Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Trip to Yellowstone (Part 2)
I picked up a couple of young hitch-hikers in the middle of Wyoming. They were on vacation from Minnesota and wanted to see Yellowstone Park. I said I was headed through there on my way back to MT. Mike and Ted said they would like to try some Coors since they were out west. I said I would buy it because I was 21 and they were only 19 and 20. I learned later the legal age in Wyoming was only 19. We drove up to a drive up cold serve window, similar to a Frosty Freeze, which is a unique phenomena in the Cowboy State, bought a case of beer and promptly began to consume it. When the evening grew long, we found an open space on the prairie and spent the night. Mike and Ted beneath the stars and me in the camper. The next day, I dropped them off at the South Gate of Yellowstone and headed for Old Faithful. I had a friend from college working there and thought I would look him up. I walked into the employee dining room at Old Faithful Inn and said I was looking for a guy with a beard. They all laughed because the company policy did not allow beards when employed by the YP Company. I found my friend Mike. He said they were having a hard time keeping employees and I should apply for a job there and save up enough money for my king pins. The next day he rode up to Gardiner with me where I was hired on the spot as a dishwasher. They assigned me to the Old Faithful Lodge. I had three helpers when I started, but they all quit and I had to run the dish machine all by myself. I was so fast they called me Golden Boy. The cook was a black man by the name of Jim. He would give me $5 and tell me to sneak out the window, go to the Hamilton Stores and buy him a flat pint of Old Black Crow. One day I came to work and Jim wasn't there. I asked where he was and the manager said he had gone into DT's in middle of the night and they took him to detox. I became a cook that day. Everything was pretty much frozen. You either put it in the oven to bake (TV type entrees in a big pan), dropped it into the deep fat fryer (chicken and fries) or fried it on the grill (steaks and trout). Of course, it was all billed as fresh on the menu, like Trout caught fresh in the Rocky Mountains. The waiters would tell the “touri” that it was the “altitude” if they had any complaints about the food. On payday, we would each buy a bottle and have a party in my dorm room because I was the only one with a record player. Our favorites were the Grateful Dead's ”Europe 72” and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's ”Will the Circle be Unbroken” One pay day, we were sitting around listening to music and sipping from our bottles when a Galliano bottle fell off a shelf, hit the garbage can, broke and the short half came back up and hit me behind the ear. The blood gushed out pretty hard. My friends bandaged me up with a lot of cloth. We were able to keep partying though. The next morning when I went to work I looked like a civil war veteran returning from a battle. The manager sent me to the Lake hospital to get some stitches. Towards the end of the season, the crews were running short because people would just leave when they tired of the work. The management brought in a bunch of students from the cooking program at the Missoula Vo-Tech. One of them got drunk and beat his head with an ashtray. I think he had gone into a depressed state. He really liked the band Motor Head, so we called him Ashtray Head after that. Our chef/ manager left the employment of the YP Company about mid season. He had an argument with top management and told all of us he was going to the Davenport Hotel in Spokane and we could have a job if we came out there. A lot of the staff went hot potting (jumping into the hot springs) and had to run away or get a ticket if the ranger discovered them. I didn't ever get to go, because as a cook and dishwasher I had to stay in the kitchen longer to clean up and everybody had already left before I got through with my duties. I ended up staying until almost the end of the season in late August. Obviously, I didn't get back to Anaconda to work on the smelter.
Epilogue - I got back to Missoula and had a letter in my mailbox telling me I was being assigned to the Office of Developmental Disabilities in Spokane to do my social work practicum. I reported to the office there and found a room to live in above the “All in the Family Inn” (an Archie Bunker ripoff) that was called the Longbaugh Rooms (Harvey Longbaugh, aka the Sundance Kid and another story). I had purchased king pins in West Yellowstone for the IH, but didn't have the tools to put them on. I took them down to the Goodyear store. They found out all I needed was to balance my tires. There was no need for the kingpins. I also had a letter from the lady that I ran into in Bozeman. She had a little over $100 in damages to her car. I made payments to her that fall until the debt was fully paid. I found out she had spent the summer working in Yellowstone Park, at the Lake Hotel. I decided to check in my old boss from the park down at the Davenport Hotel. Sure enough Roy was there and he was good to his word. He gave me a job as a dishwasher. I worked three evening a week, plus Saturday and Sunday. It was enough to cover my expenses. The World's Fair was winding down. The Davenport had bought special china at a cost of $4000 for the Shah of Iran when he visited the fair and stayed at the Davenport. I also went to a Episcopal Church in Veradale where the priest was the father of one of my fellow employees at Yellowstone. I saw Mary, her boyfriend and another friend of theirs from Yellowstone at Christmas just before my practicum was over. I also got the opportunity to spend a week in the bishop’s mansion in Spokane to house sit as a result of this connection.
