Chapter 1

It was well past my usual time for my nightly stop at Joe's on the way home but I wasn't really in much of a hurry today. It's not like Joe would get too worried about me, even though he is one of my closest and most elderly uncles, as my hardware store was just a stones throw away on the other side of the hill from the bar. Joe never bothered to get the dirt road to the bar paved — and probably never will. Nor will his kids ever do it either, not that either of them have had any interest in the bar, past or present. The modern paved road at the end of town stops right in front of my hardware story leaving nothing but a dirt trail around the hill to the bar and then down to the river. Tradition.

Tradition is a very powerful thing, especially to us mountain Wyldewood folks here in south-eastern Missouri. Things change very slowly in these parts and that's just the way that most folks like it.

Jeppeson "Joe" Wilde has been the owner and proprietor of "Joe's Bullpen" for as long as I can remember as a young boy. The building has been the Wilde family tavern for well over a hundred years, during which the name outside may have changed a few times but the only changes inside are purely cosmetic. Here is where the family business gets done. It's the pulse of our county, where the real decisions get made first and later enacted down at either the local City Hall or up the road north a bit at the Wyldewood County seat, Whiston.

The Wilde family, and its off-shoots were among the first to settle this remote tree covered mountain region of southeast Missouri about a hundred and fifty years ago and we still run things around here in our own peculiar and very quiet way. We're a pretty large family which includes the minor name derivatives like the Wild's, Wilde's, Wylde's, Wilder's, and so forth. There are several other local "sister" families as well, some of which even predate James Joseph Wylde's settlement here in 1851. We even still have a minor family branch back in Lovett County, Texas of a few Wilde's that didn't quite all emigrate up here to Missouri with James. We've got other minor branches of the family scattered out west, in upper New York State and scattered across Canada. Here locally in the mountains, we're about 250 households, more or less, with another few hundred scattered everywhere else in other counties and states.

Supposedly, we've been an extremely rich family on several occasions, but from what I hear little remains of the original legendary amounts of wealth. The money seems to have been pretty well spent in my opinion and we supposedly own (openly or secretly) and/or control a pretty decent chunk of these fairly remote mountains (at least 1000 square miles), although you'd be hard pressed to find more than three good hard top roads in the entire area. Inhospitable driving conditions help keep the tourists and other strangers with curious or prying eyes away. We mountain folk enjoy our privacy.

The family engages itself in a number of various businesses, but primarily, we're miners at heart. Last I heard, mining provided nearly 75% of the total jobs for the entire county. The smartest Wilde kids (even some of the young ladies) usually go to one of the big mining colleges like UTEP or Colorado School of Mines and work their lives managing our numerous mining interests. The dullards (and most "non-family" folk) handle the more mundane mining jobs, unless their family owns farming, ranching or timber lands for them work instead. It's good and steady work at the mines — nearly every Wilde has spent at least some time there. Especially as a teenager. Hard work certainly is good for building character and us Wilde's have plenty of it, our elders usually see to that. They like to think it keeps the young folks out of trouble, or at least two tired to get into much. Probably they're right.

We produce a decent bit of copper, lead and zinc, with some minor ore minerals like galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, and bornite, in order of decreasing abundance, with small amounts of silver associated with the galena. Frankly though, crushed rock for concrete and masonry is really our largest and most profitable mining industry and our only mining division operating at even close to full capacity. Construction and industrial grade sand and gravel, common clays, and the odd minor gemstone fill in the corners.

As I said, we're not rich, at least not at the moment, but anyone with at least two brain cells to rub together in our family usually manages to at least make themselves comfortable. Besides, we're not the sort of folk that like showing off to outsiders what we have. Our financial lights usually get kept firmly hidden under any number of bushels. Our houses appear very old and plain on the outside — any style or extravagances saved for what's inside, hidden from the sight of others. Wilde's that like to show off what they've got usually don't get trusted much by the rest of us, with the exception of acquiring a nice top of the line four-wheel drive pickup truck or two. "Thems' don't count, besides I needs it to tow my fishing boat and horse trailer", as they would say with a wink and a drink or three in them!

It would seem odd to outsiders that folks around here try so hard to keep their lights well hidden under the bushels. To all external appearances, we're just a low income rural community with 'quaint' local customs but nothing worth getting off of an interstate highway to visit. And that's exactly just the way we want things. Having little love for most aspects of our government, we keep our financial affairs even quieter and the tax men as far away as possible. One of our oldest traditions is in fact avoiding the revenuers, which definitely includes the IRS. You can be quite sure that most family jobs don't report more than a fraction of their real income. A few folks exploit this a bit by double-dipping some extra cash by filing for various poverty programs, but this is very much frowned upon by the family elders. Besides, no true Wilde kin would ever be low enough to pick their hand out and beg for help from the government. We're a proud folk, no two ways about it.

