Smalltown, Wyoming

In most towns in Wyoming, the elevation is greater than the population.  When I drive out of Yellowstone I see small towns with names like Tensleep or Wapiti that house less than three hundred people.  Wyoming is one of the largest states but it is the least populated.  In order to have fun here you have to get creative and you change your definition of an eventful night.

Erin and I start driving the three-hour journey to Cody to get a Wyoming license plate.  We both work early on Friday and have to rush out of Yellowstone so we can reach the DMV before it closes at five.  We only have the weekends off, so we only have one shot at securing a plate before our temporary tags expire.  We take the east entrance beyond the lake and speed down two lane roads out of the mountains and between the redrock canyons and into the prairies baking under the summer heat that has largely eluded us in Yellowstone. 

The mile marker signs start off high but you know when you are about to enter a city.  Usually there are no exits to Wyoming towns; the highway cuts right through the main street.  Erin turns on the GPS when we reach Cody so we can find the DMV, but the iPhone tells us nothing useful.  We see a sign that says Driver’s License and an arrow pointing right, so we follow those directions and enter the building and ask a lady behind a desk if we can get a license plate here, but she tells us to go to the courthouse and tells us which streets to take.  It is almost four o’clock so we run to the car and drive too quickly down narrow lanes until we reach the courthouse.

We stand in line and another lady tells us we need to get a VIN inspection at the police station.  She says they’re quick about those but we better hurry, so we do.  I get out of the car and run toward the station. 

“Do you think you should be running toward a police station?” Erin asks me.

“It’s better than running away from it,” I say and open the door.

Two black signs with white lettering give me instructions.  If I need to meet with an inmate, I pick up the phone on the right.  If I need a VIN inspection, I pick up the phone on the left.  I pick up the phone on the left and a man asks me for my information.  I am still breathing hard from the sprint.  He says he needs a certain number on my registration and I unfold the piece of paper and the voice says, “That’s it right there,” and I jump because I don’t realize he can see me from behind the tinted glass behind me. 

I hand him my registration through a small gap in the glass that has opened up, and an older man emerges from a side door and walks with me quickly out to the car.  He checks some number near the dash and signs a paper and says, “There ya go,” and we drive slowly out of the police station parking lot and then step on the gas until we reach the courthouse for the second time.  The rest is just a matter of waiting in line and paying a tax that is more expensive than I originally thought it would be.  I get the license plate with five minutes to spare.  Now the car is legal. 

Then we walk through the shops on the main street.  We browse through stores filled with Native American pottery, shiny rocks, Yellowstone souvenirs, and Old West knickknacks.  Erin is searching for something to buy her parents and she has more patience inside stores than I do because I realize that nearly every small town in the west has the same set of shops.

 

In Custer, South Dakota there are shops filled with arrowheads, turquoise jewelry, and cowboy boots.  In Jackson, Wyoming, you can buy the same junk.  Cody is no different.  Every small town capitalizes off the wild days of the past when outlaws shot through saloon doors and hunters slayed buffalo.  But now what are we creating that is worth commemorating?  Will there be gift shops honoring the great gift shops of the past?  Statues immortalizing shoppers?

There are three things to do in Cody, Wyoming:  shop, visit the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, and go to a rodeo.  There’s one every night in the summer, and the town claims to be the rodeo capital of the world.  We take our seats at the topmost bleacher so we can rest our backs against the chain-link fence.  The light in the air is getting grayer as the sun descends behind the nearby peaks.  Cowboys start off by roping calves, hogtying their legs together and then watching them squirm for a few seconds like a tired fish gasping in the waterless air. 

I buy a medium Pepsi that is worth less than two dollars and served by a boy that looks to be twelve years old.  Up in the stands, Erin takes pictures of the crimson sunset as the female riders begin the barrel races.  You can tell right out of the gates who is skilled by the efficiency of their movement.  The horses gallop with long strides toward the first corner where they stop and turn agilely and race to the next barrel.  After the last turn, the horses turn on their jets, and the swift riders barely jostle in the saddle. 

The barrel races are graceful and impressive, but the bronco and bullriding is gritty and over too quickly to be considered entertaining.  The animals kick their back legs because there is a belt wrapped tightly around their gonads.  Broncos and bulls are not trying to buck the rider; they are trying to rid themselves of the pain.  Some men hang on for a few seconds and only a few last until the bell rings after eight.  For those who hold on, the judges give them a score in the seventies, but I don’t understand the categories under consideration.  How does one stylishly hold onto a rampaging bull?  You either fall off or you don’t.  I don’t see how anyone could do it better than anyone by a matter of degrees, but then again I don’t understand the sport; I am more so perplexed by this custom that has risen from restlessness on ranches.

