After having completed the first grade in the Lander, Wyoming school system, and my sister the fifth, our family moved twenty seven miles north to the Winkleman Dome oil field camp where my father was employed. Three other families with children eventually moved in, and although not all of these children were of school age, the problem of providing schooling for us arose.

Fremont County District #21 decided that rather than bus us to Fort Washakie or to the town of Lander, it would establish a school at Winkleman Dome which would accommodate not only the four school-aged children from the camp, but three Winchester children from the ranching area along the Big Wind River eight miles away. That meant a school building would have to be built or moved in, and a school teacher would have to be found who was willing to live and work in that isolated area.

Providing schools for a few children in remote areas was not an unusual procedure before the trend to consolidate resulted in bussing children, sometimes more than fifty miles, to larger schools located in towns. A one room school had existed seven miles south on Sage Creek many years before. Tex Irvine, one of the men working on the oil field had been schooled there in the 1920's. Also, about that time, a one room school had been built midway between the Winchester and Hoopengarner ranches on the Big Wind River to serve the half dozen or so students of that area. The student living farthest away had to walk about two to three miles, or ride horseback to get to the school. When students became too few to justify maintaining these schools these school buildings were usually put to other uses.

One room schools have interesting histories if there is someone around who can remember them. Mrs. Ida Bel Corbett, my seventh and eighth grade teacher, told me over forty years after she taught me at Winkleman Dome, that she, as a young beginning school teacher, had taught in the school house on Big Wind River. After there were no longer any children to attend it, the building was pulled up to the Winchester Ranch and became a granary. As a teenager, working on the Winchester ranch, I shoveled many loads of oats both in and out of that granary, but had no clue that it had once been an old school house.

But the old school on Sage Creek, which had not been used for some time, would once again be filled with the sounds of children's voices as they learned reading, writing and arithmetic, for the decision was made to move the old Sage Creek School to Winkleman Dome, and a school teacher willing to endure the isolation and distance from town was found. Her name was Winifred (Winnie) Winchester Thompson. She had been a student of Ida Bel Corbett's when she taught in the old school on the Big Wind River, and as can be guessed, she was related to the Winchester children; in fact she was their aunt. "Winnie," as all the students called her had a son, Marvin, who would be in the eighth grade, so in all there would be seven students at the Winkleman Dome School representing grades one, two, six, and eight.

A dozer was brought into clear a place on the flat for the school. The operator followed the old frontier practice of clearing a large area, leaving nothing capable of hiding even a rattlesnake near the spot where the building was to be placed. The men working at the oil field dug the footings for the foundation, and poured the concrete. All we needed then was a school house.

When the school house arrived on the bed of a truck, it was not a very impressive sight. The entire building was scarcely twenty feet long and about twelve feet wide, and was badly in need of a coat of paint. It had disintegrating black boards on the walls, early twentieth century desks still bolted to the floor, and a nest of wild honey bees in the attic.

Everyone in the camp watched as the school house was moved off the truck and onto the foundation. The move took place without incident. After replacing the blackboards, applying a coat of paint, pouring a concrete step for the door, and erecting a flag pole where Old Glory would fly in the wind, our parents thought the place began to look habitable. However, the distance to town being so great, and the only housing along the Wind River being family ranch houses, the question of where the teacher was going to live quickly arose. Living in company housing on the oil field was virtually out of the question, so it was decided to build a "teacherage" onto the old school house. Because it was nothing but a "lean to" attached along the entire west side of the school house, it took very little time to construct. It was partitioned for a bedroom and a kitchen; any furnishings were up to the imagination of the teacher. At the time the teacherage was built no one thought to ask themselves if they would be willing to stay in such a "bunkhouse." In fact, few teachers, over the years--and there was a different one almost every year--were able to "rough it" after the first few weeks of living there. They preferred to drive any distance necessary, even in the dead of winter, to live in acceptable accommodations. However, there were a few teachers, most of them single, who did live in the teacherage, but even then enduring the howling of coyotes in the school yard, and being awakened in the middle of the night by range horses scratching themselves on the sides of the building were just too unsettling for most to endure very long.

The school house had been heated with a wood stove while it sat on Sage Creek, but with natural gas available on the oil field, a line was laid, a gas stove installed, and we listened to Tex as he told us how much warmer and better it would be going to the old school now compared to how it was in his day. But there never would be plumbing or running water in the old school house or in the teacherage. A crock cooler was provided for water, and my sister and I got the job of carrying water in a bucket from the camp to the school. When teachers refused to live in the teacherage, I also got the job of turning the gas stove on so it would be warm when the teacher and the rest of the students arrived. For some reason the stove was never left on after school dismissed for the day.

Sanitary facilities came in the form of two outhouses located to the south of the school. These eventually had to be anchored with guy wires to keep the incessant wind at Winkleman Dome from blowing them over, an event which caused much wide-eyed excitement among the students, especially if someone happened to be in one of the outhouses at the time. However, the guy wires were only a partial solution, because the range horses that often visited the school yard at night to graze on the sparse grass that grew there, found them handy to rub against and even get under to scratch their backs. This inevitably broke the wires or pulled the anchors out of the sides of the outhouses. We all understood that there was a certain amount of risk using the toilets at Winkleman Dome School.

One morning, a day or two before school started my sister, "Lassie," and I noticed a car by the school house, so we walked over to see what was going on. It was Winnie's car; she was inside the school house getting prepared for what awaited her on the first day of school. She met my sister and me at the door, greeting us with a smile on her face. "Good morning, children," she said, "come on in and let's get acquainted." We stepped up into the door way, and went in, and as Winnie busied herself at her desk, we told her who we were, what grade we would be in, and as incomprehensible as it may have seemed (at least to me a few weeks later), how much we were looking forward to school starting.

That first day of school in September of 1945, Lassie and I were waiting in the school yard as Hazel Winchester drove her car up to the school house and out stepped a boy, Jackie, who, like me, would be in the second grade, and twin girls, Beverly and Barbara, who would be starting the first grade. Duane Irvine, also a first grader, along with Marvin, the eighth grader made up the rest of the student body. Over the ten years the school functioned at Winkleman Dome there were never more than ten students during any one year at the Winkleman Dome School.

I still have some of my report cards from grade school, while in the first grade I made A's in everything but "citizenship"( and I don't have any idea what that could have meant to a first grader), my grades dropped precipitously in the second grade. I have no idea why this should have occurred, but a teacher having to spread herself around all represented grades in a one room school would naturally seem to reduce the amount of personal attention given to any one student or grade. In the first grade in town, the teacher had only to teach all of us a single subject at a particular time; in a country school the teacher taught everyone everything at all times. Beyond that, I did find gazing out the windows at the prairie much more interesting than studying, and the teacher often interrupted me saying, "Joe, stop day dreaming so much of the time, and get busy on your studies." For some reason, grades were recorded as I's II's and III's representing A's, B's, and C's those first years at Winkleman Dome. It must have been a trend of the time.

Only a few specifics of class-room activities remain in my mind, most of them imprinted because of their novelty or incongruity with the every day, and thus unmemorable, events of school life. They are always associated with a student or a teacher, so I mention them in relation to the persons they involve.

Marvin

Because Marvin, the eighth grader, was in school at Winkleman Dome only one year, I mention him first. Marvin was a lanky kid with a look on his face that let you know that at any time he was going to break out into a grin, during which he always dipped his chin, and this action was usually followed by a comic remark of some kind. I remember him as a paradigm of educational resistance, although my sister, older than I, had a very different opinion. She remembers him being clever and just as eager to learn as anyone. But he was good at giving people the opposite impression of what he was and believed.

No doubt, he knew some French, and would use French words to make jokes and confuse us younger kids. He would describe the sunset as being rouge, and the sky as bleu, and he always said it in ways that would make people laugh.

I remember his mother, and teacher, striving mightily to convince him of the benefits of education, but Marvin wanting little of it. "Why should I worry about learning math," he would ask; "what good will it do me?" Then he would respond to his own question, "All I need to know is how to count, because I'm going to be a sheepherder." Perhaps I took his words too seriously.

Marvin's history and mine would overlap and extend over many years after he left the Winkleman Dome school, and contrary to his own prediction, I never knew him to go near a sheep. But he did dedicate himself to the life of the cowboy, and he followed that vocation where ever it took him, eventually accumulating a herd of cows for himself, and becoming a cowman. So, in a sense he seemed to know what he was talking about back there in the eighth grade. In fact, counting cattle, in my opinion, is a whole lot easier than counting sheep.

