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Friday, 30 September 2011

Final Days at the Red House on the Niobrara

I had a feeling it would be like this towards the end. The weather has conspired to give me absolute perfection. The air is as clear as could be, the temperature is agreeable, and the colours out there are vivid in the unbroken, bright sunshine.

This afternoon I walked out onto the center pivot to satisfy my curiosity as to the precise size of those bales. Each cylinder is about five feet wide, and would be a little more than that in height if you stood it up. I doubt that those dimensions are of the slightest interest to a living soul in western Nebraska, but when I get home and show my pictures, and write about what I’ve see here, I want to be able to talk with a degree of authority


It’s for the same reason – to sound as though I know what I’m talking about – that I took a picture of the gate by which you enter the center pivot. We have all kinds of contraptions to close and secure gates at home, ranging from iron latches on a spring to a length of baling twine strung around a brick, or a 56lb weight. Believe it or not, this universal, and ingenious, device you have out here had me baffled the first time I came across it. I’ve never seen anything like it on my side of the Atlantic. I’m used to them now, but having scratched my hand on a barb now and then I still prefer, most times, to step across a fence. It helps to have long legs, and it depends how tight the wire is, of course.


Even the solar-powered deer feeder is a novelty to me, although I dare say they have something of the kind on the Scottish Highlands. I just don’t hang out with deer-hunting types back home. Can’t afford to, and probably wouldn’t like them very much. I believe they are mostly wealthy men who fly in, bag their deer, and fly back to whatever city they've come from.


I ended up walking down-river a little way. It felt a little as though I was starting on a long round of goodbyes - to certain trees, certain grasses, to a whole landscape that’s given me company and beauty these last few months. I dare say I’ll come this way again. I don’t seem to be able to avoid it. This is, if I remember correctly, my twelfth visit to Nebraska, so I'm sure there'll be a thirteenth. I just have no idea when that might be.

I’m not sure right now whether or not I’ll write any more of this blog. I have quite a bit to occupy me over the next few days. But if anything interesting happens, I’ll record it.










Thursday, 29 September 2011

I am starting to dash around from task to task, one eye on the calendar, one on the weather, a third on – well, I don’t have a third, and that’s the problem. My desk is a disaster area, the floor here is dotted with sand-burs, and outside there are a signs of the changing season that I’d like to see, absorb and record. But I only have five days left and quite a list of things to do..

Yesterday morning I ran into Kitty’s dad, for the first time in an age. I was walking down the hill to the red house, my laptop slung over my shoulder, my camera, as ever, in my left hand, when he came by on his ATV, stopped and had a short chat. He talked about my recent researches into the history of the red house, and I asked him about the Wrights, who took it on after the Arents left. It seems that they were struck by tragedy. I wouldn’t really want to dwell on the details, even if I had them to hand. Briefly, it seems that Mr Wright was taking his to young daughter up the hill, on the old road that preceded this one – the scar of it is still there, in the hillside – when he had a problem with the vehicle, stopped to jack it up and managed to roll it over. By the time help was summoned he was dead.

Following this, the property passed to another Wright family, not related. I don’t know whether these people lived in the red house, but am assuming that the first Wrights would have done. (It seems that my attempt at a history of the red house is destined to be re-written every time I get into a conversation about it.) On a lighter note, Kitty’s dad told me that when the place was up for sale in 1961 another party was all set to buy, but couldn’t agree over a couple of hay-stacks that were on the land. The prospective purchasers wanted them included, the vendors didn’t. Negotiations stalled, and that’s how the land ended up in Matt & Kitty’s family’s hands.

In the afternoon I went to Gordon with the intention of seeing Caroline Sandoz.  I met Jeanne Walter up at the residential care home, she having kindly agreed to accompany me. She has known Caroline for many years. Caroline was in fact asleep when we got there, and although she seemed to waken after a few minutes she wasn’t really focused. When we went to find a member of staff we found Tanya, the Ukrainian woman I’d met a few weeks ago, the one who had suggested I call in. I have to say I was tremendously impressed by the way she communicated with Caroline: in no way condescending, in every way solicitous, gentle, even affectionate. Caroline did perk up when we showed her the books I’d brought, the ones she’d produced about Mari’s life and signed for me, 15 years ago. But Tanya’s opinion was that it might be better for me to call by one day before lunch. So I’ve made an appointment for Saturday.

On the way home I paused at the crossroads in Merriman, then swung north. Among the ranchers whose acquaintance I’ve made these past few months was a guy who lives just outside of town and had told me to call in some time. When I asked him what sort of time would be convenient he just said, ‘Surprise me.’ So I did. I encountered a familiar scene as I drove into the yard: sheets of tin lying about the place, a ladder against the side of the house, and a guy on his knees with a pair of cutters in one hand and a pencil in the other. A second guy, my rancher friend, was walking towards me, clearly trying to figure out who the hell he knew with Montana plates on his car.

