The Big Wide Open: A Wild West Adventure

By Graham Deacon

A page-turning coming-of-age tale set in the Wild West of the mid 1970s. The West had not changed much since the 1940s. Twenty-year-old Feynman wants a job in the oilfields, but finds out the hard way that the boom is over. So he hits the road and the rails to find some means of making money wherever he can. Along the way he meets all sorts of i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Aug 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638370888

Graham Deacon

Graham Deacon was raised in Portland, Oregon. After high school he rode his bicycle to Astoria, Oregon, and worked in the woods thinning and planting trees. After a year he returned to Portland and enrolled at Portland State University...and left after three months. He travelled to Millerton, New York, to attend Apeiron Photography Workshops, which centered around black and white fine art photography. After eight months he returned Portland and went back to the university. Again it did not last long. A friend's brother had returned from Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he'd worked on an oil drilling rig and made a lot of money. Graham and his friend decided to do the same, so they hopped a freight train going to Rock Springs. When they arrived they found the oil boom was over and there were no jobs, so they went north to Big Piney, Wyoming, and there Graham got a job working as a roustabout in the oil field. After five months he returned to New York, and two months later returned to Oregon by hitchhiking and riding freight trains across the country. Landing in Powell, Wyoming, he worked on a steel gang laying rail in Wyoming and Montana for three summers. After that he moved to Helena, Montana, where he became a fly fishing guide on many Montana rivers, which he did for 25 years. During that time he went to China and adopted his daughter who was then four months old and had been left at the front door of an orphanage. Graham currently lives in Astoria, Oregon.

Book preview

1

THE OIL PATCH

T

he day was January 1, 1974. It was midnight; the temperature was a cold 10 degrees. John and I were only 20 years old. In the Union Pacific yard in Portland, we scoped out a hot-shot train heading east, found an open boxcar while avoiding the yard bulls, and slunk into a dark corner.

Union Pacific didn’t want hobos and drifters on their trains—unlike Burlington Northern, which we hopped in high school. James Hill, the railroad baron who built the Great Northern, famously said, The boys built it and the boys can ride it. Union Pacific said to the Irish who built it, Buy a ticket.

John and I sat looking out the boxcar door as the train left the yard into a black sky full of diamonds.

We were going to strike it rich. This all came about after a booze-infused business meeting a week prior. John's brother had just returned from Wyoming loaded with dough. He said he made $18,000 in three months. All you had to do was go to a bar in Rock Springs and get a job on an oil rig.

The train was moving fast through the Columbia Gorge. Troutdale, Cascade Locks, and Hood River rushed by. Then the Dalles to Celilo Falls, where the natives were robbed of their sacred fishing grounds (now a big pond); then Boardman, Pendelton, and the Blue Mountains. We crawled into sleeping bags to get warm. The train clacked along the tracks and the freezing wind screamed through the open door.

Something was making a flurry of noise in the other end of the box car, a squawk and faint caw. I roused enough to check on what was there and grabbed my flashlight. At the other end of the boxcar in a wad of straw two birds were curled together.

What the fuck! It's a crow and a duck!

John! Check this out we’re not the only stowaways on this train.

What are we going to do with them, they’re freezing.

I’ll put them in my sleeping bag with me.

That's insane.

Yeah I know.

The train sped relentlessly through the night.

The dawn came. I reluctantly left the warmth of the sleeping bag, dressed and looked at the world from the boxcar door. It was an expanse of endless snowy stubble fields like my grandfather's beard.

I went to check on my boarders, who were waking up. The birds were groggy from whatever adventure they had been on. They needed some breakfast so I ground up a granola bar and filled a tin cup with water. The three of us ate in silence at the back of the boxcar. John was just waking and shortly joined us.

John we need to talk about this thing. It's freezing! We have to stop somewhere and get out of this cyclone. I’m not so sure that this was a smart decision. This looks grim.

What did you expect? John replied."I wonder if it's painful when you freeze to death?’ I asked John.

He replied, From what I’ve read it's not an unpleasant experience and relatively painless.

That makes me feel better.

My grandmother was the youngest of 14 children, her mother and family immigrated from Germany in 1890 and went to the wheat fields in the Dakotas. Life was tough, but they had the bodies and horses to plow and harvest. The Sioux would come begging and chop firewood for a piece of table scraps, My grandmother escaped from the wheat fields with Harvey, got hitched at fifteen and continued the family tradition creating more babies. She was off to a good start with eight and then Harvey put an end to it when he fell off a three-story roof, bonking his head and killing him.

