The Great Grandmother
Ranches are flanked by mountains as the roads lead into town
Mountain roads wind down through the Tetons and the landscape blends slowly from wilderness to ranches. The beginnings of human settlement begin to blend into view like an ombre back into civilization. The drive through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons takes several hours straight through, which presumably no one has ever done because the path is dotted with iconic sights and hidden gems that beg to be explored. At the end of the drive, out the southeast exit of Americas most famous wilderness, sits a small town styled after an imagined wild west from midcentury. Timber faced buildings, charming taxidermied kitsch, and a proud century-old donut shop contour a town so defiantly salt-of-the-earth, its French spelled name Dubois is wrestled flippantly into “Dew-Boyce” on the town’s cowboy tongues.
The Independence Day parade down Main St. is led by a proud Color Guard
I met Billie by recommendation from a shopkeeper on the main street. Minutes before the Independence Day parade washed through the town, a kindly woman behind the counter of a trinket and antique shop jotted down a home phone number on a small blue post-it note. The first float rolled past.
“And here we have our proud ladies showing all of us what it means to Be Strong to the Core, with Be Strong to the Core Fitness center. These ladies all work out three times a week at the fitness center! What’s your excuse?”
The local gym's float makes a strong showing
“That’s Billie right there with the barbell on the front of the float. Looks like you’ll have to wait a while to talk to her. She doesn’t have a cell phone so it’ll be a while before she’s home to take your call. For now we can just enjoy the parade I suppose.”
The town soaked in the excitement of the parade, showing off classic floats, spraying people from the firetruck, rolling an impressive array of old tanks down the street. Everything draped and dressed in American flags, the town holds tight to a memory of its golden time. 1970s era America is the aesthetic language of Dubois; it’s when the town boomed biggest. By the 1980s it had finally, briefly reached a four digit population. But that time is receding into the distance. The town is getting older. The median age is now well over 50, and the character of the town shows the gleaming nostalgia of its population. Billie rode that wave as the town swelled and returned later in life to enjoy it in retirement.
The town's firetruck sprays down the residents on a sweltering July day
“We came here in 1946. My husband always wanted to be in a business and we weren’t making much money but we weren’t making much when we were running it because the profit was so slim. We ran a dry cleaner, the first dry cleaner and the last one ever to be in Dubois. Back then we were struggling to make ends meet, the whole town was, but it was a good little town. It was good to see the ranchers when they’d come into town and talk. We had our kids going to a little log building that was the local school. Of course, that burnt down long ago; they’ve had another 3 schools here since then. We were struggling but enjoying every year.
During the Cold War, United Electrodynamics was outside Dubois with a government contract. They were putting instruments down an old abandoned oil well to monitor for seismic activity from Russian nuclear testing. And this was a big boom for us in the dry cleaning business, they were our very good customers. We did almost all the work there so we got involved with all the customers that came in. My husband Charlie especially, he wanted to know where they came from, how they came here. He got in trouble once for asking people how many cattle they have. And of course, you don’t ask people how many cattle they had, but he was so curious and liked people so much that he couldn’t help carry on this exchange. The director of the monitoring project, Dr. Wolf, came in one day and said, “Charlie, we’re in trouble, we’re out here and all these engineers are busy handling the equipment. We need somebody out there who will do just handyman work, bookkeeping, log keeping, field managing, all the stuff we don’t have time for.” And it dawned on us that he could do that role so I took over the daily operations of the dry cleaner and he became the general fixer for a Cold War seismic monitoring outpost for a good 5 years. From there he worked on a bunch of government contracts around the quietest places in the country for seismic monitoring. The government needed someone who could get something done without all the red tape. If you needed a serviceman he knew who to call, if you needed a fence built, pour concrete, anything he knew how to get it done.”
Billie recounts her stories in Dubois
Billie and her husband Charlie were members of an America that got things done and were rewarded for it. Their time in Dubois was a stepping stone for bigger and better things a little further west. The firm offered them a chance to move to California for more work and a rich local rancher bought their dry cleaner off them to give to his daughter as a gift. People like Billie and Charlie had little trouble landing on their feet in California, even on shaky ground.
“They moved us all around from Oxnard, to a little Arizona town, to Billings, and finally back to Pasadena. That’s where the government contracts expired and we couldn’t see any future for him, not being an engineer. That was during the early 1970s when the economy was really slow, especially for engineers, which made his job scarce too so he was thinking he’d be out of work. But luckily we had a good friend, Ben, who had come out to California and he got Charlie a job. I was able to get a job at a telephone company by then too. That was the work available for women around that time: operators, secretaries, accounting, and clerking. Luckily I was able to move up from being an operator pretty quick, which saved me because I hated being an operator. I got to write orders for installation and handled customer issues.
While we were there my husband was on the school board, the church board, city council, all the various activities. Somewhere in that mix, he got on the boards of the sanitary committee and the homeowners association. When the director retired at the homeowners board Charlie put his name in and then that became his job for 10 years. Charlie got a call one time from Andy, who was a real big shot there, he had a mansion and a collection of 20 or so trophy race cars. He was asking for a garage but the association only allowed up to a 3 car garage. Charlie told him, “Andy, call it a trophy room and we can get it passed.” So as a sort of thanks, we were invited many times to their mansion for dinner. And these dinners would have important or famous people at them like Robert Mitchum and Jonathan Winters sat near us at one. We were just country folk so we were very impressed by all this and we felt like we’d made it!”
A Christmas card from an earlier time
More than the rewards it reaped, Billie’s stories revealed a slice of America that got things done because it was the only option. Whether things were tough or uncertain, they made it work
“I was in junior college and Charlie was in the service in Panama. When he came back from service I was in charge of a May Day pageant at my junior college. I got a call from him from New Orleans and he asked on the phone, “You ready to get married?” And how could I say no? But my folks they were so against it, They were saying, ”oh no no no, you can’t stop you’re education, you were planning to become a teacher, besides you have a job lined up this fall.” Under wartime emergency at that time, a 2-year program would get you your certificate so I was almost graduated with a teaching certificate and my parents couldn’t stomach giving their blessing. Well, I couldn’t say no after my boyfriend had been gone for 2 years in the service. Couldn’t have him come up to Wyoming and meet one of his old girlfriends. I was afraid of taking that chance. So he came by my town for a week of the pageant and eventually got my parents’ blessing. I wrote up the script and narration for the May Day program that was a story of a boy and girl that meet in grade school and date in high school and eventually get married in front of the king and queen. It was the story of our lives up to that point and the marriage scene in the pageant was our real wedding. Of course, the audience had no idea, they thought it was just the script for the pageant. But that was how we got married. And then we headed up here to Wyoming and had some hardships but made it work. Found this little shack for $600 with no refrigerator and bought it. Bought a refrigerator on “time” and started having our kids and making it work. It was hard times early on but we always came through.”
Billie looks back happily on her life
As Billie holds up the rear view mirror to a history beyond most memories, it’s hard to not look at the time with pride and envy of the grit of Americans from that time. But when we talked about freedom, she said something peculiarly revealing about the other half of this equation for American success. People like Billie were people that got things done because they could.
“I don’t think we have as much freedom now, with government regulation and such. But freedom is more the ability to move from one standard of living to another. If you have the chance, you could push to get there.”
As we finished, she offered one more mournful hope for our conversations with each other as Americans
“Supposedly we have freedom of expression without getting in trouble. In some areas now, people are not able to express their feelings without getting into a big fight. The freedom to talk about politics or religion and not be ostracized. More than the legal right to say it, we used to have a culture that accepted and engaged different opinions in conversation. We need to be able to at least talk to one another.”