We sat for a good hour, more like two, drinking beer and chewing that fat. I wasn’t surprised at the way the conversation ranged from the economics of ranching to near-death experiences, from women-folk to foreign travel, from the people he met on streets of New York to the Native rainmaker he knew as a youngster, growing up on this spread. I think that’s why I’d called in: this guy is always good for a provocative view on life, and a story. And he paid me a compliment, one I will always value. Told me he was real sorry to see me going home, because he admired me for what I was doing. What, I said, lazing around in a hunting lodge all summer? No, he said, for coming out to the Sandhills. You don’t want a ranch, you don’t want a cow, you don’t want a fence, you just seem to like being here. I think I saw what he meant. And then he gave me a warning. Some time after you get back home, he said, you’ll hear them calling to you, and you’ll wish you could be back. Matt has hinted at the same thing. We shall see. As I’ve said before, I am more than  ready to be home, but I know, as surely as I know anything, that I am going to miss this place hugely. It's been a landmark experience. 

I drove home with a couple of books he has loaned me. ‘Drop `em off at the station before you go,’ he said. (He meant the gas station) They’re a collection of ranching reminiscences written by his grandfather. I also had on the seat beside me a bag of corn-cobs I’d bought on the roadside in Gordon, and a bag of fat, ripe tomatoes, a gift from Jeanne Walter. Had one with my supper, and it tasted every bit as good as it looked

Time for breakfast.

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

There are times when something is bugging you and you just don’t know what it is. Occasionally it niggles away at you for days, a sense of something not done, or that needs fixing – except that the feeling is so vague that you can’t pinpoint it. You can even wake up, as I did this morning, feeling out of sorts and wishing you knew why.
I drank my tea and went out to check the temperature: 56 and rising fast. The sunlight was coming in, almost horizontally, shining on the bare earth that I’d piled up, and graded, against the side of the house some weeks ago, and seeded with a rye mix. And that’s when I realised what was troubling me. I’d given up hope that the grass would ever appear, but there it was, emerging like a slightly threadbare emerald carpet.


I was far more pleased than you might think, because over the past couple of weeks I have watched wave after wave of fat, greedy grasshoppers crawl all over that bare earth; and I’d convinced myself that they were eating the seeds, as well as any emerging shoots, and that my efforts had been wasted. It could be that they were doing just that, but I have sprayed the area against insects twice in the last few days. Maybe there’s a connection, maybe not. I sowed the seed in the hope that I might walk away from here in a week’s time with fresh green sward in place against the newly painted façade. I had a clear picture of it in my mind – red against green - and the idea that I’d failed was getting to me. So, fingers crossed.

Out on the range the grasses are in an entirely different phase, and I just wish I could make my camera record their gorgeous colours. So I keep trying, with mediocre results.


Yesterday I drove Mercy to town to put some gas in the tank, and while I was down there I took a bit of a farewell tour. I realised that I’d yet to take any photos of  Merriman, other than  from the air – and since I’m already booked in to give a talk on my adventures to the University of the Third Age (U3A) next spring I want to be able to show a British audience what a town of 118 people looks like. So here’s what you see as you drive into town along Hwy 20.


And here’s the business hub of the place: the bar, the gas station and in the background the café.


While I was down there I called in on a guy I’d met at one of the parties I’ve been to. I found Will doing what proprietors of small businesses always end up doing, sweeping the place out. He has a body shop tucked away in an alley off Main Street. We talked about a number of things, and he was soon telling me about his adventures in London and his thoughts on the beer they serve there, and how he got shouted at by drunken louts for being a ******* Yank…. but I was only half listening. Something that was hanging on his wall had caught my eye. A canoe, I thought.


I was wrong. It’s the rotted hull of an old sailing-boat, made of steel, with lead sealing the joints. That, my friend explained, was brought to the Sandhills by an English nobleman who bought a place just north and east off the highway, back in the 1890s. He had a lake on his land, fancied the idea of sailing on it, and had this craft, along with several others, shipped out. Will salvaged it from a blow-out. So what happened to my fellow-countryman? It seems he had a rather good racket going on, a sort of dude-ranch set-up where he fetched in Englishmen who wanted a taste of adventure and the cowboy life, put them to work on the spread and charged them for the privilege. It all went to pot when he took off to California one time and left the inmates in charge of the asylum, so to speak. There was a blizzard, and they had the bright idea off  bringing the cattle in off the range – right into the stack-yard, where they climbed all over the winter’s supply of feed and pretty much destroyed it.

I said goodbye to Will, took a few more shots of town, and drove home, thinking about all the other stories I’ll never hear – and wondering, not for the first time, why anybody ever bothers to write fiction.


Monday, 26 September 2011

Dreaming about skunks - and Old Jules' grave

I awoke at four-thirty yesterday from a dream about skunks. I was telling someone to relax. ‘We don’t have skunks in England.’ True, but we do have them in Nebraska, and the bedroom was filled with that pungent, unmistakable smell. Had one got into the basement? The house? It was daylight before I found the droppings outside the front door, and by then the air was breathable again. I think my visitor had just been marking out some territory – right under my bedroom window. 
After a leisurely breakfast I took a little tour. I wanted to see Old Jules’ grave in Alliance. I drove down Hwy 61, a lonely road with next to no radio reception and precious little to look at, except the varying shades of the fall grasses. I passed four vehicles in 57 miles and veered off the pavement just once – through inattention and boredom. Heading  west along Hwy 2 I paused at Antioch, just a scattering of  buildings now but in the period 1916 to 1921 home to a thriving potash industry. Supplies from Europe being cut off due to the war, somebody discovered that the vital mineral could be extracted from the alkaline content of the lakes down there. In Old Jules Mari refers to those bodies of water as “stinking as old setting eggs, the gray water edged with alkali-bleached tufts of grass.” But suddenly they were valuable, and people whom Old Jules had scorned for their stupidity in settling on such land were making a mint. Over those five years there were 2,000 inhabitants in Antioch, and five plants working round the clock. Then overseas supplies were restored, production came to a halt, and the buildings were left to decay.


