Working on the Mowing Crew on a Wyoming Ranch

"When I was in about the 2nd grade, I went out to the hay field with my dad every day. And one day we got there and the scatter raker had gone into town the night before and didn't make it home. So they threw me on the scatter rake, and I'd never done that before, but I ended up scatter raking for the end of that year and then every year after that.

But my funnest time haying in the hay field was probably the last four or five years that I did hay, and we used teams. So I started out again with a team and a scatter rake, and then I ended up on the mowing crew with a team. And my dad and my cousin and I were the mowing crew, and my cousin and I would stop on a quarter and let our horses rest, and we'd say, "Okay, next year we're going to get a real job." And the next year, we'd be out in the hay field again."

This story was collected in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its national traveling exhibition "The Way We Worked" when it was on view at the Sublette County Public Library in Pinedale, Wyoming, in 2018. This story is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" story collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences.

Tags: BHS-Job-You-Had, BHS-Main-Street
Asset #7673