Before Oil

I was talking with my right wing co-worker one day and she was going on and on about how we don't need any government interference and handouts, and I strongly agreed with her, since the government had just taken part of my land in order to widen the street and let cars drive even faster, endangering my family and animals. Screw that!

She stared at me. "Well, no, the government needs to make roads! How will we get to work?"

I thought that was a bizarre question for someone brought up on a farm. There are people who have it in their living memories around here, of only going to town once a year, to get supplies.

But, apparently, she was too young to know that it used to be different. She assumed that the government should make roads, although it shouldn't make sure that people had food or medical care.

My grandmother lived in a small town in a valley in Utah. There were so few people there that the phone book had pictures of the families, as well as their phone numbers.

The only non-farm work there, when I was a kid, was turkey ranches, but a very old woman told me that she used to ride her horse up in the neighboring mountains. (Which seemed really far to ride).

My dad finally told me that there used to be a coal mine, open only in the winter, called Winter Camp (creatively enough), where the farmers would work after harvest.

So the old woman, when she was just a child, would ride with her father in the fall to the camp, and then bring his horse back home with her. In the spring, she would lead his horse and ride back to the camp to get him.

That is how they did.

When my parents got married, my father took her to meet his family, but one brother was herding sheep up in the mountains (where he stayed for months), so they saddled up two horses and rode all day into the mountains looking for him. Then they next day they rode back. My mom told me she was so saddle sore that she never got on a horse again.

One time, we went over the mountains in a car, to get to a town on the other side. It took us hours and hours, because the dirt road was narrow and rutted, and you literally could not go faster than 10 mph.

But now they tell me that that small town has spread and there are thousands of people living there. That town over the mountain is the one where the NSA data center is, I think, and the government put a paved highway over the mountain.

So these people are considered ''rural'', although they don't herd sheep or grow hay or ranch turkeys. They just live out in the middle of nowhere and expect the government to provide roads and gas and electricity, so they can drive 50 miles to work each day.

That is how they do.