Sheridan

Sheridan WY was my first taste of the west.  I went to the rodeo here, chased cowboys here, or at least drove up and down Main St. hoping to find some cowboys to chase.  As Ellen and I left the ranch in Wolf Creek to come to town, her wonderful father used to caution us to watch out for pickpockets.  If you could see how tight our Wranglers were, the joke would be apparent.  I know Ellen was way less interested in chasing cowboys than I was, I’m a little embarrassed to think about it now.

I’m here to join yet another Habitat build for a week, meeting up with Steve, another full timer Habitat builder.  Steve has over 9000 hours of work under his belt, and I learn a lot working with him.  Hunter decided against joining us on the build, as no dogs are allowed, and leaving her three in the trailer all day was too much, but we all gathered for dinner every night, did some very good thrift shopping together.

The Big Horn Mountains are there to the west, looming dark in the front, and further up we can see Black Tooth, all craggy, and Cloud Peak still covered with snow.  I really like to have mountains on one side of my wide open spaces, and the Big Horns are the first ones I got to know, so have a special place in my heart.  We took Darth Vader up a very steep road known as Red Grade, all dirt, that claws its way up the steep face of the Big Horns and then on up into the pine forest roads and wide grassy park lands.  We saw moose three different times, a lady elk crossed the road right in front of us and lots of deer.  The road climbs by streams still crashing with water from the melting snow and ponds and lakes full to the brim.  It is always wetter and cooler up here at 8000 feet, but, as with much of the west, it is much lusher and greener than usual.

One of the great treats of my early visits out here was to play cowboy and help move the cattle up into these grassy federal summer range leases.  Three or four local ranches would throw their herds together and all join up to push them up “the face”, a wide steep rocky slope. The best part was driving them through the small town of Dayton, where the cattle bawled and milled around, going up on occasional porches to snack on hanging plants, and blocking the whole street.  If a car full of tourists got caught in this, sitting wide eyed with the thrill of seeing the Real West, then I was equally thrilled that my cowgirl self was part of the picture. Whooppee tie yi yah.

We came down the mountain highway into Dayton and drove through it in the dusk, hoping to stop somewhere for food, and in Ranchester, the next little town, was an upscale and expensive restaurant. We did have a great meal, but spent most of it wondering how the place could possibly survive out here.

The Sheridan build put Steve and I up on scaffolding, trying to resolve the rear wall’s wave.  The foundation was not poured plumb, and the framing rolls around on top of it, trying to find its balance.  It was hard, hot work in the sun, but we tamed it.

I’m beginning to get a sense of the range of variation in the H4H builds, as well as the likely cast of characters.  This one in Sheridan used a group of energetic and entertaining youngsters from Americorps-Vista.  They are moved around as a pack, sometimes building for Habitat, sometimes doing other useful things.  I don’t know how it works exactly, but it was encouraging to see them out here in the world doing something useful and finding their feet as grown ups.

Another character that seems to repeat among the RV crowd, is the Great Tool Belt.  Since buying a large motorhome and having a good retirement package is a prerequisite for the role, it is unlikely that these gentlemen were builders in their past life.  I am uncomfortable asking people what they did for a living, so I don’t know for sure.  But the urge for action, efficiency and acknowledgment as management is pretty powerful, and some of them can be overbearing and irritating.  One told me a rather sexist joke about women and tools and was astonished and a little angry when I got a bit prickly about it.  Another was loudly telling the two pros who came in to set the trusses how to do it, and generally flogging everyone to get hustling.  They often have tool belts that would make me stagger to wear, and frequently over estimate their skills. 

Their women, not surprisingly, are tentative about trying things, but glad to learn and ( to my relief) don’t pretend to knowledge and mess things up that will have to be redone later.  Sometimes, if the tasks are there, I do a sort of informal ladies clinic off in a corner, and they beam with pleasure at new skills.

On the first day of a build, the construction supervisor asks people what their experience is.  This is like the telling moment when you ask someone if they know how to ride a horse.  Those who are say they have ridden a lot, usually can’t, and those who mumble that they might manage not to fall off, are the good riders.  So it’s a tricky moment.  If I say I’m fairly handy I may be given some minor work to do, as a test, then given more stuff to do.  Lately, as an experiment, I’ve been saying I’m a retired high school shop teacher.  This produces an interesting silence in the group.  A woman shop teacher?  The Great Tool Belts are suddenly alert and sometimes a little nervous (which is amusing)  The Wives either look envious or move closer to their husbands.  All this on top of my solo RV status and veteran full timer.  The construction super usually looks a bit relieved, curious, and if there are youngsters on the build, relieved that there is an experienced wrangler of teenagers on hand.  The bad side is that I am often sent off to do things (like hanging a door or using a circular saw) that I’m not comfortable with.   

Each build is like a poker game, and each day a different hand.  I might get to do something I like to do, with someone I like working with, or I might be running a crew of kids, or just handing tools and nails to a GTB, or part of the Wives rolling clean up crew.  Often my truck is pressed into service to get materials or go to a distant site.  If I had to stay in just one poker game with just one deal for a long time, it would be pretty tedious and eventually annoying, but after two weeks, I’m off to the next.  Three cards, please, Mr. Dealer.