Chapter 28

The house is finished - 1440 square feet of minimalist architecture... 60 by 24. Two bedroom, two bath, kitchen and living/dining room with a full basement. The backhoe excavated to bedrock and the poured concrete walls went up from there. There was a three foot diameter heavy plastic pipe laid on the bedrock that encircled the foundation and fed the in-house heat and air-conditioning 67.5F average temperature air year round. The rotary drilled water well was 250 feet. The bitch had better water than the cabin did.

The entire valley floor between the low hills was glacial till covered with four feet of compacted aeolian sediment ... loess. Loess is very fertile soil which would account for three crop haying. The only fly on the butter was the trailer. It was still sitting by the fence ... clean, to be sure, but still a reminder. Someone was living in it ... I have no idea who.

Every month a hundred and twenty-five dollars shows up on my kitchen table and there are days that I think there will never be an end to the little brown men who come out, load into trucks and do whatever they do. I am usually in the creek mining architectural rocks ... me and my assigned helpers ... when the trucks deliver.

My guys have been known ... the days I am resting ... to look and say, “Guatemalans,” in disparaging tones. I give them the evil eye when they do.

I have hit bedrock and am cleaning my way down stream. Should I ever decide to go into competition with Taylor Sand and Gravel I could make a bundle ... if it weren’t for the gold I probably would. My dredge is such that the small water tumbled rocks fall off the end of the sluce onto the far creek bank.

When each day is done I washed my fines from the miners moss into five gallon buckets, concentrate it ... separate the big stuff from the fines using sieves ... and pan the fines. The jeweler in Sheridan paid me spot less five. I sold every Friday. During the month of August, spot averaged 290 bucks. In September the price peaked at 426.00. That was the day I ceased operation ... the water was too cold, the forecast was for snow and I needed a vacation. Six hours a day fighting boulders and current had taken their toll.

My vacation was half in bed sleeping and half running with the band. The Boyertown bread truck advertised out band; The Silver Spur Cafe and Band. Bobby’s idea. I just paid for the sign painter. We played as far south as Douglas as far north as Parkman, east as far as Gillette, and west to Jackson hole. We played every weekend night and a few resorts five nights. Our guarantee was now a grand a night and the gate. We played in a Battle of the Bands ... Chris LeDoux won ... we came in second.

We played one week night at the college. We’ll never go back. Kids! Ill-mannered, drunken louts. My nipples cringe thinking about it. You would have thought I wore a sign, “Band Slut.”

The Avocado had a new door. The window couldn’t be replaced. The ‘32 sold unfinished for fifty thousand. The Department of Transportation has finished the SNB ... original equipment perfect. Flies like a Beechcraft.