24 August 2006 - On Death and Community

On my way back from the phone booth, I heard a public announcement speaker and saw lights coming from the county fairgrounds. My timing has been off on this trip. I missed the cowboy ball in Wisdom which is tomorrow night and missed the county fair here which was two weeks ago.

I headed for the fair grounds to see what was up and when I got there, it was filled with cowboys and cowgirls who were competing in a team calf roping competition. I asked an old timer what was going on and he said that during the summer, the ranchers within about a 50 mile radius get together every 2 weeks or so for this competition. Prizes are awarded each time but only about a quarter of the people were actually participating. Most people were sitting around on their horses talking. It seemed to me that this competition was an excuse to get together with people who live too far away to come together for something less significant. I got the impression that they were creating opportunities to create community.

Women were sitting in the stands talking and not watching the competition too closely. Some had babies. Some had teenagers. Some women were roping. High school kids were making hot dogs and selling them. Here is a community of people, separated by 50 miles in some cases, who know one another and create ways of coming together. It is odd that the stereotypical self reliant demographic, cattle ranchers, have latched on to their interdependence and need for one another in a way that we in suburbia, separated by 30 feet of land and a privacy fence, have lost. These people are separated by sheer distance and there is not a privacy fence in sight. I suspect that they know and rely on one another because they have to in this environment. It is a shame we don’t all think that we need one another.
I passed the local mortuary on the way home as a truck was pulling in. On my way back to a local establishment that looked like it sold beer, the truck was still there and a guy named Gary was standing in the doorway. I stopped and asked him if he ended up having to work tonight. He said yes and then I apologized that his night took a turn for the worse. He told me that it happens some time and that it was an old guy, in his 80s who lived out of town. Without me asking more, he went on to tell me that he lived a good life, worked hard and it was his time. He reiterated that the man, whose body I presumed was in the back of the truck, was a good man who had lived a full life. He seemed to know the man but for whatever reason, respect, did not mention him by name. An 80+ year old man dies and the guy who comes to pick up the body tells a stranger that the man was a good man who had a good life. Community is a pretty good thing but I don’t think it is easy to create. I think there are environments that promote it and then it just happens. I think Twin Bridges is one of those environments.