A little further along the road I stopped at Ellsworth, again little more than a handful of buildings around a road junction. This is where the old Spade Ranch had it headquarters, and the former company store is still there, now re-invented as Morgan’s Cowpoke Haven and, unfortunately for me, closed on Sundays.


I’d set off for Alliance without having the faintest idea where Old Jules was buried, and unmindful of the fact that this is a town of some 9,000 inhabitants – so there’s quite a lot if it to get lost in. I walked into the first gas station I came across and asked to be directed to the cemetery. The guy at the cash register was not from around these parts and had no idea. He suggested I ask one of the customers, which I did. ‘Which cemetery?’ was the next question. ‘City or Catholic?’ I took a wild guess at the former and then listened as the lady tried to explain how to get there. She soon realised it was a lost cause. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘my daughter and I aren’t doing anything special. Follow us. We’re in that jeep out there.’ They left me at the cemetery entrance, pointing to a directory ‘over that way’, and drove off.


The directory, which looked like a mausoleum, was an electronic, touch-screen job, and as soon as I keyed in ‘Sandoz’ up it came.  Block 8, Section 5. It took a few more minutes for me to find the graves – of Jules, Mary and Flora, tucked in beside the Strasburgers, whose nephews Jules threatened when they came to talk about running a new phone line across his land. Mari it was who’d prevented bloodshed, knocking the barrel of his raised gun to send the shot harmlessly over their heads.


  

I drove home up Hwy 87, through Hay Springs and Rushville, completing a circular trip of 200-plus miles. If I can get to see Caroline this week I will have made all the pilgrimages I intended to make.

I mentioned earlier the many colours that mark the hills just now. There are pinks and reds, yellows and greens, sometimes mingled together, sometimes visible as separate broad splashes; and here and there one particular colour will dominate, according to the type of land, the amount of moisture and, I dare say, several other factors. When you stop and take a close look, you can see that the bunch-grass alone consists of several different shades. It’s a glorious time of year, and it’s going to be a real wrench to take my leave next week.

 

Sunday, 25 September 2011

Saturday was a leisurely day. In the morning I spent a full hour up by the ranch listening to soccer commentary from home and even received a half-time text from a friend who was at the game I was listening to. Modern life, eh? I love it. In the afternoon I wrote, and in the evening I went out and sat on a hilltop to watch the sun highlight the yellowing leaves and the pink of the bunch-grass.

I haven’t yet said much about what I found in the Sandoz archive. I should point out that I spent a week looking at Mari’s papers in the archive at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln some years ago, and have a pile of photo-copied correspondence, mostly about her efforts to get Old Jules and her other early works published, which was a heroic endeavour. This week at Chadron, I suppose was looking more for clues about her character and personality. I knew, for example, that she was known to have a passing interest in aspects of spiritualism. What I came across seemed little more than the superstitions of  a woman who was desperate to be reassured that she was going to make it, sometime – and that, having made the breakthrough, she would continue to succeed. Anybody who has lived for years without the security of a regular income will recognise that nagging worry. There were wish-lists, generally to do with her attempts to sell a story or finish a book, each letter in a title or a publisher’s name being accorded a number relating to its place in the alphabet to see whether they added up to a propitious number.


There was also this letter from a graphologist.


I am reminded of the lists I used to keep, and still have in my journals, of projects on the blocks, and work doing the rounds of publishers. I once listed 31 separate ‘live’ projects, and wondered why I was making no money. Editors would say helpful things like ‘don’t spread yourself so thin’, while I went slowly crazy wondering which horse I was supposed to be backing. I also remember wondering, time and again, why the breaks always seemed to come from some unexpected place where I hadn’t even thought to look.

But it does seem that her anxiety drove her to seek portents in the turning of cards, as seen in this scrap of paper (one of several) on which she notes that it was “improbable” that Harpers would take Foal of Heaven: she had only drawn “2 aces in first 13 cards”.

However, these anxieties were mostly in abeyance in her later, ‘harvest’ years, when a much more joyous – although no less diligent and focussed – persona shone through, as seen in this photo of her at a book signing in the 1950s.


She had always been a fun-lover, as this 1971 recollection from an old acquaintance, Tom Quinn, testifies:


 If there was a secret to Mari’s success it was just that diligence and determination that saw her through the toughest years, her twenties and early thirties, and her willingness to shut out the world when she needed to – even if it meant pinning a very blunt note on her door to keep visitors away.

