There were no cars coming and so I stopped the truck in the middle of the highway and backed up to the mailbox. The name was the same.
Turning down the driveway to the home, an elderly woman came out onto the porch as if she had spied us up on the highway. Even before I could get out and introduce myself the lady offered a friendly greeting.
"Hello," she said in a weak voice. "Can I help you?"
"Ma'am, I'm looking for the old Carlson place. Back in 1965 me and a friend worked there," I half yelled, hoping that the words could be heard above the wind in the towering cottonwoods.
The lady cupped her ear and I was forced to repeat myself. When she at last understood, the woman seemed deep in thought for a few seconds. By her looks, she impressed me very much as a person who had worked hard during her lifetime, but a person who had been valued and loved throughout. She was delicate and ladylike with wisps of white hair playing in the wind.
"Wait just a minute," the woman finally answered. "I'll go ask my husband. He might know."
The couple's ranch was beautiful. It was an old homestead but well-tended. Beside the house ran that same beautiful trout stream that flowed by the Carlson home and the same I had dreamed of in 1965. Two black kittens played and tumbled on the sidewalk.
"Oh, yes," said the lady when she returned. "Carlson...‘Windy' Carlson. I remember now. But it's been so long." The old woman's voice was so faint that it forced me to step right onto the porch. "He lived on back that way a few miles," she continued, "back up the road to Sheridan."
For the next twenty minutes the kind woman tried to tell me all she knew about Mr. Carlson, but between the passage of years and the kittens harassing her feet, there was little more she could offer. The lady did mention that rich people from New York--"artists"--had bought the ranch and the place was closed to strangers. Although this last bit of information dampened my spirits somewhat, still, I was euphoric. I wasn't as old and senile as I had thought a mere half hour before. Thanking the woman profusely, I returned to the truck and started the engine. Before backing away, it occurred to me that I had not seen the more active of the two kittens for the past few minutes. Sure enough, after getting out and looking under the truck, there she was directly behind a rear wheel, crouched and apparently unfazed by the roaring muffler.
Perhaps it was the rush of relief when she saw that her kitten had not been squashed like a ripe tomato, but as we started up the driveway, the old woman waved for us to stop.
"I just remembered," she yelled weakly, "Windy Carlson was trampled by a herd of horses...was killed when they ran over him....I just thought of that."
Following the lady's instructions, we did indeed arrive opposite the old Carlson ranch and everything suddenly began falling into place. But alas, the county road that led by the home had been closed and the ranch was gated with warning signs. A few hundred yards beyond, I pulled off the highway and left the truck running. For a few brief seconds the best I could do was stand by the side of the road on a little rise that overlooked the ranch (above). There were so many trees that I could see almost nothing of the home or outbuildings. But across the road, there was the trout stream, just as I remembered it. And there, directly below and to my right, spread the old hay field.
When I spotted two large dogs approaching from the old Carlson ranch, I quickly jumped back in the truck and started up the road toward Sheridan. That evening, Deb and I stopped downtown at the Pony Bar & Grill. Inside was a noisy bedlam but outside on the front porch it was mellow. Except for young locals who had to ritually rev up their engines at the stoplight, thereby ensuring that all the young females on the porch would note their passing for the umpteenth time that night, the place was quiet and relatively cool.
I was very disappointed. I had hoped to visit the old Carlson ranch. I had expected to be greeted by the new owner in a friendly Western fashion, then allowed to wander around looking for something that would fire my thirty-eight year old memory. I had envisioned leading Deb around to the haystack, the trailer, the water pump, even the supper table, and telling her the various anecdotes. But alas. I was sad that I had not been able to see the place up close and sad that my recollection earlier that evening had been so foggy. But mostly, I was sad to see how time, like wind and rain and waves, changes everything. It was not so much the good, fond memories I was seeking-–indeed, there were few at the Carlson work ranch--so much as the simple recapturing of some of my youth, the bad with the good. Here certainly, I had naively thought, little had changed.
Several cold Rolling Rocks helped assuage my blues.
Postscript
Before Deb and I left Sheridan the next day, I looked up in the telephone book the name of the lady who now owns the ranch. Curious about Mr. Carlson, I later called her and asked several questions. She was very kind, but admittedly knew little of the man. Sadly, she did recall that Carlson was not trampled by horses as I had earlier heard, but was killed when he got out to open a fence gate one day and his truck rolled over him. In a strange bit of irony, the lady also noted that she hosted writers and artists each month and welcomed me to apply for a grant. I did indeed apply and I was indeed accepted. The following September, 2004, I finally returned to the ranch; and this time I did a lot less sweating and slaving and a lot more sitting and sight-seeing than on my first visit there. Life is wine. Drink it down.
After leaving the Wyoming ranch, Gene and I set sail south and drove the Corvair as hard as we could to reach Colorado by nightfall.
One could buy beer in that state at the age of 18 and both of us were almost crazed to have a cold Coors. When we reached Julesburg in the far northeast corner of the state, we stopped downtown and bought a six-pack. Once back in the car, so great was our thirst, that we each opened a can and guzzled it down. Mine tasted great but Gene's was a disaster, apparently. Frantically opening the car door, he retched all over the curb.
