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Roamin' Wyomin': Circlin' Great Divide Basin by Tom Cullen 314 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0495; ISBN 1-4120-0127-7; US$25.50, C$28.99, EUR21.00, £15.00 Off to Sweetwater County's Great Divide Basin: to its still-empty high desert country. Off to Tri-Territory area, marking common boundaries once claimed by France, Mexico and the British Empire.
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About the Book
During two and three week periods in each of the last seven late-summers, I have wandered about southwest Wyoming's highways and two-track trails...learning much about the geographies of Great Divide Basin and many interesting sites immediately surrounding that awesome, fascinating, wind-blown and sun-burnished stretch of high desert, making too short, pleasurable journeys into nostalgia. During these seductive and productive travels, my eyes, ears, nose, hands and feet have researched, catalogued and accessioned much new material. Memories will lure me back for more.
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About the Author
Tom Cullen was born into a coal miner's family at Rock Springs, "The greatest coal camp west of Missouri", on the western edge of Great Divide Basin in September 1915, spending his first summer on his parent's 160 acre homestead near Boulder, in 1916.
His working experience includes stints as ditch digger, gandy dancer, fruit picker, cannery worker, meat packing house worker, sawmill worker, sheetmetal worker, drug company stock control manager, caatalogue librarian and freelance writer.
He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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Sample Excerpts
Introduction
I have a love affair with Wyoming. I suspect that I come by it naturally, for I had the good fortune to be born at Rock Sprigs in 1915 and to spend
the summer of my first year on my parents' 160 acre homestead
in Section 21, T30 N, R106 W, Sublette County, two
miles south of Bertoncelj's Ranch on the Muddy, still known
to local ranchers as Cullen Draw.
My father reluctantly abandoned the homestead that
summer of 1916, (my mother "didn't want to leave the
sidewalks"), returned his family to Rock Springs and went
back to his job digging coal at Blairtown Mine. This allowed
me to grow up and receive my schooling through high
school at Rock Springs and to spend idyllic, carefree weekends
wandering the hills and climbing White Mountain.
As a youngster, during those halcyon years, I bragged
shamelessly about Wyoming to newcomers, savored and
took great delight in the tall tales and exaggerations of
friends and, on occasion, contributed to the mix. When
friends and neighbors moved away and enduring friendships
were broken, I was perplexed, silently questioning the
necessity of such drastic steps. Why? Why would anyone
Tom Cullen
leave Wyoming? I believed it to be downright disloyal to
even think of leaving. I moved to the West Coast in 1938,
but still considered Rock Springs and Wyoming home,
feeling that I never really left since my heart remained
behind.
Years later, on a visit to Rock Springs and vicinity, I
stopped at an overlook above Flaming Gorge. A car pulled
up alongside, a man and a woman came forward, and we
began talking. They were from the east, had flown to Salt
Lake City, rented a car, and begun a leisurely trip around
Wyoming. Our conversation focused briefly, but earnestly,
on Wyoming's scenic attractions and beauty. "We just can't
get enough of it," the man volunteered. His short statement
brought smiles and the realization that he had put into
words what I had felt for a lifetime. I can't get enough of
Wyoming either.
During two and three-week periods in each of seven
late-summers, I have wandered southwest Wyoming's
highways and two-track trails accompanied by traveling
companion George Brox of Rawlins, with friends from the
Rock Springs area and, at times, alone, learning much about
the geographies of Great Divide Basin and many interesting
sites immediately surrounding that awesome, fascinating,
wind-blown and sun-burnished stretch of high desert,
making too-short, pleasurable journeys into nostalgia,
pleased to be once again back in my home state. During
these seductive and productive travels, my eyes, ears, nose,
hands, and feet have researched, catalogued, and
Roamin' Wyomin'
accessioned much new material. Memories will lure me
back for more.
Recently, while again looking through my 1933 Rock
Springs High School yearbook, I found the poem, "Father to
Son," among news clippings and items placed for safekeeping
in the annual's front pages. The last four lines of the
third stanza of the poem by the late "Rocky Mountain Bill"
Stroud, colorful former Rock Springs personality, renowned
climber and photographer of the Wind Rivers, and foreign
traveler, make this statement:
Say if you will I'm often wrong,
But with my faults strewn out before you
Remember this your whole life long:
T'was I who chose your mother for you!
Stroud's words now prompt me to belatedly thank and
honor my father for choosing my mother for me and to
honor both my father and mother for choosing my home
state and home town. My father, born in Ireland, left
England's Newcastle coal fields in 1905; stopped off at Butte,
Montana, then Mecca to immigrating Irish; found hard-rock
mining not to his liking, and journeyed south to the coal
mines at Rock Springs. My mother arrived in Rock Springs
from Usworth Colliery, County Durham, England in 1909,
married my father in Rock Springs and, with the exception
of short stays at coal towns‹Mineral, Kansas and Witt,
Illinois, my parents lived in Rock Springs until my father
Tom Cullen 12
retired in 1938 as foreman at Lion Coal Company's Blairtown
Mine.
As a youngster, I enjoyed walks to the mine with my
father on summer afternoons when the mine was idle,
stopping at the power house and machine shop to visit
friends, and occasionally going down the steep main slope
into the mine, carbide lamps in hand, walking between the
rails on the short, narrow ties. I recall other summer afternoons
when I accompanied my father to the upstairs Labor
Temple meeting hall at the corner of North Front and J
Streets. After a few such trips, I became aware of a developing
pattern when my father greeted his fellow miners. If we
met a miner singly, my father greeted him by name, but if
we met groups of miners, he shouted, "Hello, this place!" I
look forward to returning many more times to Wyoming,
Rock Springs, and Great Divide Basin, repeating under my
breath my father's favorite, all-inclusive greeting, "Hello, this
place."
Catalogue Information
