Chapter 1

I loaded the last tipi pole and laced the 21 poles together. The ladder rack I had built for the Dodge last winter worked as advertised. I had spent the past few weeks swapping the frame and running gear from the W-200 short narrow 4x4 pickup over to the 1964 Dodge Town Wagon. If you don’t know the Town Wagon think Suburban ... only Dodge. The Town Wagon was an SUV before there were SUV’s. Picture three row seating and plenty wide to seat three abreast. Nine passenger I called it. The W-200 wasn’t built in the short box until 1966 but the frame bolted under the Town Wagon body with nary a hitch. Eventually, there was a 340 under the hood.

We moved from Tyler, Texas to Sheridan, Wyoming the spring of 1976. There was a lot of really boring circumstances involved and this narrative is going to be complicated enough without going into that ... except on the fringes. Up until a couple of weeks before the move, I owned a 1960 Ford pickup ... with a Dodge 318 and automatic transmission in it.

Through no fault of my own ... really ... I was t-boned heading home from work.

“Officer,” he said. “I’ve been driving this road for thirty years and never had to stop for that light. Everyone knows I don’t stop ... you should give that boy a ticket for getting in my way.”

Really. He said that ... really. Honest.

I wasn’t hurt ... not even when he tried to leave the scene and left the passenger side door and both pickup fenders laying in the street. He snagged the rear bumper ... all that kept him from getting away.

The move was already set ... I was supposed to haul a big flatbed trailer to Casper. Bought and paid for ... and no pickup.

We were both insured by the same company so I footed it to the office and they paid.

I took the money and called my favorite junkyard. They had a Chevy long wide with a blowup six ... and a 1965 Chevrolet L-79, which was nothing more than an L-76 (11.0:1 forged pop-up pistons, forged steel rods and crank, 2.02 Corvette heads), but with the 30-30 Duntov cam replaced by the #151 hydraulic cam. A little of this and a little of that, a couple of cuts and several bruises and two hours later the pickup had a V-8.

I did mention this was Spring ... Texas Spring starts a whole hell of a lot earlier than Wyoming Spring.

We left Tyler in shorts and tee shirts and approached Sheridan in snowsuits. Feet ... not inches ... of snow and still snowing.

I went to work Monday and suddenly realized that in Wyoming, neighbors is anybody within a hundred and fifty miles. Driving to the job with Gene, brother-in-law, is pretty boring. He insisted on driving.

This all started because I bought a brass framed .36 caliber Italian replica 1849 Colt revolver kit at K-Mart for 29 bucks. If I hadn’t bought that damn revolver none of this would have happened. I finished it up real pretty and sold it to my brother-in-law for a hundred.

Well, that was stupid.

So I bought another kit at the new Wal-Mart for 39 bucks ... steel frame this time. It came out good and I sold it to my next door neighbor for two hundred ... more than a factory job cost.

Casting around for something to do on the way to the job, I spotted a Santa Fe Hawken .53 caliber rifle kit by Uberti at an actual gun-store. I didn’t know what a Hawken rifle was, but the picture of the finished article looked cool. I dickered and got it for 169 bucks out the door. (I could have gotten it for 129 through the mail ... including shipping.) Once I got the curly burly Sycamore Maple stock finished with Rit dye and several coats of boiled linseed oil and the metal work urine browned it was pretty damn spectacular! Some damn fool offered me a thousand bucks for it ... Yup.

You bet I sold it.

So, by this time, a customer had loaned me The Indian Tipi by Gladys and Reginald Laubin. It was a first edition paperback.

I needed a new tent ... because another brother-in-law had tossed a butt out the window of my Chevy pickup and burned six holes through my old tent.

Well I read the book ... and just had to have a tipi. While I was deciding ... I bought a tipi pole cut permit from the office of the Bighorn National Forest. Actually, I went to buy a pole lease but they talked me out of that and into the lease I got. Which was a good thing ... I didn’t need a thousand poles.

Sheridan Wyoming had a radio station that put on a program called Tradio where a seeker could look for items and a seller could sell something. I called looking for a drawknife. More results than I wanted ... so I drove to town to look at what the most expensive and the cheapest responders had. The cheap one was a German antique and far better than the expensive China made. The guy with the good one had several and I couldn’t make up my mind so he sold me all of them for half the price of Mr. China. Now ... and this is important ... in his back yard he had a Forest Service Dodge Town Wagon that was flat from the windshield back; the result of a falling tree. He had bought it for the motor and transmission. The front clip was perfect.