(Sorry - I've no idea why it's rotated, and cannot fix it.) One has to be careful not to read too much into the papers a person leaves behind, but sometimes there are definite clues there as to his or her character. When Mari was suffering from cancer she wrote this note, which appears to be a blank, as if she planned to send copies to a number of people in reply to their enquiries and so cut short the tedious business of explaining her circumstances to everyone individually:


I now have a little over a week to finish my writing and get tidied up here. And of course the weather has decided to put on its very best face, just to make the departure all the harder. Two weeks from now all my Nebraska materials will be stowed away in my office at home and I’ll have resumed my ghost-writing work. I have to produce 50,000 words – good ones – by the end of January. But I still have every hope of completing a book-length manuscript before I leave her. Some time over the next few days, however, I need to try and call on Caroline, and I am determined to get across to Alliance and visit the one Sandoz site I have yet to see, Old Jules’ grave.  It’s going to be a busy time.

Saturday, 24 September 2011

My visit to Valentine was a success. I can’t imagine what I was worried about. The lady in the Deeds Office, Debbie, put herself at my disposal and spent the better part of two hours, either side of her lunch hour, pulling down huge ledgers containing records of land ownership and transactions.
What follows is bitty, but adds a few more pieces to the jigsaw. The first record pertaining to this 160-acre holding notes Holger Arent’s receipt of his patent on 5 June 1911. As I understand the homestead laws, that would normally be available five years after the original claim was registered. The piece of land is described as being “the South half of the South Half of Section 34 [i.e., a quarter section, or 160 acres] in Township 33 North of Range 38 West of the Sixth Principal Meridian, Nebraska.”

On 4 September 1913, Holger received patent on a further 466.56 acres, suggesting that he made a claim under the Kinkaid Act (1904), which allowed a total, of 640 acres. I suspect that the odd figure involved has to do with it being river-side land.   

It seems that Helga, the Arent’s eldest child, also made a claim. She died in childbirth, in her twenties, which would explain the record I saw of her land being assigned to her heirs on 21 March 1916.

As to Hedvig’s brothers, the Petersens, who had come out here as early as the 1890s, their land was indeed along the Snake river. I saw no record of their acquiring the land, but there is a deed whereby Julius and his wife Kristina sold various parcels down there to a Carl Jorgensen. The contract was made in June 1914, the deed exchanged in October 1916. The sum involved was $13,568.   

As to Hedvig and Julius’ brother Peter, there is a record of him and his wife Emila selling two 40-acre parcels of land to a Hans Jensen in 1910 for $1920.

In 1948 the surviving Arent offspring – Herman, (and Effie, his wife), Phillip (and Louise, his wife), Otto, Margaret (now married to James Herrington) and Anna (married to Harley Collins) signed a document granting the tenancy of this place to Charlie and Dorothy Wright. Helga and Martin were both dead by this time; Astrid was still alive, and, I believe, married to Hans Gammel, but was not a signatory. Ultimately, the and would pass to the current owner, Kitty’s dad, in 1961.

This is, as I said, bitty, for which I apologise. I simply noted all that I found – which included three other pieces of information. Some time ago, when A and I hiked down to the place where the wagon train was burned by the Cavalry, I mentioned the old wooden home we came across, known locally as the Thayer place. Having seen his name on a map, I can confirm that the homesteader down there was Alvin R Thayer.

The log house I saw yesterday, down where Leander Creek flows into the river, belonged to James J Goodfellow.

Finally, on the audio tape recorded by the late Astrid Arent, she spoke of the family staying with the Lyons family for a few months before they finally came here in 1904. I saw Lyons’ name on another map, one mile north of the Harlan school and post office, in Lavaca township, about eight or ten miles up-river from here.

The impermanence of many of the names on these old charts can be gauged by the fact that on a Nebraska Railroad Commission map dated 1915, Center is marked as a settlement. All that’s there  now is the cemetery, two miles or so from here and just to the east of the ranch-house.

It may not sound a lot, but it is helping me understand of this little corner of Cherry County a little better. Tomorrow I’ll try and synopsise what I found among the Mari Sandoz papers earlier in the week.

Friday, 23 September 2011

Mari Sandoz in bronze


I’ve tried many times to get a decent photo of the bronze statue of my heroine that stands outside the Heritage Center dedicated to her at Chadron. This is the first one I’m happy with. I dare say that at some stage I’ll write a few paragraphs about what else I found there, but I have other things on my mind right now – although I must record that on the way home I saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree down by the river. It’s the first one I’ve spotted this trip

I’m writing this on Thursday evening as I wait for the spasms of cramp in my legs to calm down. It’s my own fault, I suppose: I haven’t done anything like as much walking as I’d like to the last few months, and I sort of rushed things today. There has always been a problem with going down Leander Creek. Nobody has been willing to go out on a limb and say how far it is to the confluence with the Niobrara. Unsurprising, that: I haven’t met anybody who’s done it on foot. Well, I have – and am available for congratulatory handshakes until Tuesday October 4th, when I drive to Rapid and fly home.

I wanted to set off early, and I managed that – even though I had to drive the first 3-400 yards with my head sticking out of the side window until I could get Mercy pointed at the sun. Yep, we had a frost here too. Up at the ranch I transferred to the shiny -  well, dusty – Focus and drove out to the highway. I parked just short of the bridge that crosses the creek and was over the fence and on my way by 0800h. It was a simply perfect morning: a cloudless sky, no wind, and as the temperature climbed through the 40s it was a perfect temperature.