After we reached home the following day, Gene and I saw very little of each other from then on. I would shortly be up for the military draft and I wanted to live a little more before entering the service. Gene still had a year of school ahead but since he was refused admittance back into Lecompton High School, he transferred to Lawrence, the same school that he had been booted from originally. After graduation, the little Barney Fife look-alike went to work at, of all places, a collection agency. Since not many deadbeats were intimidated when he came pounding on their door demanding overdue debts, Gene drifted to a new line of work. Eventually, my friend ended up in Virginia where he recently retired as a very successful realtor. The last I've heard of him, he lives with his wife in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Of the few times we have seen each other over the decades (Gene has gained weight and now looks great), my friend never fails to mention that our Grand Goombah of 1965 was the defining point in his life. From that time forth, he insists, the travel bug infected him hopelessly. These little get-togethers are great and what I forget, Gene remembers. But curiously, despite age, success, happiness, and an otherwise positive and very forgiving nature, whenever I mention our week of bucking bales in Wyoming, Gene continues to smile but says little. Then, when I bring up Mr. Carlson, a sneer slowly spreads over my friend's face and he offers only one brief comment: "That son-of-a-bitch...scratching a horse's nuts!"
In October of 1965, a cousin and myself drove back up to Ucross. Since Carlson had offered me a job just before I had left that summer, I was hoping to take him up on it. Unfortunately, when we got there the old boss was gone and only the old lady was about. In pretty cool terms she informed me that there was no work to be had, not now, not ever--they had sold the place to "artists" and would be moving out directly. And that's all I ever knew of the Carlsons until I returned 38 years later.
In 2003, Deb and I found ourselves in Sheridan. I had been up that way many times since 1965 but for one reason or another I had never ventured down the road to Ucross. Together, this late afternoon, Deb and I decided to correct that omission.
When we reached the "T" in the road near Ucross, I knew that we had gone too far. Somehow, I had driven right by the place. Although it had been thirty-eight years, I was nevertheless shocked that my memory could have failed so miserably. Had it been a heavily populated area, had there been numerous changes and improvements, it might have been excusable. But this was not the case. Just as it was nearly four decades before, there were only a few scattered ranches in the valley.
Turning around, we drove slowly back the way we had come. When I saw a ranch on the left, I pulled cautiously into the driveway. I was looking hard, searching the place for anything that might jog my memory. Except for the little draw beside the house, nothing else seemed right.
"You lost?" came a sharp voice from someone I hadn't noticed.
Looking to my left, I saw a little woman clad in blue jeans, sleeveless blouse and cowboy boots. She had a long garden hose coiled over her shoulder. She stood just beyond the driveway watching me closely.
"I don't know if I am or not," I grinned with embarrassment.
When I turned off the engine, I began stumbling for words, trying to explain in record time that I thought I might have worked there in 1965. I could see that the woman was duly suspicious. She was perhaps fifty, as dried and cracked as old shoe leather and no doubt just as tough. From the look in her eye, I could see at a glance that this was no person to trifle with. When Deb got out of the truck, it did seem as if the lady softened a bit and by the time I had finished my brief story, the woman even showed signs of a smile.
"Sure," she said, "help yourself...look around."
While Deb and the woman made light conversation, I paced about the weedy lots adjoining the house. Although the draw where the old man pumped his water seemed in the right place, little else was where it should have been. There was no corral. There were few sheds or barns. The trees didn't seem right.
"Those hay bales over there?" I pointed a hundred feet to the south. "Have you always stacked your hay there?"
"Ever since I've been here we have," said the lady, "and that's been ten years."
Although the stack was small and nothing like I remember, it was in the general location and it seemed logical that once a place is located to stack hay bales, that's pretty much where it will stay, thirty-eight years or no. But my two greatest problems with the place was the house and the big trout stream. To the best of my brain's ability, I distinctly remembered that the ranch house was two stories. The home in front of me was but one floor and from the looks of the place, that's the way it had always been. And the creek. Thirty-eight years ago I was an avid trout fisherman. Everyday I had looked longingly at the tumbling cold water of a stream that flowed a hundred or so yards to the east. "The biggest German Brown trout in Wyoming are in that creek," the old man had once tempted me. But now, the beautiful stream of my dreams was nowhere in sight. Still, I reasoned, after almost forty years, dams are built, stream beds are channeled, water is diverted, and . . . . perhaps a fifty-five-year-old man's memory just goes to hell.
After fifteen minutes of questions and answers (and a really strong zephyr which raced down the valley briefly, raising a storm of dust and bending trees), we thanked the kind woman for her help and left.
It was bittersweet. This run down, weedy, dusty, forlorn ranch must be the place, I told myself. In my mind's eye, I had seen myself rolling back in here as if nothing had changed. The home, the corrals, the stream, the haystack, even the tiny trailer where Gene and I had lived, were all there in my memory, just as we had left them. But alas, nothing was the same. Thirty-eight years, almost four decades....I drove back up the road feeling very old and sad.
After driving in silence for the next several miles, I saw a mailbox to my right. The name on the box caught my attention. It was the same name the woman had mentioned in our conversation. This family, she said, had lived in this valley for the past fifty years. I decided to try it.
(conclusion tomorrow)
Unlike the day before, there was no relegation of duty on this, the first full day of work. Before Gene hardly had time to consider his late humiliation and his hike back to Sheridan, he found himself on a hay wagon.
