MINNEAPOLIS FAMILY GUESTS OF BIGFOOT
After the concert, while interviewing people from the audience for their reactions to the event, this journalist met a family of five: Norm and Naomi Nismann and their three children, residents of Minneapolis, who had an interesting story to tell. They had been caught up in this week's blizzard along with thousands of others, stranded overnight at a rest station on Highway 35.
"We'd been stuck in traffic for hours, inching through the snow and just couldn't drive any more so we stopped at one of those big Freeway gas stations. Along with hundreds of other cars and trucks and busses, almost impossible to find any place to park at all. There were no vacancies in the motels, of course, the restaurant was filled to the bursting point with people who wouldn't leave because they were trying to keep warm.
We tried to sleep in our car but it was just too cold, even with the motor running and we had only one blanket, the kids were crying. It was obvious we could risk freezing to death, so about 9 pm we were just about to give up and go back to the restaurant where we would try to find enough space, at least for the kids, to sit up all night. But we are a Christian family and first we tried praying, asking Our Good Lord for assistance in this tribulation.
And He came through.
We heard a rap-rap on our window. A very lovely young Asian American woman invited us to come and sleep in their bus, which she said was warm. We didn't understand how she'd known that we needed help, but she said Adam had heard the kids crying. Having just been praying I thought she meant Adam from the Bible, which seemed rather confusing. Also there was a blizzard going on and the wind was howling, so how anyone could have heard us in our car was a mystery. Anyway, we had no choice but to accept.
But first she wanted to explain something about the other passengers on her bus so that we "wouldn't get scared" when we met them. I half-assumed the others in the bus were also Asians, maybe a family, so I said "Oh, don't worry, we're not racists, we're Christians".
But she said that they were a band of musicians on a concert tour. For a second I thought: musicians, hippies, drugs, maybe this wasn't such a good idea. But my wife Naomi said, "Never mind, we have to get these kids somewhere warm!" Then the girl, whose name was Maki, said "what I need to tell you is that we have three Sasquatches in our band. You know, Bigfoot? So don't freak out, ok?"
Me, I drew a blank, but Mathilda, our 10-year-old daughter, got all excited, almost screaming "Sasquatches in a band? OMG, are you with Squatch & Friends?" And Gene, our 8-year old son asked, "The guy you called Adam is... is he Adam Leroy Forest?" Even little 6-year-old Shannon seemed to know what was going on, she asked Maki, "Masnia too?" Maki nodded and the kids went even more crazy, hopping up and down and shrieking with joy.
My wife and I looked at each other, completely left out. But then she said, "Wait, I've heard those names somewhere before..."
But our kids were completely unwilling to wait another second, out of the car into the snow, running. So we had to follow Maki to her bus, before really understanding just what was happening. The bus was close by, but buried under snow, so we couldn't really see much of it. Then a door opened for us and it was warm inside, so in we went. It was like a big motor home, with sofas and tables, wonderfully cozy and warm and full of people.
I was still confused about what we were getting into, but could hear the kids ahead of us shouting and laughing, so it didn't seem to be too dangerous. My glasses steamed up and I was blind for a few seconds while stumbling in from the cold. So my first impression of Adam was his voice saying, "Hi folks, welcome aboard."
It struck me as a good voice: warm, honest, friendly. Young but wise, powerful but comforting. Amazing voice, really. I got the feeling he'd make a good preacher. I rubbed my glasses dry and put them on so that I could finally see our host. Then I understood what Maki had been trying to tell us and remembered exactly who Adam Leroy Forest used to be: the world-famous Baby Bigfoot from some little town in Washington state. Only that had been almost 20 years ago and he wasn't a baby any more.
Yes, he was huge, but that wasn't really my main impression: his size didn't scare me because I could see that he was a decent human being. He had a nice smile. The Bigfoot = Monster idea never occurred to me. But I was impressed, oh yes. And then I saw his girl friend Magga-- she was shorter than him, but not by much. Good thing it was a big bus, high to the ceiling. There were also a lot of other people in it, in fact the whole band they call Squatch & Friends was there. About eight people, and then the five of us, so that bus was rather filled up.
The kids were not scared one bit, but they did freeze in awe, unable to believe that they were among their musical idols. Maybe they'd have done the same for Beyonce or Taylor Swift, but seemed to be looking at the girl they called Masnia like she was the Virgin Mary Herself. Their mouths hung open. Maybe I did too, she was certainly beautiful. I think Naomi nudged me so I wouldn't stare.