It’s the sort of view that always puts a spring in my step - even though I was carrying a pack loaded with a gallon of water, a dry lunch, one of Matt’s ready to eat Army meals, and my mug, coffee and trusty methylated spirit stove, 34 years old and going strong.

Most people I’ve spoken to have said I should walk in the creek – and then corrected themselves: they’ve never seen water in it this time of year before. I tried to follow the margins, but it turned out to be a little like the river up here: meandering, and flanked by deep draws with steep sides and dense tree cover.


So I was forced ever further away from the water. Not that I minded: this was a beautiful walk, and I was enjoying it. I was stopped in my tracks twice: once by a snake, which made me jump, but turned out to be a harmless looking thing, smooth and slender, with red streaks along its body. The second incident, however, had me quite excited. A sort of fawn coloured creature, quite a bit larger than a coyote, with a longer body, shorter hair and longer legs – shorter ears too - was walking along a low ridge about a hundred yards in front of me. It was only visible for about four or five seconds. It looked slightly menacing, so I called out to it, whereupon it slipped quietly down the far side. Could it have been of the feline persuasion? 


I was walking fast, still uncertain as to how far I had to go, and was surprised when, after only two hours, I got to a point where I could actually see my destination about a mile away. I decided to sit and rest. I would treat myself to a snack. That idea soon went out of the window. I had lunch instead, and admired the view before dropping down to the flat delta of land that divided the two waterways.
I’d been told that there was an old settlement down there, and I soon found it, across the creek – a derelict barn of some sort and a log house, sadly falling apart.







From there I walked on down to the confluence, where I brewed myself a cup of coffee – and wished I’d packed my lightweight three-legged camping stool (it weights 15 ounces). I’d really enjoyed the trip down. 


The return was pretty unpleasant. I’d put myself under pressure by telling A. I’d be able to talk on the phone at three, and rather than return the way I’d come – up down up down up, the scenic route – I sought out a two-track about half a mile further away from the creek.



This made the route easier to follow, but I hadn’t taken into account the heat, nor the fact that there wasn’t a scrap of shade I might rest under; so, seven miles or so non-stop. I was trudging along like some old hobo well before the highway came into view. Still, a great hike, and a sense of achievement. I had planned to do it as an overnight – and it would have been great to camp down there – but I kept waiting for the weather to cool down and suddenly found myself short of time, and of course the nights now are almost twelve hours long.


Tomorrow, Valentine, and the land registry. I shall put on my very best ‘Hi, I’m over here from England’ act and see if I can persuade some kind soul to help me negotiate whatever documents they have there that record the homesteading around this part of Cherry County.

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Well, I’ve done it again: set out with a plan and watched it go up in smoke, simply because I will get talking to people. This morning it was Badger Buckley telling me about his background in martial arts, learning Japanese, and German and French, and travelling to Okinawa, and growing organic vegetables, and grapes, and making wine out at Crawford… and slipping me an ancient spear-point as a parting gift.

Later, over my hot tea, it was Yvonne Sandoz, clearly exhausted with all the jawing she’s done over the past two weeks or so – not to mention shooting prairie dogs from the cab of a pick-up yesterday. Y’see, old Hector St Jean de Crevecoeur was dead right: take a mild-mannered, civilised European, stick `em out on the Plains for a week or two, and what do they turn into? Killers. And talking of killers, here’s a deadly weapon I found on the bar at the Olde Main this morning.


It’s a replica, but a working one. Jeannie has a small collection and is always pleased to drag them out for curious visitors – or to keep the peace:


I’m going to keep this brief (again) as the day is running away with me. It’ll soon be noon and I haven’t eaten; and I need to try to wind things up at the Sandoz Heritage Center archive so that I can get back to the red house before dark. But my time here has been useful. There are always dark corners in a narrative as complicated as Mari Sandoz’, and I’ve managed to shed a little light – at least on my own areas of doubt. As regards note-taking, I’ve taken the lazy way this trip, photographing a number of documents rather than transcribing them. I can’t resist showing this page from her original manuscript of “The Christmas of the Phonograph Records”, one of my favourite pieces, which suggests the extent to which she re-wrote, and re-wrote, and then re-wrote some more until she felt she had got the content right and the mood, tone and texture the way she wanted it.



Tomorrow I doubt that I’ll post an entry. With luck, and a following wind, I should be hiking down Leander creek and back. So I’ll catch up Friday. Well, that’s the plan – and we all know what happens to plans out here.

Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Yesterday felt like a vacation day. It kicked off with tea and cinnamon rolls in the bar here, after which I strolled round to the Bean Broker where I had a meeting with Bob ‘Badger’ Buckley who had driven over from Crawford to get his car fixed. He’s another remarkable individual who has more or less made his living as a trapper, hunter and guide who can turn his hand to certain traditional crafts like flint-knapping, tanning (with brains, the Native way) and working in hides. He attends rendezvous around the region to trade, and sell his wares. I remember that some years ago when I travelled the Lewis & Clark Trail, from St Louis to Astoria, I met a number of  ‘mountain men’ (re-enactors, that is) who made that their full-time occupation. I was supposed to be doing a brief transaction with Bob, but it turned into an hour-long discussion – which is one of the pleasures, as I’ve said before, of smalltown life, and another reminder that these places are never what they appear to be on the surface. The longer you hang around the more you discover.