While the rotund and good-natured brother-in-law drove the tractor through the pasture, Mr. Carlson and I walked along on either side and "bucked" the bales from the ground up to the wagon. For the first two rows or so, we were able to place the bales on the wagon ourselves and stack them in a way that would interlock the load. After the second row, however, Gene was up. When a bale was thrown to him, he was expected to use his hay hook and drag it into place on the wagon. This, of course, took some getting used to and the struggle between the Barney Fife look-alike and the hay was hilarious. Most of the bales probably outweighed him. Beyond a doubt, this was the first real work Gene had encountered in his life. Pumping gas and picking cherries did not prepare him for it. Even tossing brush in Canada was nothing compared to hauling up a ninety pound bale of hay every ten seconds under a blazing sun while trying to maintain your balance on a moving wagon. But for most of the day, my buddy seemed determined to prove his manhood and escape his disgrace.
Late that afternoon, after we had already loaded and unloaded ten or more wagon loads and were working on our last haul of the day, Gene was obviously on the verge of total collapse. Although Mr. Carlson and myself had the truly hard jobs of tossing the dead weights five and six rows high, Gene was so exhausted by this time that he could barely get his hook into the hay to help pull it up. Long forgotten in his misery was the manly attempt to prove his mettle. Of course, Mr. Carlson and myself were thoroughly fatigued and quite miserable ourselves. With some of my last energy, I struggled to hoist up a bale that felt like solid lead.
"Come On! Get it up here!" Gene snapped sourly.
Needless to say, that pissed me off. When I came to the next bale of hay laying on the ground, an aroused sense of strength came over me. Grabbing the bale by the twine, I hurled it up at Gene with all my might. The weight and force of the bail knocked him over and almost off his perch.
"You son-of-a-bitch," he hissed.
"Well you deserved it!" shouted the ever-observant boss from the other side of the tractor.
By the time the wagon was unloaded, we were all too exhausted to be angry at anyone or anything. Curiously enough, roles were reversed at the supper table that evening; I was the one this night who ate like an animal and Gene was the diner who could barely hold his fork. Also that night, back at the trailer, there was no cussing tirade or mention of walking back to Sheridan. Both of us were asleep in five minutes.
For the next seven days, this was the routine. When we had cleared one pasture of "dead soldiers," we'd move on to the next. Over the week we adjusted to the backbreaking work. Even though Gene was given the easier tasks such as stacking, no job on that ranch was easy and my friend more than carried his weight. Between slave labor and sleep, there wasn't much time left for anything else. Although we saw the antelope and deer coming out of the hills each evening to drink from the creek as we were returning from the pastures, neither Gene or I had time to admire the beautiful Big Horns that towered to the west; nor did I have the requisite energy to slip over the fence and catch Brown trout from the nearby stream. We worked hard, we slept hard, and somehow, we managed to eat hard.
Neither before or since have I ever seen so much food as was spread on the Carlson table in that kitchen. In the morning, there were pancakes, biscuits, gravy, fried potatoes, eggs, ham, bacon, and sausage. For lunch and dinner, the table groaned with bowl upon bowl of mashed potatoes, vegetables, stuffing, relishes, pickles, and fresh rolls. Since they were a ranching folk, they were also a meat-eating folk. I recall that there was as much elk, antelope, and venison on the table at any given time as there was beef, pork and mutton. And now, since Gene felt he was earning his lawful right to eat like a horse, he ate like a horse. Despite this, I do not think he added one ounce of muscle to his thin frame
"What's wrong with him? Why is he such a scrawny little runt?" Carlson nudged me one day as Gene walked across the lot to the trailer. "Is it the cigarettes...or does he just jack off too much?"
Since they were visiting and thus did far less work on the ranch, Mrs. Carlson's sister and brother-in-law were much more lively and talkative at the table than the rest of us. Their home was in the California desert near Indio. Every autumn during dove hunting season, the actor, Clark Gable, and a few friends would come with sleeping bags and camp in the couple's back yard.
"Oh, yeah," said the brother, "he's a heck of a guy...a man among men."
The Carlson's brother-in-law was a "heck of a guy" himself. He took a shine to both Gene and myself and was full of fun and life. He tried to pitch in and help us, but years of easy living and good food had made him soft. One day, as we were trying to repair a water pump down by the brook north of the house, the wrench the brother was turning with all his might suddenly slipped. Belly first, the little man flopped full into the water. In truth, the stomach was so big and the pool of water so small, that most of the latter splashed out. Though the brother cussed and fumed, neither Gene or I could hold back our laughter.
In her own domain, Mrs. Carlson probably worked harder than any person on the ranch. Her sister stepped in and helped, but the overloaded old lady was seemingly baking, cooking and cleaning up from dusk to dawn. From her chilly demeanor toward Gene and I, it was evident that she didn't think either of us was worth the princely sum of $5 a day or the extra work she was forced to do on our behalf.
After lunch one day, Gene and I noticed that Mr. Carlson was standing with his favorite horse in the driveway. The golden stallion (above; Mrs. Carlson, Oscar Carlson, Gene, me) was a progeny of "Trigger," Roy Rogers' famous trick horse. As we walked by I could see that the animal's rear legs were spread far apart.
"Oh boy, he really loves this," laughed Carlson. He was energetically scratching the horse's testicles.
"Did you see that?" said Gene after we got to the trailer. His eyes were wide with disbelief. "Did you see that sick son-of-a-bitch scratching the horse's nuts? Man, that fucker's crazy...crazy!" This was all the evidence Gene needed to convince himself that Carlson was not only despicable, but depraved.
