IBO - Brian R. Lundin (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

mouthful of rotting teeth as she directed them to a booth that overlooked the parking lot.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Yes please,” Chris answered.
Chris and William ordered theirs black, Walsh wanted cream and a little sugar.
“Sin City, that’s a hell of a name for a restaurant,” Chris said smiling to Walsh.
Chris noticed two young wayward looking white men sitting at the counter drinking coffee. One had on a pair of muddy cowboy boots, cowboy hat and dirty blue over-alls over a plaid blue shirt. The other one was wearing colorful matching khaki shirt and pants that needed washing. He had green hair combed into spikes and had a stud in his nose. Their conversation was loud and their speech slurred.
Sue Ann returned to the table and placed three large mugs of steaming coffee and three menus in front of them and said,
”Take your time, I’ll be back for your orders,” Sue Ann said walking away but the smell remained.
Walsh looked over at the young men at the counter who was trying to give Sue Ann their order, but they were too spaced out on something to order. Sue Ann was losing patience with the men and abruptly removed their coffee cups and pointed at the door. The two men tried to protest until a big man with a rolling pin came out of a door behind the counter. The two men staggered to their feet and left.
“Damn drugs going to ruin this country,” Walsh said shaking his head as he watched the two young men staggering across the parking lot.
“I wouldn’t imagine you would have a drug problem in this part of the country, so much open land,” Chris said as he also watched the two men.
“Well, you would imagine wrong,” Walsh said.
“Before they passed that new law, we had black and Hispanic gangbangers, dope dealers coming from LA plying their trade, now we got the older blacks, and Hispanics coming and the young white kids are involved in the drug business.”
“Years ago Rock Springs used to be called Sin City, Walsh continued. I can remember when I was a little boy my grandpa bringing me into town for supplies and I found out later as I got older, he always made a little detour to Mamie’s Whorehouse. There were bars and whores everywhere, some of the younger people would smoke some weeds that got off the mountains, but nothing like this. During that time, the coalmines were going strong and you had many single immigrant men who had come to the area because there was plenty of work. Some of them sent for their women folks, some of them did not, but between the whores, bars, hustlers, and gamblers most of the miners were broke two days after payday.
The town was a feature story way back then by the Sixty Minutes News Show. They had shots of the whores working “K” street, the main street, twenty four hours a day, the drug dealers operating in broad daylight and they interviewed wives of miners who had been cheated out their pay checks by the cards and dice sharps and killings were common during those times. Finally, after the show aired, the governor and all of the other big shot politicians in Cheyenne decided something had to be done. The sheriff was arrested for corruption and the governor appointed a no nonsense lawman named Ed Cantrell as the Public Safety Director to clean up the city. Cantrell had a reputation for being fast on the draw and was a crack shot. Well, he hired a New York City vice cop, I forget his name, whose job was to find the leaders of the drug dealers and gamblers, but before too long the cop was on their payroll and started using drugs himself. When Cantrell found out about that, he fired the cop who swore revenge.
One night when Cantrell and a couple of his boys went to one of the bars to arrest a dope dealer they were met by the cop who was working as the dealer’s bodyguard, in the parking lot. The ex-cop had a drink in one hand and his forty-five was on his side. He started berating and swearing at Cantrell, that was his first mistake because Cantrell backed down from no man, his second was trying to draw his pistol, before it cleared leather, Cantrell had placed one right between his eyes, the cop was dead before he hit the ground.”
“That’s some story,” Chris said.
Sue Ann appeared at their table,”Ready to order?” she asked.
“Yep, I’ll have the rattlesnake stew,” Walsh said.
William and Chris looked at each other,
“Rattlesnake stew,”William said turning up his nose.
“It is delicious, Sue Ann said, I am a Ute Indian and my mother taught me how to make it when I was a little girl. In the old days, my people had to live off the land and they used everything that the land provided. They use the roots of plants for medicines and they found out that most of the creatures on the land was edible, snakes, frogs, lizards, everything. Remember, during those days there were no Wal-Marts or grocery stores, the People had to make do with what they had. Tell you what, try the rattlesnake stew, if you don’t like it, it’s on the house,” she said challengingly.
“Ok, bring it on,” Chris said.
Shortly Sue Ann brought out three clay bowls of rattlesnake stew and a clay plate stacked with flat, hot bread and waited while Chris and William put a spoonful into mouth.
