Every tourist with a
camera makes the same joke at scenic
turnouts where the drop is precipitous: “Back up just another step
– no, just kidding!” It’s part of tourist myth – that someone
actually asked a spouse to back up near a canyon, and then it was
“Goodbyeeeeee.” Here’s a variation, and it’s all true. Driving down
a road from the Santa Fe ski area, Kansan Steve LeDou pulled over
to take a quick picture, putting his transmission in park, leaving
the engine running and not taking the time to put on the emergency
brake. The photo wasn’t quick enough. As he snapped the picture,
“that’s when the station wagon started rolling,” Associated Press
reports. LeDou ran back to the car and “was hanging out the window,
his feet in the air, as the car headed down the embankment toward
the boulders below.” Some 50 feet later, the car stopped, leaving
the driver wedged “like a cork in a bottle.” His companion, Ruth
Finnell, said she forced herself to remain calm during the descent,
figuring that if she cried she’d “shake the car.” Neither traveler
was hurt on the downhill ride, though the car refused to be driven
once it was towed back to the road.
Ketchum, Idaho, resident
Tobey Crane suffered a New West attack
recently after stopping at a lemonade stand near a bike path in his
town. Proprietors were two little girls, tended by a young woman
who appeared to be the family’s au pair. The
girls sold him a lemonade for 25 cents – price marked down from an
optimistic $1. Then, noticing what looked like delicious brownies,
Crane asked, “Who made them?” The answer came from the au
pair: “The maid.”
This country’s love
affair with the rich and famous played out
in Jackson, Wyo., recently when actor Harrison Ford illegally
piloted his helicopter into a wilderness area to rescue an ill
hiker. The hiker, plucked off 11,106-foot Table Mountain, found
herself a celebrity after the rescue, mainly because she threw up
in Ford’s helicopter – though not on the
helicopter. Thanks to Ray Shriver, a member of the Teton County
Search and Rescue Team, 20-year-old Sarah George of Idaho Falls,
Idaho, vomited elsewhere: “I was looking for barf bags, but there
weren’t any,” Shriver told the Jackson Hole
News. “I really didn’t want her barfing all over his nice
corporate helicopter with its nice leather seats. She barfed in my
hat.” As for the Forest Service, which could have punished the
actor with a $5,000 fine, officials said this was the first breach
of the law in three years and they’d let the infraction pass. Teton
County officials, meanwhile, said that with helicopters costing
$1,000 an hour to rent, they were delighted that Ford’s was
available for rescue missions.
In hyper-dry Albuquerque,
N.M., some parched residents are turning
into vigilantes. Pretending to be city officials, the wannabe
bureaucrats walk up to homeowners and threaten hefty fines and a
cutoff of all water unless the wasteful watering halts. One fake
inspector told an 11-year-old whose mother was away that sprinklers
at his house were watering way too long, and that a $5,000 fine
could be expected later that day. “The imposter then took matters
into his own hands,” reports the Albuquerque
Tribune. “He went into (Gail) Case’s garage and turned
off the water.” City officials note dryly that the freelance
inspectors are “overly enthusiastic.” The city can legitimately get
tough with those who squander water; after eight violations, a
flow-restrictor can be installed that allows only enough water for
“basic drinking and sanitation.”
Suburban West Jordan,
Utah, hopes to head off watering wars by
talking to a satellite. In a test at 13 homes, small purple control
boxes will replace the clocks on automatic sprinkler systems, and
they will receive satellite signals telling the sprinklers exactly
how much water to apply, reports the Salt Lake
Tribune. Master control is a California company that
examines detailed weather reports before setting the city’s
backyard needs. West Jordan Mayor Donna Evans says the
sophisticated system is just one of several conservation measures
her city will experiment with as it grows from some 70,000 to
150,000 people in the next few decades.
The small town of Silverton,
Colo., recently produced its own vehicular
soap opera. The bad actors were two brothers from Texas who
indulged a yen for off-road thrills at 12,500 feet. The drama began
when the men drove their two vehicles, a Jeep Wrangler and Dodge
Ram 4×4, off a dirt road, over a ridge and onto a steep slope of
fragile tundra where it was a long, long way down. “The vehicles
looked like they were defying gravity,” Lisa Richardson, a staffer
for the Bureau of Land Management, told the Durango
Herald. “It’s an extremely risky spot.” At first, the
Texans said they thought the 70 percent grade was no big deal; six
days later, they’d changed their minds. First, a tow-truck driver
refused to help for fear the federal agency would hold him
responsible for harming native plants. Then the BLM fined the men
$300 each for their destructive joyride on publicly owned land.
Thanks to some complicated and dicey winching with cables, the men
saved their four-wheel drive vehicles. But perhaps not their pride.
“I don’t think anybody will ever be that stupid to go there again,”
said BLM enforcement officer Lanny Wagner. The Denver
Post adds that Silverton locals had begun calling the
brothers “Dumb and Dumber,” “Bubba One and Bubba Two,” and the
sorry “champions of stuck.”
Four-legged critters, watch
out! Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s
got a gun, and he’s not afraid to use it. The Republican senator
recently pleaded guilty to shooting at a dog from a highway near
his Ignacio, Colo., home, reports The Denver Post.
Campbell’s attorney said the 66-year-old member of the
Northern Cheyenne tribe was reacting to two “aggressive Akitas
attacking his dog near his two-year-old grandson.” Campbell has
since pleaded guilty in tribal court, which fined him $250 and
sentenced him to 10 hours of community service. Campbell, who loves
riding motorcycles, could put in his hours at a bike rally this
Labor Day, his attorney says.
Heard
around the West invites readers to get involved in the column. Send
any tidbits that merit sharing – small-town newspaper clips,
personal anecdotes, relevant bumper sticker slogans. The definition
remains loose. Heard, HCN, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or
betsym@hcn.org.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Heard around the West.
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