squatch what happens
Or, a rollicking romp through the adventures of Tom Slick, Yeti Hunter.
Hi friends!
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Okay. On with the show.
When you catalogue dirtbags semi-professionally, you have to keep your head on a swivel. Sure, a historical weirdo is likely lurking in the pages of a nonfiction book or a documentary. But sometimes, a dirtbag strikes when you’re least expecting it.
This time, I was cleaning the bathroom and catching up on back episodes of my comfort podcast, Judge John Hodgman. Usually this isn’t a history podcast, nor are the people on it dirtbags. John Hodgman adjudicates the important interpersonal disputes in our daily lives, such as “can I flush my (still-living) mother’s ashes down a toilet at Disney World?” or “what should I do if my friend’s herd of miniature ponies are ill-mannered and I’m worried they’ll knock her down?”
But then I heard John speak the sentence “this man stole a Yeti hand from a monastery and smuggled it across national borders” and I said, aloud, “NOW HOLD ON A MOMENT, SIR.”
Anyway, my bathroom still needs to be cleaned, but now we all get to enjoy the story of:
Thomas Baker Slick, Jr., The World’s Most Famous 20th Century Yeti Hunter (Not a Hotly Contested Title)
Tom Slick was born in 1916 in Oklahoma, where his family had moved in search of fame, fortune, and oil (mostly oil) about 10 years before. Slick’s father had found a giant oil well in 1912 and within the decade would be one of the richest oil magnates in the country.
Tom Slick’s father’s name was also Tom Slick, but every single source I consulted referred to him by his nickname, “King of the Wildcatters.” Not one of these sources took the time to explain to me what the fuck that means, and for that, I salute them.
Mr. K. of the W. died when Slick was 14, leaving the family with about $100 million in inherited oil baron wealth. Slick’s mother, Berenice, remarried a few years later. This is not important to the story in any meaningful way, but I bring it up because Slick’s stepfather, Charles Urschel, was later kidnapped and held for ransom by Machine Gun Kelly.
Did you guys all know that Machine Gun Kelly was a 1930s gangster? And not, as my dumb ass assumed, an original name Megan Fox’s boyfriend came up with for his rap career? For a full 15 seconds I was sitting here thinking “how fucking old is Machine Gun Kelly??”
Anyhow. I disappoint myself in new ways every day. Back to the story.
Say Yes to the Ness
Slick attended Yale University, a thing he managed a) because he seems to have been pretty smart, and b) because he had just inherited $100 million and, then as now, that helps. He enrolled in a pre-med program and immersed himself in studying the sciences. Meanwhile, he spent his nights and weekends studying my personal favorite semi-academic subject:
Cryptozoology!
In case you aren’t familiar, cryptozoology is the study of animals or creatures that have not yet been proven to exist. I’m talking your Jersey Devils. Your Mothmen. Your chupacabras. The whole pantheon of cryptids. It’s biology for whimsical weirdos and it fills my heart with joy and gladness every time I think about it. Mothman for president.
Slick had one notable venture into applied cryptozoology during his time at Yale: the 1937 sea voyage he and a bunch of frat boys took to Scotland to see if they could find the Loch Ness Monster. This is way better than any spring break trip I ever took and makes me feel like I wasted my college years. The group found no sign of Nessie (alas), and Slick returned stateside to receive his degree.
In his 20s and 30s, Slick was—to my enormous surprise—a pretty reputable scientist! He founded a number of labs and research institutes that still exist today, including the Texas Biomedical Research Institute and the Southwest Research Institute. He invented something called the “lift-slab construction method,” which I’m sure is very interesting to people in the concrete business.
But I am not in the concrete business! I am a cryptozoological enthusiast who wants to hear about this guy’s YETI HUNTING!! So let’s zoom ahead to 1957.
Whoa Black Yeti, Bambalam
(This pun is terrible and yes I have been singing it around my apartment all day.)
Slick seems to have been an equal-opportunity cryptid fan in the early days, but as time went on, a real fascination emerged for the yeti.
Programming note: the yeti has many alleged relatives, depending on where in the world it’s supposed to be and how goofy you want to sound when describing it. Bigfoot. Sasquatch. The Abominable Snowman, or ABSM. I’m using all of them interchangeably throughout this story, both to create more pun opportunities and because sasquatch is funnier to say than yeti in most contexts. Don’t come at me, crypto(zoology) bros.
The Loch Ness Spring Break Cryptid Hunt had been a bust, but this time Slick was a full-blown adult in charge of a real expedition, and he wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. He shelled out the cash for a months-long expedition to Nepal, accompanied by multiple fellow “adventurers.” He brought a pack of bloodhounds with him to track the ABSM, outfitting them all with four adorable little snow boots each.
And he did his research!
During his travels, Slick heard tell of a monastery in the Himalayan village of Pangboche that allegedly housed yeti relics. The story goes that long ago, a Buddhist monk entered a cave and meditated so hard that a yeti became his servant and converted to Buddhism. After the yeti’s death, the monk brought its hand and scalp back to the monastery and broke them out for special occasions, like medieval Catholics were wont to do with the fingernails of Saint Jerome or what have you.
