SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Old Ranchers

by Larry Gabriel

Some people think the "Old West" is a bygone era. They are wrong. All the best of it lives in the hearts of people like Wayne Hage and his wife Helen Chenoweth-Hage.

Never heard of them? Wayne is the Nevada rancher who fought the federal government over water rights on his ranch for more than twenty years. Helen is a former Idaho Congresswoman who married Wayne in 1999.

The whole thing started back in 1978 when Wayne found and bought the ranch of his dreams. As it turned out, some federal officials were dreaming of the same place and wanted it for a park or wilderness area.

Wayne owned the place only about two months before federal officers tried to "buy" it for about half of what he paid. Maybe there are people dumb or scared enough to take such an offer, but not in the West. The fight was on.

Most of what Wayne bought was vested water rights and related improvements on leased federal lands surrounding his private tract of 7,000 acres. All the government wanted to pay for was his deeded acres.

They figured they could get the rest away from him without paying for it. The federal officers proceeded to make life difficult for him and even filed competing water rights claims. They were wrong about water rights.

Water rights are traditionally established by state law and governed by state law. They could take away his lease by simply not renewing it, but the water rights and related improvements were property, under state law.

However, in the process of proving that (over the course of ten years of legal battles), Wayne was forced to sell his herd.

In one sense, you could say the government officials won. They outlived Wayne and they put him out of business, but they didn't win. If you do an internet search on Wayne's name, you will find it on 199,000 pages. Many of the leaders of the states' rights and property rights organizations of America knew him personally.

A person from the East once asked, "Why is it that only the Western States fundamentally grasp the concept of states' rights?" The reason we understand is simple. Everyday we look at a mountain, a valley, a field or stream and know who gives us our rights. We also know that Congress has only the rights we choose to give them and no others.

States' rights and property rights are everything. They are the foundation of our nation and we still understand and respect that foundation. We also know that anyone has only the rights for which they are willing to fight. The rest is just paper.

As Wayne said, "Either you have a right to own property, or you are property."

Wayne is not gone. Old ranchers never really die. They just go to seed. New life will spring from the seeds he planted.

Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture


Varmints need water too; the fuzzy, feathered, or two-legged variety

By Julie Carter

It's dry, it's a drought and yes, it seems to be getting worse. Now we are setting "drought" records. Not the kind of record to make anyone very proud.

The hot winds blow every afternoon and take away any clouds that might want to ponder in the sky. It moves them across the state so possibly it rains somewhere.

The humidity levels are ranging in the single digits to low teens that's the "dry heat" we hear folks talk about.

Wells and springs that have served ranchers for generations are coughing, choking, and sputtering with a death rattle warning of catastrophic consequences. You can feed livestock when you are out of grass but out of water means out of business.

If you ever once thought the ranchers were not tending to the wildlife during the day to day business of caring for livestock, a drought drives that point home hard. Usually the only water available in the majority of the local ranch country is water pumped to the surface by a rancher. All forms of wildlife have moved to the water holes.

The fenced highways have become a death trap for the antelope who find the only green food to eat to be in the right-of-ways.

Pastures along an 80-mile route that I drive every week have noticeably no grass, few if any cattle and an unusual number of highway casualty antelope carcasses providing buzzard feed. It is a "blight" staring every driver in the face.

In three consecutive days I've had close encounters in my yard with varmints I would just as soon not meet in the dark. A snake, family of raccoons and a skunk not that any one of those is unusual but so many in a row so close together isn't the norm.

The antelope have brazenly become part of a mowing operation on the perimeter of the yard. They are hungry enough that they barely look up as I step out the door and leave only if I head out the gate.

I drove to White Oaks today to do an interview for a story. For those of you that are not from around here, White Oaks is tiny old-west town that should have died after the mining boom of the 1880's and didn't. Going to White Oaks is a 125-year step back in time where you might tie your horse to a hitchin' rail but don't plan on filling up with gasoline or buying a burger anywhere and the folks that live there hope to keep it that way.

It was the middle of the day, middle of the week. But the White Oaks watering hole, also known as the No Scum Allowed Saloon, had a full-parking lineup in front and the bar stools, and possibly the patrons, were loaded.

Two-legged varmints and other folks of genteel persuasion—known as tourists—found shade and liquid refreshment while they waited for the ghosts of famous Lincoln County lawmen, gunfighters and cattlemen to drop by.

There are a lot of good folks looking upward these days. They look up with hope for a cloud and they look up to pray. Those same folks wear long tired faces of worry while they stay awake nights trying to figure out how to outlast the drought.

