Bio: Waitress 1968-69. Descriptor: Western realities for a greenhorn easterner, gymkhana participation and a tequila lesson.
Mary’s Story: In the summers of 1968 and 1969, what an incredible opportunity for a gal from a small town in upstate NY: spend the summer working on a Dude ranch in Wyoming! As my college roommate Nancy Zimny has already posted, it was thanks to Beth Thomas that we got to do this. Having ridden a horse maybe twice before in my life, learning to ride was the major accomplishment of the summer. Waiting tables and washing dishes was nothing new to me. But riding up the mountain in the early morning to wrangle the horses down for the day; hearing elk bugling for the first time, That was a memory worth holding onto. When Frank, or maybe it was Nona, decided it would be picturesque to have ducks/geese swimming on the pond. They hadn’t considered the natural inclinations of their Yellow Labs. When a bunch of us heard the ruckus and ran to the pond to investigate, it was left to Tom Barrett, more animal-savvy than the rest of us, to mercifully put the poor birds out of their misery. But watching him grab a flopping bird by the neck and with a quick flip of the wrist snap it’s neck for good; was quite a dramatic intro to the realities of ranch living for this greenhorn! I confess that memories of a moose calmly eating water plants in a marshy meadow are more pleasant if less dramatic. Riding into Moose on horseback and tying off at the rail, to send letters back East to friends less fortunate in their summer employment, rated high in bragging rights. Twenty years later, my ten year old son could hardly believe that his mom, who was “ruining” his hot young quarter horse by saddling him up and moseying off for leisurely trail rides, ever rode in an amateur gymkhana herself in Wyoming. No need to tell him that she fell off in the very first round when the trailing end of her Mexican style vest got hung up on the saddle. And definitely no need to tell him that she drowned her sorrows in her first taste of tequila, using her fake I.D. And didn’t touch tequila again for twenty years! Mary (Moran) Bowman.