[Small Town America] Lincoln Highway Part 6: Towed to Laramie, Wyo.

After spending the night in the pullout on the road to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Center we went back to the Castle Rock Medical Center in Green River where there was supposed to be a Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic, but it had been moved to Rock Springs, the next town to the east.

No problem finding the clinic but it turned out that I couldn't just renew the prescriptions issued by my local clinic in Prescott, Ariz. even though my records were in an on-line database that was accessible nationally. After some dickering with Margaret Roberts, the nurse practitioner, new prescriptions were issued to be fulfilled at WalMart just down the road.

THE NEXT TOWN THAT LOOKED INTERESTING was Rawlins and we had a long talk with Rans Baker at the Carbon County Museum. He gave us the long view as an answer to our rather simple question of how Rawlins was doing during the present economic downturn.

Rans Baker, Carbon County Museum, Rawlins, Wyo.

Rans said he moved to Rawlins in 1942 but his view of history goes back a lot further than that as Rawlins was more or less the center of a native American indian battleground that stretched from Elk Mountain in the east to the Sweetwater River in the west. Each year, from May to November various tribes fought each other with the Saratoga hot springs to the south being a sanctuary. Most of the time indians buried their dead but not on such a battlefield and decades later pioneers took the bones scattered on the surface, ground them up and used them as fertilizer.

As time went on the early trappers followed the indian trails, pioneers followed the trapper's trails, railways followed the pioneer trails and the Lincoln Highway followed the railways. (To this I added that we would see fiber optic cable markers alongside the highway.)

The area was developed in the 1860s and from then on "We have ridden an economic roller coaster," Rans said, as there have been various booms: a coal boom, an oil boom, a natural gas boom, and now, perhaps, there will be a wind boom with turbines starting to appear on the crest of hills. All the while there have been cattle, and sometimes sheep, to keep things going. Each time there's been a boom, people show up from everywhere, "At the bust, they leave, but a few stay." Thus there are now people from Pakistan, Philippines, China, and Thailand living and working in Rawlins.

And this is nothing new. According to Rans, back in the 1860s, many people from the British Empire would go, legally, to Canada and then walk across the border into the United States. An example being a local sheriff who was found to be an illegal immigrant from Canada only after he ran for election the third time and the lack of correct paperwork caught up with him. But this wasn't considered a Big Deal as out west "You accept people on what they do, not what they've done."

Before we left Rawlins, we had a brief look at the downtown area. Some shops were empty, some were operating, one of them being a large store selling Chinese goods: china, paintings, furniture. Across the street was a mural showing cattle living in peace and harmony with antelope, elk, and mountain goats. Not surprising after listening to Rans' stories.

Downtown mural, Rawlins, Wyo.

WE'D STOPPED AT A COUPLE OF REST AREAS IN WYOMING looking for a place to stay the night, but each had a sign saying "No Overnight Camping" so we'd gone on. Then we came to the Wagonhound Rest Area which had the usual sign about not camping but also had an unpaved road leading to the Wick Beumee Wildlife Area and a sign saying No Unauthorized Motor Vehicles, No Unauthorized Human Presence, To Avoid Disturbance To Wintering Wildlife, November 16 - May 31. There were supposed to be campgrounds but after wandering unpaved roads for a few miles and not finding any, we decided to stay in a pullout just over the hill from the rest area.

Looking west the next morning we were treated to a most spectacular sunrise as the sun came over the hill leaving the foreground in darkness and lighting a small hill in the distance under a stormy sky dropping enough rain to produce a rainbow.

Western sunrise, Wagonhound Rest Area, near Elk Mountain, Wyo.

We had breakfast and drove up to the rest area to use the bathrooms and disaster struck. The van wouldn't start. It had started first thing, and the engine turned over well enough, but wouldn't start.

The closest help was at least 50 miles (83 kilometers) away. There was a public phone but it only worked to call police or make collect calls. The caretaker said most cell phones don't work at this location. Ours didn't. We tried calling our insurance agent collect, but it was Saturday so all we got was the answering machine. We asked other people if they had a cell that worked, none did. One couple had a new Buick with OnStar, which is satellite, but it didn't work, nor did their regular cells.

We kept trying until we found Ted & Debbie from San Diego, Calif. who had a cell that worked and we were able call our insurance company’s emergency roadside assistance who found a company that would tow the van to the GMC dealer in Cheyenne for $435 less the $100 provided by the insurance. No other choice.

Before he left, we asked Ted about the recession and he said he'd been a carpenter until things had slowed things down and he'd retrained as a truck driver. He'd voted for Obama and felt that some kind of national health insurance was a good idea, but it was too expensive and was mortgaging the future. Then he and Debbie jumped in their truck and were gone.

Western sunrise, Wagonhound Rest Area, near Elk Mountain, Wyo.

The tow truck didn't show up for over an hour so we had time to talk with the resident caretaker, Lucky, who said that he was the only resident caretaker on Interstate 80 in Wyoming. Curiously enough, he was originally from Salome, Ariz. which isn't so far from where our house is. He still had an Arizona Identity Card although his driver's license and vehicle license were both from Wyoming.

