SP: This is Samantha Powell here with Jack Whitman for the Voices of West Yellowstone Project. Thank you for meeting with me here today, Jack, and agreeing to be interviewed. We really appreciate it. To start out, could I get your full name, year, and place of birth.

JW: David Jack Whitman. Over in Montana

SP: Where did you attend elementary school?

JW: West Yellowstone.

SP: West Yellowstone?

JW: Here

SP: What was that like here when you were attending school?

JW: It was fun. Yeah.

SP: Was it in the Madison Crossing Building or did they have a…

JW: Yes it was.

SP: It was in the Madison Crossing Building?

JW: Yes it was.

SP: Nice. I started school there too.

JW: Did you?

SP: I have fond memories of that place. Was it fully K-12 then or did that change later?

JW: Um, no it wasn’t through 12. It was through 8. 9, 10, 11, 12 we had to go somewhere else.

SP: So, if you wanted to continue past 8th grade there was somewhere else that you had to attend? Do you remember where that was.

JW: I went to Ennis.

SP: Wow, that’s a long way away.

JW: Well, everything was a long way away.

SP: I guess that would be true

JW: There was no highschool.

SP: Wow. Then did you have to figure out, or your parents have to figure out your own transportation to Ennis or was there-

JW: Well, mostly people would go down where they was going, to Bozeman or wherever, and find somebody to take care of us. I stayed with a family in Ennis for four years.

SP: Okay, so then that made it easy for you to finish your schooling?

JW: Yeah, yeah.

SP: Did you come back during summer breaks or?

JW: Well I come back during winter time, too, but after a couple years you got busy in what you was doing down there. You come back on weekends once in a while if there was a ride back.

SP: Okay, so even though you were living in Ennis for school purposes, you still got to come and spend time with your family and around West Yellowstone?

JW: Mmhmm

SP: Did you do any higher education after that? Trade school? College? Military? Any of that?

JW: No, not after high school.

SP: Okay. Just went right into the workforce?

JW: Mmhmm

SP: What were some of your favorite subjects or did you have any favorite teachers that kind of made school a little bit more enjoyable?

JW: You know, I don’t remember any. There couldn’t have been very many because – one teacher taught most of the grades.

SP: Oh really?

JW: Yeah.

SP: When I went there, it was K-12 then and they had it separated into the different grades with the different teachers, so it was way different for you.

JW: Well, teachers sat like where you’re at (head of the table) and we were… there might two or three grades in here (the room) you know, and the books were right here in a V (in the center of the table) so

SP: Was it… do you remember, was it kind of more difficult for the teacher trying to cater to all of those grades or did it seem pretty –

JW: I don’t think so. I think it’s just. Teachers, that’s just how it was in them days, you know? The teacher come along and it was just a part of the deal. It wasn’t a lot of kids.

SP: Yeah, I imagine because even now West Yellowstone is still far away from everything. Do you remember anything funny or unusual that happened in school, especially here at the school in West Yellowstone.

JW: I sure don’t. It was normal, but we didn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t. It was just, just what we did so it was normal to us, you know.

SP: And then you said you started work right after. Was that, did you do a trade or was it family business. Did you work with someone outside of the family?

JW: I probably worked around in the family, parts of the family. I was a mechanic for a while. I just did a lot of other, lot of stuff a kid should do. 

SP: And was there sort of plenty of job availability here in West Yellowstone or did you find yourself maybe –

JW: No, there was plenty of jobs. Didn’t have to look very far. Most people come looking for you.

SP: That’s different from now where they are not so much looking for you, you gotta go look for them.

JW: Everybody knew everybody in them days.

SP: That must have been nice

JW: Yeah. My granddad’s house was over by the school and you come through the front door and through the house and out the back or into the school, and that’s how most houses were. If you come up this trail and you go through somebody’s house to get on about your way, you know. It was just accepted that way.

SP: So it was a little bit less of a town and more of a big family almost?

JW: That was what it was.

SP: I’m guessing it’s a lot bigger here now

JW: Oh yeah. Yeah. There weren’t so many people in them days.

SP: Did you have any of your own projects or maybe ideas of something you wanted to do with your life or work outside of-

JW: Not that I can recall

SP: So what did you ultimately end up in?

JW: I ended up as a heavy equipment operator, a mechanic and a supervisor.

SP: Nice. Was that your own business or –

JW: Part of it was. The last part of it was. The front part of it I worked for somebody else. I started my own business, but I didn’t know nothing so.

