The blue mountains are mottled
with cloud shadows. Cottonwoods stir in the breeze, and that
sizzling sound mixes with the tinkling of distant wind chimes.
Birdsong also fills the ears. A clump of green grass grows
luxuriantly next to a dumpster. Yes, a dumpster.
I’ve been walking in the alleys lately. A century ago —
at Buffalo Bill Cody’s behest — Cody, Wyo., was
designed by a city planner with a grid of wide, right-angled
streets. The east-west running avenues are paralleled by alleys
broad enough to drive through. If you want to know the true nature
of a Western town, ignore the Chamber of Commerce and the ugly
billboards and the tourist traps on Main Street. Go check out life
in the alleys.
In Cody, like elsewhere, they border
backyards, places where people live their lives: play with their
kids, work in the garden, or lounge in a hammock with a newspaper.
Places where they observe some of life’s rituals: birthdays,
family reunions, 4th of July barbecues, and receptions for weddings
or after funerals. The life of the backyard is an American
phenomenon, of course, but it seems to be more visible in the
culturally informal West.
This time of year,
getting gardens ready is a big deal. The long winters of the
Rockies drive some folks to an insatiable lust to make things
green, though those too eager to plant suffer the consequences of
late frosts.
Backyards are also the domain of the family
dog, who may greet the alley passerby with a happy lolling tongue
and wagging tail, or a ferocious snarl that makes the barrier of a
chain link fence a comforting thing. I’m constantly reminded
of the phrase “alley cat,” as feral felines roam a
dozen backyards in complete freedom, though wary of the attentions
of the imprisoned and jealous dogs.
The alleys also
exhibit what some people (not me) might label junk. Cody is mostly
tolerant of this, as long as the alleys remain passable by vehicles
like garbage trucks. So a stroll through the alleys may remind the
thoughtful citizen of one of author Jim Harrison’s
prescriptions for living the good life: “Surround yourself
with the simple things that you love.”
One
thing Westerners love are pickup trucks — rusty,
gone-in-the-teeth, and whether they run or not, the alleys are
lined with them, modernistically shiny or geriatrically tarnished.
There’s also one or two ancient Volkswagen buses sporting
Grateful Dead decals and “Save the Wolves” bumper
stickers. Also small travel trailers yearning to be hooked up to a
truck for a weekend in the mountains. And old dented paint-peeled
horse trailers tired of moving and storage duties, and longing for
the clip-clop of hooves being loaded.
There are
drift boats and small river rafts on trailers and temporarily
dry-docked canoes and kayaks. Mountain bikes chained to trees and
fences. Piles of stacked cordwood, young, fresh and bright, or old,
wormy and gray. Elk and deer antlers adorning the back outside
walls of garages and sheds facing the alleys. And the periodically
necessary brown dumpsters.
You meet interesting
people in the alleys, and most of them always seem to be fixing
things, such as trucks and horse trailers. Also meter readers,
dumpster divers (“You can’t believe what people throw
away”, one old-timer told me), and the occasional anonymous
shifty-looking type maybe up to no good. Red Lodge, Mont.,
Cody’s neighbor to the north, and closer to the mountains,
has a problem with dumpster-diving black bears. Not yet in Cody.
And I hope it never happens. It’ll only draw tourists, and
then the alleys will be ruined for me.
Recently, a
man I know was putting the finishing touches on raising up a
brightly painted teepee replete with multi-colored ribbons tied to
the top poles in his backyard. His three young kids were
understandably excited. He kept laughingly telling them to stay out
of it until he was finished. His wife waved at me from their nearby
back porch as she took in the scene.
I waved back,
and walked on. Down the alley were the cloud-mottled mountains that
the tourists come to see, but for the alley habitue, the views
include dumpsters.
Bill Croke is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
writes mostly in Cody, Wyoming.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
