Milosh
I always wondered why Milosh got drunk as soon as he hit town. Of course, I was just a kid, and couldn’t be expected to know the psychology of the matter. Nevertheless, I was puzzled by why, after being alone all winter in his mountain cabin, he didn’t give priority to visiting his relatives. When the stage from South Pass dropped him off, he headed straight for the Fremont Bar–and that’s where he stayed until he got done what he had come to town for. In the saloon he’d sometimes meet a woman who would tolerate him for a few minutes. If not, the booze seemed sufficient for the occasion.
Usually, we learned that Milosh was in town when someone in the family spotted him staggering out of a bar, or making his way down the street between bars. Despite his average height and frame, he was a conspicuous figure among the many miners, cowboys, and sheep herders who came to town with intentions similar to his. Milosh’s jet black, winter-long beard, embedding a leathery face, burned dark by relentless sun reflected from high country snow fields, identified him as no ordinary citizen.
Milosh had other characteristics which for most men would not be notable, but when combined with his general presentation, became eye catchers. He habitually wore a black broad brimmed hat, Levi’s and a long sleeved shirt; but his Levi’s were often turned up at the cuff four inches or more to expose his boots, and beyond his shirt sleeves protruded the wrist bands of long johns, which he wore year round. The only accessory to his clothing was a pint of Seagram’s Seven whiskey shoved into the right hip pocket of his jeans. The bottle was not only Milosh’s fuel tank, but a symbol of his sociability; he offered a drink from it to nearly everyone he met.
There were times when no one in the family knew he was in town until he was about ready to head back to the mountains. Then he would drop in on my grandparents and visit for an hour or so, never longer. Milosh was my grandfather’s cousin on my mother’s side of the family. However, all of us kids thought of him as our uncle. Now that Milosh and all the other primary sources are dead, no one can remember much of his family history.
Milosh never married. I once asked my mother why, and without hesitation she replied, “no woman could stand to live with him.” I once heard an uncle of mine joke with some friends of his that one winter Milosh had tried hibernating with a sow bear, but she kicked him out in mid-winter. As to why she kicked him out, the listeners offered various humorous and vulgar reasons. The story fits the facts of Milosh’s social life; no one who ever tried, lived with Milosh for long. While it could be a delight to be around Milosh for a few days, eventually, he would get disagreeable and unpredictable.
Every now and then some solace seeking citizen who had become friends with Milosh would move in with him only to reappear in civilization a short time later with a wild explanation of why he had moved out. Although I don’t remember Milosh actually hurting anyone, during his dark periods his threats could be understood as terminal; he could be quite convincing, especially when he happened to be carrying that long barreled forty-five caliber Colt revolver I admired as a child.
Reflecting back on Milosh’s behavior, he obviously suffered from periodic bouts of depression. When the ominous grey clouds appeared on the horizon and darkness began to overcome the light, Milosh descended into the abyss while everyone around him fled or looked for shelter from the storm to come; Milosh could get downright mean fighting against an uncontrollable force that ambushed him, struck him randomly without justification.
Someone, thinking that his isolation was the cause of his depression, rather than the other way round, once gave Milosh a cat to keep him company. It disappeared in mid-winter–testimony enough to how difficult it could be to live with him. Even the battery in his radio seemed to go dead long before it was supposed to.
Milosh was a mountain man born a hundred years too late. He survived mostly on what he could shoot and trap. In the winter, at specified times, my grandfather would send a few cans of food by the stage that went to South Pass, and if Milosh knew what day of the month it was he would snow shoe down to the drop off point and pack the groceries back to his cabin.
In early summer, when my father took the family to the mountains to fish, we would visit Milosh. Usually, he was glad to see us, although we couldn’t always count on it. But Milosh was family, and we liked him despite his unpredictable moods.
Evidence of Milosh’s diet during the winter could be found in the pile of discarded bones right outside the cabin window. During dark and stormy winter days, Milosh sat by the window to eat. When he finished, the bones of whatever animal he had devoured were tossed outside. Most of the bones were of snowshoe rabbits, deer and elk; but Milosh’s diet also included beaver, muskrats, porcupine, and occasionally a bear. One spring Milosh shot and killed a black bear with a 22 Special rifle. The bear, hungry from hibernation, had come to scavenge the bone pile, and Milosh shot it right between the eyes from the cabin window. Milosh said that liked it when “dinner came to dinner.”
Milosh would eat just about anything if it provided the opportunity. One wonders about that missing cat.
Besides trapping, during long winter months Milosh would work a shaft he had dug into the side of the mountain behind the cabin. The South Pass area is famous for its gold mines. Milosh would first crush the ore with a hammer, then with a large iron mortar and pestle, grind it to dust. When spring arrived he would pan out what little gold he could at a nearby spring. He never found enough to make much money, but he once showed me a jar containing some small nuggets, and another with a lot of gold specks at the bottom of a solution.