Now, the Dodge was my own fault.

I bought my wife a last year production Jeep station wagon. Four wheel drive with the Tornado overhead cam six. She loved it.

I wanted a larger four by four ... because she wouldn’t let me drive her jeep ... so I bought two Dodges ... a town wagon and a short wide 4x4 pickup. I made the swap and went to the courthouse to register it.

No!

“No?”

“No title, no registration.”

“I have the title for the pickup.”

“You’re not registering a pickup. You’re trying to register a Van. You need the title for the body.”

“Well, shit!”

The fella I bought the drawknives from? The Dodge in his backyard? He gave it to me. So ... I had a 1963 title to a 1964 Town Wagon and a title to a 1973 Dodge pickup ... the clerk took a look...

“I see you got smart. Here’s your plate.” Then she said, “What did you do with the frame to the van?”

“Took it to the landfill.”

“The operator took it home ... it’s now a pickup so I’ll just keep the title for the frame.”

“Why?”

“So my husband will get it out of my garage.”

I peeled the tipi poles with the German drawknife and stacked them in the crotch of the cottonwood tree in the front yard.

Cora Jo, the wife, said, “Decided on the tipi?” She acted pissed. I know better than to make a decision before discussing it with her.

“Umh, sorta.”

She got all squinty eyed, “Those poles ain’t a sorta, buddy. Them is a positive. Order it yet?”

“No,” I said. Would she let me?

“Me and the rug rats want an eighteen footer.” She grinned. “Had ya worried didn’t I.”

“You coulda said,” I said.

“Just did.” She got a good chuckle out of that.

And that settled that.

The Japanese war bride that sewed the tipi together made a good one.

While she was doing that I was cutting and peeling pegs and lacing pins. The pegs were to fasten the tipi skirt to the ground and the pins held the sides together at the front. (If you’re confused, look at tipis online.)

The bank along the stream behind the house, Wolf Creek, was a tangle of chokecherry bushes. Chokecherry makes really good pegs and pins. It’s a hardwood ... even if it is awfully small.

The lodge took awhile, the builder was making a speedboat cover and a couple of awnings.

The sign in the gunshop window said:

Rendezvous:
Buffalo Skinners Presents
The Third Western International Black Powder Shoot
Three Days
Paradise Guest Ranch

“Cora!”

From the kitchen where she was baking eight loaves of bread, “Jesus, Hairy. You made me pee my pants,” she said. “What?”

And it was true ... there was a tiny wet spot on her shorts.

“Big black powder shoot Friday week ... Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Wanna go?”

“Is my gun finished?”

“Umh.”

“That’s a no,” she said. “Better get your ass in gear, boy.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Call and see if the lodge is finished.”

So ... I picked up the phone and no dial tone ... but I could hear breathing.

“Hello?”

“Herro.”

“Osako?”

“Yes.”

At the same time as she said, “You tipi is leady,” I asked, “Is my tipi done?”

“Yes. Come get it.”

CLICK

“Cora!”

“Damn it, Hairy,” she shrieked. “Don’t do that. What?”

“Tipi’s ready. Wanna go to town?”

We lived 13 miles from the nearest town with an actual store ... of course she wanted to go ... and the kids, too.

“Gimmie a minute, I’ll cover the dough pans,” she said, “Collect the kids.”

Wolf Creek Road barely answers to the name Road. In a state where off the beaten path pavement of any kind is rare, Wolf Creek is paved to the Water Treatment Plant and it’s ruts the rest of the way. I have driven from our house to the treatment plant in fifteen minutes ... but ... I was alone when I did it.

When I bought the Town Wagon it came with the wheels and tires on it and an extra set in the back. I’m pretty sure that the tires in the back were supposed to be on it... 37x12.5 12 ply on 16.5 snap rings. The tires that were on it were 235xR60 6 ply on 16 inch white spokes. The 37’s were at least 10 years old and still had 3/4’s of an inch tread. The 235’s were nearly new and looked like shit.

The town excursion always finished up with a trip to the Cowboy Store ... we only looked.