Pioneer Woman.

The winter of 1979 found my family living in a single wide trailer located on 18 acres of rocky waterless desert ground near the little town of Farson, Wyoming. We experienced a series of unfortunate events that brought us to our knees and almost caused us to move back to a warmer climate.

Over a period of weeks our washing machine quit, the electric dryer quit, the hot water heater quit and the submersible pump in the well quit and we had no water. The temperture hovered around 30 degrees below zero celsius for much of the winter and not having water, or the ability to wash clothing was a severe strain when we had two children still in diapers. This was in the day when disposable diapers were not prevalent and it wasn't too long until the soiled diapers began to mound up. I was able to fix the water well, and fix or buy used appliances over the next few weeks, but I soon found that I had another problem.

The house was heated by propane gas and the first gas bill I received was in the amount of $300.00, which was one third of my monthly pay check. Frantically I searched the area and found a neighbor who had a free standing coal fired stove and who was willing to let me borrow it until I could buy one of my own. When the stove was unstalled it did a good job of heating the house and I paid $300.00 for enough coal to last through the winter. The free standing coal stove had one problem, it was necessary to check the coal when it was poured into the coal hopper for rock, or hard objects, because when they fed into the auger that fed the fire, they would sometimes cause the auger to seize up and the auger shear pin would break that stopped the coal from feeding into the fire pot. When this happened the house would usually fill with smoke. It then was necessary for me to remove all of the coal in the coal hopper and then fix the auger pin so the stove would work. This usually happened late at night, or at the most inopertune times and it was a messy difficult job to perform.

During this difficult winter I was a member of the Wyoming Highway Patrol Special Services Squad, a unit consisting of twenty two Patrolmen scattered throughout the state who were trained and equiped to quell riots, or perform unususal law enforcement duties anywhere in the state when called to do so by the Wyoming Governor. At nine o'clock one cold night we were preparing our children for bed when I received a call from the Cheyenne dispatcher advising me that the Special Services Squad had been called out by the governor to travel to Douglas, Wyoming to help quell a riot at the Wheatland Power Plant.

She further explained that I was to be in Douglas by 2:00 o'clock the next morning. Douglas was 271 miles away and would normally take 7 hours to drive, but I was being ordered to drive it in five hours over a treacherous mountain pass and in the middle of a blinding Wyoming snow storm on slick icy roads. I kissed my worried wife and kids good bye, loaded my gear in my Patrol car and took off towards Douglas with little to no visibility and driving in excess of one hundred miles per hour.

I traveled over the always treacherous South Pass and breathed a sigh of relief when I made it to Lander, Wyoming in record time. The road from there to Douglas would be easy compared to what I had just endured over South Pass, but the snow became worse if that was possible and visibility was almost nill. Just as I entered Shoshone, Wyoming I met another Patrolman Mike M. who pulled onto the roadway right in front of me. I called him on the radio and told him that the poor visibility was slowing me down, and he returned with "Don't worry "T" just follow my taillights and we'll make it just fine."

The next one hundred and fifty miles my speedometer never went below 100 miles per hour as I followed my friend Mike towards Douglas. We drove into the parking lot of the National Gurd Armory in Douglas just as the clock struck 2:00 a.m. It took my nerves several hours to relax from one of the most harrowing trips I have ever made. The riot turned out to be nothing but bluff and we were released to return home three days later and I was glad to be headed home to my poor little family, not knowing how they had fared the snow storm that had knocked out the telephone lines in the area.

There was three feet of fresh snow on our half mile long driveway from the main road to the house, and I arrived back home at about 8:00 p.m. When I opened the door to the house which took some doing because the door was frozen shut, I saw one of the most heart rending scenes it has ever been my misfortune to see. My wife was seated in front of the free standing coal stove wrapped in a comforter, holding a large spoon filled with coal in front of her; sound asleep. She had cordoned off the living room of the trailer using every blanket she could find in the house to lessen the space to heat, and all of our children were asleep on the floor around her.

I...broke down....and cried. The stove auger pin had sheared shortly after I left to Douglas and she didn't know how to fix it, they were stuck without any heat in the house. My dear wife kept the fire going by spooning coal onto the fire. She had not slept for over forty hours when I got home. I tenderly put her to bed and quickly fixed the stove and heat was restored. What can I say about my dear wife, she is the granddaughter of pioneers