The cause of death was the immediate concern. More specifically, the cause of death as it might relate to waterborne diseases. Even in our pitiful state, it was clear that the large jackrabbit had drowned in the stock tank. The poor creature was so desperate for water that he had jumped into the tank. A desperate need for water had also brought us to the tank, to face the decision to go thirsty or to drink jackrabbit soup.
***
How did two North Carolina — the state, certainly not the university — boys end up craving water at a stock tank somewhere near the old Widowmaker Mine in eastern Nevada? This tale of nuclear arsenals, high-speed driving, arrowhead hunting, East Coast-West Coast rivalry, the dude ranch, and the Econoline van began as many of my adventures have, with blind luck. I was out of work, between undergraduate and graduate school, when I got the call from Judy (to become Aunt Judy, see below). Was I interested in a summer-long project? Was I willing to go to Nevada to work? Would I work 55 hours a week, with 15 hours at time-and-a-half? Was I willing to pick up the company Bronco in South Carolina and drive it west? The answer to all these questions was a resounding yes.
However, rather than react too enthusiastically, I decided to see how much more attractive I could make the deal. I first inquired if I would be getting pay and per diem for the drive west. I then asked if they needed any more crew. I vouched for the surface collecting (fancy archaeological jargon for arrowhead hunting) abilities of my best friend. Not only was Tony my best friend, he was also a fellow distance runner. Having succeeded in getting Tony hired, I made the last push, for him to get pay and per diem for the journey west. Judy eventually gave in and I next called Tony to tell him of his plans for the summer.
***
There, of course, was no logic in splashing the water on our faces to see if it was safe. We knew of no diseases that would make water burn our skins, thereby warning us not to drink. Yet somehow this face-splashing was important step in the decision-making process. Tequila logic, perhaps.
***
We had five days to get to Tonopah, Nevada. This allowed us time to run each evening, attempting to acclimate to the slowly increasing elevation. I also recall that we saw the movie “The Young Riders” at Oklahoma State University. It included the quote from a Pinkerton detective, “That’s an incredibly stupid question.” Tony was to use this quote repeatedly during the summer, including our first conversation with our new boss.
At some point on the journey west, Tony and I decided that we were going to show “those westerners.” Judy had told me that most of the crew was from California. Only Tony, myself, Dad (not really anybody’s father), and a few supervisors represented the eastern states. It should be emphasized that at this point in our lives Tony and I were both extremely self-confident and utterly full of crap. It remains unclear if we had an explicit plan for dealing with the aforementioned westerners, or whether we simply improvised all summer.
***
In the name of accuracy, I should say that Tony was not his real name. Tony had been christened with two old family names, Chatham Morford. His father was also Chatham, so the son became Morford. It is not a common name, and it is difficult to pronounce. Many people try to work an “L” into it, like “Mulford.” Others ignore the first “R”, resulting in Mufford. By the time he got to college, he was getting sick of people mis-pronouncing his name, especially running race announcers. He also felt that he should have a snazzier name, and he selected “Tony” after seeing Saturday Night Fever. His first use of the name came at the Tuckaseegee River and Road Race, a two-day event in western North Carolina. The first day you paddle 10 miles of whitewater on the Tuckaseegee River, even if you really don’t have much Class II-III experience and you sort of lied to the Wake Forest Outing Club to get the canoe. The second day you run 10 K around the campus of Western Carolina University. The best combined time wins. I only beat Tony by about 20 seconds on the 10 K run, but I had sufficient time to get the crowd chanting “Tony! Tony!” as he finished. There was no going back after that.
***
I was the Survey Chief and Tony was my assistant. Our job was to locate, flag, and record directions to the survey areas. This basically meant that we got to experiment with dead-end routes and got the truck stuck on a regular basis. We were specifically told “don’t waste any time getting to the survey areas.” This is certainly not the best thing to say to boys who had grown up on a diet of high-speed, dirt road driving. The instructions were interpreted to read “push the envelope at every opportunity.” One-hundred miles per hour on the paved road got old after the first week, but 70 miles per hour down single-lane, sand roads remained exciting through the entire summer. We became adept at High Desert driving, and also became fast with the jack and shovel. Typically, we were assigned either an F-150 pick-up or some sort of 4-wheel drive Chevy pick-up. Very occasionally, when several vehicles were in the shop on the same day, we drew the dreaded Econoline, a.k.a. Mom’s grocery van. The cargo van was two-wheel drive and had a weight distribution not well suited to sand driving.
