of McCleary would've turned into a crater. I assume the guilty party was apprehended.

Anyway, the explosives storage area later became the same place where I conducted all my comix business, including editing City Limits Gazette, from mid 1986 to mid 1994.

So as a token of that local lore, I still have the old fellow's little homemade stand and his homemade fishing pole.