Marvin liked the out-of-doors, and on one of his excursions found a cave in the sand stone ledges to the west of the school. It so happened that at sometime during the year we got a temporary student, whose parents for some reason or other had moved in with one of the oil camp families. His name was Duane Gallinger, and he was just about Marvin's age. One day Marvin begged Winnie to let them take an afternoon and the next morning off from school to hike toward the mountains a few miles and have a "camp out." Marvin told here about the cave and said he wanted to investigate. Winnie agreed, and Marvin and Duane set out across the prairie with whatever they would need for an over-nighter. They took a lot of hamburger and sausage with them!

I remember when they came back the next day laughing as they told Winnie about their excursion. Duane had apparently gone into the cave while Marvin gathered brush for a fire which he built at the entrance of the cave. The smoke vented into the cave and smoked Duane out. That was the highlight of the trip. It was a story of an adventure that we younger boys listened to with great interest, anticipating that someday we might hike that far up toward the mountains and find a cave to explore.

Marvin went to high-school in Dubois, a small town at the foot of the Absoraka Mountains about fifty miles north of Winkleman Dome. He learned how to box during that time, and he liked showing Jackie and me what he had learned, sometimes "flooring" us in the process. He would then give Jackie and me the gloves and we would flail away at each other. When Marvin would leave to go work as a cowboy someplace he couldn't take his gloves with him, so they remained at the Winchester ranch most of the time.

One night Jackie and I "gloved up," and were sparing under the yard light at the ranch. After a wild swing, I ended up with my head under Jackie's left arm, while at that very instant his mother, Hazel, who for some time had been trying to stop us and get us to come into the house, turned the yard light off. When everything went dark without my knowing the cause of it, I thought I had been knocked out. It was only after my eyes adjusted to the darkness that I figured out what had happened. That was my first lesson in questioning the nature of reality.

Some time after Marvin left highschool to hit the cowboy trail he and a band of cowboys found their way to Lander, the week of the Fourth of July celebration. A carnival had pulled into Lander with a wrestling and boxing ring as one of the main attractions. The "carnies" would strut back and forth on a platform in front of a big tent, flexing their muscles, and shouting out challenges to the men in the crowd that formed. "Come get into the ring with us if yer man enough," they bellowed. After all, this was Wyoming, the wild west, and there must be some "real men" out there. They said that they would take on all comers regardless of size. For awhile nobody answered the challenge, and the carnies became abusive and taunted the men in the crowd. "Maybe there's a women out there who isn't afraid of a fight," one of them shouted. "Any of you Indian braves out there want to distinguish yourselves in battle?"

A local roughneck, named Cotton Pit, was walking by at the time. The Pits were a tough family; everyone body knew it, so when Cotton accepted the challenge, no one was surprised. Cotton, who had been a towhead as a boy, thus the name, got in the ring, and to everyone's delight, whipped the first of the wrestlers. Cotton was brutal. He used his forearm to bash away at his opponent's ribs and neck, and when his opponent would go down, he would jump on him and use all his weight to smash him into the floor of the ring-just like the pro's, except few of us had seen professional wrestling, because TV would not come to that part of Wyoming for several years.

The carnival paid a dollar for every minute a person could stay in the ring, so Cotton, dispite his brutality, would go the distance, although I believed he could have ended the match more quickly. Because Cotton was willing to take on both wrestlers he made a lot of money that night, so much money, in fact, he was barred from competing after awhile. The "barker" would taunt the crowd by asking if Cotton was the only "man" out there willing to challenge the carnies.

I paid a dollar to watch Cotton the first time he threw one of the carnie wrestlers out of the ring. That left me broke, as a dollar was all my parents gave me for the carnival. A dollar was a lot of money in those days. You could buy a hamburger for twenty cents--a deluxe with fries for twenty-five. A ride on the "octopus" was only a quarter.

I wanted like everything to see Cotton whip that other carnie, so I had to figure out a way to get in without paying. While I was inside the tent the first time I noticed that after the match was over a couple of boys, instead of exiting through the door of the tent, crawled under the back wall to get out. I figured that if one could get out that way one could surely get in that way. So when the next match began I waited until the commotion started and the noise level was high, then slipped under the wall of the tent to watch the show.

After Cotton had whipped the second carnie, the first one he had wrestled thought that he could beat Cotton in a rematch, so naturally, I had to slip under the tent to see that match as well. I was crawling under the tent when I felt myself literally lifted off the ground by my belt. The carnie boxer (they only had one) had noticed me sneaking in under the tent, and waited until he could catch me red-handed. He dropped me on the ground, then stood me up and drew his fist back like he was going to hit me. "I saw you crawl under the tent during the last match," he snarled, "and I'm gonna smash your face."

I don't know if he really would have hit a twelve year old boy, but I used my wits and warned him that my dad, being the mayor of Lander, would run the entire carnival out of town by morning if he punched me. The strategy, although an outright lie, worked, and he let me go. I allowed absolutely no moral reflection on my actions or words that night. I hadn't read Emanuel Kant's ethic yet; as far as I was concerned those carnies were all on the fringes of moral society, sort of like Philistines among the Children of Israel. Beating them out of a dollar was a moral triumph.

The inventiveness of my wit must have been very convincing, or if you prefer, I was a good liar, because a friend of mine, Joe Herbst, who I was showing how to get into the tent for free, was with me, and when the boxer let me go and walked away, Joe, with a bit of amazement in his voice, exclaimed, "I didn't know your dad was the mayor!"

Marvin happened to come by shortly after that incident, and I though Marvin might be the one to mete out justice for me. I told him about my run in with the boxer. Marvin was only about 135 pound at the time, a light weight, to be sure, but the cowboys with him kept encouraging him to get in the ring with the bigger carnival boxer. Marvin gave thoughtful consideration to the idea; he had sized him up, and thought there was a chance he could take him, but the carnie had his right hand heavily wrapped up with tape, almost like a cast, and Marvin was suspicious that he might have something under the tape he could use as a weapon.

So Marvin declined to listen to the voices of persuasion. He remarked the whole thing was probably a set up anyway, and went on to enjoy the rest of the carnival while the boxer stood on the platform, flexed his muscles, and challenged anyone out there to get in the ring with him. Someone I didn't know, a stranger in town, answered his challenge!

As before, while adults paid their dollar and went inside the tent, I ran around to the back of the tent again, waited until shouting started inside, and crawled under the canvas.

The carnie charged out of his corner like he meant to deny the stranger even a single dollar for answering his challenge. He looked like he had "knock out" on his mind, but the punches he threw never affected the stranger. After the first couple of lunges, the stranger nailed the carnie with a left hand, then with a right, which sent him flying between the ropes, and out of the ring. The men nearest the ring were getting fired up with excitement and wanted blood, so they picked the carnie up and shoved him under the ropes and back into the ring.

After he got to his feet he put his gloves up again while the stranger proceeded to jab away with his left and then land another right hand to the carnie's face. The carnie stumbled backwards. As he grabbed the ropes he looked straight at me. He looked dazed, but I shook my fist at him, and said, "That was for me."

The bell rang signaling the end of the fight, and the stranger collected his seven dollars and walked out with everyone patting him on the back. I ran over to him and asked him where he was from. He said, "Rock Spring"(That's a town in Wyoming about a hundred and forty miles south of Lander). "What are you doing over here," I asked. "I like it here," he replied.

Although the carnie boxer challenged the stranger to come back and see if he could land that lucky punch again, I felt justice carried, out and didn't go into the tent again; I wanted to see what else the carnival had to offer. When it got late, I walked down to my grandmother's house to spend the night. Her house was down by the river which ran along the east side of town. The morning of the 4^th of July, I walked up the river toward Main Street to watch the parade when I noticed a man leading some of the carnival horses down to the river to water them. I got a good look at him as I walked by. It was the stranger who had beaten the boxer the night before. Marvin was right, it had all been a set up.

