Many years ago when I was a very young boy I would visit my grandfather and grandmother Canter at their little store in a place called Poor Town located in Jessamine County Kentucky. The little town was on the cliffs of the Kentucky River and for someone who was so vertically challenged at the time the distance from the cliff edge seemed like an eternity to the river below. The little town was full of characters such as the woman who wore a garter belt and kept a derringer stuck in her carter and once shot a man’s toe off for trying to grab her derringer or maybe he had other ideas. Or the man who they all called the sheriff of Poor Town who was nothing more than a man who “said” he was the sheriff of Poor Town or the little man who stopped and danced to no music and then walked on. An eclectic mixture of the wonderfully non normal.
I would stand or sit and listen as the men would gather in the store or on the store front porch and they would talk and do the things men did at that time in life. They were all men whose word was extremely important to them. It was all they had at times as life was not easy back then for many of them. I would be quiet and listen so close to the tales of war and love and hunger. But there was one story that I will always remember, I will always remember how the faces and tone of words would change whenever someone brought up The Walking Bear Of Poor Town..
You could sense and feel the uneasiness whenever the story was brought up. Whatever came through Poor Town on that fateful night placed fear in the hearts of fearless men and made them question what they believed in and most of all, made them question themselves.
It was late at night and the folks of Poor Town were asleep when it happened. It started with a few dogs down the road barking then seeming to go berserk. Almost everyone had a dog and most dogs stayed outside. One house where a true free spirit lived had least 50 dogs in the yard and house. All 50 dogs would soon wake up everyone in Poor Town. The first dogs down the road apparently came out of the yard and attacked whatever was coming down the road. The people who had awoken only heard the dogs attack and then whelp and then silence. It was then the creature neared the house with all the dogs and all hell broke loose.
From what the men said over and over some of the dogs jumped the fence or burst through the fence and attacked. My grandfather and several other men had by now gotten up and had their guns and were standing on their porches trying to see in the dark. They could hear dogs fighting then screaming and then running away. I remember my grandfather Canter telling how at first he could not see the thing but suddenly he could make out a huge dark shape walking in the middle of the road that ran directly in front of his store. He said it was the biggest bear anyone had ever seen and it was walking on its back legs and never went to all fours as it walked by and down the little hill and vanished from his sight and was then attacked by more dogs. The others who had seen the shape also spoke as my grandfather did, but in their eyes and voices you could tell they were telling this because they could not begin to imagine what it really was. Several dogs were killed and some were maimed for life and some it seemed ran away and were never seen again, the next morning the road was like a butcher field.
Sometimes after dark we would walk down to a large flat rock that you could stand on and overlook a huge valley with the Kentucky River running through it. We would stand on that rock and listen. I remember hearing big cats, and I do mean big cats but every now and then we would hear this loud strange howling moan which at times turned into a screaming growl. I would ask my father what was that? He always said it was just the echoes off the cliff walls. When we would hear this sound I always remember him easing his pistol out of his pocket and saying "let’s head back".
Some say that sound was nothing more than echoes in the night, but to me it will always be, The Walking Bear Of Poor Town..
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