FIVE TWENTY-EIGHT.  A.M.   (although it seemed scarcely a minute past midnight when the frozen ring of the kitchen bell pulled my feet out from their comfortable curled-under between me and the old Army cot, and into the only pair of genuine Levi Strauss bluejeans I had ever owned).

Impulsively, I ran my eyes past every visible inch of hardwood and plaster in the cookhouse that enclosed my new life, until finally they paused to look through a small, shuttered window in the far corner of the kitchen.  Already the summer sun had stolen a glance over the beautiful, uneven Wind River Mountains as the dew from the August morn lifted up to a half-misted sky.

I was sixteen.

The long, gutted dirt road had led me to where I was at that window, a million miles, or maybe just thirty, from civilization as an eighteen-hours-a-day cook for a hungry haycrew on one of the largest cattle ranches in the state of Wyoming.

Smoothing out the wrinkles from my makeshift bedcover and my best red flannel hunting shirt simultaneously, I inhaled a deep satisfaction in the sight of half-harvested gold before me.  

******* 

It was on a late summer's day just like this that I met Muffin.

She was fairly young still, in her late twenties, although we never discussed age, and almost totally without exception wore a frumpy pink bathrobe over her tall, slender frame.  Her chestnut-bark hair was pulled loosely away from an unmade face by a pair of sunglasses, the type generally worn Après-ski, and fell straight to the middle of her back.  No one would have suspected that beneath it all was the mind of an undefeated debater who after graduating with a Masters degree in Egyptian archeology from UCLA turned suddenly into a rancher's wife in remote Wyoming.  In the hours when I was alone in the trenches of the cookhouse, she would come from her palatial ranch house next door, armed only with a pack of Marlboro Lights and a rhinestone-studded ashtray, and open my mind.

I always wondered why such a beauty would submerge itself in the Wyoming wilds.  She had been raised a Beverly Hills urchin, and to make certain I knew it, reminded me regularly that her father had been president of United Artists.  I remember vividly how she would describe her childhood days sitting on Marlon Brando's doorstep, while together we slapped sourdough hotcakes on a spitting griddle.

Despite her provenance, never once did I ever see her actually fully dressed, and then it was in a pair of frayed Levis and one of her husband's shirts.  She was on her way to town, and the half-hour trip would take her among other stops to the library.  Did I want her to bring back a book for me? she asked.  I told her I was anxious to finish reading "Summerhill," a book about a private school in England.

She sunk immediately into the nearest chair.  "Honey, I've been there." 

The entire afternoon became a reconstruction of her student years at Summerhill, filed with tales of being expelled along with Mia Farrow for playing hookey as teenagers.

I don't think Muffin ever made it to the library that day.

*******

Three times daily I rang a bell that signaled the beginning of an eight-course meal.  In her occasional spurts of ambition, Muffin would come help me reposition each of the thirty-two place settings on the long, white pine table in the dining hall as one-by-one the men staggered in and dipped their burned, unshaven, college-boy faces in the washbucket near the screen door.  We had no modern plumbing facilities in the cookhouse, except for a 40's porcelain double-sink for cooking and washing dishes; everything else had to be taken care of either at the outhouse out back or the Green River that wound clearly around the front of the ranch buildings.

I learned from the first day never to argue with Muffin; either I agreed with her or I kept my silence.  The men hated her, always gullible enough to let her take them down with her words.  It was such an art to her, this debating--lobbing slow, careful tennis balls to unsuspecting opponents with fragile egos.  She'd castrate them to tears.

*******

To venture anywhere near an appreciation of Muffin or the mysterious life she inhabited, one had to tour the ranch house, a privilege few were afforded.

It was marvelous.  I happened to be there the day a several thousand dollar imported carpet was being installed in her bedroom on the second floor. 

The maze of rooms was decorated with everything from wagon-wheel chandeliers to obscene eyecharts.   There were nearly a dozen telephones in the house, the one in the kitchen next to a list of numbers including everyone from Ethel Merman to the Pope.  The most fantastic room in the ranch house was, however, her own private bath, which was drenched in blue from one wall to the next and had a large Desiderata poster hanging over a magnificent gold-leaf dressing table.  Once or twice she granted me the rare privilege of having an afternoon off to bathe there, instead of taking my usual dip in the Green.  Always there was a handful of change loosely cast about the dressing table, and always, I left something of mine on top of the change, knowing she likely counted it before and after I left.  Predictably, she'd return with my leave behind.

*******

I have endless memories of those days, days I thought only sweat could buy my friends, afternoons of exploring deserted buildings, chasing after unbroken horses with lumps of sugar, accompanying a freckled, sandy-haired five-year-old boy to an old, rotting shed near the stables to milk the cows, discovering the latest litter of cottontails abandoned under a nest of straw.  When my chores were done at day's end, I would go to the bunkhouse to watch the men run their fingers lovingly over the twelve-strings, or cram into a Volkswagen with half of the hired help and head for a Saturday night picture show.

Nothing escaped Muffin's attention.  Wherever any of us was, she knew about it somehow.

*******

Muffin flew away on one of those calm, harvest mornings, leaving ranch and husband behind, but she left me contemplating Egyptian artifacts on the old, tattered brown sofa in the corner of the bunkhouse, with her treasured copy of the "Last Whole Earth Catalogue" resting in my tired hands.

I suppose the sourdough and army cots are still there.

(The above tale of my adventures cooking for a Wyoming hay crew at the age of sixteen, mostly true, worn by time, was written a year later, at the age of seventeen.   Photo of a Wyoming ranch and mountain range courtesy the Diamond X Guest Ranch.  For more insights into the setting of this story, and cattle ranching in Sublette County, Wyoming, see Miller Land and Livestock and  "To Ride the Circle," in the July-August 2000 issue of American Cowboy.)

I went looking for some really great sourdough hotcakes photos to give you a sense of the story, and found this wonderful recipe from barefootkitchenwitch, along with these incredible photos.  I recommend to appreciate the story fully you soak up her page here on Sourdough Hotcakes (Plain or Blueberry), and get inspired to go make a sourdough starter.  Picture me getting up first thing every morning the summer I was sixteen and reaching into the bin for the sourdough, adding lots of flour and water, and making hotcakes for over thirty people.  Imagine the smell of coffee and crisp bacon.  You'll get the idea.

barefootkitchenwitch:  Sourdough Hotcakes - Plain or Blueberry