(bright music) - [Jim] Legend, myth, unexplained phenomenon, or hoax?

Whatever, 50 years later, Mo-Mo the Monster is in some ways still with us.

- People are still interested in it, it's still a mystery.

- [Jim] Meet the musical couple from Columbia, Missouri, who got an offer they couldn't refuse.

- He said, I'm Harry Lynch, I'm a producer for PBS, and we should make a TV show.

- [Jim] The globe-trotting couple you know from Great Performance's "Now Hear This".

We came for the picnic, but we stayed for this very old church's history and survival story.

- They wanted to drive us out of this valley.

- [Jim] And something to chew on, a back to nature lawn service.

- Non-polluting, eco-friendly, and then they're therapeutic also.

- It's all Next on "Living St. Louis".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) I am Jim Kirchherr, and we're gonna start off with a story that can't really be confirmed or denied.

You might call it a myth, a rumor, maybe a hoax, maybe an unexplained phenomenon.

Veronica Mohesky found it irresistibly tantalizing.

- [Veronica] In the summer of 1971, strange things started happening in the small town of Louisiana, Missouri.

♪ One hot night on a hill at the edge of Louisiana, Missouri ♪ ♪ A family reported a huge monster ♪ ♪ Roaming round behind their house ♪ ♪ He was big, mean and hairy, smelly and ugly ♪ This 1972 song sung by Bill Whyte describes the situation well.

♪ Within days, this monster, fictitious or real ♪ ♪ Became a folk legend regionally ♪ ♪ And the stories have been reprinted worldwide ♪ ♪ This Missouri monster was nicknamed Mo-Mo ♪ But more on the song later.

Even though the legend of Mo-Mo the monster started over 50 years ago, his story, real or not, hasn't been forgotten, especially by those in Pike County, Missouri.

- Well, Mo-Mo is kind of a Bigfoot-like creature, maybe just a little bit smaller, maybe more hairy, but has the same foul odor, has the same sounds.

- [Veronica] Brent Engel is the President of the Louisiana Area Historical Museum Board of Directors.

He's essentially the expert on Mo-Mo the Monster.

- Just about all of the big searches were here on Star Hill.

- [Veronica] Engel says, the first encounter with Mo-Mo in Pike County occurred in July, 1971.

- Two women from St. Louis were on their way back from a trip along Highway 79, northwest of town.

Stopped for a picnic at one of the scenic overlooks and noticed a foul smell, and they couldn't figure out what it was, and they looked over to the edge of the woods and there was a creature standing there gurgling and growling.

And of course, they were scared, they ran and jumped back in their car.

- [Veronica] The creature ate their food.

But luckily, the women escaped and the monster began appearing elsewhere.

The most famous Mo-Mo sighting occurred the next year.

- July, 1972, a 15 year old girl was inside her house cleaning a bathroom, she looked out the window, she heard her brother screaming, her younger brother screaming, and she went out and saw that there was this large, hairy, stinky creature standing there holding what appeared to be a dead dog and growling.

And she took her brothers back inside, called her father, and that's where things kind of escalated.

- [Veronica] Linda Beer, the treasurer of the museum board, grew up in Louisiana, but was living in Quincy, Illinois when the Mo-Mo encounters happened.

At first, Beer says she was worried about her family.

- Because he was spotted on Star Hill, and that's where I had family living.

But I don't think they were ever in great fear, I think that they kind of went along with the story that just all in good fun.

- [Veronica] And the strange occurrences didn't stop.

A week after the famous Mo-Mo sighting on Star Hill, some residents reported seeing fireballs shoot across the sky in Louisiana.

- [Brent] There were up to five sightings during 1972 that were probably legitimate, there were others that weren't.

- [Veronica] The story was picked up by media across the nation.

- The major television networks were here, The New York Times, other big newspapers were here trying to track down this creature that a teenager and her two younger brothers had said they saw up on Star Hill.

- [Veronica] Mo-Mo even became the subject of a song.

A young man named Bill Whyte was working at a radio station in Bowling Green, Missouri when two of his coworkers approached him with a poem called "Mo-Mo, The Missouri Monster".

- They knew I was a musician and played a little guitar and asked if I could make a song out of it.

And I did, I sat down and put some music to it and tweaked the words a little bit.

And shortly after, a friend took me to Nashville for the first time and we recorded that song, "Mo-Mo, The Missouri Monster".

And then we started playing it and radio stations all across Missouri asked for copies of it, and it just became what we would now say is a viral hit.

- [Veronica] Today, Whyte is a songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee, and over 50 years later, people still remember his song about a Missouri Bigfoot.

♪ Mo-Mo, the Missouri Monster - I gotta sing it now.

♪ Let me tell you about ♪ Mo-Mo, the Missouri monster - Once it gets into your head, you can't get it out.

