Luke Ovgard
Chapter 13: Wild West
Chapter 13
June 17, 2019
Day 3
Origin: Rock Springs, WY
Destination: Omaha, NE
“Velike ribe male žro,” Slovenian Proverb, very roughly translated to “Men are like fish; the big ones devour the small.”
My maternal great grandparents emigrated to the United States around the turn of the 20th Century. I’m routinely asked “Where did they come from?” and that’s a difficult question.
Given that Europe’s map east of Prague and Milan shifted faster than its fashions for most of the 19th and 20th Centuries, the question has a complicated answer. Culturally and linguistically, my great grandparents were Slovenes, a people group that had existed for centuries and maintained a unique cultural identity without ever having its own country. At the time my great grandparents emigrated to the United States, they had been living in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in part of a geographic region that is today inside of Slovenia. So nationally, they were Austrian.
They fled the political unrest that was building in the “South Slavic” region of the Empire to the United States. They joined the other Slovenians heading en masse to the United States during the 1880s until the start of World War I in the largest wave of Slovenian emigration to-date.
Those who remained in the Old Country didn’t accept the status quo. Citizens of what is now Slovenia, in addition to modern-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro all held national resentments towards their Austrian overlords. It was this collective unrest that ultimately led to the group of Serbs and Bosnians who worked together to successfully assassinate Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which would trigger World War I in 1914 and the creation of a still less-than-ideal “Southern Slavic State” called Yugoslavia in the aftermath of The Great War. Yugoslavia would last for decades.
As the long-rusted Iron Curtain began to disintegrate, so too did the Slavic proxy for the Soviets.
Yugoslavia began to crumble in 1989. Slovenia voted to declare independence in 1990 — the year I was born — but wouldn’t officially become its own nation until June of 1991.
Many wars would follow, but when Slovenia and Croatia became independent nations in 1991, their freedom foretold the doom of Yugoslavia, a state that would survive just a year longer before dissolving entirely. After nearly 50 years of Communist rule by the greater powers, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia were all free.
It would take several more wars, territorial disputes (i.e., Kosovo), and name changes as recent as 2019 (i.e., North Macedonia), but the small fish would be free to swim in the directions they chose without fear of being gobbled up.
Rock Springs
Though most Slovenian emigrants settled in the United States, specifically Ohio, my great grandparents ended up in Rock Springs, Wyoming. My great-grandfather was the sheriff, and at various times arrested such famed outlaws as the Sundance Kid (of hipster film festival fame).
Though technically the “good guy”, my great-grandfather was actually a terrible human being who drank like a fish and routinely abused his wife and children. When my grandfather was 19, he married my grandmother (17), and they moved west to Oregon, settling in Klamath Falls and leaving much of their past behind them.
Despite the dark and sordid history of his time in Rock Springs, my grandpa still told me stories about it. Holding the horses of outlaws and lawmen alike for a nickel while they drank at the local tavern, hunting and fishing, and generally living in the inhospitable wilds of Wyoming. He passed away years ago, and he’d be 108 if he were still alive when I rolled into the city where he met and married my grandma.
I’d passed through Rock Springs very briefly on a road trip in 2018, but this time I spent a few hours there, walking the train tracks downtown and appreciating what the little city had to offer. Not a whole lot, as it turns out — especially in terms of fishing. I’d hoped to find a Plains Killifish or Plains Topminnow, but the pond hopping and limited creek fishing turned up nothing, so I grabbed a cup of coffee by the train station, checked out an impressive street art memorial to the Chinese-American workers that built most of the nearby railroad, and unlike that same railroad, headed east.
The drive across Wyoming is pretty desolate, and this is coming from a guy who just days before had driven “The Loneliest Road in America”. There are several stretches with 60 or 80 miles between civilization of any kind, and I-80 stretches further than a supple yoga instructor. The one advantage would be that it has a generous speed limit, and the roads are lightly trafficked, but every time (okay, both times), I’ve taken it east through Wyoming, it has been an endless chain of road work driving all six cars on the empty road between stops into a single, diverted lane. Inevitably, a truck moving 30 miles per hour — or worse, a cop — will slow traffic to a crawl.
There is an Internet conspiracy that Wyoming is not real but rather a carefully crafted lie by the government. If my incredibly boring drives through the least populous state are any indication, I’ll bet this rumor began when someone drove through Wyoming and just forgot about it. I almost did.
Nebraska
I drove through Wyoming into a marginally less desolate state: Nebraska. Again hoping for the Plains Topminnow or Plains Killifish, I had marked a chain of small ponds that appeared to be connected to a creek, very accessible, and just off the Interstate. Oh how wrong I was.
When I arrived at an oversized gravel parking lot, I found myself staring at a large, fenced area with an open gate. There were industrial buildings and trucks going in and out.
I found neither “No Trespassing” nor “Authorized Vehicles Only” signs, so I drove through. It quickly became obvious that something sketchy was happening. It had the vibe of a major drug distribution center, and as I ambled along the poorly maintained roads, I began thinking I should turn around.
As I got out of the car to look at the overgrown ponds, a gunshot rang out, and I was soaked in a cold sweat. What a way to die. The pain in my leg suddenly announced itself, and I thought “Huh. Being shot doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.”