Jackie

After Marvin left the Winkleman Dome school, Jackie would always be the tallest kid in the school. He was a long legged boy. Only when we were in the eighth grade did I grow to about equal height, but then he began growing again and soon was a couple of inches taller than I was. Jackie and I had our occasional squabbles, but we were good friends otherwise, probably because I often stayed over with him at the ranch, and after the seventh grade, I worked in the hay fields with him. He ran the mowing machine, and I followed up with the side-delivery rake. During the grain harvest, he and his father, Albert, ran the binder, and I, and whoever was available, shocked the bundles of oats that came out of the binder. Then, after the grain was good and dry, we forked the bundles onto a wagon and drove them to the threshing machine. We also spent a good deal of time hunting pheasants in the hay and grain fields, and ducks on the river.

Jackie loved machinery. There wasn't a bolt or a machine part on the ranch that he couldn't tell you what it was off of. No one could put more stress on a piece of machinery in the name of speed and efficiency. He was driving tractors before he was in school, and became a "terror" with the mowing machine. Someone on the ranch nicknamed tractor driving "gouging," and Jackie became synonymous with "gouging." He was always fixing a tractor or attachment for a tractor, and that, in a sense contributes to my memories of him in school.

Jackie had a cousin, who also attended the Winkleman Dome School for a few months. We all called him "Booge," although his name was Dwain. During his time at our school he lived on the Winchester ranch with Jackie.

One spring morning, after the teacher had rung the bell to start school, Jackie and Booge entered the school house and sat down in their desks at the back of the room. Suddenly, the teacher began to sniff the air and make the rounds of the students. When she came to the back of the room where we older boys sat she stopped and asked what the terrible smell was. I already knew what it was because Jackie and Booge and I had been talking about it outside, but now a very disgusted teacher was about to turn an incident of western work ethic and maximization of natural resources into an occasion for expelling students from the school room, at least until the offensive odor was taken care of.

The occasion of the offensive odor was spring lambing. Although their main purpose was raising cattle, The Winchesters at the time had a pretty large herd of sheep. Being spring, the ewes were lambing, and as is usually the case, ewes die from one thing or another associated with lambing. In the late 40's and 50's, sheep pelts and wool still brought a pretty good price, and youngsters could make a dollar or two skinning dead sheep and pulling wool off of decomposing carcasses. But the sheep has to be in a considerable state of decomposition, otherwise the wool would not loosen from the skin.

Jackie and Booge had spent the afternoon of the day before skinning sheep, and pulling dead wool to sell. When engaged in that occupation there is no way to keep from smelling like a dead sheep after a while. In addition, they had decided that the tallow would make good boot grease, so had rubbed the tainted tallow into their shoe leather to water proof them. When Jackie and Booge told the teacher what the smell was she asked them to go outside and take off their shoes before they could come back inside. This they did, but smells that come from tainted oils and fat which have impregnated the skin are not easily erased, so even after the most vigorous scrubbing of their hands we still got a whiff or two to remind us that the virtue of industry sometimes has objectionable consequences.

Duane

One thing I can affirm about the students who went to Winkleman Dome School is that we knew that the teacher, whoever it might be, was ultimately the authority, and there were very few times that authority was questioned or challenged by a student, even though some teachers were more lenient than others and gave us more slack. We made rules at the beginning of the year with the help of the teacher, and since we had supposedly made the rules we were obligated to keep them. Usually, if we wanted to go to the water cooler or the outhouse, we raised our hand until recognized, then we requested permission. When permission was granted we went to get a drink or went outside to the toilet.

Duane Irvine, being a first grader must have be awe struck by this devotion to obedience during his first day of school. It was a ferociously windy day, and Duane raised his hand to get the teacher's attention. She was helping someone at her desk, and either did not see that Duane wanted something, or she ignored him until she was finished with what she was doing. Well, Duane wanted to go to the outhouse. In fact he was desperate to go to the outhouse. I watched him go from standing upright to bending over, crossing his legs and putting a hand to his "loins" (as the Bible says).

Still the teacher didn't see him. Then Duane started to sob. At that point one of the Winchester twins called the teacher's attention to Duane's plight; a puddle was forming on the floor. The teacher immediately gave Duane permission to leave the room, and he made a dash for the outhouse. We were all watching out the window as he rounded the corner of the building, only to stop dead in his tracks, an aghast look on his face. He turned around and ran back into the building looking like the end of the world was upon us. "The toilet's blown over," he declared. We older students, who had experienced that event before, roared with laughter.

By that time, Duane had lost interest in going to the outhouse, so the teacher told him to go home, but not forget to come back to school--and the next time he had to use the outhouse he should ask to be excused sooner and in an emergency, go without permission.

Dudley

Duane had a brother, a year younger than he, who also went to the Winkleman Dome School. If I ever got into a fight with Duane I always had to watch my backside, because I knew that somewhere Dudley was there with a rock or a missile of some sort. They worked as a team. One bitterly cold winter day when I was in the seventh grade we boys got into a scrape inside the school house during recess. It was so cold outside that day the teacher decided we should have recess inside. But things got too wild, and the teacher told us to go outside and fight if that is what we were determined to do.

That day it was the Irvine boys against the two oldest boys in school, Jackie and me. Somehow Jackie managed to get paired up with Duane, and I took on Dudley. It may be thought that to be fair Jackie and I should have been paired up because we were older than the Irvine boys, but Jackie and I had nothing against each other that day; it was the Irvine boys we were having trouble with.

Dudley and I went first. I hit him with my fist square between the eyes and sent him flying backwards into the snow. I thought he would go crying back into the school house, but I just made him mad. He got up and came at me swinging like a windmill. One of those wild punches caught me right on the point of my left front tooth. I felt it break, and the next breath I drew of that sub-zero air produced pain I had never experienced before. I simply had to quit. It was a TKO. Besides, I already had gotten my two bottom front teeth chipped in a scuffle with Chuck Thompson, a boy in town, and the memory of my mother's reaction to that was still fresh in my mind. I was already anticipating her reaction when I grinned at her after I got home from school.

Dudley's victory over a kid two years older than he must have been an encouragement to Duane, because when he took on Jackie in a wild swinging affair, he managed to bloody Jackie's nose. Seeing blood on Jackie's face, the teacher decided to step in and stop the barbarism, which she was willing to tolerate a few minutes earlier because broken teeth don't bleed, and boys will be boys. Blood was another matter. She stopped the fight, and Duane declared victory. The Irvine boys gloated that day.

The Winchester Twins

Beverly and Barbara, the Winchester twins, will always occupy a special place in my heart. At one time or another I was sweet on both of them, but Beverly was the one that attracted me the most during our early years at Winkleman Dome school.

The twins were in the first grade the year the Winkleman Dome school was established. Their hair was white-blond, and being identical, they were hard to tell apart. Beverly was the more aggressive one, always protective of her sister, willing to sacrifice herself for her. If a boy "picked on" Barbara, Beverly was the one he had to answer to. Beverly was also a fast runner. By the time she was in the fourth grand, and I in the fifth, she could outrun anyone in the Winkleman Dome school but me. No brag, just fact. Having Beverly on your side during school games was an asset; trying to run away after aggravating her was risky.

When the twins were seven or eight years old my sister and mother invited them to go to Sabbath School with us. I think it was during one of those "invite a neighbor or friend to church" appeals. We took them with us for several weeks. Mom would drive down to the ranch Saturday morning and pick them up, take them to the Lander church, and then after spending the afternoon with us, take them back home.

The twins seemed to enjoy the congregational singing, though they were not familiar with some of the hymns, but with my sister's help they contributed vocally to the service. They were especially delighted when they found out that my mother was often the featured soloist for the special music. They had obviously never heard a soloist like her sing a song like "Jerusalem" before. Mama could really turn up the volume. And when she hit the high notes, she could cause things to shake in the room.

That first church service their eyes were wide with expectation when the superintendent of the Sabbath school announced that we would now be favored with special music by Dolly Greig. Mrs. Smart had driven all the way from Shoshoni, a distance of around fifty miles, to accompany her, as she was the only one who went to church capable of playing that kind of music.

The twins were clearly entertained by the song until my mother got to the place where she turned up the volume and approached the end, and the climactic high note. As the music got louder, the twins looked at each other with strange excitement. Then when, she sang, "Hosana in the highest,"near the end, and hit that high note, they broke into unrestrained laughter. All the church members turned and looked at them, at first not knowing what to make of the outburst, but then seeing the innocence in those two little girls eyes, they laughed too. That morning, they had heard a champion.

