Loren - Thanks for the EB film. I grew up on them in school in the ’50s and ’60s. Too bad students these days don’t get to see them, even as historical reference. I’m looking forward to the book.

Whether the Iceman was real or not, I owe a lot of my curiosity about cryptid animals to that article that I read as a child.

One summer, when I was a teenager, I went to the state fair of Texas and strolled down the midway. Years previously I had gone to the “freak shows” and had seen the “monkey girl”, “alligator boy”, “two-faced boy”, three legged man, Siamese twins, and the “abominable snowman” (a fellow with elephantitis of the feet).

This particular summer the “freak show” was less an attraction. Instead, I saw the “woman turns into a gorilla in front of your very eyes” show and a sideshow of a frozen “caveman” found floating in an iceberg. Little did I know at the time that both these shows would later relate to my crypto passion concerning sasquatch.

The “frozen caveman” was, of course, the later famous, or infamous, Minnesota Iceman. You really couldn’t see much, the ice was white. But I could make out the sparse, coarse hair and the underlining tan skin. It reminded me of a chimp.

Later, at the girl morphs into a gorilla show, a smoke and mirrors deceit, I was surprised that folks in the audience really jumped in fright when the “gorilla” broke loose from its cage. Decades later I would learn that the gorilla suit used in the show was typically made by Phillip Morris, the fellow who claimed to sell his gorilla suit to Roger Patterson for his bigfoot film at Bluff Creek.

My brush with sasquatch, twice in one day!