On our last day at the ranch, when all the hay had been bucked and stacked, Mr. Carlson saddled a couple of pack horses, handed us the reins, then told us to ride wherever we would. Although he cautioned us not to run the animals, as soon as we were out of sight, that's the first thing that we did. After years of watching TV Westerns, we couldn't imagine a horse walking anywhere. By the time we rode back to the ranch later that day, our buttocks were so tender that we could hardly sit in the seats of the Corvair when we got ready to leave. After the brother-in-law took a few Polaroid snapshots, Gene and I bid everyone good-bye and struck off once more.
As we turned down the road toward Buffalo, I mentioned to Gene that the old man had asked me to come back that autumn; he needed help on the ranch as well as someone to drive broken down horses to the glue factory in North Platte, Nebraska.
"Did he say anything about me?" Gene looked over anxiously.
"No, he just said me."
"That son-of-a-bitch," sneered Gene. "Anybody that would scratch a horse's nuts...."
(continued tomorrow)
"Look at all those dead soldiers," I said to Gene as we drove beside a pretty pasture wedged between the road and the hills. There were hundreds of hay bales just laying there.
"Alright! Let's do it," replied Gene.
We had reached a point about thirty miles southeast of Sheridan, Wyoming. Although the Bighorn Mountains still towered to the west, we were now surrounded by pure prairie near a "T" in the road called Ucross. Easing the Corvair off the highway and onto a gravel road, I entered the driveway and stopped outside an old, two-story home. With our dime store cowboy hats set low for business, Gene and I walked through the gate to the house. Before we could knock, we heard a "Can I help you?" shouted from off to our side. Walking over to the corral, we met a large man in coveralls. He had a massive head and his eyes bulged when he stared.
"What can I do for you two cowboys?" he asked
"Howdy," I smiled in my best Marshal Dillon. "We saw all that hay out there. Do you need any help putting it up?"
The man looked at me for an instant, but by his quick response it was evident that he'd already given the matter due consideration.
"Well, yes I do, now that you mention it," he stared. "How much do you work for?"
Happy just to have jobs, neither Gene or I could come up with any figure in the one second or less this man gave us to think.
"I'll give you each five bucks a day," he offered. "You can sleep in my hunting trailer back there behind that haystack...and you can eat at my table."
With the contract set in stone, we all introduced ourselves. Oscar "Windy" Carlson was his name, a big, bursting Swede who laughed and raged equally, I reckoned, judging by his great bulging eyes. He ranched sheep and horses in the spring and summer and in the autumn and winter he led hunting expeditions into the Big Horns. Mrs. Carlson ("the old lady") was in the house cleaning up after lunch, he said. Her sister and brother-in-law from California were visiting and would stay at least another week. Mr. Carlson wore a beat up cowboy hat.
"How do you like our hats?" Gene asked.
"Ha!" the big rancher laughed with a snort. "Those are dude hats. No real cowboy would be caught dead in them."
Somewhat crestfallen by this comment, we asked if there were any extra work gloves around. These were in stock aplenty. Mr. Carlson also pulled out a very small pair of old cowboy boots. Who they came from we never did learn (perhaps a child), but they fit Gene almost perfectly and they were, as of that moment, officially his. Forget Frank Sinatra; with his new footwear adding inches to his height, my buddy felt like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry combined.
And now, without any further ado, we began the earning of our keep. Having already sized us up at a glance, our new boss selected the more muscular of the twosome to do the really hard work of stacking bales of hay; the scrawnier of the litter seemed fit only for light construction and thus was given a hammer and nails and told to repair the corral. After taking my position atop an already high stack of bales, shortly Mr. Carlson returned driving a little Ford tractor. On the front was a fork with what seemed like a hundred bales of hay. After the load was dumped atop the stack, it was then my job to grab up each one and neatly stack it, much like a brick layer sets and interweaves a wall. From past experience, I estimated that these bales were some of the heaviest I had ever wrestled with and each must have weighed between eighty and ninety pounds. Hardly had I struggled one load into position, when I would look up and see the little gray tractor returning with another large installment. Had I not been fairly strong and experienced, I probably would have collapsed during the first hour under the broiling sun.
Meanwhile, at the corral, Gene was having a fine time. Through my grunts and groans, I could hear the tapping of his hammer occasionally, as well as his cheerful whistling. Every fifteen minutes, Gene's addiction forced him to take a long cigarette break in which he would sit himself atop the fence like an old ranch hand. There, he would rest, reflect and admire the scenery. Once or twice an hour he would mosey over to the haystack in his authentic cowboy boots to chat and tell me how lucky we were to actually be working on a real Wyoming ranch.
"Man, this is great...just great," he laughed. "Wait till we tell the chicks back home...they won't believe it!"
Unfortunately, I was far too busy and exhausted to be of much company for Gene. Nor did I have the time or energy to ponder how lucky I was to be working and dying on a Wyoming ranch. Unperturbed, Gene would then saunter back to the corral with a carefree smile and begin his tapping and whistling again. Obviously, ranch work suited my friend to a tee. Unbeknownst to either of us, on his numerous trips back and forth from the pasture, our new boss took note of all this. Although there was a low rumble deep down below, for the time being Mr. Carlson kept his own counsel.