When I asked him if he liked the job, he said, he did and had been at Wagonhound for 14 years. He keeps a 4-wheeler in the small garage next to his trailer and likes to go into the Wildlife Area in summer.

As for the No Camping sign, he said that it only meant something set up in the grassy area, it didn't mean staying overnight in your vehicle. Most of the time there aren't any problems but there's a red phone in his trailer that will have the police here in 15-20 minutes if needs be.

According to Lucky, there are lots of Californians going east as they've lost their homes and when the tax refund from the state comes it's in the form of an IOU. It's OK with him if people need to stay in their vehicles for long periods of time but says "I'm not going to let people do things that jeopardizes my job." When I asked what kind of things that might be, he said, especially selling drugs. In a rest area? Yes, in a rest area: he's had to call the police seven times to come and arrest drug dealers.

AT LAST THE TOW TRUCK ARRIVED. The van was put on the truck and the trailer hitched to the rear with temporary brake and turn signal lights.

Josh, Wagonhound Rest Area, near Elk Mountain, Wyo.

It took the better part of an hour to get to Laramie so we talked with the driver, Josh, about the economic situation. He said the population of Laramie goes up and down by 10,000 because there are quite a few colleges so people are used to some fluctuations in the local economy. A local sawmill had gone out of business and construction is down but the tow business has held steady as there are a lot of people coming through that need help. And not just for mechanical breakdowns: Wyoming gets a lot of wind and blowing snow in winter and every year four to six people need to be pulled off Sherman Summit east of Laramie as they can't handle driving what with the temperatures at -20º F (-29º C) and with winds of 30-60 mph (48-96 kph) blowing snow across the highway.

Josh dropped us off at the Laramie GMC Auto Center who checked the van and said the fuel pump needed to be replaced. Our choice was to either have them get one from NAPA Auto Parts that would be guaranteed for one year and install it that day for $800 or we could wait for two days and have them get and install one from GMC that would be guaranteed for life for $1200. We decided to go for the second choice as we'd already had a fuel pump from NAPA installed less than a year ago and the auto center said we could stay in our trailer out in the parking lot until the new one was installed.

MEANWHILE, MAY-CHAN, OUR 18-YEAR-OLD OSAKA ALLEY CAT wasn't doing well. At first we thought we could wait until the coming Monday before deciding to take her to a vet but she was so much worse the next day, Sunday, that Sueko said she should bring her to a vet immediately. After calling around with our cell, she found the Animal Health Center just a mile or so down the road that handled emergencies and would come and pick us up and take us to the center.

Left to right: Debbie, May-chan, Sueko, Animal Health Center, Laramie, Wyo.

The person in charge was Debbie Finnegan who said that May-chan was dehydrated and had an infected pancreas. In her opinion, there was a 50-50 chance of recovery: the only thing she could do was keep her at the center, put her on a drip and antibiotics along with very small amounts of food every two hours for three days, and see how she was doing. It would be expensive. It was up to Sueko if she wanted to do it; it was up to May if she made it. Sueko made the no-choice choice and May stayed.

This series of reports documents life in small towns along four major highways in the United States during these hard times. It is NOT a survey but an attempt to come a fuller understanding of the land and the people which comprise significant parts of America but are typically un-represented by main-stream media. This is the third section and reports on traveling east through towns along the Lincoln Highway from San Francisco to New York City.

Related Articles

• Lincoln Highway Part-1: Rolling Clouds and Fog at Start of Lincoln Highway
• Lincoln Highway Part-2: Clickety-clack, WHAM, BAM, BAM, BAM
• Lincoln Highway Part-3: Each of the Summits has a Lincoln Highway Marker
• Lincoln Highway Part-4: Begining to Lose Interest in Getting Back to Reality
• Lincoln Highway Part-5: Evanston Still has a Small-town Feeling
• Lincoln Highway Part-6: Disaster Strikes, The Van Won't Start
• Lincoln Highway Part-7: Van Runs, May-Chan Lives
• Lincoln Highway Part-8: Walls of Corn to the Left of You
• Lincoln Highway Part-9: We Were in Trouble before the Recession
• Lincoln Highway Part-10: With Malice Toward None, with Charity for All
• Lincoln Highway Part-11: Lincoln Highway Crossed by Jefferson Highway
• Lincoln Highway Part-12: Lincoln Highway in the Land of Lincoln
• Lincoln Highway Part-13: Ideal Section Starts Lincoln Highway in Indiana
• Lincoln Highway Part-14: Simple life depends on Where you Draw the Line
• Lincoln Highway Part-15: Somewhere Around the Middle of Ohio
• Lincoln Highway Part-16: Crossing through West Virginia into Pennsylvannia
• Lincoln Highway Part-17: Almost the Last Leg of the Journey
• Lincoln Highway Part-18: The Last Lincoln Highway Sign
• Transition to US 60 New York to Virgina Beach

Other Sections

• Section 1: US 95 from Mexico to Canada
• Section 2: US 395 from Canada to California
• Section 4: US 60 from Virginia Beach, Va. to Brenada, Calif.