I don't recall exactly how long the twins kept going to church with us, but eventually they heard the preacher preach on unclean meats, a subject where pork takes a pretty hard hit, and the twins decided they would give up eating pork. Of course, this would have gone over at home like a lead balloon, because the Winchesters regularly butchered hogs for meat and lard, and having two minuscule daughters condemning it most likely terminated their Sabbath school experience.

As time went by, and we grew older, the twins become more like sisters to me than girl friends, and we sometimes fought like bothers and sisters. When the twins were old enough to work as wranglers during the annual cattle drive to mountain pastures in the spring, and from the mountain pastures to the lower ranch in the fall, that somehow created a temporary tension between us. They got to skip school for a whole week during these cattle drives, while I had to keep on going to class. Only on the weekend did I get to go up the trail and ride a horse like a "real man," and then only because my mother pulled camp and cooked for the drovers during the cattle drive. The twins sometimes used these experiences to "rub it in" during certain uneasy moments in our relationships. They even began learning to play the guitar from their aunt Emma. How aggravating! A girl, as Patsy Montana used to sing, should "want to be a cowboy's sweetheart," not be a cowboy. None of us realized it then, but the twins were my first real opportunity to grapple with the relational implications of what would become the feminist movement.

Jane

Beverly had been my one and only girl friend through the third grade. At that time, George Wight, the new boss for the oil field, moved with his family to the Winkleman Dome Camp. Those bosses, or superintendents, seemed to transfer from one oil field to another quite frequently. There were four children in the Wight family, but only one of them of school age. Her name was Jane, Sarah Jane, to be exact. I fell in love! I remember our exchanging valentines, and taking her on the back of my bike for rides down the roads to the oil wells.

During one of those bike rides Jane nearly got me killed. School has out for lunch and I asked Jane if she would like to go for a ride with me on my bike. She agreed, and with the Irvine boys on their bikes as tag-alongs, away we went. We were going down a hill at full speed when Jane, exhilarated by the wind in her face, began to swing her legs back and forth as we plummeting down the hill. This set up a sympathetic vibration , and the front of the bike began to shimmy. Try as I might, I couldn't hold the handle bars steady enough to control the bike. The front wheel jack-knifed as we left the road and crashed into the barrow pit. I was thrown headfirst into a pile of rocks where I lay unconscious until the Irvine boys lifted me up in an unwelcomed and unappreciated rescue attempt.

For a while I denied that I had been knocked out. I was just too proud to be helped in front of Jane by the Irvine boys. But the awful headache I had quickly brought my pride and my argumentative mood to an abrupt end. The front wheel of my bike was so bent that I had to push the bike home. I tried to go to school for the rest of the afternoon, but my headache was so bad, and I felt so sick, the teacher told me to go home. My mother was sympathetic to my suffering, but when I began to feel better and she saw the bike, she informed my father of the matter, and the two of them decided to forbid me to ride my bike for a week. I thought it was a harsh punishment for something Jane actually had caused, but the attention I got from Jane for the next few day as she worried about the knots and bruises on my head, make it seem like a mere trifle.

I believe I was a fourth grader, the year Jane went to our school, so she did not experience the continuity of one-room-school life some of us long-termers did.. We celebrated holidays like Easter and Christmas with plays, singing, and parties. Halloween and Valentine's Day were also high times for us at the Winkleman Dome School. The teacher would make out invitations, and our parents, and sometimes others who worked at the oil field, would come to the school to see and hear us perform.

The year Jane was in our school, Miss Kelly, the teacher, for Valentines Day, suggested we have a party where the girls would bring box lunches to be auctioned off to the boys. No one could bid higher than fifty cents for a box. None of the girls were to tell any of the boys which box lunch they had brought. None of us had ever heard of such a thing before, but it sounded fun. The teacher contacted our parents, and they gave the idea unanimous approval.

By Valentine's Day evening the school room had been decorated with valentines, everyone was in a festive mood when they arrived, and the teacher was sure she had made a hit with the students and their parents. The Winchester twins showed up in skirts! I don't think I had ever seen that before! They really looked nice! However, I had my mind on one thing, and that was to get Jane's box lunch, so I could eat with her. I considered her my girl friend, and no body was going to eat with my girl friend.

The auction began. Tex Irvine was the auctioneer. The first box he picked up was Jane's. How did I know that? We all knew that. In fact we knew who had brought nearly every box; we boys watched to see which boxes the girls were carrying when they arrived at the school. The only boxes we were not sure of were those the Winchester twins brought; they looked exactly the same, and their mother had carried them in and placed them on the table. We didn't know which one was Beverly's and which was Barbara's.

Duane Irvine bid ten cents on Jane's box. I couldn't let this get out of hand so I immediately bid fifty cents. There, that was the limit, I had the box--I thought. " No," Tex said, "you have to bid along with Duane and the others, and you can only raise the bid ten cents at a time." Well, nobody else bid but Duane and me. Everyone respected the fact that Jane was my girl friend--except Duane, and he had already made the first bid. I bid "twenty cents," Duane said, "thirty." I bid, "forty." Duane said, "fifty," and he had Jane's box lunch. I glared at Tex. He and Duane had conspired to do this all along, I thought. It was a matter of a simple mathematical sequence, and I had fallen for it like a coyote pup ignoring the trap trying to get to the bait.

My protest did nothing but make the men of the camp laugh. I watched Tex hand the box to Duane. I'd get even! I was so deep in misery that the auction went on without me until I realized that I might get stuck with one of the first or second grader's boxes. The Winchester twins' boxes hadn't been auctioned off yet, and I figured I'd better take a chance of getting Beverly's box. Jack had told me that their mother had fixed fried chicken. I couldn't go wrong there. I could at least take that as an acceptable consolation prize.

When Tex held up the first twin's box I said, "ten." It was all a matter of figuring out when I had to bid after that so that I could say "fifty." I got the box! It was Barbara's box! Now, I was in a less than congenial mood. After the last box was auctioned off Barbara came over to eat with me. I was rude, I didn't want to eat with her--and she laughed at me.

This was getting worse all the time. However, the smell of the fried chicken began to kick in, I noticed that Duane was eating a plain cheese sandwich with Jane, and my mother came over and told me to stop making a fool of myself. I remarked to Duane that I noticed Jane had brought plain old cheese sandwiches--all the while biting into my drumstick, and remarking how good it was.

The rest of the evening was pretty normal. Jane knew just how I felt about her, but Barbara said Jane thought I was just being silly.

I had another disappointing experience with Jane when she decided to follow my sister's example and cut her hair. My sister had long blond hair, but decided it was getting in the way of her work and play, so decided to cut it. Jane was watching as Lassie sat on the stool I sat on when my father cut my hair, and my mother took the scissors and clipped her hair to the desired length.

Jane thought Lassie looked so pretty with her new hair cut, she immediately wanted to have her's cut. I protested, but it did no good at all. Jane sat on the stool while my mother under the guiding eye of Jane's mother cut her hair. Jane looked in the mirror and was delighted at what she saw, although I thought she had compromised her beauty. But Jane was not giving me any prime time; she and Lassie went off down the road twittering, sharing the moment, and some girl thoughts that obviously didn't include me.

When George Wight got transferred, and Jane moved away, I kept mementos she had given me for two or three years before my affection for her faded sufficiently so that I was free to throw them out of my chest of drawers.

Bobby

Bobby Gallinger was three years younger than me. His mother, Iona, had an instinctive fear of living out in the wilderness, and such was the case at Winkleman Dome. Sometimes her husband Bob's job took him to the Elk Basin Oil Field, and she had to spend the night only with Bobby and his younger sister Diane. She could hardly bear being alone with the kids during those nights, so she asked my mother if I could stay with Bobby those nights. She felt I offered some kind of protection.

One night as I was going over to stay with them I decided to play a prank on her. I pulled a nylon stocking over my face and then knocked on the door. I had my back turned when she came to the door, but then turned around and growled. I learned that night that some things are just not funny. However, she must have gained considerable courage after that scare, because she never asked me to stay over night again when Bob left for Elk Basin.

When Bobby was a second or third grader the teacher took us on a school picnic. We went across the prairie toward the mountains about a mile to some sandstone ledges where we ate our lunches, looked for agates, watched the birds, then went back to the school. Bobby had taken a brand new lunch pail on that picnic, but failed to pick it up after the picnic. It was getting on toward evening when Bob knocked on our door, asking if I might remember the place where we ate lunch, and if I would get in the company truck with him so we could find Bobby's lunch pail. I said I could find the spot easily, so Bob, Bobby and I got in the truck and headed toward the mountain. Because of the steep terrain, we couldn't just drive to the spot. We had to drive down draws and climb the ridges where the truck could pull the hills. It was getting on toward dusk when we reached the place we had eaten lunch and retrieved Bobby's lunch pail.