My mother was also the youngest. They moved to Salem, Oregon. Mom was smart enough to to get a scholarship to Oregon State University, where she studied physics. There she met my father, who was getting a master's in geology. While at OSU my mom attended a lecture by the renowned physicist Richard Feynman and was stunned by his intellect and wacky personality. She thought that her first-born son should have that name. Feynman. It was a name that would bring great promise. I thought this rather ironic while freezing in a boxcar heading into the unknown.

We were getting close to Idaho. I examined new friends cradled in my arms. They were perkier now, and the deep translucent feathers of the black crow and the cinnamon teal shone in the winter light. John was watching the world whirl by from the boxcar door. When he turned to join us he saw the birds sitting on my shoulders with their heads close to my ears.

John watching the world whirl by

Well, what are the love birds up to?

They want to get off in Ontario.

They told you that? You’re kidding me. Birds can’t talk.

I’m just telling you what they said.

They said we would be crossing the Snake River soon and their only hope was rolling water. They didn’t think they would fare well in Rock Springs with the roughnecks. So as we came to the bridge over the Snake River, John and I lofted them out the door.

Maybe we will meet again, I said as they flew into the pale winter sky.

2

B

y mid-afternoon the train was rolling past the farms and into Pocatello.

Fuck I’m cold.

Me too, let's go find a gas station or cafe to warm up and figure out what to do now.

We grabbed our backpacks, walked from the tracks into town, and found a diner.

How much money did you bring? I asked.

I think around 150, John replied.

Me too, maybe a little less, I said.

This might become a predicament, we’re only halfway there, John said.

I’ll have bowl of chicken soup, we have to save our money, I said.

Me too, John said

So where are we going to sleep? I asked.

Do you think the waitress will let us sleep on the floor? John asked.

I already asked her and the answer is no, I replied.

I saw a ball field near the tracks, John stated. I think we could sleep in the dugout, less snow.

So we trudged off to the dugout, crawled into our bags, and dreamed of an island in the South Seas. The next day after breakfast at the diner it was back to the UP yard and ran straight into the yard bull.

What brings you young fellas into the train yard on a cold winter day? the bull asked.

Were trying to get back to Ogden and join the gang, I said.

What gang is that?

The steel gang.

Oh the steel gang huh?

Yeah we were seeing some girls in town and need to get back on the next train.

Do you know that Union Pacific doesn’t lay rail when it's freezing in the dead of winter?

We’re on the planning committee.

Hmm, I think you fellas better get your fannies out of the yard and take the bus.

What do we do now? John asked as we moved our fannies.

Bus station.

I was wedged in the middle of a group of Mormon children and their parents. I didn’t know where John was. The Mormon family had been visiting relatives in Pocatello for the holidays.

The dad called back over the squawking of the kids, Are you going to Salt Lake to pray at the Temple?

Oh my God, I thought, here we go.

Yes, I said, it's been so long since I’ve been to the Temple.

Welcome home son. If you’re looking for a job, me and my brother have a car dealership in town and are looking for a faithful boy like you to wash and park cars. Where did you do your mission?

New Jersey, I said.

Did you save souls? he asked.

No, not one. They were all Catholics or Methodists or Baptists and they wanted nothing to do with the true word from Moroni. Even the bums and defiled blacks wanted nothing with the word and they spit on me in the street. All they wanted was to drink Rolling Rock beer, so I joined them. Somehow along the way I lost my spirit; maybe in Paterson or in a bottle of Jack Daniel's in Wyoming on the trip back, not sure where it is, not the bottle but my spirit. Then again, maybe it is in the bottle, I’ll have to put that on the check list. I’m going to try Rock Springs first and go from there.

God Bless you my son but pray for your sins at the Temple first.

We got off In Salt lake with no exact plan on getting to Rock Springs. This required creative thinking. Hopping a train was out as we didn’t know where the yard was. We didn’t have enough money for the bus and needed whatever we had left for Rock Springs.

John, I said, I need to go to the Temple and pray for my sins.

Jesus H. Christ what is wrong with you? You don’t even believe in God! John replied.

Well, I was hoping that if I converted at the Temple they might let us stay the night and give us some pajamas and food, I said,