lot of knife

Mammoth, Montana images by Google free images

When I was a young man, little more on the wild side on things, I got the chance to be on my own and to live life on my terms or so I thought. They were hiring young people to work in yellow stone for the summer. Mom and dad sign the papers so I go. You had to be seventeen or within two mounts of your seventeenth birthday to be able to be hired.  This was a first for me to be on my own, to go to bed when I wanted to, to get up when I wanted, to eat what I wanted. Well it was somewhat like that.  I board the bus and my mom did those big alligators tears thing, and dad gave me one of those lectures on being a man giving a full day’s work for a day’s pay. Well the bus driver said it time to be on the road and everybody off the bus that was not going to Montana.

We got to Mammoth, Montana about six or seven in the evening anyway it was supper time and the baloney sandwich mom had pack for me had become a distant memory.  They check us in, there was thirty of us on the bus, and gave us a ten two dollar bills for us to spend on what we wanted it was to be deducted from our first month pay, we would not get any more till payday, we were told we had to buy our first meal, and that we would be given a meal ticket so we would not have to buy our meal once we were assigned to a work site.  I bought a hamburger fries and a coke all for 50 cents

I had some time to wait till the bus came to take me to my work site so I wandered around the lodge checking out what there was to see, and ended up in the gift shop. There was a lot of nice pretty thing two buy one of which was Bowie knife. Wow it was a lot of money back then to spend but I sure wanted it.  It had a twelve inch blade and a carved leather sheath. It was more than the money I had on me but they had smaller hunting knifes that were in my price range and I bought one, It cost four dollars. 

I still have it

 Well the call came that it was time to go and I was on my way to canyon village cabins, my job was to clean and resupply the cabin and make the beds for the next camper.  We live in a two story wood dormitory, we each had our own room, and the walls of the room were just pine boards an inch thick with one light that hung from the ceiling. There was a cot, wash bowl, stand and mirror no running water and a foot locker. The room was about seven foot square.   

I guess I had been working there for about a month, and we had a lot of free time when the cabins

dorm in the left back  the roof is all you can see

 were full. I would go off to a spot not far from the dorm and practice throwing my knife. I might say I was getting pretty good I could hit the bulls’ eye nine time out of ten.  After supper I would go out and practice more then it would come time to get to bed. I would go to my room and throw my knife at the wall above my bunk, you could see where other had done it in the past  so I guess that was not all that unusual. 

the cabins

This one night I threw the knife and it hit the space between the wall boards and sunk all the way to the hilt. Then a scream came from the other side of the wall, and he kept screaming bloodied murder.  I ran to the other room to see the terrible thing I had done. When I got there my coworker , dorm mate was laying on his bunk his back to the light holding on to a horror comic book with my knife blade coming through the book and an inch from his nose. He was not hurt much to my relief but the whole dorm was there now. He calmed down. We all had a good laugh, and I never threw the knife again.

My favorite spot the ledge on the upper part of the falls

right here play my get fiddle and watch the dreams 

Thank you for stopping by and god bless