***
We quickly settled into a routine. We lived in a number of large camper trailers/mobile homes in state parks. The large crew was provided food by a lady who quickly became known as Mom, because she provided food. Dad was so designated because he was smitten with Mom. Judy became our Aunt Judy because she was older than us and had gotten us the job. Judy, of course, did not see herself as that much older than us and she did not always appreciate the Aunt Judy label.
We were up very early every morning. Tony and I quickly realized that the Californians were very particular about their food. We naturally decided that we should be the extreme opposite, requesting white bread, refined sugar, red meat, and lots of bacon when Mom went shopping. This was not really much of a stretch from our normal diet. Tony explained to the westerners (using a favorite quote from the novel, Once a Runner) that “anything will burn if the furnace is hot enough.” Our position was strengthened when two vegetarians washed out in the first two weeks.
It became a matter of pride to always be the first truck out of camp. In a 10- to 12-hour work day, one or two minutes didn’t matter much in terms of productivity, but we knew it bothered the other folks to always be following us.
***
I was first exposed to tequila sweats when playing basketball in the old neighborhood. Eric, who was a few years older and was in college while we were still in high school, had apparently run amuck with a bottle of tequila one Friday night. The Saturday morning pick-up game saw him pale, with great spheres of sweat swelling up all over his skin. We were no strangers to hang-overs, and we knew about sweating, but this was something entirely different. After just five minutes, he stank. Nobody wanted to pick him or cover him. By shutting up and being patient, we all eventually learned what had done this to Eric.
***
Most of you know that there are not a lot of places to find water in the High Desert. If you are 30 miles from the nearest town, you had better hope for an active ranch. The USGS quadrangle maps might help, but there are no assurances that a windmill and water tank will be active. It is not a good place to be without water.
***
I am not sure who first found out about the dude ranch. Before its discovery, our social life was limited to beer, excellent Mexican food, and slot machines at the Overland Cafe in Pioche. They only had 4-5 slots, and everybody knew when you got a pay-out, which meant that most the winnings were spent on the next pitcher. The Pioche Theater also showed a film each Wednesday night. On Saturday afternoons or Sundays we might go swimming at the ice cold and crystal clear, Panaca Spring. Beyond that, nothing much was happening.
The dude ranch, however, changed everything. They had a Ponderosa-style (Hoss and Little Joe, not the steakhouse) dining room with good food and wine. They also had a classic Old West bar, complete with the brass foot rail, the swinging doors, and the obligatory moose head. It became the habit of the crew to go to the dude ranch on Friday nights. After all, we only had to work a half-day on Saturdays.
Drinking abilities naturally became another area of pride. This was a little tricky since Tony and I always got in at least a short (3-5 mile) run between work and the dude ranch. Working all day in the High Desert and then running a few miles tended to lower our alcohol tolerance (“cheap date”). Nonetheless, we felt obligated to act as if heavy drinking did not bother us.
***
We had been told that we were surveying random rectangles, to determine what types of archaeological sites might be impacted if MX silo locations were ever selected and constructed. After the third time we arrived at a random rectangle to find military personnel with plans in their hands, we began to suspect that all was not as random as advertised.
***
The particular night in question, or rather the night before the particular day in question, there was a good deal of wine with dinner. As I recall, Tony was trying hard to impress the owner’s 16-year-old daughter.
Retiring to the bar, Aunt Judy took it into her head that she, Tony, and I should start drinking shots of tequila. This was the classic image of hard-core archaeologists with the salt, the limes, and the shots. You don’t need all the particulars. Imagine yourself driving a Bronco (the old, big Bronco, a Real Vehicle) full of drunks, trying to keep up with another Bronco full of drunks. Suddenly, the lead truck pulls over, Judy stumbles out, and falls like old growth timber destined for the sawmill. Yes, it was that kind of night.