I picked up a couple of young hitch-hikers in the middle of Wyoming. They were on vacation from Minnesota and wanted to see Yellowstone Park. I said I was headed through there on my way back to MT. Mike and Ted said they would like to try some Coors since they were out west. I said I would buy it because I was 21 and they were only 19 and 20. I learned later the legal age in Wyoming was only 19. We drove up to a drive up cold serve window, similar to a Frosty Freeze, which is a unique phenomena in the Cowboy State, bought a case of beer and promptly began to consume it. When the evening grew long, we found an open space on the prairie and spent the night. Mike and Ted beneath the stars and me in the camper. The next day, I dropped them off at the South Gate of Yellowstone and headed for Old Faithful. I had a friend from college working there and thought I would look him up. I walked into the employee dining room at Old Faithful Inn and said I was looking for a guy with a beard. They all laughed because the company policy did not allow beards when employed by the YP Company. I found my friend Mike. He said they were having a hard time keeping employees and I should apply for a job there and save up enough money for my king pins. The next day he rode up to Gardiner with me where I was hired on the spot as a dishwasher. They assigned me to the Old Faithful Lodge. I had three helpers when I started, but they all quit and I had to run the dish machine all by myself. I was so fast they called me Golden Boy. The cook was a black man by the name of Jim. He would give me $5 and tell me to sneak out the window, go to the Hamilton Stores and buy him a flat pint of Old Black Crow. One day I came to work and Jim wasn't there. I asked where he was and the manager said he had gone into DT's in middle of the night and they took him to detox. I became a cook that day. Everything was pretty much frozen. You either put it in the oven to bake (TV type entrees in a big pan), dropped it into the deep fat fryer (chicken and fries) or fried it on the grill (steaks and trout). Of course, it was all billed as fresh on the menu, like Trout caught fresh in the Rocky Mountains. The waiters would tell the “touri” that it was the “altitude” if they had any complaints about the food. On payday, we would each buy a bottle and have a party in my dorm room because I was the only one with a record player. Our favorites were the Grateful Dead's ”Europe 72” and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's ”Will the Circle be Unbroken” One pay day, we were sitting around listening to music and sipping from our bottles when a Galliano bottle fell off a shelf, hit the garbage can, broke and the short half came back up and hit me behind the ear. The blood gushed out pretty hard. My friends bandaged me up with a lot of cloth. We were able to keep partying though. The next morning when I went to work I looked like a civil war veteran returning from a battle. The manager sent me to the Lake hospital to get some stitches. Towards the end of the season, the crews were running short because people would just leave when they tired of the work. The management brought in a bunch of students from the cooking program at the Missoula Vo-Tech. One of them got drunk and beat his head with an ashtray. I think he had gone into a depressed state. He really liked the band Motor Head, so we called him Ashtray Head after that. Our chef/ manager left the employment of the YP Company about mid season. He had an argument with top management and told all of us he was going to the Davenport Hotel in Spokane and we could have a job if we came out there. A lot of the staff went hot potting (jumping into the hot springs) and had to run away or get a ticket if the ranger discovered them. I didn't ever get to go, because as a cook and dishwasher I had to stay in the kitchen longer to clean up and everybody had already left before I got through with my duties. I ended up staying until almost the end of the season in late August. Obviously, I didn't get back to Anaconda to work on the smelter.
Epilogue - I got back to Missoula and had a letter in my mailbox telling me I was being assigned to the Office of Developmental Disabilities in Spokane to do my social work practicum. I reported to the office there and found a room to live in above the “All in the Family Inn” (an Archie Bunker ripoff) that was called the Longbaugh Rooms (Harvey Longbaugh, aka the Sundance Kid and another story). I had purchased king pins in West Yellowstone for the IH, but didn't have the tools to put them on. I took them down to the Goodyear store. They found out all I needed was to balance my tires. There was no need for the kingpins. I also had a letter from the lady that I ran into in Bozeman. She had a little over $100 in damages to her car. I made payments to her that fall until the debt was fully paid. I found out she had spent the summer working in Yellowstone Park, at the Lake Hotel. I decided to check in my old boss from the park down at the Davenport Hotel. Sure enough Roy was there and he was good to his word. He gave me a job as a dishwasher. I worked three evening a week, plus Saturday and Sunday. It was enough to cover my expenses. The World's Fair was winding down. The Davenport had bought special china at a cost of $4000 for the Shah of Iran when he visited the fair and stayed at the Davenport. I also went to a Episcopal Church in Veradale where the priest was the father of one of my fellow employees at Yellowstone. I saw Mary, her boyfriend and another friend of theirs from Yellowstone at Christmas just before my practicum was over. I also got the opportunity to spend a week in the bishop’s mansion in Spokane to house sit as a result of this connection.