- [Veronica] And though no physical evidence was ever found of Mo-Mo, his legacy lives on.

For many years, there was a Mo-Mo Burger at a restaurant in Louisiana.

And from 1973 to '94, a ride at Six Flags St Louis was named after the monster.

Louisiana, Missouri hosted a Mo-Mo the Monster 50th anniversary concert in 2022, and Bill Whyte performed the song.

- My goodness, the place was full of friends and family that I had not seen, some who I did not recognize because it had been so many years.

And it was a wonderful gathering of people that way and a chance to sing the song, and they had some guy dressed up in a Bigfoot outfit, came out dancing while I was singing the song.

- We knew it would be successful when people were lined up in the rain outside the museum to get tickets for the concert.

They wanted to make sure that they got in, we had a packed house.

He was just treated like a rockstar, which he is, you would've thought he was The Beatles from the reception he got.

- [Veronica] Brent Engel says, "It's clear that interest in Mo-Mo remains."

- Yeah, it's been more than a half century since there's been a sighting in Louisiana.

But there are still books, there are movies, there are television shows and there are songs that have been written about it.

I mean, it's one of those legends that lives on because people are still interested in it, it's still a mystery, we haven't solved it yet and that's one thing that piques our interest.

- [Veronica] And though the monster's existence remains in question, many people appreciate the story for what it is, just plain fun.

Engel reads a letter that was sent by a Kansas City area woman to Louisiana officials in August of 1972.

- Quote, "The thing that seems strange to me is what became of monster Mo-Mo.

We no longer hear of him, and perhaps he was a figment of our imagination, or should I say the people of Louisiana, but whatever it is, it was fun and exciting.

♪ Whoa, let me tell you about ♪ Mo-Mo, the Missouri monster - Public TV over the years has featured a lot of classical music programs, but nothing I think quite like Great Performances' "Now Hear This".

Violinist and conductor, Scott Yoo, accompanied by his musician wife, Alice Dade, they travel the world, bringing us music, culture and storytelling.

Brooke Butler wanted to know more, which was fine because, well, she didn't have to go to Berlin or Buenos Aires, just down the road to Columbia, Missouri.

- I'm Scott Yoo, come with me to discover the greatest music ever written, like you've never experienced it before.

Whoo!

Join me on spectacular journeys around the world to "Now Hear This".

I get chills reading Vivaldi's handwriting.

This is Liszt's piano?

- That's Liszt's piano.

- Holy (beep), oops, sorry.

- So I'm sitting here with Scott Yoo and Alice Dade, "Now Hear This".

We love the show, everybody loves the show.

It's just amazing how the journey you take us on in each episode, I mean, talking about, of course, music and history and cultures and architecture and cuisine, I mean, everything jam packed.

But I wanna say, you know, when people see you on TV, they're used to seeing you in these grand, beautiful historic places around the world.

But here we are in Columbia, Missouri.

(laughs) You know, that doesn't stand out as a, you know, grand significant place for music history but tell us about living in the Midwest.

- Well, when Alice and I started dating in 2012, we decided to not do it long distance.

- And because you're a professor at the University of Missouri and they have a really great school of music.

- It's great, there's a lot of new music here which is kind of surprising, but a lot of new music going on, there's a festival in the summer and there's a new music ensemble throughout the year.

We have three large ensembles, actually four.

So it's a big place for musicians and people especially who wanna go into music education.

- I conducted the Minnesota Orchestra a few months ago and the clarinetist in front of me was a graduate of the University of Missouri, I mean, it's pretty neat.

- There you go, there you go.

So let's talk about, there are four completed seasons of "Now Hear This", tell us about how the show idea started in the first place.

- Well, at my festival in California, it's called Festival Mosaic, we have a audience that's really rabid about their classical music, but they profess to not know much about it.

And so, I created a series of concerts sort of that kind of deconstructs pieces of music.

And we took one of those on the road, it was comparing the three Brahm's Piano Trios, and I was arguing that you can almost trace Brahms's maturation through those three pieces of music.

One of them he wrote as a kid, and then rewrote at the end of his life, and you can kind of see, oh, you can, even a layman can see that he had grown up.

And anyway, writing that script took me about 10 days, and at the actual event in Austin, Texas, I think there were seven people.

(both laughing) And four of them were my college classmate and friend and her family.

- Wow.

- So there were three other people and I felt like, oh my, I've just spent more than a day per person in the audience.

But one of them was Harry Lynch who came up to me after the concert and said, he said, "I'm Harry Lynch, I'm a producer for PBS, and we should make a TV show."

(dramatic piano music) Eight months later, we were shooting the pilot in Milan, and that was it.

I'd never been on camera before, I mean, it was a very strange situation to have cameras pointed at me.