Around dusk, the old man brought in what seemed like the hundredth load of the day and dumped it on the stack.
"That's it, Mike. Time to eat. Do this in the morning," he boomed above the tractor.
As I eased my body down from the stack to the ground, every bone in my skeletal system seemed alive with pain and punishment. My hands were swollen and sore, my arms and shoulders were on fire, my legs felt like noodles, and my brain was thoroughly fried. Even the lucky parts of me that weren't sore were harassed by sticking things that had fallen down my jeans. When I had finally washed the dirt and grime off and combed the hay from my hair, I joined everyone at the supper table. Gene was already there.
"What kept you?" he laughed. "We were going to start without you."
Cheerful as always, fresh as a daisy, my friend was in high spirits as he joked and jested with the Carlson's sister and brother-in-law. While Mrs. Carlson kept bringing out food, her husband sat at the head of the table, listening to the chatter, but perfectly silent.
As the various bowls and platters began moving around the table, I was unsure if I could even hold my head up long enough to eat. I tried to smile and act polite but I would have much preferred to simply crawl into bed. When the mashed potatoes came my way, I took a dab and passed the bowl to Gene. Still laughing and talking with the others, Gene took enough potatoes to make up for me, and then some. I didn't bother with the gravy when it arrived but instead handed it on to Gene. My partner needed plenty of gravy for all his potatoes and poured it on thick. Mr. Carlson took note, but said nothing.
When the vegetables came, I took a little, Gene took a lot, and when the roast was passed, I simply handed it on to Gene. Perhaps it was the clean air and bright sunshine, or perhaps it was the great table conversation; whatever it was, Gene had worked up a cowboy-sized appetite and his eyes were already feasting on the meat.
"Man, that looks good!" he said with a big lip smack.
Grabbing a big chunk of roast, he flopped it down on his plate. At the head of the table, the boss' eyes began to bulge.
There was hardly any room left on Gene's heaping platter when the bread plate came around. I took a slice and passed it on. Gene grabbed two slices.
With eyes popping from his head, Mr. Carlson at last exploded.
"NOW WAIT JUST A GOD DAMN MINUTE!" he glared angrily at Gene. "NO MAN HAS EVER WALKED AWAY FROM MY TABLE HUNGRY. BUT NOBODY TAKES TWO SLICES OF BREAD!"
Everyone at the table was stunned by the sudden outburst. Gene, of course, was more startled than any. With disbelieving eyes, he stared at Mr. Carlson, a big grin still frozen on his lips.
"If a man works hard for me, he can eat all he wants at my table," continued the red-faced boss loudly, "but YOU didn't do a GOD DAMNED thing today!"
As can be imagined, by now I had forgotten my own misery and had straightened up in the chair. Poor Gene. I noticed that under Carlson's bulging glare, he was slipping ever so slowly down in his chair, still wearing the ridiculous smile.
I do not remember who broke the icy silence following this rampage. Perhaps no one did. But I do recall that Gene meekly placed the two slices of bread back on the plate. And I do remember his reaction after we finished supper in silence and retreated to our little trailer behind the hay stack.
"GOD DAMN HIM!...THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH!!" yelled Gene. "He's not going to get away with this. THAT DIRTY BASTARD!"
My friend was as hot and angry as I had ever seen him.
"I'm leaving....I'm leaving! THAT LOUSY SON-OF-A-BITCH! Take me back to Sheridan!" Gene demanded as he started snapping up his duds.
Had I not been so tired and sleepy I might have enjoyed a good laugh. The spectacle of that little squirt storming and raging about the trailer in his new hat and boots like some bantam cowboy was ludicrous, indeed.
"Gene," I moaned, "I'm not going to drive you back to Sheridan. I'm dead. I got to get up in the morning and work."
"TAKE ME BACK TO SHERIDAN. If you don't take me back, I'm walking."
"Man, you're gonna have to, ‘cause I can't make it," I said while flopping down on the little bed.
After several minutes of thrashing about the trailer, searching for a sock, cursing Carlson with every breath, Gene stopped when he heard a loud rap. When I looked up, I saw that the door had opened and Mr. Carlson was stepping in. After a few words about how tiny the trailer was and other small talk, the big, smiling Swede sat down. I noticed that the grin had returned to Gene's face as well.
"Now look, I'm sorry about that little blowup at the dinner table. I shouldn't have went off like that. It was wrong," said the boss patiently, all the terrible red in his face now drained and his eyes safely back in their sockets. "All I ask from any man who works for me is a day's work. If a man gives me a day's work, he can eat all the food at my table that he wants. Now Mike here, he worked his ass off today."
Then, looking back at Gene once more, Carlson's face started to flush.
"But YOU...," pointed the old man, his eyes beginning to bulge. "Now you know God damn good and well you didn't do a f----n' thing today! I'm sorry about tonight, but you deserved it."
Gene's smile suggested that he agreed.
"Now you two try to get some sleep. We've got a lot of work tomorrow," concluded the boss as he rose to leave.
Hardly had Carlson closed the door behind him and left than Gene's stiff grin dissolved into an ugly grimace.
"That son-of-a-bitch," he hissed. "God dammit, I'm leaving! If you won't take me back I'm walking."
"Gene, you can't walk back tonight. It's thirty miles...and there's wild animals out there," I groaned while laying back down. "Let's go to sleep. I'll take you in the morning."
