Description:
Bigfoot in the Delta? You bet. And once word got out, two intrepid hunters decided to bag the Bigfoot. Well, sorta bag him, anyway. Well, they sorta decided.
Brief description: John Pritchard, born in 1938, is a native of the Mississippi Delta and a county therein that had only one paved road, even after World War II. His father-the son of a hardwood lumberman from Indiana who came to live in Memphis in 1910-was an architect and a Fellow in the AIA. Pritchard's mother, Miss Charlie, was a Delta girl of the 1920s, who said tootle-loo and twenty-three-skiddoo, did the Black Bottom and the Charleston, rode the train to all the dances, understood herself, exemplified the "place," was the best of her time, and possessed both a DKE and an SAE fraternity pin, given to her by two of her many admirers. Indeed, Pritchard's parents were exceedingly good and fine and kind and generous. Yet, though he would say "involuntarily," he strained their capacity. And Pritchard, himself, has a son, a man he says is the last Knight of the Round Table and the noblest of them all! More biographical commentary can be found in the "Appendix" of Hunters. Please, be aware that none of it is complete. Ever. Then, by way of mild non sequitur, Pritchard will add that religion lost all credibility when he, in the thick Episcopal fog of Sewanee, was a cadet at SMA. But, though he rejects religious "truths" as myth, he believes in the truth of myths. Mostly the old ones. He earned diplomas from three schools: Sewanee Military Academy (Secondary 1956), Ole Miss (BA 1960), and Memphis State (MA 1968). Other places he "attended" include: Miss Lee's Kindergarten (Memphis), Tunica County Consolidated (the Mississippi Delta), Thomas Jefferson Grammar School (Arlington, Virginia), Columbia University (NYC), Vanderbilt University, and the Nashville Night (YMCA) Law School [One Quarter]. A life of privilege was difficult. Predictably, Pritchard "taught" some sort of English in several institutions and, as it turned out, did the greater part of that-very happily-at Shelby State, which became Southwest Tennessee Community College, in Memphis. Though he no longer lives in the Mississippi Delta, the Delta most certainly lives in him-at his odd little rustic Midtown Memphis house, not far from where, as David Cohn explained: "the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel