Boy’s Travels the Stuff of Dreams

--According to his mother, Dorthea, 11-year-old Michael Lamont Dixon always was a sleepwalker. But she didn’t worry too much about it till the other night, when she was awakened by a call from the police saying her son had been discovered sleepwalking along the railroad tracks in Peru, Ind.--nearly 100 miles from his Illinois home. Michael himself remembers nothing of his journey. All he can recall is dreaming about being chased and running into a closet. Peru Police Chief Bill Page figures Michael hopped a freight train near his home in Danville, Ill., and got off in Peru. He was spotted by a train crewman at 2:45 a.m. Michael was dirty and barefoot but otherwise in good condition. Dorthea Dixon said she was taking Michael to a doctor immediately. “He sleepwalks, but I didn’t know it could be dangerous until now.”

--Three strapping loggers high-tailed it out of a picnic area near Sierraville, Calif., when their roadside repast was invaded, not by a swarm of hungry ants, but by a nine-foot-tall creature they claim was the legendary Big Foot. Claude Dudley, Tommy Ruffing and Lee Janet III said they heard screeching, squawking noises moments before they saw an upright creature coming toward them, according to Sheriff’s Sgt. Joe Mosley. “It was this large, hairy burnt-black animal walking on its hind legs,” Mosley said the loggers told him. Gary Horn, a state Fish and Game warden who also investigated the incident, said the loggers claim the creature crossed Highway 89 in two steps. “One guy told me: ‘Two strides was enough for me. I packed my grub and got the hell out.’ ” Mosley said it was the first reported Big Foot sighting in the northern Sierra in several years. Neither Horn nor Mosley was able to find any evidence to verify the loggers’ story when they visited the site with a trained tracking dog. They speculated that they may have heard a loon, which makes an eerie screech, then seen a large bear.

--F. Michael Luby, 22, an aspiring advertising copywriter, figured a little self-promotion might speed up his search for a job. So instead of pounding the pavement, he sat on it--on a bridge in downtown Chicago, where he relaxed in a folding chair accompanied by copies of his resume, his portfolio and a sign that read: “Good Writer Needs Ad Job.” The results were promising. In 1 1/2 days Luby said he handed out 51 copies of his resume and more than 10 people inspected his portfolio. And he’s got six interviews lined up. “If nothing else, I’ve gotten to meet many people in the advertising industry,” he said. Some of them wished him luck, he said, and some of them--the ones who were out of work--said: “ ‘I wish I had the nerve to do that myself.’ ”