So, Did You Hear The One About The Alligators In The Sewers?

Come now, fella, you don't expect me to believe that one, do you? Don't get sore.

Yes, I know you heard it from a good friend, a reliable friend. I also know that if we ask your friend, he will say he heard it from another friend.

When we find this friend-once-removed, he'll say he heard it from yet another friend. And so on and so on, and on through an infinity of friends.

We are talking about stories I like to call "true-true" stories. Lord, how many times people get suckered by these true-trues!

I'll give you an example of a true-true, or what The New York Times dubbed "urban legends," and what one investigator called called "stories too good to be true."

Here's one that shines in the old memory.

A fellow and his wife are pulling a recreation trailer with their truck. The husband, being tired, goes back to bed in the trailer while the wife drives. The wife hears a noise coming from the trailer.

She pulls off the highway. It is pitch dark, late at night. Her husband comes out of the trailer in his pajamas. They inspect the trailer to see what caused the noise.

Well, what with one thing and another - call it "lack of communication" in a marriage - the wife gets back in the truck and drives off. The husband, too late, discovers he is locked out of the trailer.

So she drives off in the night, leaving the poor wretch behind, clad only in pajamas.

I've heard several versions of this true-true folk tale. It's always true because the person who tells you the story always hears it from a reliable friend, who knows the couple by name.

One day, so help me, I found this story printed in the Scorecard section of Sports Illustrated. Straight-faced, they ran it. True, oh so true, because Sports Illustrated always double-checks everything.

Since I happened to work for SI at the time, I called Earl Burton, then the magazine's chief of correspondents.

"How did you get suckered into that one?" I asked. "The trailer story's got whiskers on it."

"You mean it's not true?"

"Of course it's not true. I've heard at least five or six versions of it over the years. Where did you get it?"

"One of our stringers sent it in," he said. "What should we do now?"

"Cultivate a deep silence," I said. "People will forget it soon enough."

Another version of the "urban legend," or true-true story, is about alligators in the sewers. This one was cited for what it was - a myth - by The New York Times.

The story goes that New York vacationers buy these miniature pet alligators in Florida. Pet dwarf alligators. Soon the people tire of the pet alligators and flush them down the toilet.

Well, the alligators, nourished by heaven knows what nutrients in the sewers, multiply and grow up and become dangerous. In time, it became an article of faith among New Yorkers that they have live alligators in their sewers.

The second or third time I heard this fable, it came from Walt Kelly, the famed creator of the "Pogo" comic strip. We were getting drunk in a bar together when Kelly passed on the "good authority" of this story.

Kelly can be forgiven, perhaps, because he loved all kinds of bugs, animals and water-borne creatures. His strip even featured a lovable critter named Albert the Alligator.

When I said to him, "Hell, I've heard that one out in Seattle," he shrugged and grinned, "Well, it must be quite a thing to find a big alligator coming at you out of a sewer pipe."

A fellow named Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of English at the University of Utah, has written four collections of urban legends, the latest being, "Curses! Broiled Again. The Hottest Urban Legends Going."

The New York Times quotes Professor Brunvand on this genre of true-trues. He said they "describe presumably real events and are usually told by credible persons narrating in a believable style."

At least two of his stories - the alligators in the sewer and the pet accidentally cooked in the microwave - have been around for years. He's also got the one about grandma's corpse.

"Grandma's corpse" has several versions. The one I remember vividly was told me by a prominent lawyer in town - and it happened, he swore, to a slightly eccentric fellow lawyer, whose grandmother died unexpectedly on a family vacation trip in Mexico.

Stuck in a rustic Mexican town and fearful of bureaucratic delay if he reported Grandma's demise to authorities, the Seattle lawyer bundled her in blankets and put her on the overhead luggage rack on his car. From there, he made a long drive to the nearest large town.

Emotionally and physically exhausted, the lawyer and his wife stopped for a drink, leaving the car and Grandma's corpse parked on the street.

When they came out, they discovered - horrors! - that their car had been stolen. Grandma, too, of course.

The story ends with the poor couple frantically trying to find their car with Grandma lashed to the roof. This one, as I say, was told me by a lawyer friend, a most credible fellow.

But something, some friendly celestial voice, told me not to write that story. Otherwise, we'd have another urban legend, all too genuine - the case of the bushwhacked columnist.

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.