Essay by Judy Holzworth
Rural Life – October 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
AS A KID IN RURAL Montana I grew up knowing _characters like June, a snuff-spitting, aging cowgirl who drove a pink Lincoln Continental, and Joe, a bronc buster with bow legs who taught a pair of Texas longhorns to nicely pull a buggy. Both were leather-faced, and if they ran a little short on social graces, June and Joe were long on personality.
I thought they would always be around. Now, they’re passing on and I’ve begun to figure out that there’s no one around to take their place. The fields surrounding their houses outside of Bozeman are being subdivided, transforming pastures into backyards, and the new people in the new houses with their green lawns may never know June and Joe existed. And this was just a couple of decades ago.
If you met June, you wouldn’t forget her face. It was lined like the ruts in the road to our cornfield during mud season. Divorced and retired, she’d earned her men’s boots, her western shirts with the elbows blown out, and the snort of whiskey that completed her day. June listened to Paul Harvey on her radio, fed 20-head of cattle by Jeep and told dirty jokes that made my mother cringe.
June spent her free time visiting neighbors, and no one could fail to recognize her driving around in the car she called “Pinkie.” When I got my driver’s license, she hounded me to drive the big car. I slid onto the white leather seat and she joined me, throwing on an eight-track of Hank Williams. June urged me to test how fast I could go, and when I stomped on the gas petal, she whooped and hollered as the speedometer shot towards 100 mph.
June believed in my mother’s creation of a vegetable farm, nagging her friends to buy our produce and fretting over the crop during storms. One day a nasty squall blew in while June visited, ripping off the clear plastic protecting the tomato plants. June ran out and lay face down on the plastic to hold it in place and refused to move no matter how much we yelled at her. She planned on staying there until either the storm passed or the wind swept her away.
Joe, a horse trainer and a spit of a guy in a sweat-stained cowboy hat, talked with his hands, telling tales that usually began with “This ol’ boy…” and ended with the lesson the ol’ boy learned.
His hands were also known to pinch behinds when least expected, much to the annoyance of the area ladies.
JOE WOULD BUY a green pony, one skittish to the touch, and within a couple of weeks have it prancing around the neighborhood. We could see him out our front window, working his latest horse, the reins held firmly, his hat bouncing as he trotted down our rough road. One year, Joe lumbered over with two of his Texas longhorns pulling his buggy. Besides making drivers gawk and swerve on the road, the only other hazard was the threat of the steers gashing each other with their horns — but Joe fixed that problem by topping their horns with styrofoam balls from K-Mart.
Joe freely shared his horse know-how with the area kids. He spent hours encouraging me to find patience when haltering a squirrelly colt and reminding me to sit deep in the saddle when my 4-H filly launched into a bucking spree. He also offered his big yellow barn as a haven for my sick horse and a storage facility for my mother’s pumpkin crop.
Joe and June brought our scattered community together, connecting us like a common thread in a five square-mile quilt. They brought news and they told stories. They spent time with my brother and me as if we were their grandchildren.
June passed away several years ago and Joe doesn’t remember much these days. Like the background hum of the farm truck’s radio, I took them for granted. I realize now that I don’t know much about them. I never asked about their childhoods or what brought them to our doorstep. I never told them how much they had meant to me when I was growing up.
Now that the area is becoming crowded, with backyards cutting up pastures and a highway running through the old railroad right-of-way where we rode horses, I’m not sure anyone finds the time to visit neighbors or share “this ol’ boy” wisdom. It’s me who is left remembering and telling the stories, as if I’m already an old-timer myself.
Jody Holzworth is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (www.hcn.org). She lives in Hailey, Idaho, and is a graduate student at Boise State University.