Last Stand at Hart Ranch
The weather has cooled down, it has rained all day (!) at least once. The brown hills have greened up and the poor scorched lawns of the campground are green and lush again. The nights are cool, and we have taken down the sunscreens that covered the windows, so we can see the hills clearly again. We wear long pants and jackets in the morning, and begin to look at what we have to get done before our last day of work, finishing staining 2 cabins, build new covers for two of the hot tubs, and finally finish the outside of the pool fence.
I have been working on the pool fence for half of the summer, trying to be there on the early AM before too many swimmers are there to get either sprayed with water or bump into wet paint. At 8:00 AM, the water aerobics class meets. This is an older crew and the activity is tempered, there are even 3 men in the group. The leader is an enthusiastic and funny lady who keeps up a running patter of orders, encouragement and jokes. I suspect that this is a social high light. The tedious part is that they have one tape that they play every day. First some inspirational singing to stretch and warm up and then up-beat greatest hits accordion music. My Grandfather’s Clock, Clementine, Home on the Range, and so on to a brisk metronome beat. Periodically, a man’s voice comes on to say how far you have walked. For some reason, when Working on the Railroad comes on, they start to sing a long, but only at the “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah” verse and then the Fee Fi fiddle I O. I was suddenly struck by the idea that the banjo being strummed was probably metaphorical for some thing else that was happening to Dinah. The highlight(?) for me is when they sing Daisy, Daisy. They did this for weeks before they knew that was my name, but after that I had to wave my hat and bow. This last Thursday I was ordered to appear for one last chorus and cheers and applause. You would have thought I was doing the singing. That night they drained all the water out of the enormous pool. Summer is over.
This is our last working week, we will be done by Sept 15. After Labor Day, the park has been emptying out pretty well, although not as fast as I would have expected. It is a great time of year to be here. I am anxious to get on the road, tired of the work, and I find I am tired of so many people. We are a little sad too, to be leaving what has been a great place to work and live, and the beauty of the Black Hills.
As I said before, this is the 11th largest city in SD when we are full up, and it really does feel like a city even though the sites are large and well spaced. We, as employees, are supposed to be hugely friendly to everyone, waving like the Pope as we drive around in our golf cart from job to job. I can’t wait to be somewhere that I don’t’ have to wave all the time. And smile, and do chitchat. Since we are all transients, it is hard to make any sort of connection even with those we work with. Everyone moves around and no one seems anxious to exchange addresses or emails when they leave. Some folks we will see next year when we return here to work again, others not. So it is like living in a town, but never really making any connections, although there are few that I have met that I really wanted a connection with. I seem to be just happy with work and our evenings at home, watching TV, playing with the computer or working on small fixit projects on the trailer.
I find that the prospect of leaving the Airstream and the truck here in storage for the winter is making me quite sad. We have replaced the water pump, reattached the kitchen counter which was tilting away from the wall. And I have either taken out or secured anything that mice or freezing will bother. I can’t really figure out why it makes me so sad, I think it is because living in the AS was one of the few times in my life when I could arrange my space, my day, my dinner and my destination wholly by what I wanted. No compromises, no discussions, no second guessing what would please another person, and along with that, no moments of shame when I did something wrong, and certainly no huffs, or shouting or silences or tears. Now that I have written that down, it looks like kind of a sterile existence, and it is probably inevitable that I would meet someone that I wanted to share my life with. I do like being a team, I like cooking and caring. Maybe the part that I am missing is the nest building. Since this is Don’s trailer, and he gets a little nervous when I speculate on painting all the lighting fixtures black, or doing a warm scumbled paint job so the walls don’t look like wrapping paper, I do have moments of frustration.
There is no question in my mind, however, that staying with Don is the right thing to do, and more to the point, dragging the truck and AS all the way to TX and back again is just plain silly.
We took a trip to Bear Butte, another rocky high point that got eroded into the light of day, this one is not the odd shape of Devils Tower, but it rears up out of low rolling prairie, a sort of precursor to the Black Hills. Like Devils’ Tower, it is a holy NA place, and the park education center has a lot of good displays, and explanations. I read a biography of Crazy Horse, the Sioux leader who was at the Little Big Horn disaster and was one of the last to come in and be a reservation Indian, for which he was murdered by panicky soldiers. The book was written by NA woman, Marie Sandoz, and it tells the dreadful story of the gumment’s treatment of the NA from their point of view, and in a writing style that echoes the cadences of NA language,(at least it seems that way) but also gives a sense of their world view. Not an easy book to read, but looking at the displays, I recognized many of the NA leaders and had one of those moments when a disparate collection of thoughts crystallizes, and I had a sense of the power of this place where one of the last great meetings of the tribes was held. 30,000 horses. And no clear agreement on what to do about the white man.