Horrified, I looked down as I quickly tried to get back into my car for cover. A single black spot above a trickle of blood peeled my eyes wide, but upon closer inspection, I saw the black spot had wings. It was a massive horsefly, and it was sucking my blood with fervor. The timing was at once immaculate and cruel, like so much modern European engineering. The bug had bitten at precisely the moment I heard the shot, and my mind filled in the blanks. I crushed the bloodsucking bastard with so much happiness, words can barely express it. I wasn’t shot!
“Cracccccckkkkkkkkkhhhhhhh!”
Yet.
“Cracccccckkkkkkkkkhhhhhhh!”
I needed to get down.
Another shot rang out, and I saw two guys in a beat-up SUV peel out maybe 200 yards distant. I thought they were coming for me until I saw a deer bound away. They were shooting at the deer. Funny, I’ve never heard of a late June deer season.
“Oh, (profanity not suitable for print),” I whispered aloud.
They looked extremely guilty, but I was a little nervous these poachers were going to shoot me. I pretended not to notice them until the ginger redneck behind the wheel of car with no plates and a few bullet holes in the windshield hopped out, the exertion of his felony causing his skin to match his red hair.
“Crap,” I said under my breath.
“This here is private property,” he said, flashing a badge that was clearly fake and appeared to be printed with “FBI: Female Body Inspector” but refusing to identify himself or keep the badge up long enough for me to scrutinize it.
Visions of my kidneys being removed and shipped in cold storage flashed before my eyes. I swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I was just looking for a place to fish.”
His unblinking, featureless face reddened further as he put a hand on a revolver (again, not a real cop) on his hip holster.
“Well you can’t (his twang actually spit out ‘caint’ but…) be here.”
I stood there, motionless, as he stepped toward me.
Before he could react, I lunged for his eyes, gouging them out with surprising precision. He screamed in pain as the passenger emerged, sawed-off shotgun in tow. I grabbed the pistol from the holster and put down the other poacher with two shots to the chest.
The bleeding man on the ground moaned “Whhhyyyyy?”
The wind changed, and it snapped me from my waking nightmare. I shuddered at the violent turn my daydream had taken.
“Well?” he repeated, obviously repeating something he’d said while I was blanking out.
“Huh?” I inquired intelligently.
“Why don’t you just leave,” the ginger repeated.
“No problem. Have a good one,” I said, driving out the gate praying all the while they wouldn’t shoot me in the back.
They didn’t, and I headed down the road to a place where the parking lot was not fenced.
I was shaking a little, but I managed not to vomit or pee that much, instead focusing on the water available to me across the large parking lot maybe 500 yards away. It was a disgusting soup of dirty pond water, and I quickly caught some small Largemouth Bass and Bluegill. As I went to snap a picture of one adorable little micro bass, I heard a car peel out of the parking lot.
It was the “cops” I’d encountered moments before. I was still on edge, and I dropped my phone into something equal parts liquid and gel pooled on a piece of plastic near the waterline. Gagging and very nearly vomiting for real this time, I grabbed it out and washed off the milky liquid-gel in the pond to get the chunks off.
I dry heaved.
Thankfully, my Lifeproof case held up, but I was horrified to see some indescribably filthy biological substance on my phone even after rinsing. I wrapped it in one of the old rags I always tuck into my waistband to wipe my hands when fishing with bait and drove to the nearest gas station to clean my phone.
A full minute under the running water of the sink followed by a bath in rubbing alcohol and then another minute of washing, and I was satisfied that the filth was removed.
Whatever Breaking Bad-type operation I’d bumped into had me shooketh (that’s slang for “shaken,” for those over 25 because apparently using the wrong verb tense and adding letters to words is cool).
Daily horror behind me, I drove under the highway arch to the river I’d been given as a place to chase Shovelnose Sturgeon. Like most flowing water I’d encountered on the trip thus far and the hairstyles of an increasing number of elderly women as I made my way further south, it was blown out, the waters running high and dirty. Calling it a night, I drove on to Omaha, fighting traffic en route to “The Gateway to the West” for the College World Series.
I wanted a fairly healthy meal, so I opted for Japanese. Fighting exhaustion, I powered down a pork belly bao, seaweed salad, and some excellent ramen before staggering out of the restaurant. Eschewing my car and trying to limit lodging costs, I’d embraced Couchsurfing, and tonight would be my first stay. Slowly, I made my way to the house. I was staying with Ashley, who had told me to just walk up and knock when I arrived. I did so, despite the darkened house, and she opened up with a smile. After a quick walk-through tour of the place, in which she offered me free access to the kitchen, introduced me to her kids (who were sharing a room tonight after forfeiting one room to me), she told me about her job as a Terrorism Auditor for PayPal. I was intrigued, but it was too late for meaningful conversation, so I showered and called it a night as I fell asleep on the little bed in her daughter’s unicorn-themed room, wondering if I’d be trusting enough to let a stranger into my house with little kids. I battled for uneasy sleep all night.
I was up, showered, and out of the house before they went to school, and my first Couchsurfing experience went better than I’d expected. At least, I assume it did, but you can’t really tell if someone watched you sleep, right?
Before leaving home, I decided I’d leave a thank-you card and a $5 Starbucks gift card for every person who let me Couchsurf with them. I had a box of thank-yous and a stack of gift cards in my center console.
I left the card on the pillow and slipped into the quiet morning, illusions of being a big fish in a small pond shattered by the previous day’s events.