But you know, both of us are experience collectors, we like to experience something new, eat something new, drink something new, meet a new person, and so it's kind of an ideal job for both of us and we get to do it together, which is great, so it's been amazing.

- And you're reaching more than seven people now.

- Right.

- (laughs) We hope so, yes.

- Much more, and that's what I love the way you say, like, deconstruct for the average person listening, I'm thinking about the very first episode and Vivaldi Four Seasons, and you're out in the field recording the birds and the dogs barking and relating that to why the music is the way it is.

- Yeah, and like, you know, like sticking your boom in there and seeing if we can get a cuckoo.

- [Crew Member] Yeah.

- The passage is describing a very sort of primitive animal, this cuckoo, right?

And it's just two notes, but he adds enough notes, enough other notes to make it sound cool, right?

- Right.

- You know, these pieces of music tell a story that is relevant to us today.

I mean, there is a reason why this music has survived until 2023.

There is a reason, the experiences of these composers, maybe they don't involve TikTok or an iPhone, but they still have human experiences that are unchanged for centuries and really millennia - Actually eating food that Beethoven ate, his favorite meal, that makes Beethoven more three-dimensional, you know, he's not just this idea that we have.

And I think that music gives us another perspective of people, of culture, it's unfortunate that sometimes people who haven't had the opportunity to be around music, they may kind of be put off by it.

But the hope is that this show will reach a larger audience.

- And this is not your full-time job, you're teaching, you're conducting in Mexico City, and, I mean, that's really exciting for viewers to know that there are more episodes coming, but it's very demanding on your schedules.

And how much longer do you think you will continue?

- I mean, you know, when I spoke with my bosses at PBS and WNET, they said they, you know, want this to continue for a very long time, and we are very happy about that I mean, WNET and PBS, they've been like the greatest, as you've experienced yourself, they've been the greatest people to work with, I mean, they're all really kind and thoughtful people and they have really only the best intentions, they just want things to go well and they wanna try to enrich America.

- What's one episode you're looking forward to for the next season?

- Well, we just finished shooting an episode at Alice's alma mater at Julliard, and we followed around this little eight year old boy.

- Oh my goodness.

- He was so cute, like, such like a little comedian.

- [Brooke] Oh my gosh, I love it.

- And an amazing pianist, excellent - Wilson Liu, and we played a Mozart sonata, violin and piano, that was the first piece that I played in public when I was eight.

- [Brooke] Wow, full circle moment?

- Full circle, and the mother was really cool.

- Yeah.

- And hearing you both talk about all these relationships and people that you've met around the world, I mean, I think that speaks even more so to the fact that music connects us all, right?

You don't have to be in the same culture and speak the same language, but you all bond over music.

- Universal language, I mean, that's overused.

But really you do not have to, you can actually be mute and still play music with somebody else.

- Absolutely.

- 'Cause it is a form of communication.

- Well, we're looking forward to the next season of "Now Hear This", Scott Yoo, Alice Dade, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thanks, Brooke.

- Thank you, Brooke.

- Honored to be with you.

- If you travel around these parts you will occasionally see an old church with a German inscription, evangelische kirche, evangelical church.

Now, as a kid, I went to a church like that, still had monthly services in German that my grandparents attended.

So when a local church with very deep German roots sent us an invitation this past summer, I thought, sure, because it offered two things I like, history and picnics.

(gentle music) Femme Osage, Missouri is a tiny, unincorporated community in St. Charles County's wine country, more accurately, perhaps, Daniel Boone country, because it's been around that long.

And this church picnic, 190 years in the making.

The picturesque Femme Osage Church was marking that anniversary on a hot summer Sunday afternoon in August.

- This is an exciting, an exciting event happening, 190th anniversary.

- [Jim] That's a lot of years, I mean, we know St. Louis has a long history, but 190 years for a church, especially on this side of the river, right?

- On this side of the river, our moniker is we're the oldest German evangelical church west of the Mississippi.

Our property was the hunting ground of Daniel Boone.

- The first pastor was an educated immigrant by the name of Herman Garlich.

He wasn't ordained, that would come later, but he was a good preacher, and several other churches that are still in this area also point to him as their first pastor.

The history is all around, the one room schoolhouse, it was built from stones from the old church building after this one opened in 1888.

This started out as a pretty simple story about a church picnic, a church is celebrating its history.

Well, it is that, turns out though, it's a lot more than that.

This church's story is part of a complicated story of immigrants from the kingdoms and principalities and grand duchies of what is today's Germany coming to the American frontier with different ideas about religion, Catholicism, and competing versions of Protestantism.

so I figured a trip to Eden Seminary in Webster Groves was a good place to start.

The United Church of Christ Seminary traces its own roots to Missouri's early German churches.

- St. Louis was a gateway for a lot of German immigrants of every religious or non-religious stripe.

- [Jim] We sat down with Eden librarian and archivist, Scott Holl.