***
We were running, in theory, as training for some as yet unidentified summer race. Tony was also heading back to the cross-country team at NCSU in the fall, and I was bound for graduate school at Florida and a less than spectacular career in Category 4 bicycle racing.
Our first effort to get to a race came one weekend. We headed out Friday evening (having been excused from our Saturday work) in the Chevy truck with the camper top. We headed for Las Vegas, driving through an awesome lightning storm. It is rare in the east to ever see lightning hit anything, but in the Great Basin that night we saw three trees hit. (I thought I had almost been hit by lightning once in North Carolina. I was sprinting to finish a run before the storm hit, when I heard something zip 5-6 feet above my head and then nail a tree ahead of me. Years later, I found out that Billy had shot the tree with a .22, just to give me a thrill.). We were doing fine, as we passed through Alamo, heavily signed as the last chance for gas before Las Vegas. A few miles outside of town, a tire went flat. Tony and I both had the same thought, “I hope we have a spare.” There had been a lot of flats that summer, and some of the crew chiefs were not conscientious about getting the repaired tire back into the vehicles. With constantly changing vehicle assignments, you never knew. As the lightning flashed, Tony assured me that he could see a round shape in the back. I ran out in the rain, threw up the tailgate window, and stared at the tireless wheel.
We then developed the routine of sitting in the truck until we saw headlights approaching, jumping out to hitch-hike, and running back to the truck after the vehicle passed. We did not relish the idea of walking back to town in the lightning and pouring rain. We were rescued by two good old boys and a woman who seemed to be everybody’s girlfriend. I am not sure why exactly they had left West Virginia and had come to Nevada, but that night drinking heavily and driving poorly were clearly their priorities.
By the time we bought a used tire and got it on the truck the next day, we were too late to make the race. Much to our chagrin, Mom showed us an article about the race, later that week. The time for the “mostly downhill course” was insultingly slow.
***
The rabbit had not only managed to drown himself, but he had done it directly in the center of the tank. Or perhaps the cumulative forces of physics had somehow moved the rabbit to the perfect center point. No matter how many times a person walked around that tank, it was impossible to find a more advantageous location from which, perhaps, to drink. This didn’t seem quite fair at the time.
***
The themes of running and rabbits came together earlier that summer as well. We had been talking to some of the California folks about how the Indians survived. I said if all else failed, you could stone a jackrabbit to death. Tony went further, contending that a fit person could run a jackrabbit to death. This idea was much scoffed at, but Tony quietly decided that we would try just that.
Where to start? We had not identified any particular attributes that could be linked with good rabbit habitat. The whole bloody desert seemed to be prime rabbit habitat. So, basically, we just stopped the truck wherever.
As soon as we jumped a rabbit, the idea was to keep him moving by pressuring him on both sides. We had thought to carry rocks to throw, but that made for hard running. It quickly became clear that jackrabbits were not at all altruistic when pursued. After the third time that the chosen rabbit tried to rub us off on another rabbit, we recognized that he was doing it on purpose. In an environment full of rabbits, why not use confusion to escape predators? Nonetheless, we managed to keep on track to the point where the rabbit was jumping straight up to spot us. I do not know if jackrabbits really pant, but this one sure seemed to be doing just that. And then he was gone. He did not run off. I think he must have dived to the base of a sage brush and determined not to move no matter how close we got. The whole thing probably lasted ten minutes, and could be considered, at best, a moderate success. Perhaps if we had throwing sticks, we could have killed him. Ah well, no need to mention this experiment back at camp.
***
Not having learned from the Las Vegas attempt, Tony and I again planned to race, this time a Fourth of July event in Cedar City, Utah. Mom and Dad were headed to the Grand Canyon, and were willing to drop us off. And speaking of being dropped, at the last minute, Tony decided that he would rather go camping with this girl he worshiped from afar. Still not sensing that this race thing really wasn’t meant to happen, I caught the ride with Mom and Dad. The next morning I walked across the street and signed up.