SP: Sometimes the best way to learn is trial and error

JW: I had to work for somebody else to learn

SP: Yeah, and I’m guessing there was a lot of that just because of the nature of West Yellowstone and where we’re located, that’s how people learned was sharing knowledge through other town members that knew?

JW: Yeah, there was a, somebody owned a business, they knew everybody so if you was a good worker they’d come and hire you, you know.

SP: Speaking of family businesses, was it your grandmother that was the original owner of the Ho-Hum?

JW: Yes.

SP: Did she kind of start that herself or do you remember how that came to be?

JW: My grandpa was there too, and yes, they started that themselves and that Conoco station they started.

SP: Oh wow, so were they pretty good business people?

JW: I don’t know  as I was just a little kid, but they were as far as I knew.

SP: And then did those businesses sort of stay with the family for a while?

JW: Quite a long time. See, Mrs. Johnson was the first owner of that. Actually she was the second owner, my grandpa and grandmother was the first owners. They built it. But across the alley was the Ho-Hum. That was my grandparents too. My grandma on my mother’s side, and they built that up themselves.

SP: What other businesses in town did your family sort of have their hands in or build up themselves? Were there other places?

JW: Well everybody helped everybody else. I asked my granddad one time if there was no banks or nothing. I said what did you guys do? How did you handle that? He said we just borrowed from each other.

SP: That sounds really nice. I like that. They just kind of trusted that people would get it back?

JW: Apparently. I don’t know of anybody that ever didn’t, but you know, I don’t know how they built buildings and the businesses they built. I don’t know how my dad built that ranch up out there.

SP: Which ranch was that?

JW: Just when you start down 287, first place on the right.

SP: Is that Parade Rest now?

JW: No. It was back, back through the- there was not any name on it. Eventually it did, my dad finally put a name on it. Bear Trap 1 I think? Bear Trap 2, but you know, back in them days my grandpa was building a business here in town and he starts that ranch out there. He’s gotta put a fence on it. Nobody had any money in them days, and so he got that piece of property, 160 acres, for a grocery bill. The homesteader owed him a grocery bill so the homesteader wanted to go and so he just turned the property over. 160 acres for my granddad, but that was pretty common in them days.

SP: That’s really something.

JW: Yeah. The thing about this is, this is – we’re in a time where things are moving pretty fast. That’s back in a time when, in my time, that’s the way everything was here. 

SP: Yeah, it’s kind of an alien concept to me because being removed by generations, um, and how things were for me growing up, exchanging land like that so seemingly easily is not something that really occurs anymore.

JW: No, no, but those homesteaders come into this country. They didn’t have nothing either and this isn’t the best ranch country or growing anything, you know.

SP: And a lot of people have told me that years and years ago winters were a lot harsher and a lot longer here, so I imagine that played into it too.

JW: Oh, sure.

SP: Speaking of those winters, the first time we talked we talked a little bit about your dad and some of his friends heading up to Bozeman for their eight grade test. Can you kind of rehash and tell me more about that?

JW: You know, I can but I won’t be accurate, I’m sure because he, him and I don’t know who, they skied up to Bozeman to take their 8th grade exam so they could go on to school. They had to pass that. My dad, I don’t know whether he passed it or not, but he never went to school after that, but I don’t guess that was a big thing but it sounds like it

SP: It does sound like a big thing now because when you drive it it sometimes feels very long so skiing it, especially at 8th grade age, that does seem like a lot.

JW: They’re just little kids

SP: but again, that’s just how it was done, right?

JW: Just how it was done. And their equipment, you know, the equipment probably the skis were made by a guy here in town so they were just board turned up on the end, you know. And harnesses weren’t nothing, ski boots were nothing.

SP: Do you know if they had to, were they able to make it all the way to Bozeman in one day or did they have to stop around Big Sky?

JW: He never said, and I never asked him, but wherever they stopped people would put them up. So I know he didn’t make it in one day.

SP: It just seems like a very big trip for some eighth graders, but that’s such a fascinating story that kind of speaks to just how things were in West Yellowstone and how much things have changed with, especially, you know, having the K-12 school here and now in a new building. I did also wonder if you lived anywhere other than West Yellowstone throughout your life or did you stay here?

JW: No, I did. I lived in Columbia Falls for twenty years.