Perhaps it was a combination of factors--not the least of which were "wild animals"--but after stalking about and cussing for an hour or more Gene did finally crawl into bed.
The following morning, after no mean amount of mighty persuasion, I coaxed Gene into the house and back to the dreaded dinner table. Surprisingly, everything went smoothly. Everyone acted as if nothing had happened at the last sitting and Mr. Carlson seemed in the best of spirits. Gene, of course, was noticeably less loquacious than on the previous eve and when the toast tray was passed around that morning, you better believe he took only ONE slice.
(continued tomorrow)
Unfortunately, while the historic Great Alaskan Highway may have begun in Dawson Creek, British Columbia (above), back in 1965 the "Great Highway" part of the deal ended thirty miles north of town where the route became a rocky, wretched gravel road that stretched for hundreds and hundreds of dusty miles.
Although we were once again running short on money, Gene and I both felt that we could make it to Alaska. As ever, we slept in the car. When we were hungry for something more than candy bars, I would stop beside a river, pull out my fishing rod, and promptly catch supper. Some of the streams were so clear that I could watch the large trout and Arctic Graylings as they eyed, chased and then hit the spinner. With absolutely no amenities, we would start a small fire on a gravel bar, run a green stick through the gutted fish, then place it on two forked sticks at either end of the fire. In ten minutes, we were ready to eat.
As we moved further north though, and especially after we entered the Yukon, my fishing forays became more infrequent. Although we listened with both ears wide open when locals warned us of bears-–"Oh yeah, some get to be ten feet tall. You're afraid of ‘em, eh?"–-I was far more concerned with mosquitoes. For some reason, I had always assumed that these pestiferous insects were limited to the hotter climates, of say, everything south of Canada. Not so. Indeed, the further north we went the more we were plagued by them...and the larger they grew. Some seemed as big as bats. At nights, we were forced to roll up the windows to keep from being drained dry of blood by the time morning came. Nevertheless, we could hear the high-pitched hum of the devils as they followed the warm blood-scent through the car's air vents. Fishing became almost impossible. No sooner would I plant myself beside a stream and try to cast the lure than I would be assailed by scores of the blood-sucking vampires. I once was compelled to actually dive into a creek head first when one attack became more vicious than normal. As a consequence, we ate less and less fresh fish.
Somewhere deep in the Yukon, the Corvair suddenly started coughing and sputtering. Spotting a place to pull over, I finally rolled to a stop. No matter what we amateur mechanics tried, the engine would not fire up again. Gene and I finally jumped back in the car, rolled up the windows, killed mosquitoes, and pondered our next move. A small stream flowed nearby and I could see the sign on the bridge. Appropriately, it was called "Deadman's Creek."
After drawing straws, Gene set off back the way we had come. Somewhere fifty or a hundred miles to the south we both remembered a garage. With mosquitoes and bears waiting just beyond the car to pounce, there was little for me to do while my friend was gone but read, sleep and wait. I do recall that at 11 PM that night I was startled to realize that I was still scanning the newspaper. In fact, at midnight it was light enough to see.
Sometime that next day, Gene showed up with a tow truck. After the car was hauled back to the garage, we learned that the gas line had become crimped; a common problem on the rocky Alaskan Highway, noted the mechanic. When the car was finally fixed, we drove away, minus nearly every cent that we had. With Alaska still hundreds of miles away, we abandoned our long-cherished goal on the spot and turned south. By the time we reentered British Columbia, not only were we starving, but the Corvair was down to its last tank of gas.
Although I once again pulled out my spin rod, the clouds of mosquitoes were so relentless that I was forced to flee without a fish (apparently the winged vampires had not dined since last they dined on me). Gene and I both recalled stopping at a small log store along the Peace River and both remembered how nice an old German lady had been to us. Hence, when the store was spotted again, we pulled over and asked for a job. Although she did not have nearly enough money to hire even one incompetent teenager, much less two, the sweet old woman did give us a sack of pastries instead. Next to the cherries a man in New Mexico gave me when I was hitchhiking earlier that summer, this may have been the second-best food I've eaten in all my life.
Thirty miles north of Dawson Creek and down to our last gasp of gas, we pulled up at a clearing where lots of men were at work, judging by the trucks. Walking to a house, we were greeted at the door by an enormous fellow who walked on a wooden leg. He looked big and mean and all that was missing from the picture was a patch over his eye. He was still chewing part of his lunch. His name was Glen Powers.
"How do you do, sir," Gene wisely smiled in his best Eddie Haskell. "My friend and I was wondering if you had any jobs open?"
"Well, that depends," said the huge, dark-haired man as he stared down at us. "Either of you know how to handle a cat?"
Under normal circumstances the answer would have been two quick affirmatives; I once had a big furry tom that I loved dearly and Gene had seen enough of them to know how to pick one up and pet it. But since we both could see and hear huge yellow Caterpillar tractors in the distance bulldozing trees, we not only knew what Powers meant but knew we were out of luck.
Returning to the car disheartened, Gene and I discussed our options: A) Stay in the car and starve, or B) hitchhike until we found food and work. Choosing from category "B," we actually did go out on the Alaskan Highway and stick out our thumbs. But after walking a mile or more it was very apparent that we were never going to get a ride on a road with so little traffic. As fortune would have it, a tractor passing on the opposite direction gave us our only lift, and this back to where we had started.