He spent a good deal of time getting firewood for the winter. Most of the wood was aspen, but also lodgepole pine. Milosh cut the trees, dragged them out of the woods, then sawed them into blocks, and split them with an axe. Milosh turned stacking wood into an art form; every stick was carefully put in its place and the form of the pile carefully maintained. By mid-October, when my father would go to the cabin to hunt deer, the woodpile was finished, standing as high as Milosh would reach, and except for it not having a roof, it was larger than the cabin he lived in.
If life had a purpose for Milosh, it would have been survival; no wife, or children to care for, so no participation it their accomplishments, no reciprocating family relationships, and only a few dependable friends. He must have known, at some profound level, that we loved him, otherwise we would not have kept coming back to visit him. But all being said and done, from within the cavern of his depression his life seemed a road in the wilderness. It started there and ended there; civilization lay beyond the boundary to the unknown; he seldom felt compelled to cross it.
Milosh is a Serbian name, and Milosh was proud of whatever the name and its provenance connoted. Serbs are masters of descriptive and analytical profanity, and he furnished me at an early age with an extensive vocabulary of Serbian swear words. He also taught me to ask for wine, whiskey, and beer in Serbian. My mother countered by adding the word for water to my vocabulary, but it was a weak counterattack.
Once when Dad and Mom had taken me and my sister to the mountains to fish we found Milosh with several Serbian coal miners from Rock Springs, a town on the west side of the Rocky Mountains. Mostly, what brought these men together was not that they were Milosh’s close friends, but that they were Serbs like Milosh. They came over the mountain each summer for a barbecue–in fact, the barbecue was a regular event at Milosh’s cabin.
The miners brought a lamb, a goat, or a pig. They dug a pit at the edge of the timber, and burned wood in it until there was a large bed of hot coals. Then they killed the animal, fixed it to a pole, and roasted it for several hours. About an hour before the meat was done the miners threw potatoes into the coals and ashes to bake. There was something ritualistic about the whole affair–men killing the animal, cooking the food. Women had nothing to do with it.
Serbian was the ceremonial language, and although I understood little of it, in my mind, those barbecues still stand out as among the richest experiences of my early childhood.
During one of those barbecues Milosh was sitting with several miners who were passing around a bottle of whiskey. I, only four years old, entered the circle and asked for a drink of it,
“Milosh, Daj mi piti rakije.”
Milosh, not wanting to deny me, but realizing what whiskey could do to a tender young throat offered me a tiny bit of whiskey in the lid of the bottle. I’d have none of it. I wanted it straight from the bottle like the men were drinking it.
Milosh gave me the bottle. I drew a mouthful from it, and my reaction was immediate. Coughing and choking I ran to Mom while pointing an accusing finger at Milosh. The miners and Milosh were beside themselves with laughter. Mom was not! The party was over.
A picture in one of my parents’ photo-albums shows Milosh and me standing with our guns at ready. I was six years old at the time, and my gun was just a cap pistol. I’m wearing a WWI helmet that Milosh gave me, and he is wearing his Army jacket, Army cap, and is holding a 30-30 Winchester.
Shortly after he immigrated to the U.S.A., WWI broke out, and Milosh volunteered to join the Army. Some said he joined to obtain his citizenship, but others held that such an act could only be understood fully in light of his ancestral disdain for those who aligned themselves against America. In the picture, his hand is resting fondly and protectively on my shoulder. I distinctly remember trying to shrug it off. I didn’t want his hand on my shoulder. I felt it would soften my image, compromise my strength and manhood. The camera caught his pleased look.
Milosh was killed when I was thirteen. Two of his few friends had paid him a visit, and after getting liquored up, they headed for town to continue the party.
Although nobody really knows in detail what happened, on the way to town they were rear-ended by a truck hauling a bulldozer. The dozer, not being anchored to the trailer, rolled over the truck cab, killing the driver, and landed on the car in front. Milosh was crushed. His friends survived to try to remember what happened.
Being a veteran, Milosh was given a military funeral. His casket was draped with an American flag with forty eight stars. The color guard stood at attention until the command was given to raise their rifles to the sky and fire into the air. Following this act of honor for a man who fought for his country, they folded the flag, and the funeral director gave it to my mother to keep as a memento. After his death, Milosh’s life was finally given dignity, and it came not from the testimony of one or a few, but from his country.
Milosh was buried on a sage covered hill above town with the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains looming protectively in the background. He would never go back to them or to his log cabin near South Pass, but in full view of their splendor he lies beneath green grass, watered and mown at city expense, the recipient of a social grace largely denied him in life.
I visit Milosh’s grave when I go back to Wyoming. It’s part of a ritual I go through to reactualize primal time and space. I find some kind of maverick meaning in my memories of his unconventional and largely insignificant life. I’m overcome by an aberrant feeling that by turning out so normal and decent, by being so successful, I suppressed some of my potential, denied some part of my heritage. Had Prozac or some other mind altering drug been available to Milosh his life may have been very different, even normal, although normal is often dull and uninteresting.
It’s hard to memorialize a man who associated flowers with women and funerals, so out of respect for his idiosyncratic ways, I buy a pint of Seagram’s 7 and sacramentally pour it over his grave. I prop the empty bottle against the headstone, step back, and say,
“Milosh, daji mi piti rakije.”
I can still hear him laugh.