But I couldn't help it; all the girls in that bus were beauties, even the Sasquatches. Melly and Lissandra, Maki too, stunning, a poor husband didn't stand a chance of not gawking enough to make his wife jealous. I almost had to pray for deliverance from temptation. At first I supposed they were all beautiful because they were professional entertainers: singers, dancers, musicians. I learned that Melly was the daughter of once movie star Sally Rathers, so figured they'd all been gathered up by some Hollywood producer. But we learned that it was purely by coincidence, they were a band because the original four of them had gone to high school together. They were all still very young, in their early 20's.
Besides Adam, there were two other young men in the bus. One was a Salish Indian named Pokey who was the band's drummer. The other was this latin Romeo-looking guy who'd been strumming a classical guitar in the background: when I heard a casually fantastic riff I suddenly recognized that he was none other than Miguel deSanto! Not that I'm a devoted fan of flamenco or anything, but I'd seen him on TV and knew who he was.
They were all very friendly, especially to our children. Masnia seemed to be just as fascinated by our kids as they were of her. She's new to our world and hadn't met many-- uh --human children, I guess. She went to them and shook their hands. She's big for a girl but small for a Bigfoot, plus the youngest person in the bus, so she's less intimidating than Adam and Magga, just because of scale. Although, I guess the kids weren't really intimidated by them either, that was only my wife and I, because they all hopped up onto his lap, like he was a giant Santa Claus.
He sat down on a sofa, which brought his head down to our level, opened his arms to greet them and they had just automatically jumped into his embrace. I think they wanted to make sure he was real. Couldn't blame them, he did look like a fantasy figure, maybe from a super hero comic or Lord of the Rings movie. We parents started to apologize for our kid's over-enthusiastic behavior, but Adam was laughing and giving them a collective hug, obviously not put out in any way.
They showed us to the bedroom in the back of the bus. We passed six bunk beds, three on each side, with curtains for a minimum of privacy, all very comfy for a band on the road. I was slightly apprehensive about how clean a Bigfoot's bed would be, but it was very neat, a wall-to-wall mattress spacious enough for at least two or three Bigfoots, so there was plenty of room for our family of five. Which is to say big enough for an orgy, but I tried not to fantasize about the infamous lifestyle of rock bands on tour, since our kids needed to spend the night there.
We had to ask where Adam and Magga would sleep, since they were clearly too big to fit into the bunkbeds. "There's plenty of room on the floor," he told us, so we had to protest, but he explained that they often sleep on rocks out in nature, "so a blanket on the floor is almost too much luxury."
It was clear that Adam and Magga usually slept together in the back room, since there was no other place for them to be. I became concerned about the morality of that, since I was pretty sure they were not married. So I thought maybe Sasquatches have a different morality than humans. Then I realized that all these young people on that bus were quite unsupervised by any responsible Christian adult, they could ALL behave as immorally as they wished to. After all, this was a rock band on tour! So should we be there with our children?
But Naomi reminded me that the invitation to the bus had been an answer to prayer, it was dangerously cold outside, and that I should have faith that Our Lord would not be leading us astray. And in fact, we saw no drugs, no indecencies whatsoever, nor even unChristian behavior. They seemed to be nice people.
They put on some tea, offered some kind of granola or "muesli" to eat-- the kids loved it. I asked them about their music-- although the kids already seemed to know every song. So Adam pulled out a guitar-- an oversized instrument made just for his great big hands-- and played Mean To Me. I recalled having heard it on the radio lots of times without really registering who had performed it. It was peppy, fun, and before it was done the whole band had joined in. We had half an hour's private concert, which was really quite wonderful.
Several of the songs they played were quite spiritual in nature, although not exactly religious. Take Me Seeking, Self-Same Trip, So Long Babylon, I found them actually... inspirational. Although I did feel some concern that they could just as well be at odds with Christian doctrine, they also somehow made me feel open to new ideas. Which is to say, uncertain that my own faith is as perfect as it should be. But is that good or bad?
We tried to go to bed about 11:00 PM. But it was hard to get the kids to stay in the room with us, they kept going out to be with the Sasquatches, sitting on Adam and Magga and having stories told. Finally we gave up and let them enjoy the experience. They fell asleep after midnight and so did we, all cozy and warm instead of freezing to death.
In the morning the Freeway was bulldozed free once again, we could finish our trip home, so we said good-bye to our new friends. Later that evening we saw on TV News the already famous videos of Adam and Magga helping the police in the snow.
We knew that the band would be playing in St Paul Tuesday, but that concert was already sold out. Then we learned there'd be another concert tonight, so we bought tickets and here we are. Now we love their music, just like our kids.
Looking back on it now, Adam seems even bigger than my first impression.
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