September 2015 – Meredith Hardwick

There’s a great little saying about small towns “If you don’t know what you are doing, someone else surely will.” I’ve lived in small towns my whole life and have found that the town stories are basically the bolts that hold the town together. Phrases like “He’s probably slept with the whole damn church!” or “That nut sure didn’t fall far from that tree, did it!” Whether or not you want to, eventually you are going to create some buzz.

For example, when you go out with someone in a small town, its like a James Bond movie for the first couple of weeks. Starting out clever with stealth, you have to Anne Frank your time together. Just one curious wondering eye ball spies the two of you out together and the carrier pigeons are shitting your personal life into the mouths of town gossip. Of course, you wouldn’t see someone if you had not fully researched their story from some reliable source.

“Who’s that? Where’s he from, what’s his story?”

In big cities finding someone to go out with is as simple as a phone app, a website, or a large number of bars, gyms etc. People are everywhere, options abound and no one knows what you are doing or who you are. Going out with a person in big cities is a half assed effort. Big city people take comfort in the number of options they have and can go into a date as if it were a cruise liner, sailing by, it makes an impression, but once it is over the horizon you’ll probably never see that boat again, unless you want to. In big cities, people are just wang dang doodlin’ with no second thoughts, no aftermath.

In small towns you’ve got one bar, one grocery store, their exes, their friends, their life completely intertwined with yours. Making the decision to ‘see’ someone is like getting a dog. You are committed to this, you have no idea if this dog is brilliant and loyal, or a lazy shit head that doesn’t listen to you, or is one of the nip at your heels LOOK AT ME AND FEED ME kind of dogs. You are in for the long haul of that decision– no matter how it ends up, it’s going to affect your ‘town story’.

I prefer living in small, off the beaten path towns because I like the community, even for its faults, it is a much better place to live than the artificiality of a big city. Small towns feel safe and it is easy to build relationships with people and the services are courteous. The big flood happened soon after I moved to Wimberley and was a great reminder just how incredibly small town communities can come together to help each other out.

In big cities, people are taken for granted and more easily dismissed. But in a small town, every one has their ‘town story’. A short rundown of their history and from that story, decisions are made to like a person, hate a person, hire a person, help a person, or ignore a person. In big cities, anonymity is almost your best friend. Sure you may have friends from school, church, work or family, but there’s always a place where you are unknown. When I lived in a little town in Wyoming, I was traveling to big cities all over the nation for work every once in a while. This gave me an opportunity to leave behind my ‘town story’, which I’m thinking sounds like this; “She’s like, really Texan and rides horses, been here for a couple of years… she’s pretty funny and has a nice butt”.

I loved that I could go all over the country and play different parts. Sometimes I would introduce myself as Lynn, wear fake wedding bands and make up stories to people on planes and at bars. The anonymity was fun, until I was ready to come home to my little Wyoming home. It was always a tit for tat situation. I got to go out and see what was going on in the world, shop, see movies and eat Indian food. But then I’d remember that other girls wear makeup and don’t consider a base ball hat an essential accessory, and missed the home that learned to not be offended by my sense of humor and general appearance.

I hope my current ‘town story’ is at least somewhat flattering. I know that if you are kind, honest and respectful to people, then in general the contents of your town story will have facts but will never be off-putting. But one thing is guaranteed, your town story will follow you around like a bad habit.

If you want to witness just how typically ‘America’ Americans are, spend some time in the service industry. When I say ‘America’ I don’t mean the good qualities; freedom, pride, patriotism, dreams, industry, opportunities etc… I mean the qualities that say, how a European may describe Americans; wimpy, loud, over fed, un-athletic, unable to ‘disconnect’, impatient, complainers and other poor qualities. I’ve worked a few customer service jobs but the place that displayed the over all childishness of the American people was a Dude Ranch in Wyoming I worked at for two years.

I worked as a wrangler, which basically means caretaker of the horses, mountain guide on horseback, and in general ‘clown’ for the entertainment of people willing to pay thousands of dollars to ‘experience’ the west. It was a lot like working at Disney World, which I’ve not done, but I feel like they are very similar experiences. Guests, as we called them, found our outfits so completely intriguing that they arrived already mimicking them. Like children with Mickey Mouse ears, they arrived with poor quality cowboy hats, boots and jeans that fit like SNL’s ‘Mom Jeans’. Our outfits were utilitarian to us as we were all riders in our actual lives and were not costumes, but we did play up the unnecessary wearing of spurs (we were mostly walking for god’s sake), and because this was in Wyoming- we wore a lot of scarves and vests, which REALLY got the guest’s goat for western wear.

Aside from our attire was our general interaction with the guests. We worked very hard everyday, up at 5 am to bring the horses in from pasture to begin doctoring horses that needed to be doctored as well as saddle the horses for the guests that were going out for a ride that day. Rides were typically all day endeavors so our chores were complete before breakfast and the sleepy headed guests arrived full bellied and ready to complain in the saddle for the remainder of the day as I answered questions about flora, fauna, my potential ranch romances and if I was a rodeo queen.

The adults were the worst as they just could not stand the fact that saddles were made from leather and wood and not purple satiny velvet or La-Z Boy couch material. The minute they got into the saddle their ability to listen or use motor functions just vanished completely. Arms are all over the place, reins were on the ground after REPEATEDLY being told to not let go of the reins to take photos, remove jackets, eat food that they can’t live without for ten minutes, pick their noses… anything really. I mean human arms become incredibly active the minute we ask them to do one activity, and one activity only. JUST HOLD THE REINS.

We had the opportunity to ride in some of the most beautiful country in the West, the landscape of Wyoming’s Gros Ventre valley is so diverse and geologically impressive especially when observed with the explosive arguments of dysfunctional families yelling at each other, or the quiet subtly of a creepy couple hinting at an offer for a private threesome in the native Douglas fir trees. Not every guest was lazy, loud, or rude, most were endearingly honest and good listeners. One of the most entertaining situations was when the guests found out that they would have to use the bathroom outside, I always enjoyed holding their horses and handing them a smooth rock while I wished their pouting faces good luck.

Hours would go by before the inevitable questions, “Why do horses poop so much? Was that a fart! MINE JUST FARTED!!!!”

“Uhmmmmm… Meredith… How do I make my balls not hurt? They won’t stop hurting… how much further are we going? Can I just walk!?”

And my all time favorite question from a showy- wealthy, probably owned his own personal Jet type, question was “Meredith… my butt is sweating. Do other people’s butts usually sweat!?”

This guy had to of graduated from Yale, Harvard, Princeton… somewhere prestigious, but had managed to skip the biology class that informed him that bodies cool themselves by sweating from the skin and that the skin on your ass is still skin. Skin that sweats. I had to explain this to him, and the way I did sounded like a children’s tale, “The Story of the Sweating Ass” and he wasn’t even embarrassed.

Not everyone was this bad, in fact most of the guests were incredibly interesting people and I would have payed to listen to them talk all day. I keep in touch with most of these guests and would gladly guide them to the end of the world. I learned a lot from them and enjoyed teaching them some things as well.

Although this job was exhausting and frustrating at times, I loved it. Guests would stay for a week and be awkward and uncomfortable for the first half, but by the end of their stay, everyone felt like family. They were thrown completely out of their element and by the time their departure date came, they did not want to leave our magical little western Disney World. I enjoyed watching how these people changed in just a week and could write pages and pages about the people, the situations, the funny questions I was asked, the scenery… all of it. But the Guests were definitely the most colorful part of those summers in the Gros Ventre Valley.

Meredith Hardwick

Month: September 2015

Small Town Talk

American Adults in the Woods