Back to Jackson

Late 1940's early 1950's

The tourists were going "out West" again, in droves. Some of them went to dude ranches and some of them just drove around, liking the sights and sounds of the West, safe now, but not quite tame. Did they know how the Westerners, even city slickers from the big towns like Bozeman and Pocatello, Billings and Cody, looked at them? How they watched those tourists in their fine tailored suits as they walked the streets of towns held together with barbed wire and flour paste and sandy grit? Did they feel the fine disdain the ranchers felt for the "dudes" who paid good money to do work they weren't suited for, work that had to be done over, like as not, by someone who understood the business end of a pitchfork?

The streets in Jackson were lined with ancient boards, eaves that came out over the boardwalks and held up by ancient stripped poles of lodgepole pine so straight they didn't need tapering. You could still tie up a horse on the rail in front the general store or the saloon. Most days it wasn't crowded, just an old town with a lot of history. Winter, it was almost completely closed in, lying like it did at the base of the Tetons. Not much skiing yet, no housing boom and there wouldn't be one for another fifteen or twenty years. Most folks just lived like they had always lived here, in cabins. Some of them had wires hooked up for electricity and leantos on the back were converted from cooksheds to bathrooms with running water, but the chinks had to be patched to keep the winter chill out just the same. Deer got into the gardens and mosquitos got into the house in the summer. In winter it was just cold; ten, fifteen, twenty below and the wind blowing all the time.

Some days in summer people flocked in for the fakey acted out quick draw on main street. It always started in the saloon and spilled out onto main street by the park with the antler arch. The roads would be lined with station wagons and Chevy sedans, not a pickup in sight. It was just such a day that my inlaws brought their children the two hours to Jackson, a little outing for the kids, a rest from the backbreaking work of running a farm. After stretching their legs and walking around a bit, the littlest one needed feeding. I am not sure which of the boys the little one was, but she took him and the next littlest one with her back to the car while he took the older children to see the sights with a promise of meeting under the antler arch in half an hour. She got the toddler quieted down with something to play with and settled the little one in to nursing with a blanket drawn over for modesty.

People kept walking back and forth on the walk, most not even glancing at the woman in the car with her babies. Two women, set apart as Easterners by their dress, walked by, looked in the window and stared. Not noticing that the window was rolled down to catch the air, they just stood and stared. Finally, as they walked off, she heard one say to the other "How quaint!", as though she and her hungry baby were part of the show, part of the Wild West.

Rinda Fullmer
Copyright 2006