On the Back Roads (23 page)

Women run many businesses here, like the Sublette Stage, a taxi-shuttle service. At age thirty-three, Kathy McCarty started it three years ago, with nothing more bankable than an idea.

Kathy grew up in the 1960s on a ranch near here. She rode a snowmobile to where she caught the school bus. Her family had no telephone, no TV. Her study-light was a Coleman lantern. To say they had no running water tells only half the story. They hauled it in and hauled it out again.

I dropped by Kathy's house, which is also her office. Her four children, ages six and less, had just finished lunch. She cleared the table and poured us coffee. I walked to the back door, which opened onto an enormous pile of firewood.

“What you see is our heat for the next nine months. I'll split, stack, and cover that wood before the first freeze.”

Kathy has three vehicles and three on-call drivers, including her mother, when she is in town. They run to the area guest ranches and to the airports in Rock Springs or Jackson, one to two hours away. Backpackers are a growing group of customers. Kathy takes them to a trailhead, then picks them up a day or two later when they come out.

Like many here, Kathy's business is seasonal. What it takes to support her family for twelve months she has to make in four. Once the snow flies, it's all over until next year.

One woman here everyone speaks of as a local celebrity. She is Madge Funk. Madge grew up in La Cross, Wisconsin and went to college in Minnesota. She came to Wyoming in the mid-1920s.

“As a young girl, I loved the wonderful western novels by Zane Grey. They ran in Country Gentleman magazine. It came in the mail once a week, always at noon. My father used to say, “Can't you set it aside long enough to eat lunch?'

“I came to Wyoming at the urging of a school friend. Here I met a man Zane Grey wrote about, Jack Funk. And we got married. Isn't that something?” Madge's voice rose half an octave, as if, after all these years, she still couldn't believe it.

“Which book?” I asked.

“Man of the Forest.” She handed me a copy, which I quickly noticed had been handed around many times. “That's Jack Funk,” she said, pointing to a framed photo, one in a cluster of many.

For decades, Madge has lived in the same log house, shaded by a big cottonwood tree and flanked by tidy stacks of firewood. In the winter, they are the only source of heat for her and Rusty. She has had many dogs, all named Rusty.

I told her about my Rusty and that I named her after my first dog, although she is mostly black.

Her response I will always remember. She looked me square in the eye and said, “I am so very glad to meet you.”

We talked about the mountain men. She said they lasted only sixteen years here. Then the silkworm replaced the beaver. The silk hat came into fashion, the beaver hat went out. By 1840, The mountain man was history. The beaver was almost extinct.

“Lucky for him, too,” Madge said. “They took about 100,000 pelts out of here.”

H
orses trotting out tight figure eights on parched ground .made the hot air a dusty haze. I tried to park upwind of it, but there was no such place.

This is the fair of Sublette County, the third least-populated county in the nation's least-populated state. For that reason alone, I had to stop.

The air is permeated with the smell of fresh straw and manure, not that of diesel exhaust from noisy engines powering a Loop-to-Loop or a Ferris wheel. No gaudy sideshows. No cotton candy. No pushy crowds. This is a back-to-basics county fair.

An historic marker just beyond the fairground fence proclaimed this spot as part of the Lander Cutoff from the Oregon Trail. Those who chose this grueling shortcut crossed a barren, arid stretch of Wyoming, where for fifty miles there was no water and little grass. They saved eighty-five miles of travel and gained a week. They also forfeited the chance to rest and resupply at Fort Bridger.

Leaving Pinedale this morning, I had come south down U.S. 189, over much the same type of country. The morning had been chilly, but now it was hot.

The Green River flows by here, heading south to join the Colorado. A few days ago, it was last winter's snow. It came from high in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. I could only guess, as sweat ran down my back, what seeing that river meant to those emigrants and their livestock.

What happened here 150 years ago had nothing to do with what was happening here today. Surrounding me were ranch animals and the young kids who care for them, the best of both. Yesterday were the rabbit and poultry judging, 4-H dog show, cookout, and free concert by the Cowpatsys. I had already missed the floriculture and vegetable judging today, but I am just in time for the Open Angus Steer Show.