The weather is very windy, with spitting rain, so we did not climb to the top, we will save that for next summer.
As we drive down the highway, we both are anxious to be on the way to somewhere soon. Our next experience will be working the sugar beet harvest on the ND MN border. It will be long hard days, 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week, with very good money, but we don’t know exactly what we will be doing, or even where exactly. Should be a good adventure. I keep having snatches of folk songs about migrant workers run through my head. They pay our CG fees in any case. We will leave on the 23rd, take two days and go to Grand Forks ND where we will get our assignments.
Today is Friday, blast off in the morning. Today, in the pouring rain and wind at 47 deg., a big motor home, tan and beige with green swooshes and a PT Cruiser in matching beige for a toad pulled in. We watched them back in, and watched them hook up. Then himself walked right through our site to go to the bathhouse, er Comfort Station. Pretty typical so far. Then we looked out and they are actually washing their motorhome AND the little car in the pouring rain and wind and cold. Neither of them were dirty. I don’t understand. Now remembering that these motorhomes come with luxurious bathrooms, imagine my surprise to see himself once again cutting through our site, this time with his stuff to take a shower in the Comfort Station. Don says many of these rigs have never had the shower used in them. It seems that they would rather use the campground shower than clean their own private one. I am flabbergasted that they will wash the motorhome in the pouring rain when it doesn’t need it, but won’t clean the shower. Sputter, sputter.
Tonight we are in a free city park campground in Roscoe SD. Just us and the tired flowers. It was a very windy rainy start and the rain let up but the wind has only just slowed. No problem handling the wind, but it did lower our MPG. Roscoe is a small town, wide streets, quiet on this Sat eve, at least until the fire siren went off right in our ears, VERY LOUD, and rotating to get to everyone for miles. A lot of pickups came roaring up and two fire trucks flew off into the distance. Funny to be parked among houses in a real town after the transient and rather isolated town of Hart Ranch.
I have been working on the pool fence for half of the summer, trying to be there on the early AM before too many swimmers are there to get either sprayed with water or bump into wet paint. At 8:00 AM, the water aerobics class meets. This is an older crew and the activity is tempered, there are even 3 men in the group. The leader is an enthusiastic and funny lady who keeps up a running patter of orders, encouragement and jokes. I suspect that this is a social high light. The tedious part is that they have one tape that they play every day. First some inspirational singing to stretch and warm up and then up-beat greatest hits accordion music. My Grandfather’s Clock, Clementine, Home on the Range, and so on to a brisk metronome beat. Periodically, a man’s voice comes on to say how far you have walked. For some reason, when Working on the Railroad comes on, they start to sing a long, but only at the “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah” verse and then the Fee Fi fiddle I O. I was suddenly struck by the idea that the banjo being strummed was probably metaphorical for some thing else that was happening to Dinah. The highlight(?) for me is when they sing Daisy, Daisy. They did this for weeks before they knew that was my name, but after that I had to wave my hat and bow. This last Thursday I was ordered to appear for one last chorus and cheers and applause. You would have thought I was doing the singing. That night they drained all the water out of the enormous pool. Summer is over.
This is our last working week, we will be done by Sept 15. After Labor Day, the park has been emptying out pretty well, although not as fast as I would have expected. It is a great time of year to be here. I am anxious to get on the road, tired of the work, and I find I am tired of so many people. We are a little sad too, to be leaving what has been a great place to work and live, and the beauty of the Black Hills.
As I said before, this is the 11th largest city in SD when we are full up, and it really does feel like a city even though the sites are large and well spaced. We, as employees, are supposed to be hugely friendly to everyone, waving like the Pope as we drive around in our golf cart from job to job. I can’t wait to be somewhere that I don’t’ have to wave all the time. And smile, and do chitchat. Since we are all transients, it is hard to make any sort of connection even with those we work with. Everyone moves around and no one seems anxious to exchange addresses or emails when they leave. Some folks we will see next year when we return here to work again, others not. So it is like living in a town, but never really making any connections, although there are few that I have met that I really wanted a connection with. I seem to be just happy with work and our evenings at home, watching TV, playing with the computer or working on small fixit projects on the trailer.