Just after reaching the car, we noticed two guys about our age walking away from the ranch. From where we stood, they both looked PO'd. Without any ceremony we quickly strode to the back of the house and discovered that the two had just quit in anger. And so, less than five minutes after getting off the tractor, Powers had us in a hole digging a ditch. At one dollar an hour, plus room and board, we were wage-earners again.
"Flunkies" best describes our positions on this soon-to-be cattle ranch–-hauling brush, painting sheds, cleaning mud from the tracks of the Caterpillars that tore down the forest, doing anything and everything that anyone said for everyone seemed to be our boss. At a dollar an hour (about 80 cents, Canadian), I suppose we were paid according to our abilities. When we were loafing (which took up about half of our normal day), Gene and I were always on the look out for Powers, as was every other loafer on the spread. He had caught the two of us one afternoon playing X's and O's on the side of a shed with our brushes instead of painting it as ordered and his thundering wrath was fearful. Powers' little boy also loved to hang around us. He was a cute kid of seven or so and built like a tiny bull. When Gene had good-naturedly started wrestling with the boy one sunny day, very quickly the scrawny eighteen-year-old found himself pinned beneath the husky seven-year-old. Although Gene continued to laugh and play and act as if it were part of the script, it was very evident that he could not get up until the child got off. The boy probably outweighed Gene by ten pounds.
One day while we were piling brush, Gene managed to get a small tree over his head prior to tossing it onto the heap. The tree was not much bigger around than my arm. Perhaps Gene was exhausted. Perhaps Gene had underestimated the tree's weight. Perhaps Gene was just weak and puny. Whatever, when he tried to hurl it, his arms gave out completely and the tree came down square on his back, pinning him to the ground. I ran over and managed to get the tree off (actually, I just lifted it with my foot), but Gene was clearly in some pain. For the next three days he laid in our tiny cabin recovering.
Before we had left Kansas in May, my Mom had given us twenty stamped postcards to insure that we would write. Gene now took this opportunity during his convalescence to send his first words home.
Dear Mom and Dad,
We are working in Canada. It is a ranch. We are doing OK so far. Yesterday a tree fell on me. My back feels broken. I am in bed today. Hope you OK. Love, Gene.
As I learned later, at almost the same time that Gene's parents were receiving that postcard, my parents received this:
Dear Mom and Dad,
Well, I'm now stuck here on Deadman's creek. It is in the Yukon. The car broke down yesterday. Gene is gone trying to get help. We are almost out of money. Don't worry. Love, Mike
My Mom, of course, did worry. In fact, the woman was almost frantic when she got this, my first card. She called Gene's mom and she was frantic as well. Each could envision us both dead. In her mind, Mrs. Miller naturally imagined a giant red wood crashing to earth and crushing her son. And Mrs. Goodrich, already crazed and sleepless when she had learned from Aunt Marge that I had been hitchhiking, could all too easily see in her nightmares my bleached bones along someplace called Deadman's Creek. Dad attempted to throw some common sense into the mix when he burst out at the sobbing woman: "Why hell, he has to be alive! God damn it Evelyn, he wrote and sent the card, didn't he?"
After a month on the job, Gene and I decided to collect our wages and walk. Old man Powers was an awesome figure. One leg or not, had he chiseled us there was not one legal or physical thing we could have done about it. But in the end, the big boss paid us every cent we were worth, and then some. With our new found wealth, we headed south.
Perhaps we ate too many doughnuts each pre-noon, or too many fiesta sundaes each afternoon, but whatever the drain, by the time we arrived in Sheridan, Wyoming, we were again reaching for the bottom of our financial barrel. On the day before, we had pulled up briefly in Cody and picked out a few presents for our folks. We also bought cowboy hats for ourselves. This spending spree certainly did nothing to help our money situation but the boost to our egos after purchasing the hats was miraculous. With our new cowboy hats-–the first either of us had ever owned--we suddenly felt ten feet tall; felt that we were now destined to be more in life than ditch diggers or cherry pickers; felt that we were cut out to be cow hands and live a life on the open range.
Soon after reaching Sheridan, Gene and I proceeded posthaste to the unemployment agency and asked for work riding fence lines. As we sat there at the desk in our cowboy hats, I'm not sure how the good man kept a straight face, but let it be said, he did. When he asked if we had our own horses, we had to admit that no, we did not. When he asked if we had our own saddles, we again confessed that we had none. Tack? Gene and I could only look at one another blankly. When we walked out of the office after our record-setting "interview," it had never occurred to either us that ranches wouldn't have horses and saddles ready and waiting for two willing-to-work cow hands like ourselves. More confused than depressed, we got back in the car.
As we drove down the highway southeast from Sheridan–-me in my cowboy hat, watching the road; Gene in his cowboy hat, smoking and crooning a Sinatra song--I began to see signs that potential employment was just ahead. Along the valley floor, ranchers were beginning to bale their hay. What "tacks" and cowboys had in common, I didn't have a clue, but here was something I understood. Back in Kansas during the previous summers, I had probably put up enough hay bales to stretch to Borneo and back. It was hard, hot work and the going rate was two cents a bale. But if one had a strong back, a weak mind, and a capacity to suffer, one would not go hungry. Gene, the "city" boy from Lawrence, had never put up a bale in his life; like everything else about him though, he was willing to try. As we moved down the narrow valley, I kept my eye open for any field with lots of "dead soldiers" laying about.
