Boomerang Track - Dodge Caravan makes a run for it
Boomerang Trackers capture the attempted escape of one of two stolen Dodge Caravans from a Montreal neighbourhood
The Goat Man
The picture hung in my parents’ home for years before I finally asked about it: a pencil sketch of a gentle old man looking like some unkempt, nomadic Santa Claus, cradling a baby goat in his strong, leathery hands. Behind him, a team of older goats pulled a ramshackle, trash-strewn wagon, a placard on its roof screaming “GOD IS NOT DEAD.”
As a kid, I dismissed the drawing as yet another curiosity that my parents would buy in the folk art galleries and antique stores that surrounded our North Georgia mountain home. But when I began writing columns for the local paper and became hungry for story material, I asked my mother one day about that strange old man on the wall. She flipped the picture around with a smile, revealing a manilla folder full of newspaper articles taped to the back, waiting for the day that I would ask.
That was how I first became acquainted with the fascinating life of Mr. Ches McCartney, a.k.a. the “Goat Man.”
For over five decades, the Goat Man roamed the highways and byways of the South, fueled by little more than simple wanderlust. Most of this time was spent in a goat-powered, scrap wood wagon covered with cooking utensils, dented signs, old furniture, rusty lanterns and whatever else he could find on the roadsides. “The Goat Man’s coming!” became a common refrain on radio stations and newspapers across the region. Traffic would back up for miles as curiosity seekers stopped to gawk at him. Some schools would even let out early so that the children could see this modern day pioneer.
After his “retirement” from traveling in 1987, rumors circulated in the press that the Goat Man and his team had been killed on a rain-slickened highway by an out-of-control truck. But back in 1998, I discovered he was indeed alive and well at the Eastview Nursing Home in Macon, Georgia. After arranging for a visit with the staff, I drove down to see him.
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