Chapter 7

By Sunday the place was livable. I had a lock on Karen’s bedroom door and she had both keys. I had the washhouse cleared and the coal fired hot water heater hooked up to the the gasoline Maytag. The Maytag was already there.

Karen hinted me to death so I took out the old electric stove and hooked up the even older wood range. That meant a journey to Ranchester Ranch Supply for a chainsaw, fuel, bar oil, files, axes, wedges, a sledgehammer. While I was there I arranged for Kewitt Coal to deliver a load of stoker out to the coal bin in the washhouse. Nine tons at 12.00 a ton, delivered. We were going to need that much or more for the coming winter.

We had two “StokerMatic” Stoker Coal Furnace heaters; one in the dining room and one in the living room. They were a nifty operation; about three foot tall and a two by three footprint. An under stoker kind of arrangement. A bin with a Vee bottom that feeds a stoker auger. The tube the auger runs in served a dual purpose ... feed the tuyer with air and the fire pot with coal.

The only drawback was carrying the five gallon bucket of stoker coal from the coal shed through the kitchen to load the bin. Some days the snow gets deep in Wyoming ... no carpets ... they hold melting snow for hours. Eventually, we made it a team effort. I bundled up and hauled the buckets to the kitchen ... two for each stove in the morning and two before bed ... Karen took the buckets to the hopper and filled the bin. After I got organized I fetched my own ... saved 3.00 dollars a ton. I know it sounds crazy ... but I liked doing it myself.

The chainsaw went down to the creek where it did its duty cutting up a few of the 13 hundred trees blown down during the hundred mile an hour wind that roared down the canyon. Cottonwood is a hardwood and works well in the kitchen range.

Surprise me ... Karen was an expert at wood stove cookery. The people in the tri-state area; Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota who regularly used wood cookstoves were of Germanic descent and religion. During the six years we were roommates she never once mentioned her home life. Nobody came looking for her so I guess she was outcast.

So ... I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The rest of the first summer was crazy. I won the lottery again. This one was rather more and I took the annuity. Fifty thousand dollars per million after tax netted me a cool five hundred thousand a year ... but we never moved. I like seasons!

Wyoming is nine months of snow and three months of road construction.(local joke.)

I bought her a 1965 Jeep Station Wagon and had a 283 chevy adapted into it. She drove it to school in the winter but took the Mazda whenever she could.

“The Jeep is okay,” she would say. “But the Mazda has class.”

She started school in the Fall of 1976 as a Junior ... thanks to diligence and outside study. Tongue River High School is a very small school. The classrooms are generally fewer than 20 students, a teacher and an assistant. The school is supported by School Section leases and land taxes and it’s a wealthy county. TRHS has some of the highest paid teachers in the nation.

As far as notables go, Prince Charlie owns a Polo Ranch in Story and the Queen visits now and again. Elizabeth sits a great sidesaddle.

In my first life, I was interested in the Fur Trade; in my second life I used the furs to supply the extras in life. In this one ... since we were semi-camping every day (Hey! Don’t kid yourself. The cabin had fewer amenities than a travel trailer.) I decided to stay home more.

That’s a lie. Five hundred thousand a year? I explored my kink. I leased a building in Sheridan and bought a few machine tools; a Bridgeport mill, an Atlas lathe, a rotary drill, surface planer, a Storm Vulcan crank grinder with ways long enough to hold Packard Merlin cranks. Evidently it was the buying that satisfied me ... I used each machine to obtain proficiency then locked the doors and walked away.

“I have a date for the Prom!” Karen announced near the end of her Junior year.

“Have I met the guy?”

“No.”

She had that sneaky look she gets when plotting my demise.

I rumbled my brain through possibilities and realized I’d met every Junior and Senior and most of the Sophomores in her school. If I’d never met the guy...”Whose Prom?” I asked.

“Sheridan,” she said. “That was quick. How do you do that?”

“So who is he?”

“James Anderson.”

Quick like a bunny I picked up the phonebook and thumbed through the A’s.

“Anderson, Anderson, Anderson. James Anderson, Senior. Senior means there’s a Junior. Ah ... Jim Anderson ... same address. Kid has his own phone.” I dialed.

“Sheriff, Hairy. Hi. What can you tell me about Jim Anderson ... the kid.”

“Thanks, come out Saturday and we’ll blaze a few rounds. Steaks on the grill ... all that.”

“Sorry. You’ll miss it if you pick up a felon in Arizona.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bye.”

I turned to look at Karen. She was in shock and just beginning to pull out. She opened her mouth ... but I raised my hand.

With a completely straight face, I said, “He’s a serial rapist and mass murderer out on work release ... you can go.”

She blinked ... once ... twice ... three times and picked up a plate and got ready to toss it.

“Is that plate part of the Great Mishmash?”

The Great Mishmash is a set of non matching china, really good english flowers series pieces that we have been collecting for the past 8 months. We can seat 28 people and not one piece of china or silver matches another. Yard sales, garage sales, estate and auctions. We have been to every secondhand store in 200 miles looking for that plate, saucer, cup pattern we don’t have. It’s getting hard ... hard I tell ya ... to find mishmashed china. We have gone so far as to buy a complete set for a single cup.