I find myself waving
vigorously at faces I recognize these days. I wave hard at people I
know like we’re close friends who’ve found ourselves in a big,
unfriendly crowd. I’m happy to see them, and often they wave back
just as vigorously.
I live five miles out of Pinedale,
Wyo., this town booming with tight sands natural-gas development
all around us, and I don’t feel as safe as I used to. Last night,
for the first time, I caught myself locking my truck doors when I
got home from work. Bizarre, right, in a town of less than 1,700
people? I see heavily tattooed guys walking around town and I have
a knee-jerk reaction: I want them arrested. It’s not so much the
crime rate, which is up, but the feeling I have of being invaded.
At convenience stores, groups of rough-looking men and women tumble
out of beat-up cars with out-of-county license plates. They look
scary.
The young women who work for me at the weekly
paper in Pinedale have horror stories about guys approaching them
in the bar. Stuff like being offered money for sex and men grabbing
at them as they walk by. My office window overlooks the alley
alongside the Corral Bar, and again, late last night, guys were
screaming cuss words at each other for all to hear. It seems the
louder they yell and the more f-bombs they use, the better they
feel. This happens often now. Why are they so rude? What are they
trying to prove?
Early this morning, when I walked into
Faler’s for breakfast, I found a bag full of fast-food restaurant
trash and several fountain drink cups on the sidewalk right near
the door. The people who ate their dinner in front of Faler’s
didn’t care enough about Pinedale to step just inside, and find a
garbage can. Even worse, they may have cleaned out the trash from
their car, and left it on the sidewalk.
It made me mad. I
actually gritted my teeth. I see a lot more trash these days. It
could have been there before this energy boom descended on us, I
know, but I notice it now. So you know who I blame.
A lot
of gas-field traffic drives by the front door of the newspaper.
When I see them speeding, I yell at them to slow down. Speeding on
some streets is rampant. I find myself slowing down on purpose just
to make a point, which causes impatient drivers behind me to seethe
in frustration. I’m just as mad at them.
Every business
owner I know looks hollow-eyed and haggard. The town is just
crazy-busy, which means that the demands of customers overwhelm
everyone’s available help. Customers get mad, and employees and
business owners get mad right back. We’re all on edge. Everyone
seems angry.
Before the drilling projects were approved,
the companies were happy to talk to us — the “locals.” Now,
Halliburton won’t answer when I call and ask questions about their
hotel opening later this month, and I’m no longer allowed to talk
to Geoff Sell, Shell’s local man in charge. Ultra won’t return my
calls either. Only Questar and EnCana still seem concerned about
their impact on the town and the people who live here.
You probably think that I’m not being fair. It’s true that many
good people are moving to Pinedale now. We’re all making money
— finally. It’s inevitable that the town has to change.
My head may reason with my heart, but my heart says
Pinedale is losing its small-town feel. The boom is taking it away.
I know, it’s not like all the locals are angels. There are plenty
of homegrown jerks: I’ve been called one many times.
But
I can’t help it. What I see, and how I feel about it, hurts.
Rob Shaul is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado. He is the publisher of the Pinedale
Roundup in Wyoming.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