SP: And was it work or what reason took you-

JW: I went up there for work in the logging business and heavy equipment. I wanted that. Well I went with another guy and he just passed away Monday. Just two days ago. And he was 82, but his dad lived here and he was 104. His mother lived here. Now Stan’s dad, there’s a picture of him leaving the Jenny Lake lodge. There’s a picture of the mountains behind him and he’s leading his pack string heading for Montana and he come over here to start up.

SP: And do you know where he came from to here?

JW: Well he come from Milwaukee.

SP: Milwaukee to here?

JW: Well as I know he come from Milwaukee to JWson and then the Rockefellers bought him out over there so then he packs up his stuff and heads over here leading his horses.

SP: I feel like that’s kind of a common story I’ve heard from people, that the ones that weren’t born here just decided to end up here. So that seems pretty common. When you were in, did you say Columbia Falls? Did you have any plans, like was the intention to stay there or did you have plans to eventually come back to West Yellowstone?

JW: I never had plans to come back. I planned on staying and putting my kids, a boy and girl, through school. My son still lives up there in the house we had. He’s raised his kids there. My daughter lives in Portland and she has two twin boys, but they’re fairly old now, too. They’re in their 20s.

SP: So then how’d you end up back in West Yellowstone?

JW: I wanted to start a ready mix business so I come back to start that because I could put a, I could start on my dad’s property and so that’s what I did.

SP: And what was that business?

JW: Ready mix concrete and of course then there was construction with it and trucking and we trucked our material in from Ennis and so you just picked a little whatever you can pick up, you know, to make a living.

SP: Somebody mentioned a garage business running out of the UP dining lodge? Was that you, your family?

JW: I run the garbage out of there. I run the garbage out of there and supplied the wood for those big fireplaces and all those trees, I had to get some trees kind of like Christmas trees for them, the Union Pacific people.

SP: Was that when the Union Pacific was still operating?

JW: Yeah they were still going. That was before I went to Columbia Falls.

SP: The train was still coming in then, too, right?

JW: Mmhmm

SP: There was an interesting story, too, that you told me about when the trains started running in spring. What was that like in town?

JW: Well that’d be about like now. They’d be coming up from Ashton.

SP: Oh they came up from Ashton? I think you said that it was kind of a big deal when the-

JW: It was a big deal. It was the one time we ever seen anybody!

SP: Yeah, when the spring train came in, everybody came to see it?

JW: Pretty much. School let out and we’d all go down, you know, because the train’s coming

SP: What ended up keeping you here in West Yellowstone?

JW: Well I started out like, you know, I had two kids and there was no work here and the only way you can make it is if your folks left you a business, and that’s still pretty much the way it is today. A lot of the businesses are owned by the parents that left it to their children. It’s kind of changing, but I didn’t want to stay here because I just wasn’t making it. We’d charge our groceries all winter long and get them paid off just in time to start charging again, well I was coming to an end, charging you know? I didn’t want to do that, I was too ambitious so I moved up to Columbia Falls. Let’s see, no we left here and went to New Mexico. We logged down there for a couple three years.

SP: That must have been quite different than West Yellowstone.

JW: Quite different, but the guy that I was – he’s the guy that just passed away. He’s kind of leading me along, you know, and so that’s how we got down to, well, the logging outfit was from here. They went from here down to New Mexico

SP: And you went with them?

JW: Yeah.

SP: And you said you had kids, so did you marry?

JW: Yeah. I’m not married now, but

SP: Did you meet her locally or where did-

JW: In Ennis. Yeah. She was from down in Idaho and her parents moved to Ennis to work on a ranch there. Yeah but I’ve been divorced over 30 years. But I was married 30 years too!

SP: And you had two kids from that?

JW: Mmhmm. They’re grown up and they got their kids all raised.

SP: And the one still is in columbia falls, correct? The son?

JW: My son is, he’s got three kids of his own and my daughter has a set of twins. Twin boys. And she went to school in Bozeman and got her degree in geology. Then she went to Idaho State University and two more years and got whatever that is. Then she went on her own and was taking gas tanks and stuff outta the ground right at that time. So she had a business going of her own. Then she decides to be a nurse so she goes to school to be a nurse. There wasn’t any work in geology, you see, and she isn’t into minerals she’s into hos this looked around here before 2000 years ago. She’s interested in not things as they are today. It’s fun to go for a ride with her because she looks over the mountains and she’d tell you where the water line was up there and things like that.

SP: And then the timbers in quake lake after the earthquake, were you a part, because you were involved with the logging and heavy machinery, were you a part of the cleanup of all that.

