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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

After I was here, I was there.

I’ve been to St. Joseph, Missouri, a few times.

Each time, I’ve stopped at the Jesse James Home. The notorious outlaw Jesse James was shot and killed in the house on April 3, 1882, by Bob Ford, a member of the James gang, who wished to collect a $10,000 reward, of which he received little. Jesse died at the age of 34 after a career as an outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla and leader of the James–Younger Gang. He was living with his wife and two children under the assumed name of Tom Howard at the time of his death. He had married his cousin because he wanted his children to look alike. Jesse was shot from behind while he stood on a chair to straighten a picture on the wall.

Rumors of Jesse’s survival proliferated. J. Frank Dalton of Texas claimed to have 32 bullet wounds and rope burns around his neck when he died in 1951 at 101. Jesse would have been older. His headstone bears the name of “Jesse Woodson James.” The James family disputed his assertion, maintaining that when Jesse was shot, it was game over and it had been impossible for him to walk it off. In 1995, a forensic scientist exhumed the outlaw’s body at Kearney, Missouri, for DNA tests. The results showed a 99.7% certainty that it was Jesse James. In an odd coincidence,

Jesse James, Jr., the son of the real Jesse James, who had become a lawyer, also died in 1951.

Wild Bill Hickok enjoyed playing cards, but Jesse James didn’t because of the spilled beer and whiskey. Jesse couldn’t deal with sticky cards, and he couldn’t eat enough Doritos to become a ranch hand. I don’t think he tried raising goats.

A St. Joseph resident, who claimed to be a relative of Jesse James, even though he denied ever robbing a bank, said he and his brother were having lunch in a field of purple-flowered henbit growing along a hiking trail when they spotted a big hole at the edge of a woods and wondered how deep it was. They dropped a pebble into it and listened for it to hit bottom. Not a sound. They tossed a boulder in, and there was still no noise. They scouted around for something bigger to drop into the hole and stumbled upon a railroad tie. They dragged it over to the hole and pushed it in. Not a peep. Suddenly, a goat, acting like a motor goat, ran out of the woods and jumped into the hole. They thought that was strange, but they had dirt to scratch and eggs to lay.

As they walked home, they met a farmer who asked if they had seen his goat. They told him the only goat they’d seen had come running at a full gallop out of the woods and jumped into a hole.

The farmer said, “Well, that couldn’t have been my billy goat. He was tied to a railroad tie.”

When I was a boy, a neighbor had a billy goat, which smelled like nothing should smell. An insurance man, intent on selling the neighbor oodles of insurance (term, whole, universal and variable life), drove into the farmyard. He was behind the wheel of a brand-spanking new car that he intended to present as proof of his success in selling insurance policies. He’d won a sales contest or three thanks to his dogged persistence. The billy goat was unimpressed. Before the neighbor could open his front door, the goat had jumped on the hood of the salesman’s car before climbing onto its roof. The insurance guy left in a huff, or it might have been in a Buick as the billy goat slid off the car.

The neighbor said the insurance agent never set a wheel on the place again. He reckoned it saved him a lot of money he’d have had to use to pay premiums. He added, “Of course, that insurance fella had to smell better than that blamed billy goat.”

There was a common theme in the claims of J. Frank Dalton, the two guys tiptoeing through the henbit, and the neighbor’s billy goat dancing on an automobile.

Something smelled.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.