With reluctance he drove into the high mountains to visit the ugliest town in America. As he reached the top of the steep ascent and looked down into the valley he felt compelled to record his thoughts:
This used to be one of the loveliest spots in North America. That stream was crystal, filled with beaver. Those bare flanks were covered with trees. Deer and elk abounded, and the mountains stood like sentinels protecting it. My ancestors discovered the place, and that old Indian I told you about found gold here.
Well, no spot anywhere in the world, no matter how lovely, can withstand the discovery of gold ... or oil. Look at this abhorrent thing—no trees, a fouled stream, no wildlife except dogs left to die by summer visitors. The old opera house rotting, the railroad trestle falling in—and those goddamned neon signs.
Before the first open sewer had been laid down the middle of Main Street, the town of Blue Valley had been a disgrace. For sheer destruction of nature, it took the prize in a state which had so often defiled its finest treasures. Not a single redeeming feature had been built into the town, and those that remained stood as memorials to man’s greed and insensitivity.
“The whole damned thing should be burned to the ground,” Garrett mumbled as he drove into town. But then he slammed on the brakes and studied the problem anew, spotting here and there some old building which might be restored for travelers to gawk at:
The mind of man is provoked to speculation by ruins, and the paintings of Hubert Robert that show the desolation of Rome, or the dark, powerful etchings of Piranesi showing the ruins of those somber castles excite us. Maybe the committee’s right. Maybe we could salvage something that would remind the city traveler of the past.
He looked disconsolately at the awful modern excrescences that monopolized the town-the hot-dog stands built like hot dogs, the Moorish motels, the towering neon signs, the trash in the gutter, the preposterous architecture, and everywhere the assault on taste and judgment. Even the ski slope, built at enormous expense, was contaminated. In winter, candy-bar wrappers lay frozen in the snow. In summer, they mingled with beer cans and broken bottles:
It’s beyond redemption. Everything about it is wrong. Look at how the highway stupidly crosses and recrosses the stream which can no longer be seen. The only possible salvation for this place would be to hire gigantic helicopters with huge dredges to fly over it, day after day, and fill the whole valley with earth and hope that within a couple of hundred years the eroding stream might create something lovely again.
The worst awaited him in the town itself, where a group of men representing saloons and motels had gathered to outline their ideas for the centennial.
“What we have in mind,” the spokesman said, “is the recreation of scenes which will inspire the visitor and give him a feel of the old west. We’re gonna take that building on Main Street and false-front it into a Wells Fargo station. Every day at noon a band of outlaws—we can hire eight cowboys at a price we can afford—will hold up the stage, and a big gun battle will last for about five minutes. Jeff, tell him about the hangin’.”
“Well, we figure that for less than a hundred dollars we can erect a gallows over there, where we have lots of parkin’, and at three each afternoon we’ll enact the hangin’ of Dirty Louie and Belle Beagle Now, we know that the actual execution took place about four miles up the stream—charge was claim jumpin’ and her bein’ a whore and all that—but we figure no one’ll complain if we move it into town.
“The highlight comes at seven o’clock each night. We’re gonna rename the saloon ‘The Bucket of Blood’ and come sundown we’re gonna reenact the shootin’ of the Pettis boys. We’ve contacted Floyd Calendar and he’s agreed to play the part of his grandfather-Amos Calendar, the one who gunned them down—”
“Say,” a motelkeeper asked Garrett, “wasn’t one of your kinfolk involved in that shootin’?”
“Yes. And so was Harvey Brumbaugh’s.”
“Do you think that on the actual anniversary we could get you and Brumbaugh to join Calendar and come down the Main Street blazin’ away? We could have television and it’d make every station in the country.”
The dismal plans went on and on—the whores, the dry-gulching, the bank robbery, the runaway stagecoach. As Garrett listened he wondered if these men had any comprehension of western history. Did they think it was all murder and mayhem? Didn’t they know that ordinary men and women also settled the west, and that most of them had deplored the very excesses this committee wanted to celebrate. Jim Lloyd had left a brief memento of his foray into the mountains in search of the Pettis boys:
From that moment on I have never handled a gun. I have found even the shooting of a rattlesnake abhorrent, and I recommend to all my descendants that they keep away from firearms, for I have found that they do far more damage to good men than to evil.
At lunch the committee presented its one good idea. The chairman said, “We’ve saved this till last, because we know you’ll like it. What we’re going to do is put a big billboard on every major road leading into the state. We’ll tell the tourists, ‘Come to Blue Valley and Eat Like the Pioneers Ate.’ ” With this he snapped his fingers, and the cooks brought out the sourdough bread, the beans and onions, the johnnycake and the elk meat.
It was an imaginative concept, and Garrett was loath to discourage the men. Such a meal, served on red-checked oilcloth in a rough surrounding, might prove popular with tourists. The other proposals were offensive, and Garrett wanted nothing to do with them, but he had to concede that these men would do no worse damage to the valley than their predecessors had already done.
Grudgingly he told them, “If you can scrape up forty or fifty thousand dollars to clean this town up ... and build some false fronts ...”
