Dean Shalhoup

Every year right around this time, it finds its way back to my doorstep as faithfully as the arrival of pollen, Mother’s Day and that seriously over-hyped horse race down South just the other side of the Mason-Dixon line.

Once as giddily anticipated as Christmas morning, “it” has had its ups and downs over the (let’s just say “many”) years, its peaks bunched up in the early years, its valleys becoming the standard somewhere toward the middle and falling off a bit more as it catches up to the present.

If you’re guessing “it” is an alias for “birthday,” step up and receive your gold star.

I was just reminded the other day about a particular event on which The Telegraph did a story that ran on an inside page on Tuesday, May 10, 1977, which was just about one-third of the way down the graph chart, aka my 23rd birthday.

That this story, at once humorous, eye-roll worthy and even a tad intriguing, happened to appear in the paper on the anniversary of my birth is a mere footnote to the tale.

I was still a “general assignment” reporter – code in those days for “do whatever the boss needs you to do – at the time, but had I been editor the story would have appeared on Page 1.

The tip came via text message from Mary Ann Stawasz, who lived in Hollis with husband Tom at the time. The Old Farmers Almanac, she wrote, “lists this Saturday … the anniversary of 1977 Bigfoot sighting in Hollis.”

It didn’t ring a bell, which is odd because my memory banks are filled with odd and bizarre stuff at the expense of “important” stuff.

So, hello, Mr. Google.

Sure enough, one of the first references to pop up was a blog titled “New England Folklore” (newenglandfolklore.blogspot.com), maintained by Boston-based historian and author Peter Muise.

The entry, posted in 2015, tells the story of Lowell, Massachusetts resident Gerald St. Louis and his family, who supposedly encountered Bigfoot the night of May 7 as they slept in their truck at the Hollis flea market.

It wasn’t uncommon back in the day for flea market vendors to stay overnight, or show up at 4 a.m., to assure they had a good spot to set up when the market opened at the crack of dawn.

So, according to Muise’s blog, St. Louis unhitched the small trailer that probably contained most of the stuff they planned to sell, and the family got ready to turn in for the night.

All was quiet for awhile, but around 10:30 p.m., the St. Louises awoke to find the truck shaking. According to Muise’s blog and the Telegraph story – probably written by my former colleague Don Dillaby – Gerald St. Louis turned on the truck’s headlights, which illuminated the source of the shaking – and undoubtedly scared the bejesus out of him and his family.

St. Louis jumped in the drivers seat, fired up his truck and sped off toward police headquarters to report the encounter – probably not realizing in his agitated state that telling the dispatcher what he saw – or thought he saw – could have put him at risk of sounding like he was under the influence of something or that the proverbial cheese had slipped off his cracker.

The descriptions St. Louis gave to police varied slightly; for instance, in the Telegraph account he described the culprit as “a 10-foot-tall hairy animal with ‘human-like’ features,” while in Meuse’s account, he was said to describe it as a “large humanoid … 8-9 feet high, brown-colored, and covered in long hair.”

The headlights startled the creature, St. Louis explained, and he said he watched as it “ran across the parking lot, jumped easily over a 4-foot fence … and once over the fence, it stood and stared back at the truck.”

Then-police Chief Paul Bosquet listened to what St. Louis had to say, according to the accounts, then sent an officer over to the flea market to see if he could find any creatures – or at least evidence that could indicate a creature had been there.

Bosquet, in the Telegraph story, offered a more likely – albeit less intriguing and exciting – assessment of the situation.

“The Hollis chief said the animal may have been a bear that came out of nearby woods in search of food from a nearby rubbish container,” according to the story.

But it’s also true, Meuse wrote in his blog, that something really did shake the St. Louis’s truck that night, and the family “seemed legitimately scared.”

Perhaps, Meuse ventured, “it was pranksters enacting the role of Bigfoot.” After all, “it’s a time-honored tradition.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.