There is a comedian dressed like a clown who is carrying a broom and making jokes about Democrats and his wife.  He says that when he was looking at his marriage license he mentioned to his wife there wasn’t an expiration date.  The announcer in the booth keeps saying things like, “Let’s not let him leave empty handed,” after a rider is disqualified from falling off a bull or failing to rope a calf’s leg.  Cowboys travel from rodeo to rodeo on their own dime, and they get busted up each night only to sit in a truck and drive through the darkness until they reach the next corral where they attempt to stay on the bull while another small town watches from the stands. 

The rodeo ends as the moon rises, and we shuffle out to the car.  All the hotels in Cody are booked because of the 75^th Anniversary of the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.  Bikes are parked everywhere along the main street, and all the neon motel signs glow with NO VACANCY.  When I search for hotels on GoogleMaps, I find a room for sixty bucks in a dingy motel in a nearby town called Meeteetse.  To round out this road trip, I want the all-American motel experience:  a room complete with tacky art hanging on faux wooden walls, dirty shower curtains, mattresses with cigarette burns, and a box TV with seven channels and a broken remote.  So we set out for the thirty minute drive through the barren, rolling hills until we reach a town that consists of a motel, a gas station, two restaurants, and three hundred people.

We check into the motel with a nice lady who runs the place with her husband who has a ranch nearby.  The room has everything that I want except the mattress merely has stains instead of cigarette burns, and the remote actually works.  After settling in, we decide to drive around.  I spot an elementary school and wonder if there are enough people to fill it.  Then I drive up a gravelly hill to a cemetery which makes me wonder how many people used to live here.  On the way back to the motel, we stop at one of the restaurants which are located side by side.  When I step out of the car, I detect a hissing noise and see Erin inspecting the rear tire on the driver’s side.  There is a nail poking out of it.  She jimmies the nail so the air no longer hisses, and we step inside the restaurant and order a pizza from a bartender smoking a cigarette in one hand and pouring foamy beers with the other.

We tell her about our recent automobile troubles and ask her if there is a mechanic in town.  She says his shop is just up the road, but it’s closed now and, this being a Mormon town, is most likely closed tomorrow, which is Sunday.  A burly man who is friendly with the bartender asks us if we’re driving a motorcycle, and we say no, and he offers to take a look at the tire.  He steps outside and notices there’s a nail embedded into the rubber and diagnoses what we’ve already deduced:  the tire is punctured.  

A skinny woman who looks like she could be the bartender’s sister exits the bar and laughs at herself for forgetting where she parked.  Erin and I reenter the bar and another man offers to call the mechanic but the mechanic doesn’t answer.  Then the bartender realizes the mechanic plays in a band, and there is a wedding tonight in the oil fields, so he’s either out late or sleeping by now.

A chubby man with holes in his shirt and black oil grease on his hands walks into the bar, and I think this could be our man until he orders a bottle of fireball whiskey and 24 pack of Rolling Rock.  The bartender says, “You’re not going to get shitfaced and puke on the sidewalk again, are you?” And the man says he’s going to party in the woods, where nobody will be inconvenienced by his drunkenness.  He leaves and an old man with a white mustache finishes his soda and follows him.  When he opens the door, he asks himself out loud where he parked his car.  

  

I wonder what kind of condition a person must be in to forget where you’ve parked your car in a town that consists of one street with a commercial district spanning a mere 500 yards.                 

I think of the flat tire leaking air outside and wonder if this is how people get stuck in small towns like Meeteetse.  Like Lightning McQueen in Cars, the road won’t let me escape.  I ask the bartender what else there is to do in Wyoming.  She says she doesn’t know Casper, but there isn’t shit to do in Cheyenne.  There are no clubs worthy of her time, and I realize our definitions of fun differ greatly.  How do you occupy yourself in a small town without obliterating yourself with alcohol or work?

 

Everyone here knows each other by name, and everyone knows everyone’s business.  There are no secrets here, and I suspect our flat tire will be the biggest piece of local news all week.  The bartender delivers our pizza, and we thank her for all her efforts in trying to contact the mechanic.  She gives us her phone number and says to call us tomorrow if we need any help.  We drive to the mechanic’s garage and I place a piece of duct tape over the nail, so we can easily find the hole tomorrow.  We walk back to the motel in the dark. 

After a night’s rest, we tell the owner of our troubles and our inability to leave by checkout time, and she offers to drive us up to the mechanic and help us change our tire.  We tell her it’s no trouble; we can walk.  But she says she has errands to run anyways. I’m thankful for her help and meanwhile I wonder what errands you could possibly run here that couldn’t be completed on foot. 

We borrow a jack from the mechanic, and Erin props the car up while I unscrew the lugnuts and switch the flat for the spare.  We thank the motel lady and she drives away to attend to her errands.  If we had gotten stuck like this in a big town and stayed at the Marriott, the concierge would’ve given us a fake smile and called Triple AAA and then charged us for an extra night and then we’d have to pay for the car to be towed.  Although the motel mattress had stains and the bartender was unprofessional, Meeteetse possessed an undeniable charm that comes only in unpolished places not quite large enough to be mentioned on a map.