Firehole River

Dear Gramma Dot,

Started out the day with some biscuits and gravy, but they weren’t nearly good as you make. Not even after I put on a lot more pepper. They don’t know your secret ingredients.

The reason I’m writing today is that you might hear from some people how I’m not acting responsible. That’s one way to look at it, I guess, but I got another, and the way I look at it is Buck doesn’t need my help and I sure don’t need his. I was going down to the dealership just like I was supposed to, but all Buck ever had me do was vacuum the sales office and make coffee—and they got a janitor service and Diane in the office makes better coffee than me—or so I got told. So mostly I was just standing around doing nothing. That gave me plenty of time to hear Buck saying about how I used to have a future but that’s over now. He’d say it right in front of me like I was rig with a busted axle and trading up was a better idea because what’s the point of fixing it. I just got a little tired of that. I don’t care if it was helping him make sales or not. He used to get people to buy equipment before I was available to look pathetic so he can just go back to doing whatever works.

So anyhow I need to figure out what works for me. What works today is some more fishing.

Me and that girl Polly came down the Paradise through the park to the Firehole. Stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs on the way in and the minerals were all sparkly in the sunshine. It occurred to me that maybe this was the mountains of salt that Lewis and Clark thought they’d find, so I mentioned that to some tourists, but the whole story was news to them. I also told them about how Lewis and Clark thought they would be finding wooly mammoths. The world was a pretty big place back then and nobody knew what was in it.

I kept an eye out for mammoths, but all I saw was a badger and a buttload of slow-moving buffalo. Spent time out on the river, but I still didn’t catch anything. I got distracted by some pretty girls from Japan who were taking pictures. Polly didn’t catch anything either, but I don’t know what distracted her. She doesn’t talk much. She isn’t shy—more pissed off and stuck up.

Basically, it was a good day—a whole lot better than it would have been making coffee at the dealership.

 

Love, your boy Odd