Grand Teton National Park (Wyo.); Jackson Hole (Wyo.)
The Widow down the River laughed every time she looked at Holiday’s
rooster and wanted to take a picture of it. But Holiday said, “No.”
“Holy Savior, no! I don’t want that rooster shown as an example of what
is raised on my ranch.”
Fearing Mrs. Dornan would take a picture of the fowl, he killed it,
cooked it, and invited her to eat it with him. He never once thought
that the bird might have been defeathered by disease. Mrs. Dorman ate
rooster and pretended to enjoy it. She was an understanding neighbor.
Both Bill and Holiday raised excellent gardens. To be fairly safe
against frost they never planted until the snow melted up to a certain
level in the Tetons. They raised many vegetables. Their cauliflowers
were as big as footstools. They raised currents and raspberries galore,
and made jelly and jam. And they raised flowers. Holiday always had
pansies on the north side of his buildings. He called them tansies. He
and Bill always gave freely of their vegetables, berries, and flowers.
During the wild berry season, Bill would charge “huckleberry rates” to
the local people—fare one way only—when the berries were ripe along the
ridges and around the lakes under the Tetons.
Holiday would can between 50 and 60 quarts of huckleberries during a
season. And since he drank periodically he made wine. At any rate that
is what he called it. He would make it of berries, raisins, prunes,
beets, plus whatever else was handy—and never wait for the mixture to
mature.
It would knock his hat off.
At five one summer morning, neighbors stopped at Holiday’s returning
from a dance. They were cold. They needed a stimulant, but Holiday had
no wine. He had drunk it all. So they drank a cocktail made of gin and
huckleberry juice—half and half. After finishing their drinks, 2 young
men in the party decided to go shoot a rabbit for breakfast. They did.
“We shot it right in the eye,” one said, holding up what was left of the
rabbit.
The hind parts were shot away, slick as a whistle.
That is what gin and wild huckleberry juice did to a rabbit. Holy
Savior, yes! What might Holiday’s wine have done to it?
Holiday enjoyed the summer visitors in Jackson Hole. Bill probably
enjoyed them also, but they could not lift him from his natural state of
grouchiness. Once, after looking over the miles of sage that covered the
levels of land that rise from the river to the mountains, an Eastern
lady said to Bill, “Mr. Menor, what do you raise in this country?”
Bill, a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor, looked at her and said, “Hell and
kids and plenty of both.”
He enjoyed startling people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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