Still in Big Piney!

To get a feel for the size of the town, the center row of the movie theater was only 6 seats wide, and there were either one or two seats on the other side of the aisle!

 Mail came to town once a day and when it did, there was a big crowd at the post office, which was about the size of Mom's house on Walnut Street! There were pick-ups parked every which way. We always got our mail "General Delivery", or Gen Del as it was abbreviated.  We would go to the window and say, "General Delivery for Perry" and the clerk would go through all the letters(probably m-n-o & p previously alphabetized) and hand over any letters for us.

During the summer, there was a BIG barbecue.  A whole steer was cooked and lots of other dishes were available.  I was asked to help along with one of my friends, Judy Murry.  I was glad to have the money, but that was not an issue with Judy, so on the day of the barbecue, she showed up and told the :Lady in Charge" that she forgot that she had to go shopping with her mom in some other town! (Of course it had to be in some other town....both of the stores in Big Piney were General Stores that sold everything from bread to jeans! Not really good places for "shopping!")

Anyway, I did a good job at the barbecue. As I recall, one of the workers had to be moved to another spot so I just started doing what she was doing as well as my tasks. The "Lady in Charge" was Elaine, of Elaine's Cafe.  She offered me a job as waitress and I was glad to get it. Although I did not know it by name, I worked a split shift.  From VERY early in the morning to mid morning, then again at the dinner hour. This made sense because we were slammed in the morning with oil field workers, some of whom had their lunches packed at Elaine's, then not much happened until they got off work and came to dinner.

This was a difficult job for me to learn.  Our family did not eat out, so I had no idea about "a la carte" or otherwise.  I took veal cutlets to a table that had ordered pork chops and made a lot of other mistakes.After all was said and done, I did learn and was asked to serve the "Cattlemen's Meeting" dinner.  I had never seen such big tips! Wow! Some of them left $5!  Most of my paycheck went for school clothes via Sears & Roebuck! I believe I worked there until school started.

Although Big Piney was a small town, the school drew from neighboring ranches.  The classes that I remember had probably 15-20 students. The football team played with 5 men.  Of course, so did the opponents, but it did seem a little strange to me.

One of the founding families was the Budd family.  There were two Budd sisters in school and the school was named for their grandmother!  The report cards were delivered to the classrooms by the principal.  We (Ginger and I) were in band when he came in and announced that two sets of sisters had the highest grades in the school, the Budd sisters and the Perry sisters! That impressed the locals who tended to look on "construction folk" as second rate.

The weather determined when we left that job.  Since it was outside work, and Big Piney was known as the "Ice Box" of the nation, it was around Thanksgiving that we left.  We went back to G'burg for a visit, then to Fruita, Colorado. (That is where Jan enters the picture!)