I spotted the pail still sitting on a rock, and Bobby got out of the truck to get it. When he got to it he did not just grab the handle and run back to the truck; he opened it up and grabbed a handful of gold paper stars he had gotten for his perfect "health inspections" in school (more about that activity later). "Here is what I wanted to show you, Dad," he shouted. Bob told him to hurry up and get back in the truck; it was getting dark. Bobby ran to the truck clutching the gold paper stars but forgot the pail a second time. When Bob told him to go back and pick the pail up, Bobby was too occupied with counting his stars to pay much attention. A good portion of Bobby's self respect was composed of those stars; they contributed to his identity. They were irrefutable evidence that he was a clean boy. He had passed every health inspection, and the teacher had given him recognition.

Finally, Bobby retrieved his lunch pail, and we started back to the camp. The way a young boy ranks some things of greater importance than others may be a mystery to those who are older, but Bobby had no doubt what was most important. Stars!

Barbara Gallinger

Barbara was a cousin of Bobby's who with her parents lived with at Winkleman Dome for a short time. The details of the situation escape me. She was a year or two younger than I, and attended the Winkleman Dome School before Bobby started the first grade.

The year she went to the school our teacher decided that we, as a school, should make a miniature representation of the oil field camp to take to the yearly county exhibit and track meet, where all the rural schools in Fremont County gathered in the spring before school was out to display some sort of creative work done during the year, and participate in the athletic competition.

Because Bobby wasn't in school yet, Barbara was responsible for building a model of the Gallinger house. The houses all looking the same, and although the teacher helped us cut the walls and roofs out of paper board so the houses would be uniform in size, it was up to the student to put everything together, draw in the windows and doors, and do the coloring.

That was just too much for a first grader, so the teacher asked me to help Barbara. I felt honored. I put the house together without a hitch, I drew in the windows and doors with a ruler, and colored the lawn with a green crayon. It was the best coloring job I had ever done. Even the teacher noticed in and complimented me.

After I got through with Barbara's house I set about constructing our own house. I did not take nearly the time I took on Barbara's. I did not use a ruler to draw in the doors and windows, and I pushed so hard on the crayon the lawn started to look like a thick layer of green wax instead of an evenly colored green lawn. I recognized it as an inferior product, and in an attempt to remedy it, I scrapped the thickly spread crayon off the paper with my thumbnail. It lightened the color of the lawn, didn't help much artistically. That is the way it went to Exhibit.

Fifteen years, or so later, I saw a film about the building of the Parthenon in ancient Greece, and the narrator mentioned how the artisans were so inspired by the significance of the work they were doing, they built better than they knew how. I guess that is the reason I did such a good job on Barbara Gallinger's house.

Lassie

My sister's name was Gloria, but we all called her Lassie. My grandmother had named her that because our father was a Scottish immigrant, and when my grandmother saw her first grand daughter she supposedly exclaimed, " What a cute little lassie," and the name stuck. Being four years older than me, Lassie lived pretty much outside of the interests of her younger sibling. In fact, she was at least four years older than anyone in the school after that first year when Marvin attended. She used to associate as much, perhaps even more, with the teachers than with us younger students. Jane liked to hang around Lassie for the short time the Wights lived at Winkleman Dome, but Lassie must have found it a bit lonely living in that oil field camp with no one her own age. She sometimes played our games outside, but often, during recess, she would stay inside and talk to the teacher, even doing things to help the teacher.

However, in the winter, she got an opportunity to be with some of her friends that she had gone to grade school with during the first five years of her elementary education. Lassie loved to skate. When I was just a little boy I remember her as much with skates on as off. The skating rink was not very far from our house on the outskirts of town, and she spent every evening on the ice. In my memory I can still hear the sound of her skates clacking as she walked across the wooden floor and opened the door to get out onto the ice. Lassie could do all kind of fancy things on the ice, figure eights, the grapevine, spins, skate backwards and jump. In the fifth grade she was the featured skater in the Ice Follies.

By contrast, when I skated it was full speed in one direction, either chasing someone, or being chased. I had little interest in the art of skating.

When we moved out to the Dome, Lassie was cut off from much of the socializing her skating made possible. In Winter, the two of us skated on a reservoir designed to catch run off from the oil wells, and sometimes the Big Wind River flooded the river bottom to created a surface suitable for skating, but otherwise Lassie gave up a very important activity in her life when we made the move to Winkleman Dome.

There were some nights, especially Saturday nights, when our mother after we had been to church, would stay in town so we could skate at the ice rink. And then Lassie could be with her friends again, and they bonded together as they had before when we lived in town.

At the Winkleman Dome School Lassie did her studies pretty much by herself while the teacher was busy helping the younger students. Studying by herself gave her quite a bit of academic independence, and one day a very tense situation was created with the teacher who was at the black board with her going over a math problem. I was obviously too young to understand it, but they were at an impasse over something, and I heard my sister tell the teacher that she thought she was wrong. Now, that was a serious thing to say to a teacher. The teacher took considerable offense, and the tone of the conversation became quite ominous. I heard the teacher ask if the remarks my sister was making were to be understood as threats, and my sister's response, "No, I just think I'm right." Then, with authority, the teacher told her to go to her desk and sit down, which she did.

Reflecting on the incident, I thought how similar the situation was to the way a good border collie when left alone to tend the sheep without the herder taking time to work it begins to think he knows more than the herder (sometimes it does!), and no longer need respond to the herder's commands.

I remember Lassie discussing the situation with our mother that evening, but don't remember anything further of the way the dispute was settled, if at all. The teacher probably just let the matter pass.

At school all the students were obligated to help do school chores. Erasers had to be dusted, usually by beating them on the outside wall of the school, blackboards had to be washed, and the floor swept.

My sister had been assigned the job of sweeping the floor one afternoon, and found Jackie's whittling to be a major obstacle to getting the job finished. All the boys in the Winkleman Dome School were whittlers. It isn't done much anymore, but it was a social activity back then. You can talk better, and be more focused when whittling. Most of us males can point to at least one scar on a finger, and remember we were whittling when the knife slipped.

Well, Jackie was whittling while Lassie was trying to sweep the floor. She told him to stop messing the floor up with his whittlings, but he just laughed. She warned him a second time with the same results, so she went after him with the broom. She raised the broom to swat him, and Jackie's hand, grasping his pocket knife, came up to break the blow--and that is how my sister got the long scar on her left wrist from whittling, although she never whittled in her life.

The gash was deep enough for the teacher to believe she had a severed artery, but despite the amount of blood that flowed, it was soon clear that just the veins had been severed. It was an accident; no one had to check their knife at the door before they could come into the school room.

Games

Some time went by, perhaps a couple of years, after the Winkleman Dome School was established before one of the teachers thought about getting us a bat and a soft ball to play with. Eventually, the school system even got us a basket ball and a hoop. However, to play basket ball you need a pole and a backboard for the hoop. As usual, we had to depend on the men at the camp to put these up for us. I have no idea if the height of the rim was the standard ten feet or not. It might have been lower or higher. Before these pieces of sports equipment were provided we played games with few rules, games that required not much more than speed and agility.

We played a game called "steal sticks" that involved two teams, each on opposite sides of a line, and a pile of sticks for each team, each about fifty to seventy-five feet back from the line. The objective of the game was to run across the line and steal as many of the opposing team's sticks as possible, and get back across the line without getting touched by a member of the opposing team. The team that ended up with the most sticks by the end of recess was the winner. Because the school house sat on "open range," which meant no fences, the chase involving older students, would sometimes be several hundred yards out in the sage brush before the "stick thief" would be run down and caught. But usually, when this happened, the younger kids would steal all the sticks left unprotected by the older students chasing each other.

We also played a game called, "jail." This was played against the side of the school house. An area was marked with rocks, and a jailer chosen. The jailer was given one prisoner, who we were to try an free by rushing in and touching them without being touched first. It was a hopeless game for the jailer because even though one of us older, faster kids were playing that role, when the jail got too full of prisoners they could not all be protected from the darting liberators who would charge all at once, touch and thus release the prisoners.

