The Old Man and the Monkey

With apologies to AC/DC:

“Lock up your daughter. Lock up your wife. Lock up your back door and run for your life. The monkeys are back in town, so don’t you mess around!”

Aficionados of the absurd may be aware that recently 43 monkeys escaped from the Alpha Genesis polio vaccine research facility in Yemassee South Carolina. At present they are still at large and on Thursday authorities warned residents to lock their doors and windows. “If you spot any of the escaped animals, please contact 911 immediately and refrain from approaching them!”

It was a bit of an overreaction. Though rhesus macaques are vicious little monsters which plague cities throughout southeast Asia, these were adolescent females which had yet to be subjected to experimentation, and thus carried no genetically manipulated pathogens. They weighed about five pounds apiece. Adult males are much much worse and will rip your face off just for fun. (see photo below)

In the course of my travels in southeast Asia I have learned to despise macaques. Their behavior is unpleasantly reminiscent of the behavior of inner city gangbangers. If it were up to me they would be exterminated, but in places like Thailand Buddhist forbearance forbids it, and in Hindu mythology Hanuman the Monkey God is revered.

Prior to their escape from the vaccine facility the pesky primates had lived on the Island of Dr. Moreau, also known as Morgan Island, where a colony of some 3,500 rhesus monkeys live wild until summoned by the good Doctor for vivisection.

One might suppose this to be a singular event, but no, for the land of the Gullah Geechee is a magical place shared by mad atomic scientists, wizened old wise men, and monkeys alike, a place where time stands still and improbable events occur on a daily basis. It is not true that history repeats itself, except when it does.

While researching this story I was astounded to learn that the first such event involving monkeys occurred in 1895, though those appeared to be a different species. I found the story in the archives of the New York Times back when it was a real newspaper. That was 129 years ago, but nothing seems to have changed.

All of these crazy things happened within a relatively short distance from one another. Yemassee is only twenty miles from Tillman, and both are near the Savannah river swamp where the supposedly secret atomic weapons facility is located. The fact that monkeys with polio were involved means that in addition to blowing up the world they intended to unleash biological warfare to finish off any survivors.

Travel with me now back to the days of my youth, but be forewarned that I recount the tale in the vernacular. Those who censor speech are no better than those who attempt to rewrite history to suit the current political narrative. If you are such a person, I kindly invite you to kiss my ass. So does the monkey.

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The Old Man and the Monkey:

After reading Snakes and Snakehunting by Karl Kauffeld as a boy I became a fanatical herper. Toward that end every spring around Easter for thirteen years straight I would head from my suburban home in Maryland to the low country of South Carolina, in particular to a gracious old plantation named Okeetee, for a week or more of snakehunting. Many adventures were had, but one stands out for its marvelous absurdity.

One year, perhaps in 68? I was driving around with my brilliant and beautiful but sadly deranged future ex wife Lema. I had heard tales of a “beer can” sized kingsnake that had been caught in the sandhills along the Savannah river west of the little town of Ridgeland, so we headed that way. As per usual we were stoned, hungover, and overcome by ennui. The day was hot and we were in need of refreshment, so when we spied the now long gone general store in Tillman SC we pulled in to get a drink. Tillman at that time was almost a ghost town. Most of the buildings were abandoned and collapsing such that they made fine habitat for herps!

The ancient general store stood alone in a junk filled yard on Cotton hill road just north of the main intersection. I pulled up in my 65 Mustang, then waited while Lema went in to buy us cold drinks. I was hot, tired, and irritable so I simply slouched down with my head hanging halfway out the open window. As a result I was looking straight at the side vision mirror, wherein I beheld a very strange sight.

An exceedingly comical looking old man was wandering around the yard holding an enormous white rooster with which he was engaged in a lively conversation. Without saying a word to me he came up from behind and shoved the rooster right up against the side of my head facing the mirror then said, “Lookee there Mr. Rooster, it’s another rooster! A rival for your hens! You cain’t let that happen boy, you better git em!” The rooster agreed and attacked the side vision mirror with great enthusiasm. All of this was happening inches from my nose.

The old man wandered off without saying a word, then suddenly whirled around and said, “Mister, you ain’t met the monkey yet now have you?” I admitted that I hadn’t, then got out of the car to see what he was talking about.

There in the side yard was a chained up macaque monkey in the midst of a Gyro Gearloose style art installation consisting of swings, ladders, platforms, and inexplicable mechanical contrivances, all of which was built from used auto parts and agricultural debris.

The monkey was on a long lightweight chain attached to a heavy metal ring that was placed over an upright steel rod. The monkey was unable to lift the heavy ring up and over the top of the steel rod, but if the old man did so the monkey could then throw the metal ring over its one good shoulder and go anywhere it pleased. It appeared that the monkey was suffering some kind of deformity and had one useless arm. The monkey seemed to be very pleased to have a visitor and shrieked and jumped about with glee.