Let me repeat that louder for the folks in the back who maybe don’t recognize how excited I am by this:
SAINT SASQUATCH!
I’ve written about wild old-timey Christian saints for this publication before, but the Buddhists have officially won. Sorry, all contenders. Saint Sasquatch forever.
Mission Imsquatchible
Slick resembles me in at least one respect: he too was extremely excited by the rumors of Saint Sasquatch and the Pangboche Hand. However, he differs from me in that he decided to stage a heist to steal the yeti relics and bring them back to a lab for testing.
I cannot emphasize enough how much I would pay for a blow-by-blow description of this heist. I couldn’t find one anywhere, and it remains the greatest disappointment of my month. If you have access to any heretofore unknown journals describing in excruciating detail Oceans 1957: Yeti Edition, please send them to me posthaste.
What we do know, however, is that Slick and his adventurers managed to get their mittens on a thumb bone of the Pangboche Hand and stole it from the monastery. They needed to get it out of Nepal but were worried about how the interaction with customs would go. I mean, understandably. One can imagine the scene:
Customs Agent: anything to declare?
Slick, sweating profusely: nope
Customs Agent: no holy bones of cryptids in your possession?
Slick: not a one
Customs Agent, holding up a yeti-shaped bone: what’s this, then?
Slick, holding up a $100 bill: would Mr. Franklin be able to convince you that you never saw anything?
Customs Agent: no. seriously. what the fuck is this.
Fortunately, Slick had an accomplice to help him smuggle the finger bone across the border from Nepal into India.
I will give you 400 guesses who this accomplice was. You will need every single one of them.
Because the person who snuck the thumb bone of the Pangboche Hand into India, hidden in his wife’s suitcase, was none other than Hollywood Icon Jimmy Stewart.
Why? I have no idea! But I’m so glad to know this fact! I will never be able to watch It’s a Wonderful Life again without announcing to the entire room that this man once heisted a yeti.
Allegedly, Stewart hid the finger bone in his wife’s underwear, because that would make it less likely for customs officials to search. And it worked! One of the adventurers described the scene in a letter as follows:
“Then, three days later, the hotel’s concierge called from reception to say that there was a British customs officer in the hotel lobby asking to see them […] and could he send him up. They said yes, of course and a few minutes later a young British customs official appeared at the door of their suite, Gloria’s lingerie case in hand. They gave the man a cup of tea, had a pleasant chat and signed a receipt for the case which, Gloria noticed, was locked and had not been opened. Ushering the young man out the door, she pointed this out to him and asked why it not been opened and examined by Customs. ‘Oh madame,’ said the young man, ‘certainly not. A British customs official would never open a lady’s lingerie case’.”
Once again, law enforcement being afraid of “women’s matters” has been helpful in the act of smuggling mysterious bones for pseudo-scientific reasons. If I had a nickel for every time this has happened in a Dirtbags Through the Ages story, I would have two nickels.
I Wish This Story Had Gone On for Another Four Decades But Alas Planes Need Both Wings to Fly
Jimmy Stewart and Slick got the finger bone to a lab in London, where a physical examination proved that the hand was definitely not a yeti. Later, in 1991, DNA testing confirmed this not-terribly-surprising finding. A disappointment? Maybe. Or is it proof that Saint Sasquatch performed a miracle and transformed his DNA post-mortem? All things are possible through Squatch who strengthens me.2
Not deterred in the slightest, Slick continued to split his time between funding actual-factual science and taking his kids on camping trips to see if he could spot Bigfoot. He also founded something called the Mind Science Foundation, which is doing real and interesting neurological research despite having this image of Tom Slick on its website that made me assume Scientology was involved somehow:
Tom Slick’s adventuring career was tragically cut short in 1962, when he was flying in his private plane over Montana (probably in search of squatch) and the plane started to disintegrate mid-flight. One of the wings fell off, and the plane crashed, killing Slick at the age of 46. One can only imagine how much more he could have accomplished had he survived just five more years until 1967, when everyone started seeing Mothman in New Jersey. Imagine what relics he and Elizabeth Taylor could have stolen.
Lastly, one anecdote for the road: apparently Nicolas Cage was cast as Tom Slick in a movie called Tom Slick: Monster Hunter, which never saw the light of day. This film is my Library of Alexandria and I will never stop mourning its loss. There’s still time for Hollywood to right this wrong.
All right, friends, that’s all for this issue of Dirtbags Through the Ages. I can’t believe it’s taken me four years before I did a cryptozoology story in this publication, and if you know any other good ones, I implore you to send them to me, because you all can tell how much joy I experienced researching this one.
Until next time, be well, and please share in the comments what you think sasquatch would be the patron saint of, noting that I myself am leaning toward women’s underwear and dentistry,
-Allison
I will never be more than 40% of a Serious Anything Person. I know who I am. Still baffles me I’m allowed to make decisions without asking a real adult for permission.
I need you to know how long I spent trying to come up with a good Bigfoot transubstantiation pun. I failed, but there’s definitely one out there if you want to do me a solid and help.
So his Dad was an oil slick, have I got that right?
This newsletter is always delightful, but the combination of Machine Gun Kelly and Whoa Black Yeti Bambalam really put this one over the top for me. Excellent work.