Imagine yourself in Wayne City, Missouri at the midpoint of the 19th Century. You sold that booger farm back home, and used the money to buy a new Studebaker wagon and a team of serviceable horses. You, Momma and the kids are packing for the trip west, and a new life in the goldfields.
As soon as you cross the river, you start hearing about the mint juleps that pilgrims are enjoying somewhere along the Sweetwater. Rumors, mostly. Trail talk. But you are intrigued.
So, you buy a gallon of double-rectified skull-buster whiskey at the last bar on the edge of civilization, just in case there is any truth to the rumors, and you join the wagons heading west.
The first couple hundred miles are flatter than a skillet and dry as cotton. The joints in the wagon start to shrink, and the wheels wobble on the axles. Your fine team of horses start to gaunt up, showing you their ribs. But, you keep reminding yourself, this still beats hell out of following a plow around and around in some cornfield back East.
Seems like Momma and the kids have enough patience for a couple of weeks on the Oregon Trail, and after that, they start fussin’ and gripin’. They miss their beds back home, and the constant jostling of the creaky wagon makes them nauseous. Their complaints drown out the jingle of the harness and the squeaks of the wagon.
Turn back? Hell, no! Although the bouncing seat of the wagon is giving you hemorrhoids, you keep reminding yourself of a better life on the West Coast. You’ve been told that, to clear a cornfield in the promised land, a man must plow chunks of gold out of the soil.
The trail starts to rise, and there is a blue line of mountains on the horizon. The team strains, so you start to off-load cargo. The spinet piano first, then the oak desk...anything to lighten the load. Anything but that jug of whiskey.
The team is sore-footed now, and slow. You don’t reach Independence Rock until late July. That means snow will fall as you cross those mountains out West. You remember stories about the Donners.
But you’ve finally reached the Sweetwater, and it’s only a few days until you come upon that boggy meadow that promises ice beneath the surface. You pick sprigs of mint from the willows near Devil’s Gate, and you press onward, parched and jonesing for a cool mint julep.
A few miles upstream from Jeffrey City, the horses sink to their hocks in the bog. You jump off the wagon and grab your shovel.
Digging a foot or so into the peat-like slough, through a muck of composted muskrat carcasses and buffalo dung, your shovel strikes ice the color of frozen urine. But it’s ice!
Momma muddles the mint in an enamel cup, chips off a handful of the reeking ice and pours the cup to the top with rotgut whiskey. You imagine yourself a Kentucky Colonel at the Derby, and the first sip passes your lips.
When the julep hits your gullet, it’s like drinking brimstone distilled in lye, with an after-taste of death on the trail. But you’ve come this far, so you drink it all. Momma keeps making juleps ‘til the jug is empty.
You finally wake up near South Pass, and your hangover lasts until Parting of the Ways. With a throbbing noggin, you regard your choices.
You can take the cut-off west, and reach the Sierras about the time of the first blizzard. Or you can bear south toward Fort Bridger, and eventually into Utah where they don’t allow no drinkin’.
Some choices seem to make themselves.
Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com
