Road Apples
March 30, 2009


Bull Sprott and tall tales

By Tim Sanders

Conventional wisdom has it that Haywood "Bull" Sprott is the very best amateur liar in Cherokee County. Most of his acquaintances agree that had he only applied himself, he could have become a successful professional liar–say a congressman, or even a journalist. But while congressmen lie to retain power, and journalists lie because it is in their job description, Bull has no ulterior motives. He lies for the pure joy of lying. Lying to Bull is as natural as breathing, and he has no prejudices when it comes to hyperbole. He’ll tackle any subject.

Bull, of course, would be offended if you were to call him a liar. He doesn’t consider what he does lying, only taking tiny grains of truth and customizing them into expansive sand castles of harmless creativity.

I called Bull last week to set up an interview. I told him I’d heard that he had led a very interesting life, and I wanted to write an article about him. He seemed delighted to do some heavy-duty lily-gilding. He gave me directions to his home, which he said was a sprawling, lakefront chalet in Cedar Bluff. That, of course, was a lie. Bull’s sprawling lakefront chalet was a single-wide mobile home, and the only water within two miles was a soggy spot in his backyard, caused by a septic tank leak.

"You probably heard about my military career," he said. What I’d heard was that he’d washed out of boot camp after three weeks due to an unfortunate incident with a curling iron and a chicken in the shower, but I said nothing.

"I was in special forces," he said. "They taught me how to kill a man with one finger."

He didn’t explain why anybody would want to kill a man who only had one finger, but he did explain that he’d won a Congressional Medal of Honor, which he’d have been happy to show me if he hadn’t just sent it out to be cleaned. He first said he’d retired as a major, but later forgot and promoted himself to lieutenant colonel. He said that since he was in a top secret special unit, he had no photos. "Up until 1971, the only living person who knew my code name was President Lynwood B. Johnson.”

"You knew LBJ?" I asked.

"I knew lots of famous people. I once met Eleanor Roosevelt. My daddy took her out in the river noodling for catfish while her husband was down there in Flat Springs fooling around with that Wallace Simpson woman. Eleanor got her finger took off by one of them big alligator snappers that weekend. It all worked out, though, because she had six fingers on her right hand anyway, so she could afford to lose one. Daddy he said she was a tough old bird.”

"Which river was that?" I asked.

"That was the Coosa. She come to Cherokee County to see Weiss Lake.”

"But there was no lake here during the Roosevelt administration. TVA dammed the Coosa a good fifteen years after FDR died.”

"Well of course, I know that. She come up here to see where the lake was going to be. Her and FDR had worked all that out right after Pearl Harbor. There ain’t no accidents when it comes to politics. They plan them things in secret, you know.”

"Okay, so what about that alligator snapper? I heard they only live further south, along the coastline.”

"All I know is when Daddy took it to the truck scales, it weighed 578 lbs., and after he cleaned it he found Eleanor’s finger with her ring still on it. He gave her the ring back, but she didn’t want the finger no more, so he put it up in a Mason jar. I kept it in the shed until the nail polish was all wore off, and then I sold it. It’s on display in the Smithsonian Institute now.”

I decided not to argue the point. "That was a really big turtle," I said.

"Speaking of big turtles, I once run into what I thought was a pine log laying across a dirt road in Escambia County, Florida. I was working up a census count, and when I got out to move that log, it weren’t no log at all, but the biggest rattlesnake you ever seen. It was easy four foot around. I put that old Rambler in reverse and got outta there. I later heard two Holstein cows come up missing just down the road from where I seen that snake sunning hisself. You probably never heard about snakes that big, but there’s lots of things you never hear about because they don’t want you to know. They’re afraid of a general panic, you know.”

"Panic?”

“That’s right. That’s why you never hear no more about chicken beaks, horse eyeballs, or worms in hamburger meat. Years ago they found out that fast food restaurants was putting all kinds of filler into their hamburger. All the papers said so, but then all of a sudden you didn’t hear no more about it. I had some very close friends name of Cosgrove who had a mom and pop worm farm in Albertville. They sold red wigglers to Krystal’s for their little burgers, and nightcrawlers to McDonald’s for their quarter-pounders.”

"So I guess you don’t eat at fast food restaurants anymore, huh?”

"Oh sure I do. I done some reading on it, and worms is one of the most nutritious foods there is. There was a man in Tokyo who ate worms every single day of his life, and he lived to be 143. He finally choked on a centipede. And speaking of choking, did you know that after Green Acres filmed their last show, the cast had a special dinner and barbecued Arnold Ziffel?”

I told him I’d suspected as much.

"And did I ever tell you about when I took Ann-Margret to a Taiwanese restaurant for General Chiang’s deep fried ginger cat with scallions and steamed broccoli? Chiang Kai-shek owned the restaurant, and he hand-raised his own cats. Fed ‘em tuna, but they never had a fishy taste. Every year they’d have a cat roundup and drive ‘em to the stockyards in Taipei. It took three months, and was very dangerous!”

I lied and said he’d told me.

"How about when I wrote ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ for George Jones, and then he stole my riding mower?”

I nodded, and headed for my car with him hot on my heels.

"Okay then," he shouted, "did you know that Hillary Clinton had surgery at UAB Hospital to have her tail removed in 1978?”

I didn’t answer, but I could just imagine it at the Smithsonian, on display in a Mason jar right alongside Eleanor Roosevelt’s sixth finger.