Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

It is late in the summer and in the next couple of weeks I will be going to college. The family has decided to take a trip to Chicago to visit my sister. I have decided that a 44 hour road trip is not my idea of a vacation and declined the invitation to go along. There were not any discussions or attempts to convince me to change my mind. I think all involved realized that one less person in the car was going to make the long trip that much easier. As I am sitting in the front yard enjoying a summer evening my father approaches me and says that his uncle Earcel from California is going to be in town while they are in Chicago. Dad says that he has only met this uncle Earcel once and can’t remember too much about him. He remembers that he owns a hardware store in California somewhere and that he did like the guy. Uncle Earcel told him that he is disappointed that they won’t be able to meet and was counting on him to take him fishing on the Big Horns. So dad decides that it would be a nice gesture for a family member to go to town and meet Earcel and if I could find the time, take him fishing. I am between jobs and waiting for school to start and decide that while they are gone I will meet up with this distant relative and do a little fishing on the Big Horns.

Right on cue Grandma calls me and says uncle Earcel is at her house and is anxious to go. I gather my fishing pole, a change of clothes in case we spend the night and a jacket for those high altitude evenings. As I arrive at Grandmas, uncle Earcel is sitting in a lawn chair out front, he has California written all over him. He is wearing leather sandals and khaki shorts. His skin is weather beaten and dark brown. He was an older man than I expected and as we visited I knew that I wouldn’t mind spending a day fishing with him. He had a very likeable personality. He did own a hardware store, he lived in Palm Springs and he flew his own plane from California to the Cowley airport. He said it wasn’t much of a plane, very old, and he had modified it some to take on fishing trips. What he wanted to do was fly to the Moss ranch and land in their hayfields and fish the two streams that feed into Devils Canyon. I told him that this was his lucky week because my brother Ron was working at the Moss ranch and if we buzzed the ranch house on the way in, he would come out and meet us and we could probably use his pickup to do some fishing. Uncle Earcel did not see any reason to wait and so we said good-by to Grandma , told her we would be back in two or three days and headed for the airport.

As we pull up to the plane the romantic idea of flying to Moss Ranch just got a little scarier. He was right, it was an old plane, and it look liked bailing wire was the only thing holding it together. What paint was left on it was so bleached out that I couldn’t tell what the original color was. Whatever cloth or leather that was on the interior was long gone and it was now bare steel. He had made some modifications to it. He installed big balloon tires on it so he could land on rough fields. I threw my gear in the back of the plane on top of a box of crackers and some canned meat and it looked like enough food to get us by for a couple of days. He hits the starter and the engine fires right up. We taxi to the end of the strip and in less than a minute we are in the air. He decides to do some site seeing on the way there so we buzz over the Pryors, Crooked Creek and up the Big Horn canyon and then up Devils Canyon. As we come over Devils Canyon we veer North and can see the hayfields of Moss Ranch. We buzz the ranch house just barely clearing the trees. I spot my brother Ron working in one of the hayfields and we buzz him , then land near by. As the plane touches down hay, dirt and bugs are flying everywhere. We bounce all over the cab and the gear I threw in the back is bouncing off the roof. We finally roll to a stop and Earcel says that the landing was smoother than he thought it would be. I don’t think I will ever forget the look on Ron’s face when he pulls up to the plane and I climb out.

For the next two days we fly fish the streams feeding into Devils Canyon and even take one afternoon to fish the river in Devils Canyon. We release most of what we catch but save just enough for a fish fry in the evening back at the Ranch. Ron joins us when he can and the fishing can’t be any better. Uncle Earcel and I become good friends and thoroughly enjoy the trip. Earcel decides on the second night that is it time to move on and try one more fishing spot. He wants to leave while the air is cool and can get good lift for take off. We say our goodbyes, jump into the old plane, bounce over hayfields, irrigation rows and rocks, then finally lift off into the air. We make one more stop in a hayfield in Tensleep to fish in a nearby stream and sleep under the wings of the airplane . The next morning we fly back to Cowley. I give Earcel a ride back to Grandmas and he wants to spend the rest of the day cleaning up and preparing to fly home to California the next day. I offer to come and pick him up the next day and give him a ride back to his plane. He takes me up on the offer.

The next day I head to town and pick up uncle Earcel. I pull up to his plane and help him load his stuff. He says that he appreciates what I have done for him and that it is good to be with family. He wants to make me an offer I shouldn’t turn down. He has an empty apartment above the hardware store in Palm Springs and I can stay in it for free, work in the store and he will pay for my collage tuition in California. I tell him that it is a generous offer but I don’t want to leave family and Wyoming. As I watch him and the old plane lift off the runway and head west, I thought how different my life would be living in California. Many years later Uncle Earcel dies and a family member sends me his obituary. He not only owned the hardware store in Palm Springs, but seven other hardware stores throughout California, a ranch in Columbia and he died without any children.