But there were some students who found themselves in jail most of the time; these were the young. Of course, at the Winkleman Dome School, with a few exceptions, we were all young at some time or another. But when the older boys and girls hit about the fifth or sixth grade we noticed the younger students more, because they got in the way; they messed up teams, because they had to be integrated into our games. When I think of the younger students, I think of Donna Winchester, Polly Irvine, and Diane Gallinger. These students were the ones that always got caught when they ran in to release the prisoner during a game of jail. Diane was a kind of cheer leader; she liked the excitement and would jump up and down in one spot a lot, regardless of whether she was in jail or free on the playground. Donna and Polly took the games more seriously, but still got caught and spent most of the recess incarcerated. When the weather got cold, Polly wore a hat that wouldn't stay on her head when she ran, so she had to hold it on with one hand. This slowed her down, and even those whom she could normally outrun, would catch her then.

In winter we played another game that victimized the young. We called it "Fox and Geese." We would make a big circle in the snow then walk across it several times until it looked like a pie that had been cut into four to six pieces. The center of the pie was a safe area, like a pen for the geese, but any goose that was out of the pen was fair game for the fox. Once the fox caught a goose the goose became the fox and had to catch someone else.

Once one of the younger students left the pen and got caught, all the geese knew it was safe to leave the pen, because those young little foxes couldn't out run anyone. We taunted the little foxes until they finally despaired of chasing us and went to find another game to play.

Sometimes, in spring, when the weather was warm, we would just walk out onto the prairie and look at flowers, listen to the birds, or explore the rock ledges to the west of the school. After we dropped over the slope of the flat behind the school, we couldn't hear the school bell ring, signaling the end of recess. Sometimes we took a bit longer than the fifteen minutes we were allowed. On such occasions, we usually got a stern lecture from the teacher.

After one hits a soft ball a thousand times, it is pretty hard remembering anything about any one of them, but I remember one fly ball I hit into what could be called center field. Actually, except for the bases and home plate, everything else about the ball field was pretty imaginary. Beverly Winchester, a fast runner, was playing center field.

I hit a high fly ball to center field. Jackie and I were the only boys who could hit the ball over the electric lines in center field that ran from the camp to the school house. No one out there had a glove to catch a fly ball, because we had only one glove, and we always let the catcher wear it. I figured I had a home run.

Everyone playing the outfield tried to run under that fly ball to catch it. There was a terrific collision when the ball came down. Dust flew from sliding feet and skidding bodies. I was already rounding second base and heading for third when I heard Beverly declare that I was out; she had caught the ball. I argued that she couldn't have caught that ball, but everyone involved in the collision, having picked themselves up, confirmed that she indeed had caught that fly ball, and I was out.

Donna and Polly deserve special mention when the subject is softball, more specifically, work-up softball. They were first graders when Jack and I were in the sixth grade. Younger students have to tolerate a certain amount of discrimination from older students in a one-room school; Donna and Polly were no exception. When the teacher would let us out for recess, we would get the ball and bat and head out to the playground. Polly and Donna were always eager to play with us, but hardly ever got to swing a bat. We older boys always put them in the outfield, where as batters were put out, they would have to work up through the bases and finally get a chance to bat.

This seldom ever happened. Recess being only fifteen minutes long meant that by the time Donna and Polly had worked themselves up to bat recess was over, and the next recess they had to start in the field again.

Playing basketball at the Winkleman Dome School was a game of complete uncertainty. There were just too many small rocks on the ground. If you drove for the basket to make a "lay up," just as likely as not, the ball would carom off a rock and either go out of bounds or allow someone to steal it. But the rocks had another surprising function during a game. They rolled when stepped on, especially when on the run. Quick foot work was often frustrated by sliding and skidding shoes. Sometimes we fell down--and then everyone would jump on the ball to try and tie it up or take it away. We had no referee, so we had to declare for ourselves when we were fouled. We older boys got fouled a lot, the younger kids seldom got a free throw. It was the law of the jungle on that play ground.

Health Inspection and the "Aint Box."

Monitoring the health of country school students was an important item on the school district's agenda. Two or three times a year Miss Petersdorf, the superintentent of rural schools, and her older sister, who was a nurse, would drive out to our school and check us over. Strange as it may seem, although Miss Petersdorf's sister was the nurse, I don't remember her doing anything during the visit. In fact, I can't remember her ever saying a word to us. I'm sure she must have, but she was basically there as Miss Petersdorf's medical prop, and Miss Petersdorf ran the show.

They would weigh us, measure our height, test our eyesight and hearing, and look to see if any of us had head lice.

These two women appeared "ancient" to us. They drove their car into the school yard at little more than an idle, and walked from the car to the school house at the proverbial "snails pace." But we were always glad to see them come; they always brought us some kind of treats, candy or cookies, and were all smiles as they inquired of each of us about our health. They took great pleasure in showing the boys how much they had grown since they last visited.

Miss Petersdorf had a big Elgin pocket watch which she used to test our hearing. I remember it well because my father had one like it. To test our hearing she would sit us in a chair, then stand behind us where we couldn't see her, then extend her right arm out and ask us which side the watch was on. Then she would repeat this procedure using her left arm.

This maneuver always gave us a good laugh, because when we were all asked to be quiet while she was testing a students hearing, she, being hard of hearing herself, didn't realize that the watch ticked so loudly all of us could hear it clear across the room.

After she asked us whether we had been well since her last visit, and determined that we were sound of mind and body, they walked slowly back to their car and drove off back to the highway.

If any features distinguished our one room country school it was daily health inspection and the "ain't box." Health inspection was sometimes done by the teacher, but more often the students got the job by rotation. It involved checking to see if hair was combed, looking in and behind other student's ears, to make sure they had been washed. Hands were scrutinized to make sure they had been washed; fingernails were checked for dirt under them, and every student was asked if they had brushed their teeth that morning. While all this was going on with the first students the rest of them were busy trying to prepare for inspection by remedying our deficiencies. Jack knives went to work under fingernails and handkerchiefs on the ends of fingers reamed out ear orifices.

Some teachers tried to make a "big deal" out of health inspection. There was a large sheet of heavy paper tacked to the wall with the words "HEALTH INSPECTION" on it. All the students' names were written on the paper in alphabetical order. If you didn't pass health inspection, you didn't get a sticker put by your name for that day. Since this was a daily activity, one who passed every day accumulated a lot of stickers by their name. If a student failed to pass inspection nothing got pasted by their name, or sometimes a black mark was recorded in the place where others had stickers. It was an effective way to try and shame a careless student who didn't meet the criteria for cleanliness.

Some of these stickers must have been supplied by the Ivory Soap company, because that is what they looked like, little bars of ivory soap in their wrappers. Some years, apparently when the teacher didn't know how to get these Ivory Soap stickers, she would use gold star stick-ons. I think, beyond what an Ivory Soap sticker could connote, the teacher may have used stars to convey some kind of religious significance to cleanliness. That increased the pressure to be clean--you know, "cleanliness is next to godliness," and stars are in the sky, and that is where God is--and who knows what other loose associations of ideas could be used to make us comply?

Being clean wasn't such a difficult thing for those living in the oil field camp; we had gas, electricity, thus hot and cold running water; although some of us, before we moved out to Winkleman Dome, could remember not having hot and cold running water and how bathing had been a weekly affair. Our mother would heat cold water atop the wood and coal burning range in a large copper boiler, then dip it out by the bucket full and pour it into a galvanized tub for bathing. I, being the youngest in the family, always seemed to get the water last, although my mother claimed that I always got it first.

All that changed for us once my father went to work at Winkleman Dome. We could take a bath anytime we wanted to--which wasn't necessarily all that often for the boys in the camp.

But for the Winchesters the old standards still applied until after "rural electrification" made it possible to put a pump in a water well, have electric lights and hot and cold running water. For the first few year the Winkleman Dome school functioned, because of the isolated location of the ranch, water was drawn from the river or the irrigation ditch. This was good pure water. I don't remember anyone ever getting sick from it--and we all drank it. Still later, a well was drilled, but water was pumped out of it with a hand pump. The Winchesters were a big family, so getting everyone to the place they could pass "muster"was no small task for Hazel. If Jackie didn't take care of his own hygiene, she didn't have much time to remedy the situation before they had to be off on the eight-mile drive to school each morning. In fact, Hazel was so busy cooking breakfast for her family and the ranch hands, and getting everyone ready for school, she sometimes would forget to check the gas gage on the car. Several times she ran out of fuel before she got to Winkleman Dome. And there they would sit trying to figure out what to do. Since it was nearly all up hill to Winkleman Dome; with a lot of pushing by the kids until she got the car turned around, she usually could coast almost all the way back to the ranch. Once my uncle Willie, who worked at another oil field beyond the Wind River, found them stalled on the highway and got them going again.