I watched kids vacuum, clip, and brush their steers, whose lustrous, black hides were like silk. Docile as kittens, grooming was not new to these animals. The final touch was a glue, sprayed on the tail. The long tail hairs, which normally swish flies, were curled back on themselves. The tail ended up looking fluffy like a pom-pom. Some were then protected in a plastic bag. The primping seemed better suited for a toy poodle than a 1,200-pound animal that nature meant to be a bull.

Taylor Bardin gave her handsome steer a finishing spit of glue and left to dress herself for the show. Incidentally, there is a dress code for showing animals in the West, maybe everywhere: no ball caps, ever.

I watched the pom-pom on Taylor's steer go up in the air. He then did what cattle do naturally and quite often. Following which, he laid down, front legs first. Then the rest of him settled with a splat.

Taylor returned, looking like a western doll, wearing a belt buckle as big as a donut. She stopped dead, glaring for the longest time at her steer in his messy midday siesta. She said nothing. Her boot, however, made what might be a permanent dent in a future rump roast. But it got him on his feet.

“Can you hose it off?” I asked.

“No,” Taylor said simply grabbing some towels to wipe down his hindquarter. The pom-pom survived.

“Ranch girls aren't prissy,” a lady beside me said. “They do what they have to do.” The lady was cleaning white foam from the mouth of her family's steer. He was massive.

My expression must have asked the next question, for she answered it. “He drools because he's nervous. After a few days at home, when the adrenaline is flushed out of his system, he'll be fine. Then he goes to the butcher.” She said this as if talking about someone else's animal, while giving hers a loving pat. Frankly, I flinched.

“The other animals here will be butchered probably Monday or Tuesday. Steer meat is not as good when charged with adrenaline. So they are the only animals that go back to familiar surroundings for a week or so to mellow out.”

I couldn't believe this. She told me every animal would be sold at auction on Sunday, the last day of the fair. The sale price includes delivery to the buyer's choice of slaughterhouse.

“You mean these kids raise these beautiful animals all year, show them here, maybe they win them a prize, and then they send them off to be slaughtered?”

“That's what it's all about. Rural kids are very realistic. They see the animal world as a continuing cycle. It's always going to end the same way, and they accept that. This steer is part of a cash crop. What this big guy brings on Sunday will go into my son's college fund.”

“Don't you get attached to one once in a while?”

“Sure, we get attached. They all have personalities, but they are not pets. It helps to give them names like ‘Beefsteak' and ‘Rib Eye.' That puts the focus in the right place, I think.

“Kids out here take responsibility at an early age. Ranch life demands it. Maybe they grow up quicker than city kids do. I'm not saying its good or bad, it's just the way it is. They live close to the land, closer to God, maybe.”

We watched as her son stuffed a big comb in the back pocket of his jeans. “And they also learn showmanship,” she added, laughing. “If a judge touches the steer, the hand-print is instantly combed out.”

I walked to the swine shed, where the hogs were all asleep. No adrenaline rush there.

In the crafts building, I waited in line to buy bread and sample brownies. A sign advertised the annual Lions Club spaghetti dinner tonight. Behind me someone said, “The person who usually makes the spaghetti sauce can't do it this year, so it could be pretty good.”

A
dog-eared sign, stuck on the door, read Back in 15 Minutes. Starting when? How long has it been here? This was no hastily scribbled note by a conscientious store owner called out unexpectedly. That's forgivable. This hand-lettered sign showed age and heavy use. Guess you can get away with that in a small town, where you can survive with no competition.

Since the store was dark, fifteen minutes could mean anything, maybe even tomorrow. By then, I could be somewhere else.

I crossed the street to a shady bench in the town square, which is a grassy triangle here in Kemmerer. Most of the retail business in town happens on two of its sides.

The vehicles around the square confirmed a notion I have had since entering the state. Should Wyoming ever need a symbol to rival the cowboy on a bucking bronco, which appears on every license plate, or the bison, which decorates the state flag, it has one in the pickup truck. Men and women. Young and old. If they drive anything here, it is a truck of some sort, most often a pickup.