The old man explained that he owned the monkey but that the monkey owned the woeful hound dog that hung around the yard. That apparently was true for the monkey could tell the hound dog what to do.

About that time Lema came out of the store and walked over to see what was going on. The old man turned to the monkey and asked, “You ever seen such a pretty girl in all your born days?” The monkey’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, he did a backflip then began to vigorously masturbate. Lema, being utterly perverse, thoroughly approved! That encouraged both the old man and the monkey, so the old man said, “Show em what you can do there Mr. Monkey!”, whereupon the monkey did an entire circus full of tricks!

The old man explained that he couldn’t bear to be inside so his wife ran the store. He lived in an old truck there in the yard. Every night he would sprinkle birdseed on the roof of the truck, and every morning he would be awakened by the birds pecking the seed. He could talk to the birds, just as he could to the monkey, the hound dog, the butterflies, the snakes, in fact to all of God’s creation. He felt blessed and couldn’t understand why other people couldn’t talk to animals. He just felt sorry for them, but did his best to make everything and everyone happy. It was his “calling”.

It seemed surpassingly strange that this superannuated St. Francis would happen to own a monkey, so I asked him how it had come to pass. This is what he said.

“Round about after the big war them scientist fellers set up a labbatory alongside the Savannah river not too far upstream from here. They was astudyin palsy, what some folks calls polio. They would get these here monkeys and inject em with palsy and sure enough their arms and legs would shrivel up. When they was done with em they would let em go into the woods. They’s plenty of woods and deep swamp along the river, so pretty soon there was families of crippled monkeys all up and down the river. They didn’t trouble nobody.

You can see how the monkey likes to boss around the hound dog, and it ain’t no different with people. One day some lazy ass Nigger decided to catch a monkey so he could boss him around. Soon as he did that feller wouldn’t do no work nohow. He was too good for that, cuz he owned a monkey! All them other Niggers seen what he done, and how uppity he had got to be, so they all wanted one. Couldn’t get no work out of any of em. All day long monkey this and monkey that.

Somethin had to be done, so the Sheriff went to the labbatory and told them scientists not to let no more monkeys loose. Then he went and confiscated the boss monkey and give em to me. That’s howcum I’ve got him.

From that day on when they was finished ‘sperimentn with a monkey they would put him in the insinuator, and that was that.

From that day on when they was finished ‘sperimentn with a monkey they would put him in the insinuator, and that was that. Now I’m the only feller around with a monkey!”

A few short years later I returned to Tillman but couldn’t recognize the place. All traces of the general store were gone, as were the beautiful crumbling antebellum homes rich with ghosts and frozen in time. Gone, simply gone. In the blink of an eye Tillman had become part of the modern south, a shitty little crossroads too far from the new interstate to be worth anything. Just big enough to justify a new general store of the 7-11 variety where indolent blacks stared back with insolent glares. Not much else to do, and proof that it wasn’t the monkeys’ fault.

The snakes were gone too. The fields had been ravaged by commercial collectors, of whom I was one. Worse than that, the plantations which had previously been managed either by neglect or for the benefit of hunters could no longer afford the rising taxes on idle land.

First the Hercules corporation came through and ripped up all the old stumps for the manufacture of dynamite. Those burned out pine stumps had been the essential architecture of nature, home to a thousand forms of life, and a refuge from the periodic fires that are a critical component of the wonderfully productive pine/oak savanna ecosystem. Those stumps were the very places we had once looked for snakes.

The next blow happened when both the old agricultural fields and the plantation hunting lands were converted into industrial pine plantations. Spindly trees were planted in rows and fire excluded. It was the end of a way of life, hence the indolent natives, and the ultimate death of the ecosystem and all the myriad life it contained.

The completion of I-95 completely destroyed the economies of all the small towns along the eastern seaboard. Tillman was one such victim of progress.

Only one worse thing could happen, suburban development. First Hilton Head was destroyed by upscale housing. Then the plantation lands were devoured for retirement communities intended to house the worthless geriatric multitudes who could not afford to live closer to the coast. Tillman didn’t make the cut, too far west, and too worthless even for welfare housing.

I checked on Google earth. Nothing had changed since I first visited, just a few houses and lots of pine trees. Nothing other than that the rich fabric of life and history had been utterly eradicated.

I had been privileged to have caught a glimpse of the old south, a magical Macondo like place where kindly old men hold conversations with animals. Now there are no monkeys, no snakes, no ghosts, and no reason to return.

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Next up, back to Bolivia and a trip to the jungle!