[AAC Cadet Leader]

Islands In the Prairie continued...
Pat and I were famished, so began a ten p.m. hunt for a place to eat, but found that most of the eating establishments in town had closed down at nine. The bars and saloons in the neon light district were just coming to life, but they looked a little intimidating. Neither of us looked rough ‘n tough enough to blend with the clientele in the bars, nor did we figure they’d have much to offer in the way of food beyond beer nuts and popcorn. As we searched on foot through the town for a place to eat with local color, our higher priority became the first place that we wouldn't worry about taking stray bullets or get poisoned.

Pat peeked into a saloon along our stroll and asked the bartender if they served food. He came out with a "no, but there's a place called 'Shari's' another three blocks down." We quickened our pace, passed two more bars on the dark that looked like movie sets for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” then came upon Shari's Restaurant, glowing brightly, emanating white light like a K-Mart in the night. Although we had hoped to find a place that reflected more of the local color—we decided we'd seen enough of it and didn’t need it mixing with our food so Shari's looked fine.

Shari's reminded me of any Big Boy’s Restaurant, a reliable safe haven any hour of the day and night for wayward truckers and lonely souls to eat, read the paper and find a friendly waitress to ask, 'how was your day and what can I get ya?'

All refueled with soda pop and black coffee, toasted cheese sandwiches and big bowl of hot canned vegetable soup with macaroni bits, tasted pretty darn good. We started our walk back through Laramie toward "The Cowboy Dancehall & Saloon" ready to try out our lousy two-step techniques.

"Look Pat—a train! Wanna go for it?" The train was moving slowly just beyond the back streets and it looked like it would be a piece of cake to hop on for a ride.

"Sure!" he said, not giving it a second thought.

Moving only at a fast walking pace, it wasn't much of a contest to get on it and had no box cars to crawl into for a real hobo ride, but it was still exciting for first-time train hoppers.

I jogged slowly alongside the train, and grabbed onto the black iron ladder on one of the coal cars. Pat grabbed onto the ladder on the next coal car and we climbed our way up the to the top of the cars where lit by the moonlight we could see the payloads of dirty coal all the way along the long stretch of coal cars ahead.

Gradually, the train began speeding up and Pat called me down, warning that we'd better jump off before it got going too fast, so I climbed down and we both jumped off onto the gravel and railroad ties. We dusted ourselves off and looked toward the back of the train, approaching and saw the caboose coming. I wanted to try hopping on again onto the now faster-moving train. "Pat! The caboose! I've gotta try—just to see if I can. I won't go far..."

As the caboose caught up to me, I sped up my pace and ran beside the front of it as fast as I could, thinking about jumping on and wondering where it might take me.

I coached myself, "I can make it if I just grab on and don't loosen my grip." But common sense prevailed and I abandoned my attempt. The rest of my bags were back at the airfield and more importantly, I had my friend, Pat, to consider. If he didn't have his plane to get back to at Brees Field, I think he would have jumped on that caboose first, grabbing my wrist to help me aboard.

As the rest of the caboose began to pass by, to our surprise and delight, an old black man leaned out of a window in the back of the caboose and yelled to me, “Where are you going?”

I thought for a second and called back to him, "Anywhere!"

"C'mon, you can make it!" he encouraged.

It was straight out of a movie. Pat and I waved to the man.

Our adventure didn't end at the tracks, though. It had only begun. Our train hop had taken us conveniently nearby "The Cowboy" and we went inside to join a lively, packed house of real cowboys and cowgirls, not the glittery kind you find in the big cities. These folks had their own Wyoming version of the two-step that looked to be a bit rougher than it looked in Tulsa and Orlando. Pat and I noted that some of the men had bowed legs, we presumed from riding their horses all day, every day.

Most were wearing worn out jeans, ones with real wear on them, not the stone-washed kind, and they had on ten gallon hats and well-scuffed riding boots. The women had on pretty western dresses, or tight fitting jeans with lacy blouses and cowboy boots with colorful, fancy stitching all over them.

Pat and I didn't exactly fit the unwritten dress code. In a way we felt like foreigners in hometown America. He was wearing tennis shoes, a short-sleeved sporty red shirt and shorts to fit the 105 degree Boulder, Colorado heat. I had on my weird jodhpurs and high laced boots and must say that our citified novice version of the two-step lacked at best. We were an odd spectacle to the locals, but didn't care.

After bruising each other’s toes, we sat it out on the sidelines and quietly shared made-up versions of the life stories of some of the dancers. We figured we were right on the money with most, but one cowboy had us puzzled.

The man was by himself about ten feet away from us, leaning up against a post with a beer mug in his hand. His attention was split between the pool game and the pretty girls in the room. He looked normal enough with a scruffy beard, tipped hat, snakeskin boots, hand-tooled leather belt, and a pinch between his cheek ‘n gums. But his t-shirt threw off the whole picture.

On the front of it, in big red letters was the logo for the famous play, "CATS."

This man didn’t look like a patron of Broadway. We guessed he was a trucker who had unloaded a shipment of Wyoming beef at a packing plant in Manhattan and someone had been handing out "CATS" shirts the day he happened to be there. I just had to know his real story, so I walked over and flat-out asked him, "Did you see the play?"

"What play?" he said.

"'CATS,'" I said.

"Oh, my shirt – yeah, I seen it, " he said. Then he stuck his finger in his mouth and repacked the lump of tobacco into his cheek, “I seen it in London."

I turned around to see Pat smiling and laughing about it. I turned back to the cowboy, "In London. Really?"

"Yep, I won a trip there at a plant I worked at a couple of years ago in Kansas City."

There’s our meat packing plant, I thought to myself turning again towards Pat, hoping he was catching all this. Then the cowboy moved a little closer and asked me with tobacco and beer breath, “You wanna dance?”

Oh, great, he thinks I came over to pick him up.

"Uhh, well I can't—see, I'm with a date." I pointed at Pat and waved to him, with a stiff smile then turned back to the cowboy and brought the subject back, "How'd you win the London trip? Was it a sales promo contest?"

"Naah. They just had a little drawing at the plant, and I just won it," he stated, starting to lose his patience, "Listen, why don't you stop worrying about your date and come dance with me?"

"Uh, well, he's really a good friend and besides I, uh, don't know how to dance," I said nervously, backing up a little. With my index finger behind my back, I motioned Pat to come get me out of this.

The cowboy persisted and started to reach for my hand, "All you need is a good dance instructor. I could show you..."
"Yep. I seen it in London..."

The whole conversation repeated between the two. Pat asked one more question of the cowboy.

continued...