Currently economic times have been a bit rough lately and I've heard it reported that our Elders will have very limited funds for assisting most of our High School grads in attending college next year. Fortunately, we have several other very traditional Wilde occupations other than a life in the mines: working for a railroad, joining the military, working a farm, timber cutting and/or a life of crime. I chose the military myself, but most of my immediate family tree has worked for the railroads.

At last count I think there are almost thirty different railroad common or freight carriers (not to mention the passenger only companies) that operate in Missouri, and there are undoubtedly Wilde's working at every single one of them. Often in positions of considerable authority or family 'usefulness'. It's common family knowledge that "in the good old days" a great many of our ancestors got their big boost up in life via the manly arts of train robbery ... but not via a mundane stickup. Oh no. No halfway measures for us.

Our family tends to steal the entire train, from engines to caboose ... and everything in-between, but that's a different story.

Since I was a boy, hearing all of the old stories, I've been repeatedly told, "we don't do that sort of thing anymore...", but that's not really quite true. It seems to be a rite of passage for every generational group in our family to abscond with at least a railcar (undoubtedly with something worth absconding with inside it), and according to rumor, about every twenty years or so some misguided and kleptomaniac inclined relative of mine will 'misplace' an entire train and put it into family hands for better and more secure safekeeping. Allegedly. These little 'irregular incidents' are apparently reserved for special occasions or circumstances and then, only under air tight family security.

It's all rumor, innuendo and hearsay. Ask nine out of ten people and they'll laugh and say it's just a rural legend — "Never happened". The tenth person might just give you a wink and a smile with a sly shake of the head. Folks asking too many of these sorts of questions do tend to get late night visits from concerned friends worried about their health. Inquisitive teens, like myself as a kid, will quickly find themselves working long hours in the mines keeping their hands and their minds too busy for idle questions.

Oh, it's a huge family secret, but I spent a big chunk of my misspent youth exploring a great many of our older and more remote mines — especially the ones that were marked "Dangerous", "Unsafe" or otherwise very "off-limits". Padlocks and security doors soon became no match for a very curious teenager with a mail-order set of lockpicks ... and a willingness to learn how to use them at 3 a.m. in the morning without using a flashlight. Let's just say we have a very comprehensive collection of early to modern American locomotives and railcars in pristine condition that would be the envy of every major railroad museum.

Once I learned the real secret of our family's primary criminal indulgence, I became easier to keep my eyes and ears open to start filling in a few of the more interesting missing pieces before I left to join the Army. As a result, I also started to learn more about how our family elders control nearly everything, especially the more dodgy criminal activities, very quietly behind the scene. God help the freelancer that exercised his itchy railroad fingers without the express consent and direct approval of the family Elders! Whoever they actually are. That's another great family secret. Everyone has suspicions and wild-ass guesses as to who is and isn't, but no one really knows for sure ... and that's just the way they like to keep things. The Elders manage the family fortune and make the really big decisions.

Wilde family problems stay within the family. Period. The fastest way to earn yourself a long-term stay in the family doghouse is to get outsiders involved. Strangers and outsiders are very much four letter words in the Wilde lexicon. In a perfect world we'd like it if no one outside of the Wildewood Mountains had never heard of us and accordingly kept themselves as distant from us as possible.

If you have a 'Family Problem' you tell Joe — he's the designated point man and the gatekeeper between the Elders and the rest of the family. Sometimes he'll convene a meeting to solicit ground level family opinions about a matter, but just as often he'll just simply dictate a decree from the august personages he serves down to us lowly peons and minions. He's a surly old git, but he's family ... and more importantly he's fair and he genuinely cares about upholding all of the important family traditions. He's also my uncle and his closest kin at the moment, with his children long grown and with careers outside of Wyldewood County.

I had wanted to become a Geologist when I was growing up, but frankly I could just barely handle basic simple Algebra, let alone taking three full years of advanced Calculus and Physics classes. I wasn't going to be a college boy, at least not on normal Wolfe family terms, and I wasn't crazy at the time about railroad work either, so I followed one of the other acceptable and traditional career paths and I joined the Army. In an extremely unusual display of military common sense, the Army personnel computer in assignments decided that I was most suited to working with various military support Railway Operating Battalions. And they were right. This was mostly office logistics work, not hot and sweaty labor humping railcars out on the tracks, and I loved it. Railroad work just runs in our veins I guess. I'd never realized that the Department of Defense handles and runs its own trains, or used to until fairly recently anyway.