Back to Reason

By Anne Caryl

Back to Reason is a very short book about a very small town. A hometown. People in Reason still mark a contract by shaking hands. They still turn out for things like high school football games and band concerts. People in Reason arent crazy from the traffic or the noise or the crowding. Crazy people in Reason are just crazy. But theyre OUR crazy people, and we like them that way. Some stories in Back to Reason are belly-laugh funny; others will make you sigh. They all will make you wish that, at the end of the day, you were going hometo Reason.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465325600

Anne Caryl

Anne Caryl knows small towns. She lives in one with Charlie, her husband of 39 years. They have a huge family and a dog named Pepper. Small towns are nice places to raise big families, and Anne and Charlie are still raising kids…as foster parents. Places like Reason are also nice places to grow up in …even if you are an adult to begin with. That is all you need to know about Anne. But Reason is a subject that can go on forever.

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Copyright © 2009 by Anne Caryl.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

Foreword

THE HISTORY OF REASON

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

POLITICS AND RELIGION WITHIN REASON

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

SPORTS IN REASON

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

REASON INGENUITY

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

REASON CHARACTER

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

REASON CHARACTERS

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

REASON INSTITUTIONS

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

REASON ENTERPRISE

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

AND A FINAL FEW WORDS

Chapter Forty-eight

Foreword

Reason, Colorado, is a mythical town. Its people though, are real. They live in every village in America. We do not laugh at their follies because they are different than we are, we laugh because we see ourselves in them. People in cities get lost in the shadows and the crowds. We don’t see them as clearly as we see the people of Reason, marching their parade under the only stoplight in town. Life gets complicated sometimes, and the line blurs between things that are merely important and things that are as vital as breath. In Reason that line is as clear as the lane markings down the state highway. As plain as the pin flags on the sand greens of Reason’s nine-hole golf course. Once in a while, we should all go Back to Reason.

THE HISTORY OF REASON

More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen

There ain’t nothin’ here but what we toted it here from the east or made it with our bare hands. That’s how it should be. A man appreciates life more if it requires a little sacrifice from him.

Joe Krebs, Reason’s founder

Chapter One

How Reason Got Its Name

Reason, Colorado sits on a small rise somewhere south and a little east of Sterling. Until recently the town’s population hasn’t grown. In fact, since 1950 it has wavered between seventeen-seventy-four and eighteen hundred. But a couple of years ago they put in hog farms at some of the neighboring communities and two families moved to Reason to escape the smell. So, in the 2000 census the official head count of Reason was eighteen hundred and ten.

Reason’s one traffic light marks the intersection of a state highway and a county road. Its business district runs east and west, and three of the fifteen storefronts on Main Street are boarded up. There was a car dealership once, but folks figured they should have more than one of each model to choose from, so Clyde Walker folded up his business and moved to Sterling, where he opened again, selling bottled water on the side.

Reason boasts six churches. Not that all her residents are spiritually-minded, but most Reasonites claim to be one denomination or another, and a lot of clubs meet in the various church basements. Reason has a Lion’s and a Bison’s Club, a Masonic Lodge and a Republican Women’s Circle, not to mention the usual bridge and poker klatches.

There are two explanations for how Reason, Colorado was named. The most plausible is that the first white man who settled in these parts, and who recognized the potential for there being a railroad established nearby, founded the town and gave it his name: Reason. The more popular of the stories, however, concerns woebegone early travelers.

In 1880 Joe Krebs and his wife Effie passed through the countryside around Reason, though at the time no town existed. What did exist was an endless flat plain of dry buffalo grass, a few ranches, and a sizable colony of prairie dogs. Joe’s prize bay, leading his four-horse team, stepped into one of those prairie dog holes and broke his leg, so Joe had to shoot him. That was just the beginning of their troubles. The four horses were a necessity because Effie had insisted on bringing her mother’s piano on their trek. It was lashed to the front of the wagon’s interior and left little room for the couple to sleep inside. Without the fourth horse, the other three would have to pull harder across this arid country.

Out on the prairie, where water is scarce, trees only grow along a creek or maybe on a farmer’s windbreak. The ground is covered with sagebrush and yucca plants, an occasional cactus and scrub oak. While Joe attended to the inert body of the big bay, Effie squatted behind a tangle of scrub oak and sage. She did not intend to be seated. When the snake slithered under her, Effie jerked up her skirt, lost her balance and landed on her posterior in the center of a large cactus plant.

Now cactus is not, by nature, mean spirited. It is actually a generous plant, affording travelers… by variety… a succulent fruit and a source of water. When attacked, however, cactus is a worthy opponent. This species had spines easily two inches long.

