By: Bears Butt

Back in about ’03 the Willow Creekers were pretty dang serious about finding, and purchasing a bit of land to hold the annual rendezvous.

 

Many pieces were looked at, but they always had issues… too much dust, not any trees, “this one’s great, but there’s no stream”, no hill to shoot into, not big enough, not flat enough, too far away, and the list goes on and on.

 

At some point I’m talking to Bears Butt and he mentions that Wapiti Dung placed an ad on KSL.com’s classifieds “looking for land”… I said, “you know what would be funny?”… and he could see the twinkle of a good prank in my eye… he says, “do it.”

 

So that evening I jumped on Yahoo, and created an email for that purpose… (markscreamr@yahoo.com) Then sent him (roughly) the following email:

 

“Hi, I saw your ad on KSL, and I recently inherited some land that I’d be interested in selling. Give me a call and I can tell you what I know about it.

 

(phone number went here)

 

Sincerely,

 

Mark”

 

I was at work the next day when my cell phone rang.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hi, is this Mark?”

 

“Yes, this is Mark”

 

“Hi Mark, this is John Zundel. You emailed me yesterday about some land you might have available. Can you tell me a bit about it?”

 

“Well, I’ll tell you what I can. You see, I’m not from this area, and I just recently acquired the land from my uncle’s estate.”

 

(Wapiti’s ears perk up)

 

“You access the land by going up Logan canyon. Do you know where that is?”

 

“Yes, I know where that is”, Wapiti says with a slight tremor in his voice.

 

“Now, I don’t know if I can completely explain how to get there, but I’d say it’s some 3/4 of the way to the top of the canyon. I’ve only been there 2 or 3 times, and I doubt I can find it in the dark.

 

Anyway, you access the property with a road on the North side of the main highway. You drive in about a mile before you reach the gate to the property.

 

Once you go through the gate, you’ll go about another half mile where trees line both sides of the road.

 

At that point the area opens up to an open flat area where the creek kinda meanders through the middle. The creek does a bit of a “U” pattern around an area that would probably fit 50 or so camp trailers.

 

On the NorthWest side of the flat it turns to a really steep hill and the property line is about 300 yards up that hill… about the only thing I can think that part of the property would be good for is to shoot target practice into.

 

All in all, we have about 30 acres. Does this sound about what you’re looking for, John?”

 

“Um… well, I mean… uh… how’s the road in? Is it something you could get trailers into, or is it steep, rocky, and bumpy? What about tree branches hitting trailers, and how do you get across the creek?”

 

“Oh, well we just had the road graded… you’d probably need to do that every 5 to 10 years depending on the traffic. We just trimmed the trees back, but that’s probably an annual thing. And the bridge across the creek is made of railroad ties, and it’s probably 12 feet wide.”

 

“Okay, well do you mind if I ask how much you want for it?”

 

“Well, that’s the part I’ve kinda been struggling with… I don’t know what land goes for around here, and considering there’s no power or running water… I was thinking $50,000… am I off base with that?”

 

(You can hear him practically breathing into a paper sack to calm himself down)

 

After quite a long pause, he says (with a stutter), “When could we come take a look at it?”

 

By the sheer excitement in his voice, I know it’s time to let the cat out of the bag before he has a heart attack.

 

I’m going to digress a bit in case you aren’t familiar with all the phraseology that will follow.

 

First, Wapiti is famous for saying “YOU’RE OUT OF THE WILL” whenever you do something he doesn’t “like”.

 

Second, every Sunday evening at rendezvous, he does a skit that’s a play on a Revivalist preacher named, “Reverend Billy Saltine” form “Barney and Cecil Georgia, The Golden Buckle of the Bible Belt of the South” (Say Amen)

 

And last, as far as I know, only family every refers to him as Jack.

 

— back to the story

 

“Well, I’m not quite sure John, I need to make a trip back east to finalize the details on my donations. See, I’m giving the proceeds of this land sale to a charity for de-willed children and nephews. (I pause… nope, hasn’t caught on yet)

 

In fact, you might have heard of the preacher who heads up the charity… have you heard of Reverend Billy?”

 

“Reverend Billy Graham?” (with a serious shake to his voice… excitement abounds!)

 

“No, Reverend Billy Saltine.”

 

“Can’t say I have” (Are you kidding me?!)

 

“Yeah, he’s from Barney and Cecil Georgia… it is the golden buckle of the bible belt of the south after all”

 

(I pause to let it sink in… but all I have is silence)

 

“John, can you hold?”

 

“Oh sure.” (Voice still shaking)

 

I mute the phone, and fall on the floor laughing uncontrollably…

 

When I finally get it back together, I un-mute the phone.

 

“You still there, Jack?”

 

“Yes”

 

“Wapiti Dung, You’ve been had!”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Jack! Snap out of it! This is Brandon! This whole thing has been a joke!”

 

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

 

(He hung up on me)