“Then you’ll play your grandfather in the big shoot-out?”
He smiled. “As chairman of the statewide committee, I mustn’t show any partiality.”
“Of course. We’re gonna call our show ‘Ghost Town Lives Again.’ ”
“I wasn’t aware you’d ever been a ghost town.”
“Well, we fudge the history ... a little, here and there.”
On Thursday, November 22, Garrett took Harvey Brumbaugh aside before the beginning of the committee hearing and told him, “Blue Valley has made us an offer we can’t refuse. We’re to wear revolvers, stalk down Main Street, and gun down the Pettis boys again.”
“I can hardly wait,” Brumbaugh said, brushing aside the levity. “Let’s get your lynching party over with.” He sat erect in the chair reserved for him, placed both hands on the table and said, “I suppose you gentlemen have reached a conclusion?”
“We have,” the chairman said. “Harvey, much as it pains me ... well, the health problem ... the smell ... the future plans for Centennial ... We’ve studied everything and we can reach only one conclusion.”
“You want me to move my feed lot out of here?”
“We do,” the chairman said placatingly. “Now, we don’t want you to move too far. Ten, fifteen miles maybe. The workers at the lot want to stay with you.”
“How soon?” Brumbaugh asked coldly.
“We’re not going to rush you. Eight ... nine months.”
One member said brightly “We hear you’ve taken an option on some of the Volkema land out at Line Camp. That would be just great.”
Brumbaugh pushed himself away from the table to survey carefully the ecologists who were driving him out of business, and when his eyes met Garrett’s he gave a slight wink. “Gentlemen,” he said slowly, “I may have a surprise for you.”
He was imposing that morning—fifty-six years old, tough-minded like Potato Brumbaugh, and one of the wealthiest cattlemen in the west. He had prospered by being ready at any moment to make unpalatable decisions. The citizens of Centennial had considered him crazy when he sold his bottom lands along the Platte, but he had seen earlier than they that sugar beets were a dying proposition. They had predicted failure when he devised his plan for buying y
oung steers and fattening them scientifically, absorbing the risks of the market, so that if prices went up he made a fortune, which he could easily lose if they dropped. He was the new type of westerner, the revolutionary entrepreneur, and for some time he had been anticipating the day when ecological considerations would force him to abandon his huge feed lot. Indeed, the closing down of the sugar-beet plant, with its resultant loss of pulp, would make a change of location desirable for him, so as an opportunist in the good sense of the word he welcomed the committee’s decision.
Garrett could not anticipate what his long-time friend was about to do, so he listened attentively as Brumbaugh said, “For some months past I’ve been weighing the merits of a change, and your decision this morning forces my hand. I think we’d better call in the press.”
The chairman coughed nervously. “Are you sure this is the time?”
“Quite sure,” Brumbaugh replied, winking again at Garrett, and as the men waited for the reporters, Brumbaugh asked, “Aren’t you weighing some rather serious decisions of your own, Paul?”
Garrett flushed, then said, “None that I know of.” In fact, he was perplexed on many points, but he did not care to discuss any of them with his neighbors.
“I mean about your Herefords.” Garrett tried not to betray emotion, and Brumbaugh continued: “I heard in Montana the other day that Tim Grebe was heading down this way, and in our business, when Tim Grebe shows up, it means only one thing.”
“He could be heading for Denver,” Garrett said evasively.
“They said he was coming to Venneford,” Brumbaugh said, staring at Garrett.
Now the reporters filed in, and Brumbaugh addressed them: “For some time the citizens of Centennial have opposed, and rightly so I think, the continuance of my feed lots on the edge of town. Reasons of health, sanitation and odor have been advanced, and I concur. Gentlemen, I’m in a position to announce that starting immediately, I shall move.”
The chairman interrupted to say, “Mr. Brumbaugh is taking his lots out to Line Camp. So we won’t really lose the benefits of his operation, only the smell.”
This brought smiles, which Brumbaugh halted with an announcement that stunned his listeners: “I’m dividing the lots into two halves. One part will locate west of Ottumwa, Iowa. The other part, northeast of Macon, Georgia.”
“Can Centennial survive?” the reporter from the Clarion asked. “Losing Central Beet on Tuesday, Brumbaugh Feed Lots on Thursday?”
“Centennial’s always survived,” Brumbaugh said. “It’ll adjust to this new situation.” After allowing this harsh conclusion to be digested, he added, “Newspapers and radio stations should be preparing citizens for the time, perhaps not far distant, when even the famous cattle ranches in this area will have to close down. You can’t run Herefords on land worth two thousand dollars an acre. Especially if your aquifers run dry and you have to import hay. I’m taking my feed lots to where the rain is ... to where hay is abundant. If you take away my beet pulp, I have to go to the cottonseed cake.”
That was a gloomy night in Centennial, for many families were hit by the dual loss. “Is the town finished?” descendants of the pioneers asked. “Are we to go the way of Line Camp and Wendell?” The town banker, who saw two substantial accounts vanishing, told his wife, “It’s possible for every banking need in this town to be supplied from Greeley, or better yet, Denver. All we’re left with is a holding operation, and that has never appealed to me. I think we’d better reconsider that job offer in Chicago.”