JW: No. There wasn’t really cleanup. It was, well I helped build the road around quake lake and those trees that are cut off right there, I cut them off.

SP: Oh you cut off the trees

JW: Yeah, but I cut them right at the water level, at the ice, and they’re down

SP: Yeah, that’s interesting because now the water level is, you can see the tops of those trees

JW: One thing  the water level is, it’s wearing itself down where it goes out, but it won’t go much more. But see that was supposed to be a turnout there from the highway. It was supposed to put dirt in there, but it never got needed.

SP: And that, that area there was just river before the mountain fell into it and dammed it up, right?

JW: Mmmhmm

SP: So that was a pretty big change to the geography to have witnessed. What have been some changes that you’ve seen in West Yellowstone, either policy or size –

JW: Well, about everything I’ve seen change. The size and what’s going on in the businesses, you know, but that’s just normal I think. Some of the motels and stuff are still here and some of the buildings that were out on the street are pulled back now, and they’re still there so a lot of it’s still here, but it’s a whole lot different.

SP: Yeah. What was sort of traffic to the park and policies and things with the park, because I know that has changed a lot over the years, too. Do you remember what that was like?

JW: I don’t know. I don’t know the changes. We hauled, back then I had a ready mix plant up in the park and we hauled a lot of stuff into the park, but I didn’t give it much of a thought because it’s just progress. 

SP: Were you in West Yellowstone or were you in Columbia Falls for the fires, the 88 fires.

JW: I was here.

SP: You were here? What was that like?

JW: Just another one of those things going on, you know.

SP: My mom had the restaurant and she remembers sort of military personnel being in town to, between here and madison junction, to kind of try and assist, but she said there were some policy confusions, so for a while it kind of seemed like nothing was moving. Was that –

JW: There wasn’t a lot going on. But I can understand why, you know. They couldn’t stop it and couldn’t do what, nobody knew nothing about it for one thing, and just kept the town from burning down. 

SP: Did that impact any of your operations, your business, in West Yellowstone or were you able to kind of recover after?

JW: Yeah. Probably right away. I mean, I’d do stuff for cleanup and everything. I had trucks. I don’t know if I had anybody working in them days, but I probably did.

SP: Have there been any changes in town you’re not so fond of?

JW: No, really. It’s – they’re all okay because it’s just, everything’s gonna change no matter what. It would have changed no matter what and, uh, the guys that are like me, we’re all all through. We’re dying off and the younger people are taking over, you know, and there’s not a lot of younger people here that used to be here, I don’t think.

SP: I came back. I was born in Ashton and then wanted to, we moved, but I came back here, but I noticed that a lot of my friends are kind of, from when I was in school, are kind of no longer around, have gone other places. Yeah, I think I see that for sure. Was there any other interesting, strange, fun story from your time and your business in West Yellowstone that –

JW: No, you know, like this time of year the snow has started moving back from the edge of the building and that’s where we’d play marbles. Pretty soon we’re out in the street, but hell, there was two cars a day going by, and the teacher’s with us. And if we got rambunctious or got any – he’d take whatever marbles we had there. If we lost our marbles in the building, he’d gather them all up and then he’d give them out to the kids that didn’t have marbles much so, but he’s out there playing in the damn street with us, but hell, there probably isn’t two cars a day go by.

SP: Why are you in West Yellowstone now? How did you end up staying here from, you know, wanting to be in Columbia Falls?

JW: I left there and then I came down here and I was pretty busy with what I was doing down here with the equipment. I still got quite a bit of equipment, but then a couple three years ago I fell and broke a hip. I fell off a CAT, and I’ve never been able to keep going since then, but everything’s changed. One thing, I don’t know many people anymore. It’s not like it used to be. You knew everybody, you know. So I’ve lost all my old time people that used to tell the new people who to hire. They’ve gone away, too, so it’s just – I just have to accept that things has changed.

SP: Kind of to wrap up, what would you like to see change to improve the community again? Is there anything you think could –

JW: I wouldn’t have any idea, no. I think it’ll change, it all changes.

SP: Always changes

JW: Yeah. It’ll change as people see the need to do and us old people, we’re all pulling out of here so we don’t have no say so anyways. It’s all the younger people’s ideas and, you know, so progress is gonna happen.

SP: What advice do you have for people that want to make it in West Yellowstone and want to make a life here and stay here longterm?

JW: Never thought of that. I’d just ask them to try it. Whatever their ideas are, put their own ideas into it, you know. Us old people’s ideas aren’t worth a shit anyway. Everything’s left us. It’s just the way it is, just isn’t ready for that.