Another consistency: all these pickups are American made. A while back, there was a Nissan pickup around town. The retired gent who owned it was hounded unmercifully by his lunch buddies at the senior center. They kidded him that he should be made to go to Japan to get his Social Security check.

From my bench in the square, now getting warm in the sun, I counted two cars. They passed on Pine Street, which is also U.S. 189. I didn't count them in my bench survey because they had out-of-state license plates.

Big beneficiaries of this pickup society are dogs, big ones especially. They hop in the trucks, even with muddy feet, and visit the town square to bark and be barked at. I saw many that were doing just that. I bet dogs live happy lives in Wyoming. I felt sorry that I left Rusty with the motor home. She would have had fun in the town square.

On the corner of Pine, across from the square, is the J.C. Penney Store. This is not just any J.C. Penney Store, one of 1,300 outlets in malls and on main streets across the country. This is the J.C. Penney Company Mother Store, Founded in 1902, so the sign says that spreads across its front.

Penney named his original store the Golden Rule after the biblical rule that he lived by. That store has been torn down. So they can't honestly hang a sign on this one calling it the original. But “Mother Store” is good enough. It makes the point: James Cash Penney started here in Kemmerer.

The local banker warned Penney and his two partners that a cash-only store could not make it here. Three others had tried and failed. They could not compete with the mining company's store that offered credit and accepted mining-company script, cautioned the banker.

Penney did not take the banker's advice but instead took the gent's money, $1,500.00, and added $500.00 of his own. At age twenty-six, he was an instant success in the dry-goods and clothing business. Considering suspenders sold for 5 cents and ladies' satin petticoats could be had for 29 cents, put his first-day sales in perspective. He closed with an impressive $466.59, and that in a town of just 1,000 people!

Farther down the square, near the point of the triangle, is the white-picket-fenced house of the Penney family. This is the original house, but it's not in its original location. In the 1980s, they moved it to make it more accessible to summer visitors like me. (Nobody visits here in the winter.) If they can move the house, the least I can do is walk over for a closer look.

Shirley Kindschuh was sweeping the porch. “Someone lived in it up ‘til the seventies, even though it has no indoor plumbing,” Shirley said, as we walked from one small room to another and up and down some tight stairs.

Completing the tour, Shirley offered me a place to sit in Penney's parlor: the love seat. We talked about why she liked Kemmerer. Fishing. Deer hunting. Camping. Also, what she called, “snow ma chining”—apparently a Wyoming word for what others call “snow mobiling.”

She had to leave about the time I realized that Penney's love seat is stuffed with something as comfortable as crumpled cardboard. If it's a Penney's original, I don't think Penney or anyone else sat on it much.

I wanted to visit Kemmerer's town hall until I learned that it was in another town. It's in Frontier, a community just up the road. Kemmerer got a good deal on a building in Frontier. Having the town hall out of town was one thing, but having it in another town rubbed civic pride a little raw. So Kemmerer annexed a corridor that technically puts the town hall within the town limits. It also puts Frontier's post office in Kemmerer.

I was curious to see how this is working out, but Frontier is too far to walk. I opted for the Senior Friendship Center. It's next to the Penney house.

Entering this small-town senior center during lunch stopped everything. My slamming the door didn't help. Forks, spoons, napkins, cups, even heads and eyes, everything froze as in a photograph. They didn't just stare. They gawked. For an instant, I could read the cartoonist's balloons over every gray head: Who is this guy, and why is he late for lunch? I wanted to yell, “I'm not here for lunch!” But a pretty lady in a
flowered apron put a tray in my hands and led me to the fried chicken, mashed potatoes, Kool-Aid, and salad. I was glad I didn't yell anything about lunch.

I found a seat across from Ben Brown. Ben and his late wife were ranchers here for many years. Even at age eighty-seven, he remembers those days well. “But they roll by so fast now, it's hard to keep track of dates,” he admitted.