Local Culture
At five thirty yesterday afternoon, my neighbor (and coworker) picked me up to drive into "town." I put town in quotes because usually town (sans quotes) refers to Sheridan, which is 27 miles away (pop 15,000). "Town" is Clearmont, only 10 miles away, but also with only a population of 115.
We were heading for the "Clearmont-Arveda School" which is the k-12 school where his wife teaches as the ag/shop teacher. It was halloween carnival day, which also meant a local meal of the local special: chili and cinnamon rolls.
Not gonna lie, I was pretty excited to try out this bizarre combination. And when I did, it turned out not to be as bizarre as I'd imagined it. You ate the chili for a while, and then you ate the cinnamon roll for a while, and then you repeated. The worst bit was the kool-aid, which was the only thing they had to drink. Cherry flavored water. Let me tell you, I don't know how Jim Jones got anybody to "drink the kool-aid." If ascension into heaven tasted that foul, you'd think that would have been the first indicator.
While we sat, my coworker chats with two men, also in their early 60s, whom I eventually figured out he used to work with. There was one topic of the day and one topic only: hunting. What they'd gotten, where they'd been, what they'd seen the out-of-staters doing. These guys knew what they were talking about. Saying how they saw so-and-so trying to drag a "sheep" (I was momentarily confused--why are they hunting sheep? They're in all the fields--until I realized: Big Horned Sheep) he'd shot in zone 39, when everyone knew it wasn't the season in 39. And the man tried to claim he'd shot it in zone 40 (on the other side of this one sumit, where it was season) and the ram had run into 39, and so on and so on. They continued like this with more stories and more knowledge than I could imagine. I don't know how many zones there are in the Big Horn Basin here, but it felt like these men knew every boundary (usually a stream or a mountain peak) and when what was in season in which district. It was nothing short of impressive (and terrifying, but mostly impressive).
And then my coworker's wife comes running in and asks if I could be on the panel of judges for the halloween costume contest. How could I say no? This woman had fed me weekend after weekend with good home-made meals and quality beer and kept me from getting too lonely out here in Wyo. The panel, it turned out, was three people. Me, one of the teachers who looked to be in her 60s, and a 90-year-old man on oxygen named Bud.
"I helped clean out the Ucross buildings back before there was a foundation," he told me. "The barn and the house. Did you know the house used to be a whore house?"
"No," I said, completely surprised as to why this fact was included in the official tour we gave to arriving artists.
"Yup. A post office and a whore house."
The teacher and I mostly deferred to him for all of our panel decision.
We were heading for the "Clearmont-Arveda School" which is the k-12 school where his wife teaches as the ag/shop teacher. It was halloween carnival day, which also meant a local meal of the local special: chili and cinnamon rolls.
Not gonna lie, I was pretty excited to try out this bizarre combination. And when I did, it turned out not to be as bizarre as I'd imagined it. You ate the chili for a while, and then you ate the cinnamon roll for a while, and then you repeated. The worst bit was the kool-aid, which was the only thing they had to drink. Cherry flavored water. Let me tell you, I don't know how Jim Jones got anybody to "drink the kool-aid." If ascension into heaven tasted that foul, you'd think that would have been the first indicator.
While we sat, my coworker chats with two men, also in their early 60s, whom I eventually figured out he used to work with. There was one topic of the day and one topic only: hunting. What they'd gotten, where they'd been, what they'd seen the out-of-staters doing. These guys knew what they were talking about. Saying how they saw so-and-so trying to drag a "sheep" (I was momentarily confused--why are they hunting sheep? They're in all the fields--until I realized: Big Horned Sheep) he'd shot in zone 39, when everyone knew it wasn't the season in 39. And the man tried to claim he'd shot it in zone 40 (on the other side of this one sumit, where it was season) and the ram had run into 39, and so on and so on. They continued like this with more stories and more knowledge than I could imagine. I don't know how many zones there are in the Big Horn Basin here, but it felt like these men knew every boundary (usually a stream or a mountain peak) and when what was in season in which district. It was nothing short of impressive (and terrifying, but mostly impressive).
And then my coworker's wife comes running in and asks if I could be on the panel of judges for the halloween costume contest. How could I say no? This woman had fed me weekend after weekend with good home-made meals and quality beer and kept me from getting too lonely out here in Wyo. The panel, it turned out, was three people. Me, one of the teachers who looked to be in her 60s, and a 90-year-old man on oxygen named Bud.
"I helped clean out the Ucross buildings back before there was a foundation," he told me. "The barn and the house. Did you know the house used to be a whore house?"
"No," I said, completely surprised as to why this fact was included in the official tour we gave to arriving artists.
"Yup. A post office and a whore house."
The teacher and I mostly deferred to him for all of our panel decision.