It was on November 23 that the hardest blow for Garrett fell. Early that morning a large red Cadillac sped south from Cheyenne, pulling up at the Venneford Ranch. It was driven by Tim Grebe, now fifty-one years old, a handsome, florid-faced cattle salesman from eastern Montana. After the slaughter of his family he had lived with Walter Bellamy, the former land commissioner, who had sent him to the agricultural college at Fort Collins, where he had graduated near the top of his class. He had been hired by a large Hereford rancher in Wyoming, and some years ago had left that job to become managing partner in a very large ranch put together in Montana by a Texas oilman. He had gained fame as an innovator and in recent years had traveled widely throughout the west, helping ranchers revitalize their herds, introducing new methods and new types of exotic European cattle.
He had trained himself to be a master persuader, and as he put down his teacup he looked directly at Garrett and spoke with that gentleness which had earned him a leading position in the industry: “Paul, I’m an old Hereford man myself. I can remember the psychological wrench I suffered when I had to give up my herd, and I understand how men feel when they finally decide to protect themselves.” And from his papers he produced that famous newspaper photograph from the year 1936. It was enclosed in plastic and showed a fourteen-year-old Timmy embracing a Hereford.
“I remember that,” Garrett said. “I was nine,” and he remembered, too, the other events of that fatal day. Tim Grebe exploited his photograph for that very reason; when ranchers recalled the gruesome deaths at Line Camp, they were more apt to be receptive to Grebe. He was no longer a big-shot rancher from Montana with brash ideas and the million-dollar Texas bank account. He was a country boy who had survived his own hell.
“So when I come to reason with you, Paul, I come as a friend who’s been through the mill. Let me tell you,” and he accented the word you slightly, “what your real position is.” And he ticked off each of the problems that had been concerning Garrett.
“First, your Herefords are not entirely freed from the dwarfism introduced by Charlotte Lloyd and her fancy experts. You clung to the Emperor line too long. Great bulls for exhibiting in hotel lobbies during the stock shows. Fatal when it came to breeding. To eliminate the errors Emperor introduced, you’ve got to have new blood.
“Second, your Hereford yearlings don’t weigh enough. You’ve watched ranchers who’ve switched to the exotics shipping their steers off to market eight weeks ahead of you and saving all that feed.
“Third, and this isn’t of top importance, because of light pigmentation the Hereford has always been subject to eye cancer and udder burn. You can eliminate both these faults with a simple crossbreeding.
“Fourth, your cows, when they do have calves, never produce enough milk to fatten them.” He paused and lifted his empty cup.
“Want some more of that tea?” Garrett asked quietly. Skillfully Grebe had identified each weakness Paul had been pondering.
“That’s a great tea. Sort of smoky. What’s in it?”
“Special blend my family’s been drinking for generations. Cured with tar.” He sipped from his own cup, then said with awkward sincerity, “I appreciate your coming.”
“Let’s look at your problem from a detached point of view, and believe me, Paul, you can consult anyone you wish, and if they’re honest, they’ll tell you about the same. So I invite you to check up on every statement I make.” He drank deeply of the hot tea and continued.
“If you stick to pure Herefords, Paul, it’ll take years to tighten up your herd, and even then you’ll have made no progress on the big items that mean money. So I say bluntly, ‘You’ve got to crossbreed.’ You’ve got to introduce new blood in new ways, painful though the thought may be.”
“I’m prepared.”
“Good. Now, you can do it in two ways. The Curtiss people have some truly great bulls and they’ll sell you semen for artificial insemination. Pick the right breed and the right bull, and you can turn your herd around in five years. First year you get half-bred cattle. Second year you get three-fourths. Third year it’s seven-eighths. And in the fourth year you get fifteen-sixteenths, which in our profession counts as full bred. I’ve used A.I. and it works. You breed more of your cows, and you breed them in the first estrus cycle, which means ninety-six more pounds per calf at the end of the growing season as compared to the cow that gets caught only in the fourth “estrus cycle.”
He leaned back, allowing Garrett time to dige
st the arguments of the opposition. “If you want to go A.I., I can put you in touch with two fine young men who work for Curtiss, and they’ll have the semen out here the minute you want it. But I earnestly advise you to consider my way.”
“That’s why I asked you to come down,” Garrett said.
“Good. Paul, I’m going to hit you with a blizzard of revolutionary ideas, so fasten your seat belt. I want you to buy, from me, if you like the breed I’ve elected, sixty young bulls, thirty of them half-bred at four hundred and fifty dollars each, thirty of them three-quarters bred at six hundred each. That’s an initial investment of thirty-one thousand, five hundred and it sounds like a lot, but let me show you how you can amortize it overnight. I want you to sell every one of your Hereford bulls to the bologna manufacturers—they’re paying top dollar these days because they want tough, tasty old meat. I can get you a very good contract, and you wind up owing me less than ten thousand dollars, which I’ll spread out over three years.”