I find that the prospect of leaving the Airstream and the truck here in storage for the winter is making me quite sad. We have replaced the water pump, reattached the kitchen counter which was tilting away from the wall. And I have either taken out or secured anything that mice or freezing will bother. I can’t really figure out why it makes me so sad, I think it is because living in the AS was one of the few times in my life when I could arrange my space, my day, my dinner and my destination wholly by what I wanted. No compromises, no discussions, no second guessing what would please another person, and along with that, no moments of shame when I did something wrong, and certainly no huffs, or shouting or silences or tears. Now that I have written that down, it looks like kind of a sterile existence, and it is probably inevitable that I would meet someone that I wanted to share my life with. I do like being a team, I like cooking and caring. Maybe the part that I am missing is the nest building. Since this is Don’s trailer, and he gets a little nervous when I speculate on painting all the lighting fixtures black, or doing a warm scumbled paint job so the walls don’t look like wrapping paper, I do have moments of frustration.
There is no question in my mind, however, that staying with Don is the right thing to do, and more to the point, dragging the truck and AS all the way to TX and back again is just plain silly.
We took a trip to Bear Butte, another rocky high point that got eroded into the light of day, this one is not the odd shape of Devils Tower, but it rears up out of low rolling prairie, a sort of precursor to the Black Hills. Like Devils’ Tower, it is a holy NA place, and the park education center has a lot of good displays, and explanations. I read a biography of Crazy Horse, the Sioux leader who was at the Little Big Horn disaster and was one of the last to come in and be a reservation Indian, for which he was murdered by panicky soldiers. The book was written by NA woman, Marie Sandoz, and it tells the dreadful story of the gumment’s treatment of the NA from their point of view, and in a writing style that echoes the cadences of NA language,(at least it seems that way) but also gives a sense of their world view. Not an easy book to read, but looking at the displays, I recognized many of the NA leaders and had one of those moments when a disparate collection of thoughts crystallizes, and I had a sense of the power of this place where one of the last great meetings of the tribes was held. 30,000 horses. And no clear agreement on what to do about the white man.
The weather is very windy, with spitting rain, so we did not climb to the top, we will save that for next summer.
As we drive down the highway, we both are anxious to be on the way to somewhere soon. Our next experience will be working the sugar beet harvest on the ND MN border. It will be long hard days, 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week, with very good money, but we don’t know exactly what we will be doing, or even where exactly. Should be a good adventure. I keep having snatches of folk songs about migrant workers run through my head. They pay our CG fees in any case. We will leave on the 23rd, take two days and go to Grand Forks ND where we will get our assignments.
Today is Friday, blast off in the morning. Today, in the pouring rain and wind at 47 deg., a big motor home, tan and beige with green swooshes and a PT Cruiser in matching beige for a toad pulled in. We watched them back in, and watched them hook up. Then himself walked right through our site to go to the bathhouse, er Comfort Station. Pretty typical so far. Then we looked out and they are actually washing their motorhome AND the little car in the pouring rain and wind and cold. Neither of them were dirty. I don’t understand. Now remembering that these motorhomes come with luxurious bathrooms, imagine my surprise to see himself once again cutting through our site, this time with his stuff to take a shower in the Comfort Station. Don says many of these rigs have never had the shower used in them. It seems that they would rather use the campground shower than clean their own private one. I am flabbergasted that they will wash the motorhome in the pouring rain when it doesn’t need it, but won’t clean the shower. Sputter, sputter.
Tonight we are in a free city park campground in Roscoe SD. Just us and the tired flowers. It was a very windy rainy start and the rain let up but the wind has only just slowed. No problem handling the wind, but it did lower our MPG. Roscoe is a small town, wide streets, quiet on this Sat eve, at least until the fire siren went off right in our ears, VERY LOUD, and rotating to get to everyone for miles. A lot of pickups came roaring up and two fire trucks flew off into the distance. Funny to be parked among houses in a real town after the transient and rather isolated town of Hart Ranch.
posted by Thistledown24 at 10:13 AM
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