Tracey pulled up a chair and folder his hands across his
chest and sprawled his legs straight out with his boots crossed – he was
settled in for a visit.
After asking the polite questions for a ‘smell test’ of his
audience, Tracy waited for the
appropriate opening and mentioned that his grandmother had lived until she was
104 years old. She grew up in rural Utah near Torrey. Her mother ran a boarding house and as Tracy’s grandmother
got older and became a young lady she waited on the tables sometimes. ‘Sometimes’ except when this one group of men came to dinner. When they came she was always banished to the kitchen.
Of course – even 100 years ago teenagers were teenagers. She snuck into the dining room by taking a pitcher of water
out to the table to serve the group. There was a handsome,
round-faced man at the table.
He looked up at her and said ‘Does your mother know you are here?’ He beckoned her over and put six gold coins in her hand
and waved her back towards the kitchen.
When she got back to the kitchen – her mother asked had she
gone to the dining room? Tracy’s
grandmother opened her hand revealing the gold coins and got the whopping of
her life for defying her mother.
The man? Butch
Cassidy. And the others? His Wild Bunch.
In this desolate part of Utah where people worked hard to
scratch out a living, Butch was a hero. He took money from
the Robber Baron railroads and banks and gave it back to the people. For many of the settlers – living in this remote site trying
to get away from religious persecution – Butch and the Wild Bunch were fellow
‘brothers’ against an unjust system.
Tracy leaned forward, got up from his chair and tipped his
baseball hat on his way out. We’d had our ‘campfire story’ for the
night.
No comments:
Post a Comment