They know two things for certain. Today, although it didn't rain, is one day closer to the day it will. And when it does, it will be needed.

© Julie Carter 2006


The cowboy’s lesson in fine wine

By Julie Carter

A pretty girl will stop a cowboy in his tracks every time. He will then do and say things he would have taken bets against if you had asked him prior to the pretty girl. This story is one of those times.

Ron was a good cowboy working for a good rancher with plenty of New Mexico country to tend. He was also aware this man had a daughter in an Ivy League college somewhere in the direction of “back East.”

Winter had passed, heifers were about done calving, brandings were on the horizon and summer would soon be here. Life was good.

Then this cowboy’s world turned upside down when Pretty Girl came home for Spring Break.

The celebratory barbeque at the ranch gave Ron a little time to visit with Pretty Girl and he knew right-off she was way out of his social league as she chatted about opera, Broadway openings and formal dinner parties. The closest he could hope for was to hold his own at wine tasting. How hard could it be?

Like most cowboys, Ron liked to help the Colorado folks out with their brewery success and occasionally tried to help out the Kentucky folks with their sour mash business. He knew he was going to have to get some schooling on the finer points of wine tasting.

Cowboys are experts at many things, capable of hard work with cattle, horses, fences, and equipment as well as making the hard business decisions required for a modern ranching operation. What they don’t know, they aren’t afraid to ask from someone who has a few more years and little more experience.

After conferring with a few of the hands in the bunkhouse that night, it was the general consensus an expert was required. Their collective thoughts pointed in the direction of the windmill man who was known to be able to fix anything and tell you a little but about just about everything.

In a phone call to this recommended universal expert, Ron was briefed on vintage, bouquet, body, sediment and all the various attributes of fine wine. The windmill man spoke with such knowledge and authority, the cowboy was duly impressed. He gave a brief pause of curious thought as to where this windmill man might have gotten his knowledge, but was in no position to question it.

It was clear his plan would be to invite Pretty Girl to share a little wine with him next time she was home.

Back to work he went, taking more notice than ever of the possibilities of the ranch. In his daydreams he envisioned Pretty Girl bringing him his supper after a hard day’s work on the ranch he had married. By the time she actually came home again, he was in love.

It was summer and the cowboy invited her on a picnic to a pretty spot on the ranch with wine to be the main feature. They set a date and time and the cowboy whistled his way through his work for several days.

As will happen at a ranch, things didn’t go as planned. He was down to choosing between a trip to town to get the wine or helping a late calving heifer through her ordeal. In a bind, he called the windmill man who agreed to bring him some wine in plenty of time for the big date.

Shined up, washed behind the ears and everything, Ron picked the girl up at the boss’s house and headed down the road to the spot on the creek he liked best. They talked and laughed and the afternoon progressed about as smoothly as he could have hoped.

He might have actually realized his dream of capturing Pretty Girl and the ranch -- if only the windmill man had thought to buy wine in bottle instead of a box.

© Julie Carter 2006


Independence Day

by Larry Gabriel

We celebrate it every year with parades, rodeos, picnics and fireworks, just as John Adams predicted in a letter to his wife on July 3, 1776. But, do we really know what we celebrate?

The dictionary says "independence" is a condition of being "independent". The word "independent" has several meanings.

Independent means "self governing", or being "free from the influence, guidance or control" of others. I suspect many of us think of independence as freedom from control. It is part of the rugged individualism concept. It is tied in with self reliance.

All those ideas about independence may be worthy, but that is not what the founding fathers had in mind when they finally finished debating a resolution placed before them by Richard H. Lee of Virginia on June 7, 1776.

This is what it said…Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Actually, most had made up their minds by June 11th, when the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five to draft a declaration of independence. The declaration was presented to them on June 28th. On July 2nd, they secretly approved and signed it.

On July 4th they published it to the people. They declared the sovereignty of their states and rang the liberty bell that day. They were not celebrating individual independence, because as Benjamin Franklin noted, "We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately…"

What we celebrate is not independence itself. We celebrate the fact that 56 American forefathers had the courage to put their names on a declaration and announce it to the world, even when doing so was likely to cost them their fortunes, families and lives. We celebrate their courage.

This is what Adams predicted…The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.

How do we honor Adam's request that their act be celebrated, commemorated and solemnized? How does one honor such a gift that evolved into the freedoms and bounty we enjoy?

We can be thankful to all the Americans who gave their lives for our liberty from that day to this. We also can emulate them by never allowing fear to take away that gift.