Pope Lick Nuisance

the kids behind an urban legend get their due…

Pope Lick Nuisance

by Thomas Pluck

It wasn’t easy growing up in Pope Lick.

I bet you can guess why.

It’s named after Pope Lick creek, which snakes all the way through the woods of our town, and a hundred-foot-tall railroad bridge crosses overhead like the skeleton of a steel dinosaur. Those woods are also home to a legendary monster, an ornery goat-headed creature said to haunt the trestle and the surrounding woods. A monster so fearsomely ugly that anyone brave or stupid enough to walk across the bridge’s span would leap to their deaths at the sight of him. Or maybe the creature would butt them off the edge to their doom.

The folks who fell weren’t in condition to tell.

Older kids snickered that the Pope Lick Monster was the result of an illicit union between a lonely farmer and his favorite nanny goat, but no one knew where the tales came from. Some said he was the Devil, which I’m more inclined to believe, because my town isn’t full of people who would do such things, even though kids from the city in Louisville liked to call us ‘Pope Lickers.’

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Pope Lick kids bonded because of that name-calling. The Louisville teens lucky enough to have cars to borrow and friends to take riding in them like to make use of Pope Lick creek’s remote location and sinister legend for slow journeys in the moonlight.

Us kids not blessed with such good fortune would hide in the woods as their cars stopped beneath the trestle. Waiting as the driver whispered tales of the Goatman and his bloody axe to the girl shivering at his side. Telling how the last girl got dragged out the door, and if she didn’t stay close, the Goatman would leap onto the hood waving the head of his latest victim.

About then one of us would make a little noise:

Baa.

The driver usually paused and peered into the woods. Then begin again, trying to frighten his date into a cuddle.

And we’d make the noise again.

He’d frown in disbelief and flick the brights on. Hoping maybe it was an owl with the hiccups. And the girl would punch his arm and roll up her window.

All the while one of us—-we took turns—sneaked up on the driver’s side. And just when the driver was ready to stick his head out to challenge the darkness and affirm his machismo, he’d see the Goatman banging on the roof and waving a rusty hatchet.

Don’t matter what car they were driving, they raced out of there fast.

We’d jump and laugh and chase them as far as we could. Whoever got to be the ‘Goatman’ that night wore a burlap sack and a mask we made in wood shop and decorated with papier-mâché.

Now you can judge, but there wasn’t much else to do in Pope Lick if you were too young to borrow the car and had no money spend if you did.

I used to laugh at our victims, but I don’t anymore. Because one night atop that trestle, I learned what real fear was.