Hello folks! Arthur Ruger here. We've been living in The Great Northwest for most of our lives. We've met some real characters and heard some really interesting stories about this area.
Let me tell you about our network anchors.
There's a couple of characters who are kind of mysterious to me. They seemed to take to me - probably because I'm patient enough to listen to their stories. Them guys are loaded with thoughts, memories and opinions to share with me.
I don't know if they live in one of the towns, up in the hills, somewhere along one of the rivers or what. I just know that they show up at the house usually later in the day and when we're working outside.
It doesn't take much to get them started with what seems a never-ending string of stories about themselves or where we're a livin. Now I've always been a believer that when the oldest folks want to reminisce, us younger people should write it all down while we can still get it. Otherwise, we'll miss out on the real good stuff that might never make the history books or newpapers.
So this writing will record what comes out of the memory storehouse of Jake Turnrose and Pike Boomdropper, (ghost-written by me) but with an effort to retain the flavor and style of their words. Now there's folks that have told me that these houses our here that are more than 100 years old are most likely haunted. Maybe so and maybe not. I mention it because there's something very unusual about Jake and Pike. They once dropped by my house around dusk while I was cutting back blackberry bushes. We visited for a while until we heard what sounded like a wolf or coyote cry -- or maybe it was a hawk or an eagle. Anyway, at that moment they up and said that they had to move on and just walked off.
I watched them saunter off kind of funny-like for maybe 25 yards and then just vanished. I followed after them to see if they'd fallen down or something, but found nothing. In the dirt on the road that runs by my house, I couldn't find any tracks of their boots. There was no human footprint to be found at all .... but I did see what looked like the tracks of an elk that had to have been made within the last hour... maybe the whole town is .... naw, couldn't be!
Them two can take it from here.