Jeannie’s mother, Evva, is still in town – she spends the summers here and her winters in California, not far from Palm Springs. I was chatting with her yesterday afternoon, when two bikers arrived at the hotel. One of them had worked behind the bar for Evva when he  was in college, forty years ago. Far from expecting to find his former boss at the bar drinking beer with a Limey, he admitted that he had expected to find she had passed on – but at 85 or thereabouts she’s certainly alive and kicking. The visit prompted Evva to dig out some old newspaper cuttings from the 1960s and `70s, including this advertisement for her in-house entertainment


It appears that some folk took a dim view of the go-go dancer and queried the legality of it as a form of entertainment – only to discover that jukeboxes and televisions in the town’s bars were also against the law.


The visitor reminisced for some time, on a variety of matters; what stuck in my mind was his recollection that Native visitors to town always felt welcome – safe – at the Olde Main, and were well treated. He recalled that parties would come in by truck on a Friday night to drink and party, but would generally sleep on the streets. More than once, when he was serving at the bar, somebody might hand him a bundle of cash and ask him to look after it, lest he lose the lot in some drunken card game.

The two motor-bikers had barely taken off when a car with Oregon plates drew up, and suddenly I was hearing a strong Birmingham accent. This couple were travelling the Oregon Trail, west to east – and showed me the guidebook they were using. That kind of floored me, because when I travelled the trail, back `91, it ran along the Platte river, along with the Pony Express route and the UP railroad. But the book was thick, well packaged and authoritative looking. What do I know? We were joined later by three bikers from Omaha and Lincoln – lawyers on a trip towards the Black Hills and the Devil’s Tower up in Wyoming. I think a writer could hang out at Jeannie’s, never go anywhere, and gather all kinds of material. Over breakfast this morning she had out her old flintlock rifle and a cap-and-ball pistol for the visiting Brummies. I’ll investigate those in time for tomorrow’s posting, I hope.

Well, I am now ensconced in the Sandoz Center looking through the archived collection, and have just found Mari’s death certificate. 3.05 pm on 10 March 1966.

Tonight I will hear again Yvonne’s talk at the public library, and with luck collar her for an hour or so in the Olde Main bar. Tomorrow, most likely, I’ll head to Gordon and a visit with Caroline.


Monday, 19 September 2011

The Best-Laid Plans... Interlude in Chadron with Poe Ballantine and Badger Bob

I am forced to conclude that if things went to plan life would be a dull old business. Originally I was coming to Chadron to hear Yvonne Sandoz’ talk. Then that got shifted to Crawford, 25 miles further west. I arrived there good and early. I have to say that Crawford doesn’t look like much at all from the highway, nor indeed from Wagon Wheel Road, but it has a beautiful city park with mature shade trees, well-watered grass, a fountain and the usual picnic tables. I’ve spent many a relaxed lunch-hour in such places, and camped in plenty of them; they are the great uncelebrated facility available to all travellers through the smalltown West. Try stopping off at Nenzel some time: population 13 - it was 2 the first time I drove along Hwy 20: picnic table, barbecue stand, drinking-water supply, toilet, shade tree, well tended grass… bliss.
I brewed up coffee on my spirit stove, sat and drank it in glorious late summer sunshine, then went to the meeting place to be greeted immediately by Yvonne. ‘Jeannie told me to look out for a tall guy,’ she said, in perfect English, then introduced me to her cousin Joy. Now I hardly spoke to Joy, but I have her photograph. In profile she is the spit and image of Mari.

Well, Yvonne’s talk was interesting, but I’ll get to that another time. The important news from my point of view was that (a) she was taking off directly to her cousin’s place for two nights and (b) would be repeating her talk in Chadron library on Tuesday – so I needn’t have dashed out there after all. I suspect that what’s happening is that she’s getting new invitations all the time and, because this is a vacation from her work as archivist to the city of Basel and time is tight, she’s going with the flow. She agreed that we would catch up on Tuesday night at Jeannie’s place.

That means two more nights at the Olde Main, which is an unexpected expense but no hardship. One keeps such good company there. I have been given one of the suites on the third floor: quiet, comfortable, and last night I slept like a dead man. But all that came after a hitch. I arrived at the hotel to find Jeannie out.  I couldn’t get her on the phone either. I was an hour, pacing up and down, finally calling in at the police station to see whether they had another number for her. They didn’t. That was when I hit on the idea of looking for Ed Hughes, aka the writer Poe Ballantine, who lives around the corner facing the railroad tracks. This is what I meant back there about life, and plans and so on. On the back of having to re-schedule half of this week and feeling somewhat rattled, I spent a delightful hour or so drinking his beer and chewing the fat about writing, writers, the literary establishment (we’re agin `em) and certain other orthodoxies. What good company – and I strongly recommend his autobiographical works. This guy can write, he’s lived, and he speaks with the wisdom and understanding that an astute observer will gather along the road.

I need to cut this short. It’s 1130 and I haven’t eaten yet, having been detained in the Bean Broker by yet another fascinating character – Badger Buckley. I’ll try and write about him tomorrow – and about a happy half-hour I spent in the bank, listening to tales about his adventures.