SP: Is there anything you hoped I would ask or anything else you wanna add?

JW: Not that I know of. Oh, yeah, who was your parens?

SP: They were Dood, D-O-O-D, and David Powell. Mom worked almost everywhere in town. Uh, she worked for Stan, I can’t remember his last name, but she did the Silver Spur, the Rustlers Roost, the Frontier Club. She managed the Frontier Club for a while, and then they owned Mr. Zips, which, it was a hamburger joint where the Slippery Otter is now and uh, for I think two years, my dad did the airport cafe back in, that would have been probably 90? 89?

JW: Were you related to the Powells that were here before? Lee Powell? Barbara?

SP: No, um, I was – Marge Moore was my grandmother and she did a lot of baking for the restaurants in town. And then my dad’s mom Marie Powell was, worked with the daycare that was here and this was like – They came in ‘79 so it would have been through the 80s and then my aunt, she’s Kathy Pratt now but would have been Kathy Moore, she worked for Gus over at his place and then she managed the Madison under, I can’t remember which couple owned it when she was there, but she managed that for a while, so

JW: See I don’t remember any of these people you’re saying, but this is a little before the fire then?

SP: Yeah.

JW: Yeah, so it was before I come back. I weren’t here then. I came back the year of the fire.

SP: Okay. Yeah, um, my… I think that was when they had the airport cafe maybe. No, no. That was when they had Zips because the military people had vouchers that they used at Zips for, and the fire crews that came in from other places had vouchers that they used at Zips, so that would have been Zips, but my aunt was at Madison then and, um, man, she really liked working there. She liked working for those people a lot, and I was just little. I was two when the fires happened so I was just a little, uh, problem.

JW: So you don’t remember the other Powells that lived here?

SP: No, no. They weren’t ours. I do remember the other Moore that lived here. He was not, no relation of ours.

JW: Larry? You don’t admit to him, do you?

SP: He was no relation. Oh that was another thing. My dad worked at Hurk’s and cut his fingers off there. I don’t know if you remember that, and I don’t remember what year that was, but that was my dad.

JW: I think, see there’s a time before the fires, I was gone for 30 years.

SP: So you were out of West Yellowstone for that long? Wow.

JW: Yeah, 20-some years. A lot’s changed in that amount of time, but the old people were still here, but not all of them. Some had changed and some businesses started up and, so I didn’t know everybody. I thought I could just come back and start up. Well, that didn’t work that way. I though holy Christ this town is really tight knit.

SP: So you had to kinda work your way back into it?

JW: Yeah. I thought I could set up a ready mix outfit and be ready to go in the park. Hell, I didn’t get in the park for another ten years or so.

SP: Really?

JW: I had to be, same thing, they had to accept me, but that’s a part of the deal. They aren’t gonna accept everybody that comes to town.

SP: Yeah, and my mom and dad, we ended up moving for very much the same reason that you said. It can be hard to make it here, and they could never quite get a foothold so that’s why we ended up leaving, but I always had so much nostalgia that I always wanted to come back. I always, this always felt like home, so

JW: See and I was never coming back. Shit, I’ve been back for 30some years

SP: And I was gonna say, yet here you are!

JW: And the guy I worked for, he’s still alive in Columbia Falls. I worked for two guys. They were brother-in-laws and they owned the company, but it was a big company. But anyway, pretty soon I’m running part of the damn thing and I look back at it and, you know, and I didn’t know nothing. But they hired me because I was a good worker, I’m sure, and I’m sure that I’ll learn. Well, I learned from the guys that were working there. I had one guy who unpacked his jeans out of the woods on him, with him, because he’s, the species of the trees he’s cutting, he’s cutting the wrong length. Well, he was cutting the right length. I didn’t know the species of the tree so I packed his saw out so he could get started, get right, you know, and he was a google old guy. He didn’t throw a fit. It was a fun job. It was fun. It was what I wanted to do.

SP: That’s good.

JW: Yeah, I wanted to be around big equipment and, uh, I got to be around it. I got to be able to repair it, run it, tell the guys how to run it, what to do.

SP: So you got to do something you enjoyed and you learned a lot?

JW: Oh, yeah. I learned all the time, but I also realize the guys I worked for didn’t know nothing either. They just had the longer connection than I had, see, but they’re bringing me along, but it isn’t because I knew anything. It was because I was a good worker, I’m sure.

SP: Yeah, you showed up. You did what you supposed to do.