Jackie's response to health inspection was sometimes a hilarious affair, he could be so funny! I can remember some of the incidents like they happened yesterday. Jackie sometimes would not cooperate with the health inspector, especially if it was a younger student. One time, a younger student (I don't remember who it was) had asked Jackie to let him look inside his ears--which Jack wouldn't do. When the student asked him to put his hands on the desk so they could be inspected, again Jackie refused.

At that point the young inspector called on the higher authority of the teacher to come and make Jackie comply with the rules. The teacher arrived at Jackie's desk and commanded him to allow the inspector to check his ears. They were dirty," so dirty, the teacher said she could grow potatoes in them. Jackie was quick-witted, and instantaneously shot back that she would just have to wait her turn, because he had already planted potatoes in his ears and they weren't ready to dig yet.

All this time Jackie had his hands under the desk trying to clean his fingernails with his pocket knife. Jackie loved machinery, and was always taking something apart or putting it back together, so his hands were hard to get clean, as anyone would know who has tried to wash grease off without the use of modern hand cleaning agents. Because he was working on his nails under the desk where he couldn't see them, he thought he had gotten them all scrapped clean with his knife when the teacher ordered him to put his hands up on the desk. With confidence he put them forth. Oh! oh! he had missed the index finger of his right hand. The underside of that nail was packed with grease. "That finger is filthy," declared the teacher. We were all about to burst from Jackie's response about his ears, but when he held his right index finger high in the air for everyone to see, stroked it punishingly with the index finger of his left hand and exclaimed, "Well, shame on it," we all burst into laughter. The teacher was not amused, and that morning personally drew the black mark on the chart by Jackie's name.

One time Jackie came to school wearing a bandana tied around his neck. He called it an "Einar Rag," because one of the ranch hands who worked for them wore such a bandana continually, and his name was "Einar," Einar Anderson. One morning during heath inspection the inspector asked Jackie to take his Einar Rag off so he could get a look at his neck. Jackie appealed to the teacher, claiming that the rag was part of his clothes, and he didn't think he should have to undress for inspection. Sometimes, even a teacher knows when she has been "bested," and, throwing her hands up in the air, told the inspector that Jackie didn't have to take his Einar Rag off.

In due time, when the Winchesters built a new big house that would comfortably accommodate them all, a house that had electricity, was heated with propane, and had showers and a bathtub, health inspection began to loose what ever it had that made it memorable.

The "Ain't Box"was a device invented to help shape our speech into "proper" English. Anytime one student heard another use improper English, that student was to write the transgression down on a slip of paper and stick it in the "Ain't Box." The box was opened every afternoon before school dismissed and the linguistic sins recorded on the slips repented of and corrections made before the whole school. Aint, was the most frequent violation of the language, thus the name of the box. But, "gonna", "wanna", "ya", "nah," "sez," singular verbs used where plurals should have been because the subject was plural--like "we was in town last week, " and such, were all considered illegal and to be purged from our communications with each other.

Swear words were also to be discouraged, although Dudley Irvine was the only student I remember who sometimes slipped up and uttered profanity--fluently.

One day Dudley got mad at me and let fly with a barrage of swear words which I dutifully recorded to put in the "Ain't Box.." However, I was not sure how to spell them, so I subsumed them under one word which I thought covered them all and dropped my slip of paper in the box. That afternoon, before we were dismissed from school the teacher opened the "Ain't Box" to see what sins of the tongue we had committed that day. When she came to my slip reporting on Dudley she got a puzzled look on her face and asked who had written this note about something Dudley had said.

I was eager to volunteer the information that I had written the report; I wanted to make sure Dudley got chastised for what he had called to me. Then she asked me to come up and tell her what the word was that he had said. I told her I couldn't repeat what he had said. That seemed to baffle her, so she asked me to read the note to her. The note only had two words on it: one was Dudley's name and the other was the verb describing what he had done. In a rather forceful voice I retorted "it says Dudley 'cust'." Once the teacher heard me pronounce the word aloud, she understood what the misspelling had concealed. "The word is 'cursed,'" she said; then she wrote it down on another piece of paper and dropped it into the "Ain't Box" where a few moments later she drew it out and read before the students that Joe had not only mispronounced the word "cursed," but had also misspelled it. "Joe, make the correction, please." She sure knew how to take the sweetness of revenge and sour it into embarrassment.

School Plays And Celebrations

At Christmas time we always had a school play. They were sometimes religious in nature and sometimes secular. My sister once played the part of an angel who announced the birth of Christ to the Shepherds who were keeping watch over their flocks in the fields; then in the next scene played the part of Mary, the mother of Christ, as she tended the baby Jesus in the manger. The baby Jesus was played by an old doll my aunt Zorka gave to her before we moved to Winkleman Dome. The shepherds, who by this time had changed their apparel somewhat, became the three wise men from the east. I played the part of Joseph, because my name was Josef, and folks just had to overlook the fact that Lassie was my sister.

Jackie and I usually shared the role of playing Santa Claus, although I remember Duane once playing the role. The teacher brought us the traditional red suit and whiskers, and we would give out the gifts which the students had bought for each other and placed under the Christmas tree. The entire population of the oil field camp and the ranching community would come to the Christmas play. It was the biggest event of the year.

One Christmas play, as Santa, I hadn't memorized my lines too well, and Polly who was playing the part of an Elf and had taken it upon herself to memorize everyone's lines, kept telling me what to say whenever I faltered. While a whisper would have been sufficient, she gave me my lines in full voice-- which brought a roar from the audience.

The young seem to have their ways of getting even with both older school mates and adults during those times when they show a weakness and become vulnerable. Once when Mrs. Pearl Mathisen was our teacher, Jackie and I were doing something that really frustrated her. She shouted and stamped her feet at us. Polly and Donna jumped up out of their desks and stomped their feet at Mrs. Mathisen. The rest of the students loved it--these two upstart girls mocking the teacher when her frustration with us passed the point of containment.

Once, Hazel Winchester brought her youngest, at the time, Carol, to a Christmas play. We all called Carol, Tiny, because she was so small. Tiny was only about three years old at the time, and although she was in her mother's arms she was so afraid of me when I tried to give her a present she kicked at me. Under my breath I told her who I was, but she was still terrified. I finally had to take off my Santa's mask so she could see my face. Then did she ever laugh. When I put the mask back on she pulled it back off and laughed again.

When we put on the plays at school the teacher ran a wire from one side of the school room to the other and fixed a couple of sheets on it for curtains. One day while we were practicing, Jackie and I were in charge of pulling the curtains open and closed, and I had sat down in the teachers swivel chair behind the curtain. This particular year, Miss Kelly, was our teacher. She was the daughter of a potato farmer about fifteen miles down the Big Wind River, and though she was a likeable woman, there were limits to her tolerance.

Jackie, for some reason, showed up that day with a long hat pin, and when Miss Kelly walked by on the other side of the closed curtain, he jabbed her backside through the curtain. He managed to get around the back of the curtain just as she was coming through the gap where the curtains met, so she didn't see anyone but me sitting in her chair behind the curtain. She asked no questions, just doubled up her fist and took a swing at me. All I could do was lean back into that swivel chair as fast as my reflexes would allow. The spring on the bottom of the chair flexed and put me out of range so that she missed, but the force of her swing nearly spun her around.

I quickly denied that I had jabbed her, so she went after Jackie. It's hard to dispose of the evidence in a 12x20 school house, so she caught him with the goods, and took his hat pin away. I don't remember what she did to punish him, but whatever it was it certainly didn't present the possibility of bodily harm which she was ready to mete out to me a few minutes earlier.

