Dev WFC

Greetings from the open road where Meg Glaser and I are meeting with staff at Bend's High Desert Museum to organize bringing their exhibit, Buckaroo! The Hispanic Heritage of the High Desert to the Western Folklife Center in January 2005. Buckaroo! chronicles the history of vaquero and buckaroo culture in the American Great Basin, and will become a featured exhibit at the Western Folklife Center for the next five years.
Meg and I traveled up through the Nevada and the Oregon High Desert, and on the way up we stopped in Winnemucca to eat at our favorite mid-Nevada restaurant, The "Good Cookin'" Griddle. It's a very local kind of place with 1960's horsey pictures on the walls and waitresses capable of balancing five plates on one arm - a skill you don't often see these days. They have a Zumex machine on the counter, which makes fantastic fresh squeezed orange juice, and jars of by-product homemade orange marmalade for sale by the cash register. And hanging on the wall near the front door, in a clear seat of honor, is a letter written by a young Jolene Waldman from Cloverdale, CA. She writes, "I think the food is great considering I don't like to eat." The food is great, and we do like to eat.

When we got to Bend we met up with Tom & Carol Gamm - Tom has volunteered for us at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering for years - and they took us to their favorite seafood place, High Tide, for a delicious meal.

After our meetings at the High Desert Museum Meg and I stopped in Bonanza, Oregon, to visit with Mary Fields, a buckaroo and rawhide braider, who has promised to try to come to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering this year and share her poetry and skills with us. Mary played us some piano tunes and told us some wonderful stories about her life.

On the way home to Elko, after 500 miles of driving and after nearly hitting three rabbits, a bat, numerous deer, a grey wolf-type creature, and a barn cat, Meg and I decided to call it quits and stop in Winnemucca for the night. We had a little guidance from our friend Nick Spitzer, who was spinning harvest tunes on the radio for his show American Routes and keeping us awake. When we reached Winnemucca he was playing "Stay a Little Longer." We took this as a subliminal message and headed straight for Scott Shady Court Motel. We're now well rested and headed for home.

Christina Barr
Winnemucca, Nevada