Effie yelped, and then started a low, pitiful howling that soon attracted a pack of mongrel coyotes. The coyotes were torn between what they took to be an animal in distress and the dead horse, which seemed a safer target. Joe grabbed his rifle, squeezed off a couple of wild shots and the pack scattered. Effie limped to the wagon and Joe hefted her up into the back.

After unhitching the bay and realigning the team, Joe climbed into the wagon to assist Effie in removing the cactus. She was bent over the narrow bunk, her skirt flung over her head, the needles protruding from her flour sack bloomers. Joe pulled his pliers from his belt and pinched onto one of those cactus needles. It was embedded deeper than he thought and he had to give it a couple of twists before the barbs let loose of Effie’s skin. She yelled, and reared back, dealing Joe a glancing blow to his nose, which began to gush blood. Joe swiped at it with the back of his hand and grabbed another cactus spine. He jerked it as hard as he could. There was almost a joy to the way Joe latched onto that cactus and jerked it out of Effie’s behind. The blood kept coming from Joe’s nose, and he took to wiping at it with Effie’s skirt between pulling out those cactus needles.

Eventually, Effie’s posterior was free of the spikes, but she couldn’t put any pressure on it. Riding farther that night was out of the question. Joe pitched camp.

Half a pound of bacon was frying over the campfire when Joe looked up and saw three Indians astride scruffy-looking ponies. Joe thought about the rifle, but it was out of reach behind the wagon. The Indians dismounted.

Joe tried signing to the men, but what he meant for friend, curved fingers bobbing up and down in a pantomimed handshake, evidently had a different connotation to the Indians. They grunted excitedly and reached for the knives in their belts. Joe shook his head furiously, stretched his lips in the widest grin he could manage and held out his hands palms up. The three men looked at one another and relaxed. One pointed to his stomach.

Joe surmised the Indians were hungry and he motioned for them to help themselves, which they did. After eating all the bacon that Joe had brought, fried and raw, the men started toward the wagon. Effie met them.

Now, Effie had been unable to sit, lie down or lean since the cactus incident that afternoon. She was not in an agreeable mood. When one of the Indians made to climb up into the wagon, Effie beaned him with her cast iron frying pan. The other two grabbed hold of Effie and helped her out of the wagon, throwing her on the ground on her sore backside. The injured brave stood and brandished his knife at Effie’s long braid.

Joe leaped into the wagon, threw back the key cover on the piano and banged away. The Indians turned back from Effie and moved to watch Joe playing Effie’s piano. When Joe stopped, one of the braves stepped up on the tailgate and crept across to the instrument. He gingerly touched a key, then laughed as it sounded a note. The other two men joined their friend and Joe retreated to Effie’s side. The braves played that piano for over an hour, then they pulled out their knives again and cut the thing free. They pulled and heaved at it until they had it outside, on the dry ground.

Effie was furious. She would have said a lot more if Joe hadn’t swatted her across the injured part of her body and threatened to turn her over to the savages if she wasn’t still. She quieted down. Joe approached the Indians, signaling to them that they were welcome to the upright if they wanted it, which they did.

They stood back as Joe hitched up his team again and loaded his fuming wife onto the wagon seat. He flicked the reins and they lumbered off, leaving the smoldering campfire, the body of the dead horse and the three Indians hammering away on Effie’s mother’s piano.

After they had cleared five miles or so, Effie and Joe saw the lights of a ranch house. They pulled into the yard as a man came out yanking up his suspenders. Joe was desperate, he told the man. His wife was in pain and they had been accosted by wild Indians only a short ride from the man’s place.

As Joe talked, the rancher approached the wagon and craned his neck to look into Effie’s dark face. That’d be Chief Billy, he told them. Him and his hooligan sidekicks. There hadn’t been any wild Indians around those parts in over ten years, since the Army shooed them off after the burning of Julesburg. Billy was a thief and a scoundrel, but no one had ever known him to actually hurt his victims. Matter of fact, the rancher told Joe, his own wife had taken to giving Billy and his friends a piece or two of beef, then yelling at them until they skedaddled. As for the piano, the man said, it would probably end up in the nearest town, in a saloon, traded for a jug or two of bad whisky.

Effie didn’t say a word as the rancher explained. She sat there on her pained posterior, breathing heavy, like a locomotive. When she did talk, the words rushed out like a swarm of yellow jackets from a batted-down hive. She could not believe that her husband had not been able to get the upper hand against three ignorant savages, she said. She could not fathom why he had offered them the one thing dearest to her heart. And she certainly couldn’t believe that anyone in his right mind would drag his wife across such god-forsaken country to settle in some place he had never even seen before.