This particular day, they had a 10K for the Mayor’s Cup and a half marathon. I figured that the competition for the 10K was to be strong (after all, it was for the Mayor’s Cup), and I did not think I had the necessary speedwork that summer. Plus, I had grown to like the half-marathon (I was once told that I could absorb distance like a frog in a pond absorbs oxygen through his skin. This is how one compensates for a general lack of fast-twitch muscle mass). So, having yet again made the wrong decision, I climbed into the bus that would take us up canyon to the starting point. Yes, the first five miles of the race were to cover a seductive downhill through cool, shady canyonland. Your mind sees that and it doesn’t register that the last eight miles will be almost perfectly flat on the fully exposed, blacktop streets of Cedar City in the middle of the summer.
To digress a bit further (I admit that any chance of an orderly, linear story was lost long ago), I had a cross-country coach at UVA who espoused that you should always go out hard, because you might never know when you were going to have a really good day. This philosophy well suited my mental state that summer, but was not an exact match to my physical condition. I flew through the first six miles, setting personal bests at each split. Then, things became boring and hot, and I struggled for the remainder of the race. A Mormon flash had left me behind from the start, but I didn’t feel bad because he looked like a very serious runner. At about eight miles, a Marine-ish guy came past and I wasn’t too happy about that but I was still in third. With about a mile to go, I was heat-stroked, and I couldn’t do the basic subtraction and division to figure out how fast or slow I was going. I looked behind me, and there was somebody maybe 300 meters back and closing. “Oh no, this is not going to happen.” So, setting aside my deteriorated condition, I kicked, and kicked hard. The kid that took fourth was most impressed (“You just left me behind.”). For those that live in a world of numeric results, I ran a 1:16, four minutes slower than my best ever.
There ensued about 20 minutes, I think, in which I debated myself on the need to get fluids in my body. I had dropped to the ground about thirty steps from a metal tub full of ice and free drinks. There were no friends or team mates to help me up or throw me a drink. This was as close as I ever want to get to “I’m just going to take a little rest in the snow; I’ll make it back to base camp.” Logic finally prevailed, I got two cans, and I started to revive for the awards ceremony. I first had to sit through the 10K awards (both the Mormon and I had run our first 10K faster than the 10K winner), which went five deep and were actually nice platters and trophies. The half-marathon, of course, awarded only the first man and the first woman. Perfect, just perfect. Only a race T-shirt for me.
All that was left to do was to replenish my fluids before the next day’s hitch-hike across the desert. It wasn’t too bad, and I quickly got a ride as far as Beryl Junction, Utah. Unfortunately, there were about six guys hitch-hiking in front of the gas station in Beryl Junction. I now had the choice of counter-intuitively walking back up the road, so I would be the first person seen hitch-hiking, or walking on down the road, hoping to play on the guilt of drivers who had passed by the other six. With fear that I was making a classic easterner mistake, I continued west. I had gotten about three miles out of town, when I got picked up by two Mormon missionaries, who carried me into Pioche. They dropped me off in down-town Pioche, and within a minute the local sheriff had pulled up to question me. I explained that I was one of the archaeologists staying at the campground, 12 miles out of town, and that I was just back from the Cedar City race, and that the missionaries had been kind enough to give me a ride. I had the silly idea that this guy might be Andy of Mayberry (a North Carolina boy, after all), and might give me a ride out to said campground and throw in some of Aunt Bea’s fried chicken. Instead, he offered the advice “Might want to fill up that water jug before you head out.”
***
The plan was to survive breakfast while appearing to be perfectly fine. Perceiving this as a test of our act, Tony and I loudly requested more bacon and sausage. Could a person with a bad hangover drink orange juice in such vast quantities? We were sure that the westerners now knew, once and for all, that we were gods.
***
The rabbits again entered the conversation later that summer. Tony was in a Bronco full of people traveling down the highway one night. As happens very frequently, the Bronco was smashing jackrabbits left and right. For the easterners in the audience, you are probably thinking of the gentle thud when a cottontail glances off your car. Think again. This was a brutal, bone-crushing sound of a very large rabbit being hit by a very rapidly moving Bronco. One of the Californian girls asked why this happens. Rather than give her the Hunter S. Thompson explanation (they need some adventure in their lives, and become addicted to the adrenaline rush), one of the California guys gave her the lame explanation that the headlights froze the rabbits. This, of course, is total crap. These rabbits were moving when they were hit, and that’s why it was futile to try to miss them. The Californian girl’s solution was to ask the driver of the 100 MPH Bronco on this pitch black night to simply turn off the headlights whenever they approached a rabbit. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed.