JW: Yeah.

SP: I know that definitely went a long way.

JW: Yeah, that’s how I hired people too. If they were good workers. If a good worker is willing to learn something, you know, and bad workers, they’re just trying to cause trouble. And they do cause a lot of trouble. I think, the outfit I work for they might have had around 80 people when I went to work for them, but they were young too, see. They were, as I was, because they didn’t have the experience that I was getting. I was getting the experience out in the woods right on up. They didn’t have that. They had the experience, they took over from their fathers. The father died and the father-in-law died, so they stepped into their business and took it along.

SP: Thank you for coming in. I really appreciate it. I love getting these stories.

JW: I bet you do. Yeah, they’d be pretty interesting. I forgotten a lot, a whole lot, you know, but I’m supposed to. I’m not supposed to remember everything, but I, anyway, Jerry, you heard about him. Over there at the museum, during the fires, have you ever seen that thing they show?

SP: Yeah

JW: Jerry talks about his wife going to town 2 or 3 times and there’s a picture of him there and then there’s a picture of my dad talking about the fires. Well, I’d never seen them before. Never even knew they’re there, but we had a guy that was, uh, there was a geologist living in, above us, looking over, doing something for the country. Well that earthquake hit and he’s heading right in the middle of it, and so he’s happy as hell and this guy that’s with him, helping him, a young guy’s helping him. A few years ago they had a deal at the, down at the quake lake talking about their, and I was at campfire lodge having a bite to eat, so this guy kept asking me questions and I didn’t know who he was, so I said what the hell is the deal? Well, we’re having a big talk out on the quake tonight, this evening. Oh I’ll just go down. That guy was with the head geologist and he, when that quake hit, they were not in bed yet because they were playing cards and he didn’t want to lose. So he was keeping the thing going and he said there was a big woosh sound when that quake hit. Well I believe that because I think them, that dirt and them rocks come down on an air cushion and that’s how they got up down that hill. He explained that to me so then I told him, I said I’m Roland Whitman’s son, you know, and so we got quite a little talk going there that day, and that was fun, to listen to him. Because he was, um, he was helping that guy just as a worker but he had a lot of knowledge of it too and the thing about after the quake was the airplanes coming in hauling people out. That was a big deal, you know. So the quake created probably as much trouble around here as the fire, but I had a truck on the fires, too. But mostly just siphoning off the government. Just one of those things that I learned during the fire is when they come in here, nobody knows nothing. They like to think they do, but they don’t even know where to get equipment from. They don’t know where to buy buckets or a shovel from, so they had to be told. So you had to tell them what to do. You could lead a lot of stuff to your way, you know. So that went on. The only thing about it, about the time you got looking pretty good, they moved the guy away and left you out in the street so you have to start over again but it was a lot about it right. I told them, the guys I worked for, if you ever get a fire, get on that fire right away. Get somebody – yourself or somebody else – because those guys don’t know where to hire equipment from and if you’re there to tell them where to get it, that’s where they’ll get it. So that’s how things worked.

SP: So you kind of siphoned people to the businesses and 

((laughter))

JW: And it’s still that way. It’s still that way, well, unless it’s changed. It’s that way as far as I know. My dad had a pickup on that fire up here, and all it did was hauled the Polaskis out back and forth every day, and uh then they let the fire go and so they let the machinery go, so the pickup come back. Well dad don’t have a spare tire. He had a spare tire in that pickup, see, so he’s going after them for that spare tire. Well, they ain’t got no way to help no one or nothing, so finally I said dad you’re gonna have to just give that up and go buy a tire because you’ve made a ton of money off that pickup. He thinks they beat him out of it. So anyway, it goes along and pretty soon I need the pickup, so I buy the pickup from my dad for less money. Maybe I paid… I don’t remember what I paid for it, but he made a ton of money off that damn pickup, and he’s working too. Him and another guy, they were laying over there on the bank, waiting for quitting time to haul all the damn axes back out of there. They want me to sprinkle the roads so the dust doesn’t bother them, so that’s what I do. Yeah, I’d drive by there and sprinkle the roads so the dust won’t get ‘em.

SP: While they’re laying there?

JW: Yeah. Yeah. Dad’s got his pickup, rented this pickup to him, and they’re paying him to drive it. That’s quite a lot of money for an old farm boy. Hell, I was born over on that old ranch. 

SP: Thank you so much again.

JW: Thank you. Too bad I didn’t have more knowledge for you.