(continued tomorrow)
In 1965, just minutes after receiving a high school diploma that I most certainly didn't deserve, I jumped into my little red '62 Corvair and headed west. I was not going alone. Riding shotgun was a friend.
Although Gene Miller was a year older than me (I was 17), he was a year behind me in school. Gene was without doubt one of the scrawniest kids I had ever known. He was about the size and shape of Barney Fife. The two even looked alike. Gene was an incessant smoker, which probably contributed to his puniness and his troubles in a former school. People like to identify with similar people. Since Hoss Cartwright was out, Gene identified with Frank Sinatra, bought all his records, even though the Beetles and Beach Boys were then in vogue, and even tried to croon like his idol, much to the anguish of my ears. But Gene was a trooper; he loved to travel, he had an upbeat personality, and he was the only person I could find who would go with me.
For the first time in our lives we were both absolutely free with no moms, dads or coaches–parading-as-teachers to hassle us. We had no real, clear cut destination in mind, but we were going and that was all that mattered.
Unfortunately, soon after hitting the Pacific Coast and visiting a couple of old flames in Bakersfield, it occurred to us one day that we were out of cash. Although we saved money by sleeping in the car every night, even the slow Corvair, which generally ran on air, needed a little gas every thousand miles or so to keep moving. And thus, like Moses of old, we sought refuge by wandering into the desert. At Ehrenburg, Arizona, just over the Colorado River from Blythe, California, we pulled up and mooched a week or two of free eats from my Aunt Marge, a great, good, red-headed woman whose husband of half her size worked at the nearby agriculture inspection station.
At length, Gene managed to land a job at a service station in Blythe. His dad owned an Apco station back in Lawrence and thus my partner felt himself highly qualified to pump gas. Having no similar work experience, save bucking Kansas hay bales and cleaning up messes in the chemistry department one summer at the University of Kansas, I realized that my skills were limited and that I would need seek employment elsewhere. I'd heard vague rumors of jobs in the Texas oil fields. Since the name "Roughneck" appealed to the macho in me, I thought I'd give it a shot. Hence, one day shortly after Gene went to work, I packed my duffel bag, walked east through the agriculture inspection station, stood by the road and did something I had never done before-–I stuck out my thumb.
Won't get into the folly of that week-long hitchhiking misadventure here, of burning days, of freezing nights, of starvation, rattlesnakes, and an eye-opening side trip South of the Border; but for the first few days, see "The Hitchhiker," 9.22.06, and "Thumbs Up," 12.16.06.
Ten days after my ignominious return to Blythe, Gene and I once more packed up the Corvair and struck off. As we both agreed, it was time to get the hell out of Hell. My friend had somehow managed to get fired from the gas station job and tossed out of his rented room, all within twenty-four hours. And as for myself, one week of stoop labor in the 120 degree heat of a local melon field was more than enough for me. We both now had a little money and we'd heard that hard-working he-men were wanted in Alaska, where an earthquake had leveled Anchorage the year before.
On our circuitous trip north, I found myself almost involuntarily stopping for every hitchhiker that I saw. Until my recent experience, I'd never given much thought to these thumb bums but now whenever I saw one I saw myself. Late one day, we stopped in the Nevada desert and gave a lift to an old black man. He was weathered and gray and bundled in clothes dirtier and greasier than any rag I had ever thrown away. When, just before we were to let him out, he hit on us for a couple of bucks, I thought we might strike a deal. Spotting a liquor store, I gave him four dollars. And so, when he came back to the car with his cheap wine, he also brought a six-pack of beer for Gene and me. After we let him out at a fork in the road on the edge of town, I looked in my mirror and saw the old man ease down an embankment and walk under a low bridge.
"That is definitely not the way I want to end up," I thought to myself.
After picking cherries for a week near Salem, Oregon, Gene and I once more hopped back in the Corvair and continued our journey north. We followed the Columbia River until it eventually led us into Canada. Since I was already a seasoned international traveler in 1965 after having spent less than twenty-four hours in a Mexican border town, I was not nearly so impressed by crossing another national frontier as Gene. A few things were perplexing though, even to me. Both my friend and I were a little confused when we exchanged our greenbacks for the Canadian "monopoly" money and they actually gave us back more than we had given them. Also, we two ketchup fiends were more than a bit surprised when we saw many of the locals dashing vinegar on their french fries. Although the folks we met spoke English, both Gene and I were somewhat mystified when most of the inhabitants ended questions to us with a simple "eh?" Gas was more expensive but since we were getting five quarts with the imperial gallon, we were happy. Forget Marlboros and Luckies; we switched to Players and Sailors. Also, like many Canadians, I started rolling my own. I got so good at it in fact, that I could roll a cigarette with one hand and drive with the other. Kilometers Per Hour remained a mystery to both of us but since the Corvair even at full tilt was going nowhere in a hurry we figured we were always under the speed limit, KPH or not.
With Alaska still our goal, we steered the little red car north through Osoyoos, Kelowna, Kamloops, Quesnel, and other British Columbian towns whose names we couldn't begin to pronounce. When we reached the very verbal town of Dawson Creek after several days of travel, we knew we were finally getting somewhere. The place had the look and feel of a frontier outpost and it seemed that everything--hotels, gas stations, out houses--were made of logs. Here too began mile one of the Great Alaskan Highway.
(continued tomorrow)