- What happened here in the United States with all these different immigrant groups is that all of the religious situation that was going on in Germany with all of its conflicts was just brought over.

- [Jim] The real battle for the folks in Femme Osage was with those Germans who called themselves rationalists.

- You know, they just thought much of religion was superstition, and so, you know, knowledge comes from the intellect, from human ability and intellect, not from some kind of, you know, divine God that reveals himself in the Bible.

- [Jim] Holl says the trouble started when a group of German rationalists settled in Marthasville.

And this would not be a story of peaceful coexistence.

- The Femme Osage group, I'm sure was just happy to just go to church, have their church business, be left alone in peace.

But this group, these rationalists, they saw again that the church people were leading people astray, they were feeding them superstition.

- And they wanted to drive us out of this valley.

They did three things to do that, they first tried to publicly humiliate Pastor Garlich, then they tried to subvert his work, and then Pastor Bode had two assassination attempts done on him.

- [Jim] The church survived to join with other evangelical churches and opened the first Eden Seminary in Marthasville in 1850.

In the 20th century, there were mergers with the German reform churches and then with congregational churches to form the United Church of Christ.

Today, the UCC is considered one of the most liberal denominations in the country, you may have seen UCC pastors marching in local protests.

But the Reverend Dr. Willey, is wary of such political activism.

He prefers a greater emphasis on scripture.

And on this Sunday, he preached Herman Garlich's original sermon and then one of his own.

- So the second sermon was about, as we deal with those in our denomination that differ from us, that may hold to political activism, our response should be one of humility, graciousness, kindness, compassion, love, but we don't have to agree.

- Church histories are filled with divisions and mergers, agreements and disagreements about the right way to worship and apply biblical teachings to everyday life.

That's as true today as it was 190 years ago.

But at this gathering, marking the Femme Osage church's long history, it seemed just about everyone was in agreement, at least when it came to singing the praises of the fried chicken.

(people chattering) And finally, a story about something that won't mow you down, Veronica Mohesky on a very different kind of lawn service.

(upbeat music) - [Robert] Here I come.

- [Veronica] Robert Rusan doesn't run your typical lawn service.

All his coworkers have four legs.

- That's Cookies and Cream, that's Silver Ears, that's Billy Gigi, and that's Salt and Pepper.

Everybody has their own personality.

- [Veronica] It may seem unconventional, but there are a number of benefits to having goats clear your land.

- Non-polluting, eco-friendly, and then they're therapeutic also because you get to go out and spend some time with them, and you'll find most of the goats like a little attention but they also give some attention.

And every place I take 'em, everybody loves 'em.

- [Veronica] Today, the goats are at Sunnyhill Adventure Camp in Dittmer, Missouri.

Megan Ingerman is the Chief Programs Officer at Sunnyhill, which is a nonprofit that supports people with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

- So we have about 60 acres out here, we only utilize about 30ish and that's a lot of land, a lot of land that needs to be cleaned up.

So I had heard about goat rentals, called Robert, he came out here and he toured the property.

- [Veronica] Amy Wheeler, the President and CEO of Sunnyhill says the health and safety of their campers influenced their choice of just us goats.

- Well, since it was camp season, we can't have a lot of loud noises and things like that and we can't have pesticides, and people are so close to the woods in the property that it's just not in our best interest to have any kind of chemical or anything like that.

So this was the best route to take and the most efficient route to take, and a fun one - [Veronica] Rusan says one of the biggest draws is that the goats eat allergenic plants, like poison ivy and invasive species, like honeysuckle.

He says the goats don't require much direction either, usually, just a fence around the area that needs clearing.

- They're easily to maintain, overall.

I mean, once we get a designated area, pretty much I just need a bucket of water for 'em and they're pretty self-efficient.

- [Veronica] And Rusan says the goats work as much or as little as they want.

- I think my goats belong to a union because they will eat so much and then they will stop, and they will look at me like, what?

Okay, break time.

And then, after that, they get back up and they eat.

- [Veronica] It's good that the goats take breaks though, because unlike lawnmowers, it could take them days or even a week or two to clear the land.

- It takes longer, but it's more peaceful with a goat, and they're just an enjoyable sight to have on site.

- [Veronica] And according to Amy Wheeler, the long clearing time is worth the Sunnyhill campers' smiles.

- It was an amazing time seeing them come out and seeing the smiles on people's faces.

This one person that I talked to all the time, never smiles, but when the goat came up, guess what?

He smiled.

(chuckles) So it's just that value that you get by doing something, thinking outside the box, so I think that's what we're trying to do here at Sunnyhill by having the goats and really trying to focus on cleaning up our property.

(upbeat music) - And that's "Living St. Louis".

Keep sending us your comments and ideas at NinePBS.org/LSL.

I'm Jim Kirchherr, thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] "Living St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy & Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.