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| Legend of the Alleywhacker |
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Douglas, Wyoming. It's a town that could resemble any American small town. I called Douglas home for a decade and could easily story tell hours of terrific anecdotes about the locals and the semi-rural way of life. Here are the crayons to help color in the picture: |
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-There is a 12 foot high statue of a Jackalope (a mythical horned-rabbit beast, spawned from the redneck humor of the ancestors of the taxidermist family living across the way from my grandparents) at the center of the Town Square.
-The population is roughly the same as the elevation.
-Walking to a friend's house meant being called any 14 different variations for homosexual. If you were lucky, you could catch a lit cigarette to the back of the head or a Big Swig of syrupy soda exploding against your chest.
-If you owned a Dead Kennedy's album you were painfully alone, or if you had dyed hair you were a faggot. And vice-versa.
-The only tangible way to score booze was to frequent the local waterholes and wait for the mine workers to park their 4X4 trucks in the lot. With their coolers resting innocently in the bed of said trucks, they waited to be rescued by thirsty, desperately bored teenagers.
-Douglas has one theatre with only one screen. Each week only one movie plays, which is typically past the video release date. |
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| Yes, Douglas is well accomplished in being ultra lame. However, there always seemed to be some drama that the collective minds fixated on. A local death/murder or drug bust that gave the locals fuel to gossip about. And in the summer of 1997, there was plenty of fuel to keep the gossip ablaze. And so began the Legend of the Alleywhacker. |
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In rural Wyoming, he's a mythical satanic creature that lurks the night, embedded in the subconscious of the locals. He?s a legend that everyone wants to talk about, but no one wants to understand. |
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| They say growing up in a small town builds character. Douglas did have its share of interesting characters. There was Larry the Fairy, who was the local ostracized transvestite. Mr. Walkenshaw was an alcoholic phys ed teacher at my elementary school. However, he became more infamous for turning his country house into a compound, stockpiling weapons, and posting a large wooden sign that stated "Waco, Wyoming" in his front yard. Everyone was vying for attention in a town where everyone was the lead character in the movie. |
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| However, it was the Alleywhacker who caught the curiosity and outrage of the people of Douglas, young and old. |
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| Our first encounter with the Alleywhacker very well might have been the first documented sighting of this menace in Douglas. We weren't warned of any previous sightings and I think it was my friend Tucker who actually penned the perv with his notorious name. And so the story goes... |
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| One summer evening, five of us took to the streets in lieu of nothing else to do. Fun was few and far between and nights typically ended without much action, to our dismay. So we parked along the side of Quik Stop- owned and operated by a friend's dad, making it a staple for loitering and shoplifting escapades. A couple of the guys went into the store while the rest of us stood around out back, hands in pockets, kicking rocks. |
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| Then a deep, gravely voice interrupted our geniality. "Heyyy.....aaarghh....ohhh yeahhh..." |
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| Only 20 yards away stood a tall white guy, with a white shirt on and his shorts dropped to his ankles. He is turned sideways, head cocked back, and his dick in his hands at a 45 degree angle, aiming for the sky like a rocket. It's so big that my initial conclusion is that he is using a prop. While we stand there, he continues to grunt syllables our way, stroking as fast as he can. What the fuck?!? |
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"Call the cops! There's a guy out back jacking off!" I yell at the clerk. "What? ...Bullshit." She replied. "You guys are stupid."
<Back outside> |
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| There wasn't any discussion between us. The baffled expressions on the faces of my friends spoke a new language. Being the supreme rock thrower of the group, I cut the surrealism with a rock toward the head of the whacker. He dodged to the side, pulled up his pants, and fan toward his rusted out Cadillac. We ran after him with projectiles, but the whacker would make his narrow escape. |
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| Word hit the street the next day, met with skepticism and intrigue. Within the next few weeks, stories began to unfold of other sightings from other kids at school. My best friend Weston had it the worst. Since Weston lived right at the starting part of the whacker's route, sightings were quite common for him (8 times, I think). So much, in fact that Weston stopped walking to my house after school. Things were getting a little out of hand. |
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| Finally, the guys at school decided they had enough. The cops couldn't catch him, so it was time for martial law. No longer were the boys of Douglas willing to live in fear of the notorious whacker, as they amassed a large group of weapon toting rednecks and jocks to hunt down the pervert. They drove around town in their pickup trucks for three days, but alas, the whacker was nowhere to be found. |
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| The people of Douglas weren't willing to acknowledge that sexual deviance and non-church sanctioned fetishes existed in their community. But it did. That summer you couldn't go anywhere without seeing that depraved bastard. And what was one perverts? desire to express himself sexually (as tasteless as it may appear to you or I), became symbolic of what Douglas-ites feared and hated most about modern culture and big-city life. That his behavior was somehow connected to the fabric of humanity. |
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| It was only a matter of time before the authorities wrangled in the serial stroker. One day, the Alleywhacker, perhaps growing bored or hoping to be caught, started jerking off in front of city hall at lunch hour. A business owner spotted him and notified the authorities. A high speed chase ensued onto the interstate, where a roadblock was sufficient in apprehending the legend. |
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| The Alleywhacker might have been captured after a year and a half of menacing Douglas, but his story and intrigue lived on. I found myself attempting to comprehend the Alleywhacker alongside most of the guys in school. But I think I studied him for reasons dissimilar from that of my peers. They were mostly interested in a primal game of hide and seek, but I was indifferent to his demise. I wanted to understand why he only jerked off in front of boys or ask him why he routed one block off the main stretch of road. Was he being metaphorical? And how fitting was it that he stayed a block off of main, parallel to the psyche of the locals and their unwillingness to publicly acknowledge the pervert in the local press or PTA meetings. Even when the Alleywhacker was caught, you would find no mention of it in the newspaper. |
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| And that is the Legend of the Alleywhacker. Not a story you peruse in Reader's Digest, but it makes for a great anecdote at a party. Perhaps I missed a few details here and there, but something tells me that the Alleywhacker ain?t done whacking quite yet. |
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