“This is delicious,” William, said, “Taste like a mixture of fish and chicken.”
“Who were those characters you had to put out? Walsh asked.
“There’re Tom Wylies sons, use to be nice boys. Now them damn drugs got them. They’ve been in and out of jail for the last year for stealing, breaking into cars and people’s houses. I hear there is a new drug in town that you take like a pill.”
After another bowl each, the men left.
“We will continue going west on Interstate 80 until we get to Rock Springs and then we’ll go north on State Road 191 North, it’s an old two lane highway and dirt roads, but it’s very scenic,” Walsh said.
He was right Chris, thought. As they drove, Walsh gave Chris and William a Wyomian history lesson.
“John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition was the first white man to have ever entered present-day Wyoming. He explored the Yellowstone area in 1807 and his tales of geysers, hot springs and other spectacular sites created quite a stir in east, many considered it a big lie, but they were wrong. His expedition was followed by a long line of rugged, “Mountain Men” who roamed the west along a passage route that would later be named the Oregon Trail. In fact, the first wagon train of eastern settlers bound for California, Oregon and the Pacific Ocean made its way through here in 1832. This area dates back more than 12,000 years and was inhabited by the Plains Indians, including the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Shoshone and Utes. Later came the Canadian and French fur traders and explorer. In 1846, the southwestern region was obtained by the United States in a treaty with Great Britain. The Union Pacific Railroad changed the American west forever and Wyoming was no exception; its population grew rapidly, thousands of white settlers arrived, as well as cattle ranchers and sheepherders who were moving north from Texas.
At that time, huge buffalo herd roamed the land and they provided everything that the Native American needed but the encroachments of the settlers and their cows and sheep and the fencing of the land angered the Indians and the wars began. The greatest victory the Indians had was at the Little Big Horn when they, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse wiped out Custer and his bunch, but in the end the Indians were outgunned and moved to reservations, too bad,” Walsh said sadly
“We're getting into the Grand Teton Range. Years ago there use to be little towns all over the area when the mines were going good,” Walsh said.
Walsh turned off the state road and took one of the old county roads. As they drove, they passed through what looked like a deserted town, the sidewalks were cracked and the street had an aggravating number of potholes that Walsh maneuvered expertly. An old Dodge pickup truck, which appeared at one time to have been green, was now brown with rust wherever, the green had worn off. It sat on four rims in a weed-covered field. Two old storefronts sat side-by-side, empty shells now, sagging and stained by the sun and wind. Their windows were devoid of glass and the paint was peeling. One had been probably a restaurant or bar at one time, judging by an illuminated sign on its front, now reduced to a bare frame and a few jagged shards. The other could have been some type of store, maybe a hardware or grocery store. Now it was boarded up with plywood. There were no signs, no poster not even graffiti. Perhaps no one ever bothered to leave a message because no one would bother to read it.
They came to the center of town, where a small hardware store with it windows obscured by newspapers was on the right and across the street from it was a Quik-Stop Service Station with two old gas pumps out front and a dangling Chevron sign over the pumps. Further down the road was an old western style saloon with swing doors, a hand painted sign in the window read Teton Bar and Grill, three pickup trucks with gun racks were parked on the gravel parking lot. Chris noticed a group of young white boys had bottled water and was washing down something with it. Continuing on Walsh pointed out a row of houses and garages that was sitting back off the road. The lop-sided frame houses all had metal slanted roofs to shed the winter snow and make shift ladders permanently installed to reach the chimney. Narrow strips of rocky ground separated each house. There were no yards to speak of; only open areas gravel and mine waste wherever there was not a building. In front of one place, an old pickup truck sat in two halves-the rear half sat on one side of the building and the front half was on the other side. Some of the houses had patches of grass and some had fences made from timber and old oil drums. Walsh pulled over, parked, and pointed to an old church.
“When I was a kid this was a boom town. There were maybe two thousand miners and their families. There were, bars, restaurants, grocery and clothing stores and of course whorehouses and gambling joints. The men were making a good living by working thirteen and fourteen-hour days in the mines but when the coal played out so did the town as the miners left to find work somewhere else. Once a boomtown, it now struggles for a reason to exist at all, but prosperity like a wayward lover has fled. This church was built in the 1920’s.