Effie ended her tirade by telling Joe that with all that, she only needed one more reason before she persuaded the rancher to load her up and deliver her to the nearest rail station where she could start back east to her mother. Joe thought about that for a moment, then he climbed down and walked to the rear of the wagon. The rancher kind of shuffled his feet, embarrassed at being in the middle of their argument like that, then… when Joe motioned to him… he joined Joe. The man took the dollar that Joe offered, and returned to his front step. Joe coaxed a board off the tailgate and pulled out his knife.

As Effie watched, her husband carved something on the board, then picked it up and strode purposefully to a corral fencepost on the piece of land he’d just bought for a down payment of a silver dollar. There he lashed the board to the wood, then stood back. It was a sign. Effie had said she needed only one more reason, hadn’t she? Well the sign was Joe’s contribution.

Reason, Colorado, it read. Population 1.

Chapter Two

When Sam Bass Came To Reason

Prairie schooners were a common sight on Reason’s streets throughout the 1890’s. A lot of settlers moved out from the east to farm, mistakenly thinking that the countryside around Reason was fit for agriculture. Which it really isn’t.

Reason sits in a corner of what many people call The Great American Desert. The best crop anyone had raised was prickly pear. It made good jelly, but little else. Reason winters start out cold and get colder. And the summers are intolerably hot. On top of that, the wind blows most days, and it blows hard.

But Reasonites didn’t tell that to the people who showed up back then with their hats in their hands and hope on their faces. Some people have attributed that to the goodness of the pioneer heart… not wanting to discourage the new folks. After all if you had no hope, you had no future.

In the case of Joe Krebs, it was not goodness that prompted him to encourage the settlers. It was greed. Joe had driven a team across the grasslands, had whipped them up the rises in the Nebraska sand hills and had faced Indians to get here. True, the Indians were not savage, but they were forces to be reckoned with and nearly cost him his marriage. That was ten years ago.

Now Joe had a business… a general store that sold dry goods and tobacco and farm implements and groceries. Businesses needed customers. So Joe encouraged settlers. He even paid out of his own patched pocket to place an advertisement in a newspaper back east promising a wondrous climate and clean air.

Reason was built upon the foundations of places like Lawrence, Kansas and Nebraska City. People who doubted that needed only to sit on their front stoops in the Reason wind and they could watch a big part of those two states blow by. And Reason was a place of extraordinary peace. That is to say, nothing ever happened in Reason.

But in the 1890’s Sam Bass came to town. He was a big cuss, blond haired and blue eyed. He wore a striped coat with a black tie knotted at the collar of his stiff white shirt. Joe remembered hearing about Bass. He’d robbed a train at Big Spring, Nebraska, where all the wagon trains stopped to take on water. He was a man to be feared.

Sam took to walking the dirt streets with his chest puffed out and his coat pulled back over a revolver. Most people in town didn’t carry hand guns in the ’90’s. They kept their rifles and shotguns close, under the wagon seats or hung on racks on their house walls. So people took notice of Sam Bass. Especially the settlers who glimpsed them as they rolled into town in their narrow wagons with the canvas all shredded from the prairie wind. Those easterners looked out at that big man with awe. With a sparkle of interest in their eyes.

That’s when the idea came to Joe to take Sam in as a partner.

Joe Krebs was no dummy. In fact, he was an avid reader, mostly of dime novels. He knew the real Sam Bass had been killed in ’77 or ’78 on his 21st birthday, while robbing a bank. He knew the real Sam Bass had dark hair and burning dark eyes. But he didn’t have the real Sam Bass, and this one seemed to get along pretty well.

Sam worked the front counter. The Reason ladies liked that. The men were not as impressed, but given the reputation of Bass, they bit their tongues. And most of them had taken to spoiling their wives a little now and then since Bass showed up, just to remind the ladies of what they had at home.

Every two hours or so, Joe would take over Sam’s job and let Sam walk the streets. In fact, Joe encouraged Sam to do it. As Sam strutted like a player across the stage of life, as Shakespeare said, he had no idea Joe was on to him. And, evidently, Joe was the only man in Reason who had an idea Sam was not who he said he was.

Two months went by, and business at Reason General Store was booming. Joe ordered in a whole freight wagon of new stock, and sent out his converted prairie schooner to trade with some of the rogue Indians who still remained in the area… the most of them having been moved to reservations.

Joe had mixed feelings about relocating the Native Americans. After all, this was their home first. But after the burning of Julesburg, Joe knew the two cultures could not co-exist. Still, there were a few native families that had sort of adapted to the white man… sort of being the main thought. Joe could not shake the memory of that first encounter with Chief Billy and his