CHAPTER 6

THE GOAT MAN

He wrestled a bear, narrowly avoided being lynched by the Ku Klux Klan, was pronounced dead and taken to the morgue, became an ordained preacher and even got mugged in Los Angeles while trying to see actress Morgan Fairchild—or so the story goes.

Charles “Chess” McCartney was his name, but most people knew him only as the “Goat Man.” He was one of the South’s most famous wandering travelers and folk characters.

McCartney was born in Iowa and was believed to be 97 when he died in 1998, but he was rumored to be as old as 120. No one really knows. The main sources for biographical information about McCartney are McCartney himself and his son. Some of the often-colorful details vary.

The adventures began when McCartney was fourteen and ran away from his farm and settled in New York. There he married a Spanish knife-thrower ten years his senior. He served as her target for a couple years before returning to Iowa to farm. When that failed at the beginning of the Depression, he went to work for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) cutting trees. After a timbering tree shattered his left side, he was pronounced dead, only to awaken on a shocked undertaker’s table.

McCartney had always been fond of goats since his days on the family farm, and after his timbering accident, he came up with the idea of using a goat cart to travel with his family and work as an itinerant preacher.

His wife did not like the idea and left, according to one account. Another says that his wife and son joined him, and his wife even made goatskin clothes for McCartney and his son to wear as a gimmick on their travels. She quickly grew tired of the road and returned to Iowa. Some variations on the story say she took their son with her; others say he remained with the Goat Man. Yet another version of the tale says that McCartney sold his wife to another farmer for $1,000. He was said to have married at least two more times.

The Goat Man.

McCartney’s iron-wheeled wagon was large, rickety and covered with objects he found along the road. It held a bed, a potbellied stove, lanterns, pots, pans, car tags and assorted sundries. His traveling goat herd sometimes numbered up to thirty. From 1930 to 1987, legend has it, McCartney walked 100,000 miles, preaching the Gospel in forty-nine states and Canada before retiring in the late 1960s after he was beaten and robbed one night near Chattanooga, Tennessee.

McCartney died in 1998 in a Georgia nursing home. No one is sure how many of his stories actually happened, but numerous people have personal memories of the man or have heard tales of him from others. Whatever he was in life, he is a folklore legend in death.