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My dad gave only one piece of real advice before dropping me outside the front gate at the main ranch house.
"This is a hat-based culture," he said sternly. "Keep something on your head, and you just might make it."
My dad saw a bumpy road opening for his 15-year-old son. He knew that you don't easily swap an upbringing in a hippie/festival/ski town for a life of agriculture. And he rightly guessed that my chances of survival would be limited.
The cow town of Norwood sat roughly an hour west and more than 100 years behind the resort town of Telluride. Becoming Williams Ranches' newest hand brought me the rich reward of five dollars a day plus room and board. For five dollars, a night in the bunkhouse and three hefty meals, I'd spend up to 13 hours on a fenceline, follow 30-mile cattle drives on foot and buck hundreds of hay bales. Day after day, I could hear those pennies slowly dropping one at a time into my pocket. Trips to town hardly offered the relief I needed.
"You're from Telluride, huh?" a heavy-set teen with a full mustache heckled one day from the back of the Maverick Cafe. "That's a good place to be from. Far from." A dozen restaurant-goers chimed in with laughter and applause. Still laughing, he pointed at my hat.
Sadly, the brim and bucket on my head had once belonged to my mother, and its fancy stenciling read, "Telluride Ski Area - Guest Services." It turns out my dad left me with good advice but a lousy tool.
Satisfied with a victory, the full-grown mustache introduced himself as Boomer Walrath. By way of a peace offering, he removed my out-of-place cap and tossed it in the garbage. He then shared a secret: there was a rager planned for the Nucla gravel pit later that night.
When we arrived hours later, nearly a hundred farm kids from Norwood to Dove Creek and all points between had already gathered. Worn steel-belted radials flew off a flatbed, were stacked, doused with gasoline and soon sizzling away in bright splendor. Cases of warm Coors and bottles of coconut rum quickly joined the ceremony while a mix of heavy metal, Southern rock and mainstream country blared out of souped-up Broncos and stripped Mustangs. Atop my head sat a half-mesh, half-foam Mesa State College hat on loan from Boomer. Wrapped in foam, mesh and heavy Carhartt canvas, I was finally comfortably camouflaged.
With this newfound invisibility, the most redeeming feature of San Miguel County's other side became obvious. Telluride boasted a grand total of about nine girls my age, and of the nine, I'd known most since diapers. Back home, I had long since given up on that crew of near-sisters and been fighting a losing battle to woo the visiting daughters of Texas, tricky stuff for my 15-year-old ego to swallow. But Norwood was a world apart. At the gravel pit, the light of burning tires flickered across a wealth of Western Slope femininity, conveniently stashed behind billowing polyster shirts and inside tight, Wrangler denim.
Almost instantly, an attractive girl clad in a pair of rebellious Jordache Jeans and sticky with hairspray made eye contact and approached me in a roundabout way. She introduced herself as Mindy, and after sharing the obligatory can of Coors, the Tammy Wynette/Loretta Lynn cross grabbed tightly onto my hand.
Unfortunately, my pubescent prayers soon went up in the black smoke of burning radials. Blame it on warm Malibu rum or the brim of my new hat, but I failed to notice that a semi-precious stone was resting on Mindy's 16-year-old magic finger. That piece of colored glass and circlet of sterling plated nickel firmed up a pledge to none other than John Allridge. John was a towering Norwood native with thick hay-bale arms and one of the few who could sport a John Deere cap without looking foolish.
John finally noticed that I was moving in on his ring after Mindy rested her head on my shoulder and put her arms around my waist. I know this, because seconds later his fist was in my aspiring chest. Knocked flat, I flipped backwards over the next batch of Goodyears, regaining my feet only to find a different fire brewing beneath the John Deere lid. John approached, now holding a rusty pipe in his hands.
My dad's words, "you just might make it," revolved through my mind over and over as the pipe closed in. Luckily, something unexpected happened as I prepared to mount a feeble defense. John squinted his eyes at my head and the pipe dropped to the ground. "Oh, sorry," he said sheepishly. "I didn't know you go to Mesa State. Do you know my sister Fern?"
A week later, Mindy returned the ring, I'd returned the hat, and John came to work for his cousin and my boss, joining me on my fenceline.
Off and on, I spent the next three and a half years working with John Allridge and that John Deere cap always remained in fairly pristine order. We shared stories of each of the other sides, swapped Jimi Hendrix and Steve Earle albums and regularly joked about that rusty pipe. During that time, my head sported everything from the Budweiser and Canadian Mist logos to a Telluride Bluegrass mock-up and a Grateful Dead Steal-Your-Face. Mindy also dropped in for occasional appearances before heading off to run the Western Slope circuit. The last I remember, she'd traded Jordache in for Chic and was wearing a machine worker's ring. The tires kept burning at the gravel pit throughout, and I'm sure those dead Goodyears are still sending up smoke signals from some remote corner long forgotten by adults.
It's been nearly a decade since I've been back to Norwood. Still, I always carry a little of those years with me. Call it habit or superstition, but there's one thing I can't seem to shake. I've had a hat holding my head in place nearly every day since.
- Will Sands
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