How It Was
When Jimmy was President
When Jimmy was President, there were no computers, cell phones, or 24-hour news/propaganda channels. No online shopping, no Facebook, Instagram or Xitter. There were no body scanners in airports or public buildings. There were no surveillance cameras. There was no artificial intelligence or face recognition software. Barney Fife was all the airport security we needed. The sheriff didn't need assault rifles and armored vehicles, he was our neighbor. Nobody shot up schools or clubs. Churches didn’t meet in 20000 seat convention centers broadcast on cable and YouTube.
When Jimmy was president, we'd banished Nixon and abandoned the slaughter in Vietnam. We thought we'd learned our lesson and things would get better. When Jimmy was President, there was a good Christian man in the White House. When Jimmy was President he committed to truth, human rights and freedom. When Jimmy was President, we wrote letters, called each other on rotary phones, and drove big ol’ POS Fords or tinny Datsun boxes. We went for walks, talked to each other, spent time outside, and dreamed big. Some of us lit out to roam this amazing country.
The music was epic - Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath gave way to the Eagles and Marshall Tucker. The Allman Brothers and the Dead played on forever. Jackson Browne had us Runnin’ on Empty and Willie gave us Stardust. Dylan said goodbye to the Band and newcomers Fleetwood Mac blew us away. Disco thumped from dance bars and we did the Bump and the Robot.
For a couple of those pre-digital years, I bounced between my home on the farm in New York State and the University in Salt Lake. Young and curious, I couldn't settle down though, and drifted up to Jackson Hole to join the party.
Worked for a while as a maid with Mr Ewing at the old Sojourner after a classic Corvette road trip (a story for another day). In those days the Soj had a tacky faux Bavarian hostel decor with a lobby bar and a cowboy saloon rocking in the basement. We pitched our tent up the hill but blocked out hotel rooms for “maintenance” whenever we wanted a shower and a bed…or had a girl. Got our mail General Delivery Teton Village, and rode bicycles into town on payday. Bought beer for the smelly cowboys working the horseback rides when they tumbled into the bar after pasturing the horses up the hill.
Once, Mr Ewing and I climbed a pine tree outside the hotel in a thunderstorm…at night. We swayed and swung high in the boughs yelling “I am a mountain man!” and “I rassled a Griz with my bare hands” and “I aint afeerd o’ no man nor beast! and “I seen grass so green, make your eyes hurt!” I am a mountain man!
Crazy and free.
Flexible Flyer was the bar band jamming country and rock. They traveled the West in an old bus…hence the name…and it was bedlam every time they hit town.
We ran that place. After the bar closed, we opened the restaurant for employees only. Steak and lobster and good red wine fueled subversive “board meetings”. The hotel accountant was one of us, the managers lived away from the hotel and never spent the night, the owner was an out-of-touch local surgeon. The board meetings were hilarious bitch and gossip sessions at the expense of the owner, managers and guests. After the meeting, smoking outside by the split rail fence, the coyotes sang and we yipped back in brotherhood.
Now, the hotel is a “resort” owned by a private equity investment firm bringing you the “best in boutique hospitality”. Staffed by professionals, managed by software and sterile as a hospital. The Sojourner rented for $50 a night in 1978. Today, the cheapest night at the Snake River Lodge and Spa is $650.
When winter came, Mr Ewing tended bar and I moved to the night laundry - the better to ski all day. Down Corbetts Couloir on a white-out day with the old tram bouncing off the towers in hurricane winds. Yellow snow dotted the entrance and we launched over the ten-foot cornice into the chute. Blasted three fast turns and swooped out the bottom in thigh-deep powder rooster-tailed head high. Traversed fast over to Tensleep Bowl, and turned hard off the edge into the deep. Down the steep floaty snow, turn together, breathe together, inhale on the up, exhale through snowy spume on the down, flying formation in clouds of snow powder. Every day was like that. Miraculous.
Met Sandi in a sweet Jackson summer and we got hitched in New York on the farm. But Jackson called again and we drifted west in an old VW bug with a JC Penney luggage rack whistling on top. This time I worked at the airport fueling old Convair 580 turboprop airliners in the shadow of the Grand Tetons. Baby Lear jets, Mitsubishi MU-2's, Gulfstream G2's and Cessna Citations flew in and out, symptoms of a cancer yet to metastasize. But mostly, we serviced local general aviation 210's, Mooneys, and Beechcraft, and kept our little charter airplanes spiffy and full.
I worked at the airport with Mikey - a local boy and a wanna-be bush pilot. Mikey’s girl - long-haired, blue-eyed, freckled, smart as a whip Monica - was the receptionist and glider tow pilot. After answering the phone she would pull up the hem of her skirt and hop into the cockpit of a tail-dragging Bellanca Scout to haul another Nimbus aloft.
Once, in the winter, it was so cold yesterday's coffee froze in the pot overnight.
We were nuts about airplanes. Not the droaning commercial big iron flying tourists far above the mountains. No, we loved the little 100-horse tube and fabric flivvers with big tires able to land on a sand bar and take off from a meadow. Airplanes that flew in the mountains and weather, not above them. We flew low, lifted wingtips over trees, looked moose in the eye, and buzzed hangars and cars on dirt roads. We banked in the golden sunbeams and rain glowing through the Tetons after a thunderstorm a thousand feet above the valley and saw heaven.
Gracie was Monica’s loopy English Setter. Wilbur was Mikey’s doofus chocolate lab. The dogs would hang out at the airport, lay in the shade of the hangar or ride in the fuel trucks with us.
Gracie was preggers with Wilbur’s puppies and was ready to pop. We loaded her in the back of Mikey’s Dodge sedan with the back seat down and a blanket on the floor. We threw Wilbur in there too and took off for town to get Gracie home to her kennel before the blessed event. I drove and Mikey tried to keep Gracie calm and still. But Gracie was a setter…she was never calm and still. Gracie spun in circles, crying from the pain, and snapped at Mikey and Wilbur. Mikey tried to wrestle her down to hold gently for the pups, but she wasn’t having it. The ruckus and strange dog birth smell were too much for Wilbur and he launched over my shoulder scrambling toward the open window to escape responsibility, progeny, and fatherhood. We crazy slalomed the car into town with a 70-pound lab hanging out the driver’s window and a frantic mom dropping puppies in the back. We sped down the back road into town to avoid Deputy Ron's speed trap. We carried hysterical Gracie and terrified Wilbur into Mikey’s house where Gracie gave birth to six beautiful, healthy, mewling puppies. Wilbur sat bewildered in the corner.
When Jimmy was President, we only used cash. Debit cards were new-fangled things nobody had and credit cards were for rich folks, not poor rascals like us. We drove beater cars and did our own tune-ups, oil changes and brake jobs. Back then, a fella could fix his own car. And most anything else too with the right tools. We listened to music on creaky 8-track players bolted under the dash with a folded matchbook jammed under the tape to play right.
I had ambitions then, but not the conventional school, house, or career kind. I wanted just to enjoy the next moment. To bask in the thrill and beauty and joy. To float down a powder run. To fly over immortal mountains. To sail on a mountain lake. To live with big dogs and independent, free-thinking people. To laugh. To roam. To share the poetry of this great country.
That's how it was when Jimmy was President.
Peace.
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