Sunday, 18 September 2011

Saturday was a day of contrasts: cool and grey early on, beautifully warm later, but just now, as I got a nice fire going and prepared to cook a steak, a storm passed our way and we’ve had half an hour’s rain. Well, it vindicates my decision to postpone the Leander Creek walk. I don’t know how long it will take to get out and back, but I would not have wanted to get caught in the rain.
I worked most of the morning, and into the afternoon, then put my boots on and set off across the hills. I was out for two hours, maybe more, but never got further than a mile or so from base. I think that, having spent most of my life – certainly most of my hiking life - focused on a distant objective and always watching the time, I am finally getting the hang of wandering aimlessly, with no thought of getting anywhere – and always staying near enough to home to be able to get back quickly if the weather turns. That approach is allowing me to see a lot more.

Today I scratched around in what I thought were likely spots for ancient artefacts – high spots where the sand has been exposed and washed downhill. I found a few pieces of rock that bore signs of having been worked, and several pieces of fossilised bone, but the only thing I brought back with me was this rather odd piece.


At first I thought it might be a piece of plastic jewellery, but it isn’t. It’s made of stone. Perfectly round, as you can see, but clearly made that way - or trimmed around the edges at least. The reverse side is quite flat. I’d like to think it is old, but it looks way too regular. It’s a puzzle, that’s for sure.


Anybody who remembers the big bone that Chainsaw Phil found way back in May, might be interested to know that I sent a photograph of it to Rick Otto, the superintendent at the Ashfall Fossil Beds who was so helpful to us when we called by last week. Here’s what he reckons:

This bone appears to be the lower portion of a shoulder blade (scapula)
from an elephant. (The part by your hand is where the scapula would
have come in contact with the humerus). Considering the location it was
found it is probably from a gomphothere, one of the four-tuskers that
are commonly found in "Ogallala Formation" sediment. A rough estimate
on age would be 8 to 14 million years old.

I’m getting to the point on my stay when I’m remembering all kinds of loose ends that need tidying up. I realised the other day that I often mention the dogs up at the ranch but have never posted a photograph of them. So... here they are, the canine tearaways who put on such a display of aggression whenever they see me drive up, Hoka on the right, young Cinch on the left. Butter wouldn’t melt, would it?


While I was out this afternoon I came across a few prickly-pears bearing fruit. I’m very fond of the taste of the tunas, but was disappointed to find most of them small, damaged and seedy. Still, I think that these pictures give an idea of how sweet and juicy they can be.



Regrettably, I have to admit that even at this late stage I am being confounded by blooms that do not feature in either of my books. This delicate subject looks a little like a larkspur but surely cannot be in flower this late. Nope, I’m not even going to make a stab at it, but it is rather lovely.


I am starting to feel a little wistful. I have got used to wandering freely out here, undisturbed by other people, by noxious fumes or the distant noise of traffic; I’m going to miss that, and these great expanses of sky. I can find many of these freedoms at home, but they generally require planning, preparation, and a journey. To have all this right outside your door is a real privilege.

Next stop Chadron, and a meeting with this Sandoz woman who’s visiting from Switzerland. Should be interesting. But finally, a picture I took as I sat and watched this storm approaching this afternoon. To me it suggests the approach of autumn: the pinky-brown tone on the hills to the left is the bunch-grass, pretty much the colour it was when I arrived in April.


Saturday, 17 September 2011

I hear the crunching of gears inside my head. I had today all planned out – had my bag packed for a walk along Leander Creek and a chance to see this log house down where it joins the Niobrara – but I awoke to grey skies, a cool wind and talk of rain on the radio. Out there it’s sort of spitting, not very encouraging at all. So that’ll have to wait until after I’ve been to Chadron. I head that way tomorrow morning. The talk by Yvonne Sandoz has been re-scheduled for Crawford, out by Fort Robinson, so I’ll have to leave here fairly early. Then I’m staying at the Olde Main overnight and looking in at the Sandoz Center Monday.  Last time I visited I was given a comprehensive Finding Aid, so I’m drawing up a list of the folders I’d like to look at up there. It may be half a day’s work; it could be three or four days, so I think I’ll take my tent and be prepared to camp at the State Park.
Yesterday I telephoned the courthouse at Valentine and learned that I can just show up there and rummage in the land registry. So that’s another trip to fit in, perhaps next week. I’ll be drawing up a list of names and locations I want to check on. I guess I’ll start with the claims on the Snake river by Hedvig Arent’s brothers Julius and Peter, also her mother’s claim, and of course her husband’s (i.e., this one). I’ve also been asked to look up Keevin’s parents’ claims, which may have been made under the Kinkaid act.

So, plenty to occupy me. Meanwhile, the book manuscript is taking shape. I have managed to re-edit the two-weeks-old version I was left with after losing the latest one the other day, and am quite pleased with what I’ve achieved. The odd part has been constantly adding new material day by day, yet constantly trimming a passage her, erasing a line there, and maintaining the overall length at 90,000 words. And, of course, there’s that crucial beginning, which I have re-drafted numerous times. I think I’m getting there, but of course you can never really be sure what your opening needs to say until you are certain of where and how you end. The challenge now is to start writing some concluding, reflective passages at the same time as recording the final day-to-day developments. Once I leave here I really doubt that I’ll have more than the odd moment to dedicate to this project.

