In W.P. Kinsella's book, "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" there's a common theme: Things are out of kilter in Johnson County.
The story takes place in Iowa City in the mid '80s and it's about a young man's quest to find information on an exhibition baseball game that supposedly took place in July of 1908 between the Chicago Cubs and a team of amateur All-Stars from a local league called the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. The thing is, there is absolutely no information available about this game, or any evidence that the Iowa Baseball Confederacy league even existed.
There was nothing written in the newspapers from during that time, and people who were alive don't seem to have any recollection of the game, or even the league itself. It surely would have been a major event and widely covered by the press. But, it's as if the entire event somehow vanished through the cracks of time.
The book is about the young man's quest to find any information he can. As he slowly begins to dig up details of the game, it becomes a can of worms unlike anything that he could have imagined. In the book, the league was indeed real and the game actually did happen. However, the events that unfolded were as unreal as grass growing on the moon. To say that the young man opened Pandora's Box would be a huge understatement. Things got so weird and so crazy that... Well, just read the book for yourself. Seriously. It's worth it. (Especially if you are familiar with the Iowa City area.)
Things were most certainly out of kilter in Johnson County, Iowa in 1908. And, in what perhaps is a simple twist of irony, things are currently out of kilter 85 miles to the west in southern Jasper County.
Or at least, things were. Are they still?
High strangeness was afoot here in Jasper County... This I know for sure. While the timeframe is blurry, I'm going to guess that most of the weirdness occurred between the 1940s and the early 1980s. But who actually knows?
What I'm referring to is a cryptid that allegedly roamed the South Skunk River near the tiny town of Metz, Iowa. We called it the Mudman, but it's formal name was The Metz Mudman.
This creature, thought to either be a feral human who caked himself in mud, or a Bigfoot type life form, was a common topic of conversation in my childhood circles during in the 1970s. It continued to be a topic well into my formative school years in the 1980s. For several years around Halloween, my parents would drive us out to the Metz area (my brother, my sister and me) and proceed to fill our heads with stories about the evil that lurked below the bridge that crosses the South Skunk. There were many "Boogeyman" moments that actually happened, some presumably set up by my father, who was keen on playing pranks, and others... I'm not so sure about. But it was always eerie and tense, and the strangeness was always high. And it was always incredibly fun. We kids LOVED going out there and getting the hell scared out of us.
Fast forward to 2022. I went to do research on this local cryptid, and like the character in Kinsella's book I found that there is barely any information available. There is little or nothing in the newspapers about it, and a routine internet search yielded zero results. Finding people who have had personal accounts has been next to impossible. That being said, I know that the truth is out there. I've lived it! It may have been a kaleidoscope of sliding mirrors - the mirrors being truth and fiction, but my personal experiences were real. Despite any prankery that was going on, there's no denying the strangeness that filled the air. Nor the uneasiness, nor the tension. Things in southern Jasper County were definitely out of kilter when I was a kid, and I'm guessing that they still are.
The truth will always be stranger than fiction. This blog will be a testament to that notion, as I plan to wade the waters of the South Skunk River and get to the bottom of what this strangeness is all about. This is where I will chronicle my quest for the truth, so feel free to read and share. This wont be the first time I've opened a can of worms while sitting next to a river, but with a simple twist of irony, it could be the strangest.
Thank you for reading.
"Perhaps crossing the barriers of time has freed me." - Line from Iowa Baseball Confederacy
Np: "I Go Ape" - Wee Willie Harris