Weird stories, odd places

A few words with Bill Geist

Scott C. Yates, Special to the Rocky

Published May 18, 2007 at midnight

Text size

More Books

More stories »

As CBS News Sunday Morning's roving correspondent, Bill Geist has covered more miles chronicling the quirks of those off the beaten track than a stray dog has fleas. Now, he's compiled his favorite stories in Way off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small Town America. Coloradans will be pleased to discover they haven't been ignored: Mike the Headless Chicken (a Fruita chicken that managed to survive for two years after its head was removed); the man who keeps his dead grandfather frozen in a shed in Nederland; and a guy in Cortez who uses a vacuum to power-suck prairie dogs out of their homes - they're all here. Geist spoke to the Rocky about these stories and more before his appearance next week in Denver.

Q: I did a totally unscientific survey, but it sure seems like Colorado is mentioned in your book more than any other state.

A: I believe that it is. I went back and looked, and a lot of my favorite pieces were from Colorado . . . the frozen dead guy in Nederland, Mike the Headless Chicken. . . .

Q: And the prairie dog sucker . . .

A: Oh, gosh, yeah. Who could forget. Those are three of my very favorites, absolutely. It's interesting because it turns out I very rarely get to the northeast for a strange story. . . . I get a lot of mail from people in Colorado. They seem to be a little different, which is great. We encourage that.

Q: Do you spend a lot of time looking on the Internet at the Cortez Journal for research?

A: (Laughs.) Let me write that one down. No, I don't spend a lot of time on the Internet. We just look at the suggestions that come in the mail. I'm told that I'm actually responsible for the Frozen Dead Guy festival because the people in Nederland saw my piece on Mike the Headless Chicken, and they said, "We could come up with a festival that's weirder than that." I'm not really trying to encourage festivals, but I go to a lot of them, don't I?

Q: Well, festivals are a lot of fun.

A: They are, but I have to say the prairie dog suckers were very serious. That was one of the great moments in my journalistic career, watching the dark blob go through the tube into the truck. Of course, we had to show inside the truck to show they survived.

Q: Rural humor isn't as sophisticated as big city humor, but it can actually be much funnier - like the turkey race in Cuero, Texas, where they named the turkey "Paycheck" because "nothing goes faster than a paycheck."

A: There's a lot of truth in that. I think maybe people (in rural areas) have a better perspective on life. By that, I mean maybe they don't take themselves quite so seriously.

Q: Yeah. I always think about the time I called to get a price on some rock from a dirt and rock yard and the guy said, "Well, it's dirt cheap." If you take yourself too seriously - if you think of yourself as an urbane, erudite person - you're not going to tell that joke.

A: Exactly. I'm not sure precisely what that is - humor is a difficult thing to parse - but I just know that I'm more drawn to that kind of thing. It's not for everyone. My wife hated the Mike the Headless chicken story; she hated looking at that photo.

Q: But you needed that photo so people would believe the story.

A: That's right. We had to show the Life magazine (in which a photo of the chicken appeared) and everything. It's interesting because when I first started doing this kind of story for The New York Times, the secret I had was I'd spend like 48 hours with these people standing in these odd places, and I'd come back to the office and they'd say, "Oh, that guy couldn't have really said that." Now we have the tapes, so they don't say that to me any more, so that's good.

Q: Comedy is hard, but you must feel pretty lucky to be doing the stuff you're doing when the networks are full of what I call the one-name stories: Imus, Britney, Paris, etc.

A: You're right. There are so many of those stories that I'm just so thrilled that I don't have to cover them. I don't think I could do it. . . . When I started, I covered fires and zoning boards . . . but nowadays it's all these non-stories that are kind of manufactured.

Q: You've covered a lot of rural America. Is it time to start going overseas? Will we see a Bill Geist-style story from Iraq?

A: When I started doing this kind of thing in the 1970s - when everyone was doing all this hard-news investigative reporting with Watergate and everything - that's when I started doing off-beat stuff because nobody else was doing it. Now we live in a time when there's so much off-beat coverage, I'm tempted to go the other way. I mean, nobody's doing hard investigative stuff. Not much, anyway.

Q: I see what you're saying.

A: But I'm not going to do it (laughs). I was a photographer in the Army, in Vietnam, so I don't really feel any need to go to Iraq.

Q: And there's still plenty of ground to cover here in the States.

A: Yes, but it's harder to find, especially sitting here in an office in New York. I don't get as many of the great letters that I used to get. I don't think there's a PR person behind any of the stories in that book, which is interesting because when you analyze the stories that are in the paper or on TV, all of them seem to have some PR person behind them.

Quotes from 'Way Off the Road'

"It's like drilling for oil; sometimes you come up dry."

Gay Balfour, who uses a sewer vacuum to suck prairie dogs from their holes (Cortez)

"To say it very simply, freezer burn may very well have set in."

One neighbor, on the frozen dead guy stored in a backyard shed (Nederland)

"That was used in World War II. It helped win the war. That was one of the wrecker's finest hours, I believe."

Frank Thomas, curator of the Tow Truck Museum, pointing out a U.S. Army tow truck (Chattanooga, Tenn.)

"I thought it was you! I could tell by your voice when you ordered. Love your show. You're a class act, Bill; welcome to the Branson Dairy Queen."

Unnamed Dairy Queen manager to Geist (Branson, Mo.)

Bill Geist

• When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday (free tickets for a place in line will be handed out at 6:30 p.m.; one ticket per person in line).

• Where: Tattered Cover LoDo, 1628 16th St.