The other thing that’s on my mind now is, what do I do about this blog once I’ve left the red house? I have no idea. Do I close it, seal it and consign it to ‘time capsule’ status? Do I update it occasionally? Or do I glide smoothly into a different type of blog about life back in the UK? Modern life, eh? It gets complicated. I suspect I’ll shut this down; it will have served its purpose. If I have the urge to continue blogging it’ll be under another heading.

Well, I think today’s going to be another one like yesterday: writing, editing, scrabbling through books and papers. But… priorities: this is Saturday, so all that can wait until after I’ve gone and got the football scores.

Aha! York City 3-0 up at the leaders. Feels good.

Friday, 16 September 2011

Investigating the Blaine Ellis Murders

I barely set foot outside yesterday. The temperature hovered around the 44 mark all day and it rained more or less non-stop. Today has started out grey, cold and damp.

Still, yesterday wasn’t all bad. I needed some time to decipher and write up the notes I took on my trip to Ainsworth. And then I discovered that a computer glitch earlier in the week had resulted in my losing a chunk of work, which I then had to re-write. In fact, I am still only halfway through it. It wasn’t as damaging as it might have been: I am a great believer in re-writing and had planned to go back over it during the next week or so – but I am kicking myself for neglecting to back up my work; and when my computer guru, the Chainsaw, reads this he’ll be firing off an admonitory email.  

Going back over my notes yesterday I realised that I hadn’t explained Keevin’s connection with the Blaine Ellis murders. One of the victims, Alleen Mensinger, was his cousin – the daughter of his mother’s brother, Uncle Lloyd ‘Skinny’ Jones. (His mother’s family were called Johansen, and came from Norway, but their name was amended to Jones upon arrival in the U.S., or soon after.) So he attended the funerals, which, he recalls, took place on a bitterly cold March day. The road to the cemetery at Ainsworth was covered with ice, and he remembers his mother anxiously gripping the seat as the driver of the car sped along. He seemed in a hurry, as did the undertaker. It turned out that they had another funeral the same day and were anxious not to be late. The murdered couple’s child, he told me, was taken to Idaho and raised there.

There are a few more loose ends to clear up from Astrid’s tape. Helga, the eldest of the Arent children, died in childbirth in her twenties. Her husband took the baby, Clydie, to Illinois, and started a new life. Neither Herman nor Martin ever married. Martin is the only one of the offspring to be buried up at the cemetery here, having barely outlived his mother. Astrid also mentioned, but gave no details of, her mother having a breakdown and spending a full year in a sanatorium. The children, she said, were sent to an aunt; I am not sure that she said which one. She was living by a lake which was, I think, her source of drinking water; either that or the children drank from it, the result being that Astrid got typhoid fever.

Astrid’s tape is full of interesting details, but of course it raises almost as many questions as it answers. That’s so often the way when people reminisce. She wasn’t being interviewed: she sounded very much as though she were reading from a script she had put together, so nobody interrupted and asked her to expand, and she glossed over a number of interesting points. But that’s the nature of research: you’re glad to pick up new pieces of the jigsaw, but you’re often left to make the best sense you can of them.

Astrid mentioned that she attended the Center school, up by the cemetery here, through 6th grade, before going on to Merriman. Her three sisters, she said, all became teachers. Her reference to the schoolhouse reminded me that I’ve never recorded the story Kitty’s father told me when I bumped into him up there one day. I may not have got this entirely correct, and will make a point of checking on the facts. Roughly, it goes like this. After it had stood empty for some years he bought the old place for $50, thinking to haul it to his place as a barn or workshop. But he couldn’t move it, and after several tries was happy to trade it to a neighbour in exchange for a used dish-washer. This guy couldn’t shift it either, so he persuaded a third party to take it off his hands for a few bales of hay. He thought he’d got a good deal – and so did Kitty’s dad. The house stayed where it was, and they kept grinning smugly to themselves until a snow came – and then it disappeared overnight. It turned out that the fellow had put skids under it and dragged it away to his place where it now serves as a hay-barn.

When I was at the Arents’ place Keevin took me out to see his small herd of cows which are grazing on land he leases, about ten miles from his home. To get there we drove through a ranch owned by a man of Swedish ancestry who is just now in hospital. Keevin drops in every day or two to feed the horse and the cats. The man’s father came to the U.S. at age 16. His very first job of work was as a delivery driver for a moonshine outfit. He ran a fast car, but one day when he was being chased it let him down, and the cops were gaining on him. He knew what to expect if he were caught – a long stay behind bars – so he abandoned the vehicle, gave it up and found a new career. He died not so long ago aged 101. While we were out on his place we came across this abandoned root cellar…


… and while I was photographing it I snagged a number of sand-burs on my shoe-lace. For the benefit of my British readers, here’s what they look like. These ones are small, and not quite mature, but they offer a hint of what happens if you absent-mindedly step in a patch. The spikes are viciously sharp, and picking them off by hand is not advisable.  Keevin’s advice is, always have a knife handy to scrape them off.


Well, my porridge is almost ready, the temperature has crept up to 49 degrees, and I need to decide what to do today. Nip over to Valentine and get into the land registry, or continue to re-write the thing I failed to back up? One or the other, I guess.