Flag Burning

As mentioned earlier, the wind blew at Winkleman Dome. More than once when my mother hung sheets on the lines to dry, then left the camp for a few hours, she found the sheets either blown off the lines or whipped until they were frayed at the ends. The wind was also hard on flags--and flag poles for that matter. After years of standing up against the wind, even the steel pole we flew the flag from was bent in an easterly direction. But the American flag, which we regarded as almost holy, really took a beating. Nevertheless, we ran it up that pole every morning, and pledged our allegiance each day no matter what the weather.

I have no idea of who taught us to respect the flag the way we did. It was a symbol that stood for something about America which made us feel proud of our country, yet was never completely identifiable with it. The flag was greater than the actual country, it was respect for "those who died" for freedom. No politician could wrap himself in the flag to make himself equal with it, no political party could claim the flag best represented its philosophy or agenda. We as Americans aspired to what the flag stood for, "one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all."

Maybe it was because we lived on the Wind River Indian Reservation where the American Indian was not the recipient of liberty and justice in the same way we were that heightened our awareness of the flags significance. Or, perhaps it was the addition of the phrase, "under God" that raised the meaning of the flag above human law and wisdom and wrapped it right around the Covenant and the Ten Commandments of the Bible. I remember there was considerable discussion about the addition of the "under God" phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance when the change came. Our teacher, whoever she was, must have talked to us about it. Perhaps she planted that idealistic seed in our minds.

Despite the honored place our flag had in our hearts, it seemed always to be in a tattered condition. When the first flag we flew got too beat up to suitably represent the American ideal, we got a new one. But the question was, what to do with the old one?

It would never have occurred to children that the flag had some conferred right to a special disposal, but the teacher knew that there was some kind of honorable way to lay the old flag to rest. I don't know whether she was trying to find out from us whether her opinion was right, or was encouraging us to discover from another source what we should do with the flag, but I remember going home with my sister and discussing it with my parents one night. I have forgotten who provided the final answer, but by the time school started the next day, everyone agreed that the flag should not merely be disposed of in the garbage can; it should be burned. That seemed the appropriate burial for such an honorable symbol.

So, with a new flag flying on the pole, at recess we took the old flag outside to burn it. But where should we burn it? Certainly not on the ground. We had been taught that the flag should never be allowed to touch the ground. That was an act of sacrilege. Besides, what if we set the prairie afire in the process; we couldn't risk that. The flag would have to be burned on top of something, and the fire would have to be contained. So in the end, the glory of the flag, and our commitment to it's almost sacred honor were compromised. We burned it in the trash barrel!

Exhibit

In the spring of every year, just before school was out, we went to Arapahoe School for Exhibit. The Arapahoe School was predominantly Indian school, but during Exhibit all the elementary students from around the county converged for one big celebration and track meet. Weeks before Exhibit we practiced singing the songs we would perform in front of the other students and teachers. One year we sang "America The Beautiful," and "Wyoming." We did such a good job Miss Petersdorff stood up and applauded us.

The Arapahoe School was set up for pole vaulting, races, high jump and broad jump. Until I got to be twelve or thirteen years old I didn't have enough size to be much of a challenge to the other older boys. There were girl's events, but like the boy's, everyone who wanted to run in a race had to run at the same time. We younger boys ate a lot of dust.

But when I was in the eighth grade I was almost fully grown, height wise, just under 5 feet 10 inches. At fourteen I was as tall as I ever got; I was even cutting my wisdom teeth.

I went to Arapahoe that year believing I would win the first place ribbon in the 50 and 100 yard dash. I also had been jumping the barbed wire fence at Winkleman Dome, and felt sure I would win the high jump too. I had won the second place ribbon in the broad jump the previous year, so expected to do well in that event too.

When the track meet for boys started, the first event was the high jump. At the end of the contest there were only two of us left for the final jump. I don't remember how high it was, but it was only around five feet. But that was when jumping meant jumping, not using the more modern techniques used by athletes today.

I watched as a tall lanky Arapahoe boy, whose name I remember as Robert Brown, from the Arapahoe School, loped up to the bar and jumped over it. I didn't think I could jump that high. It was higher than my shoulder, and I knocked the bar down. I took second place. He also beat me in the broad jump to take first place, even though I jumped nearly 16 feet.

My aunt's husband Max Homec, who coached at the Hudson School, was doing most of the officiating, and every time Brown beat me, he would grin at me and say, "he's good, isn't he?"

For some reason Brown did not compete in the races, but a kid from Sand Draw was there to take up where he left off, and I had to settle for second place in the 50 and 100 yard dashes.

The last event was pole vaulting. I had never tried that before, and didn't get much higher than what I had high jumped. But the kid who won the event told me a story which I believed could only be told by an Indian.

He wore no shirt, was barefoot, and had a fresh scar, part of which could be seen just above his belt. There were stitches in it. After every vault he would bend over slightly and put his hand on that scar under his belt. During the course of the match he began to look distressed, but he persisted until he had eliminated every other vaulter.

When the match was over I went over to him to congratulate him, and struck up a conversation. That is not always easy to do with an Arapahoe who hadn't seen you before that day. I asked him about the scar, and why he was bending over. He told me he had just had his appendix out. "When," I asked. "Day before yesterday," he replied. "Shouldn't you still be in the hospital I asked." "I was, until just before the pole vaulting." He told me he practiced a lot and knew I could win it, so after the nurse left his room that morning he slipped out the window where a friend of his was waiting to take him to the Arapahoe school. He assured me he was alright.

I don't remember his name, and don't know whether he ever went back to the hospital, but I did learn something that day about how different people rank things in order of importance, what risks they are willing to take, and what sacrifices they feel ready to make.

Graduation

We never actually had an eighth grade graduation at the Winkleman Dome School. If we wanted the ceremony we had to go into Lander, if invited. However, whenever there was an eighth grader in school the teacher seems to know how to get an invitation, and that is how Jackie Winchester and I came to graduate with the eighth grade class of the Lander school system.

We arrived in Lander on the special night dressed in the best we had, clean jeans and shirt. I met kids there I had gone to the first grade with, and had sporadic contact with over the years. However, they were complete strangers to Jackie. They were all curious about him and I had a good time introducing him to everyone I knew. Soon, one of the teachers came with a big bunch of carnations and pinned one on each graduating student, including Jackie and me.

The time had come. We were called to order and began to file into the auditorium where the special ceremony would begin. Jackie and I were at the end of the line.

And it was a good thing we were, because we had no idea that each student, when their name was called, would have to make a little speech about their educational experience, express their appreciation to teachers and parents, and whatever else came to the mind of the more creative ones.

I think it safe to say, Jackie and I stood in terror as one by one the students made their speeches until it was our turn. If we had never learned how to concentrate and pay attention up to that time, we learned how that night. It escapes me which of us was first to speak and who finished the sequence of graduation speeches, but we each dutifully thanked our teachers and parents, and even the Lander school system for inviting us to graduate with the class of 1953.

The Beginning Of The End

Jackie's and my graduation did not bring an end to the Winkleman Dome school; it continued on for a couple of years. But the old school stood in the school yard for only ten years or so. By then the oil field was electrified and automated, and the need for men to live where they worked was minimized to the place my father was the only one asked to remain a resident in the camp, everybody else moved away. The old school house sat empty for some time, until it was bought and moved by A.B. Morris, a gas station operator and small storekeeper on U.S. Highway 287 where it runs along the Big Wind River.

The pictures I have of it show the steel pipe guard rail built around the series of windows on the east side of the school. The guard rail prevented range horses from breaking the window panes out when they scratched themselves by rubbing on the building. I remember the morning, soon after the school was moved to Winkleman Dome, when nearly every window was broken out and lying in pieces inside the school house. The men of the camp put up heavy wire screening, called hardware cloth, to keep the horses from making contact with the glass, but it didn't work. The horses broke the screens in as well. So a welder was hired to come out and build the guard rail out of pipe from the oil field. When the school was sold the guard rail had to be taken down before the school house could be loaded onto the flat bed of another truck and hauled down to A.B.'s store. The old school that had been built on Sage Creek, and later served the kids at Winkleman Dome and the near by Big Wind River ranching community, sat there several years unoccupied, until A.B. sold it.

I was off to college by that time, and don't know the rest of its story. A.B. died, and his wife, Tress, didn't know where it was when I asked her many years later. She thought after A.B. sold it, it had been moved further down the river. She thought she remembered that it had burned down. But she wasn't sure who had bought it or just where it had been taken. The old school is at last beyond the reach of history, and the story of it must be brought to an end.

Part III: Life on the Winchester Ranch