***
Our first indicator of a possibly bad day came when we were assigned the Econoline van. What could we do? We tied our water cooler in the back, and headed out for what promised to be a light half-day, thank God. We only had one area to flag, but it was over 100 miles before we reached the dirt road turn-off. In the typical pattern, we flew to the outskirts of Pioche, crawled through the town, flew to the outskirts of Panaca, crawled through the town, flew to the outskirts of Caliente, crawled through town, and flew to our dirt road.
The historic marker was our second indicator of potential trouble. It was located at our turn-off for the dirt road, and explained the history of the Widowmaker Mine ghost town, located several miles up the road. The formal content was interesting, but the hand-written addition was a bit disconcerting. We could almost envision the poor tourist who had suffered the road to the mine and back, generating such anger that he had to stop at the historic marker and deface it with the comment “THIS ROAD IS A WIDOWMAKER.” For emphasis, somebody had leaned their squashed muffler against the signpost.
So there we were, badly hung-over, about an hour after eating a less than optimal breakfast. Facing a widowmaker of a road. In the Econoline van. We pushed on and quickly discovered the problem with the road. It received too much traffic, resulting in a combination of severe washboard and whoop-de-do topography. There was no speed at which the extreme vibrations would go away. If we went fast enough to glide over the washboard, we were badly bucked by the large wave action.
I would guess now that we had gone less than a quarter mile when the water cooler broke loose and emptied itself all over the interior of the van. It was probably about two miles down the road when I knew that I was going to have to stop and feed the dogs. I tried to calm my stomach, but I felt myself going pale. As if to provide a mirror image, Tony was in the same state in the passenger seat. The moment the van was stopped, stereo vomiting proceeded. We joked that the bacon must have gone bad.
Of course, tequila does not let you simply puke and get on with your recovery. The act of puking initiates the uncontrolled sweats, and the desire for water becomes acute. This desire is worsened, of course, if it is summer in the Nevada desert, if you are 30 miles from the nearest town, and if your water cooler is empty.
In our sorry state, we still managed to locate and flag the survey area. We were free to make a dash back to town, but we were not sure we could face the road again without a drink. The quad sheet revealed several potential stock tanks within a few miles, and the third proved to contain water. And a rabbit.
Growing up in rural North Carolina, we had both drunk out of some dubious water sources. We had eaten field-cooked game that was charred on the exterior and bloody red on the interior. But, somehow, the present situation seemed different. Granted, the water looked clear and clean. But just leaning down toward the water (“just thinking about it, I’m not drinking”) made the jackrabbit loom right above the waterline. Some of the fear was undoubtedly how stupid we would look if we died of a common western ailment because we were stupid enough to drink from a tank with a dead rabbit in it (doubly damned: humiliated and dead).
***
It was a summer of contrasts. Cool canyons and dead hot desert. Hot, dry sand and cold, wet beer. Eastern flippancy and western political correctness. A cooler full of ice and Gatorades, and a 15-foot stock tank full of water and a dead jackrabbit. The biggest contrast, perhaps, was saved for the end of the project. In part to get some extra money, and in part to get home, I volunteered to tow a 40-foot trailer to Cheyenne, Wyoming. I then drove the truck the rest of the way back to Jackson, Michigan. The truck was just a standard four-wheel-drive, lacking any special towing package. Up the climb at (I think) White Horse Pass, I had to put it into Low Range 4WD to have sufficient power to climb. Of course, I also had to run the heater on full for the entire climb to keep the engine from overheating. I swear that I was passed by two bicyclists near the top of this climb. After a summer of high-speed driving, I was being dropped by bikes (which, incidentally, became an all too familiar experience during my bike racing career).
***
I am really not certain which of us first drank, and I’ll stick with that story to my grave. The shift from no-way-in-hell to virtual inevitability was amazingly quick. The question then became how much to drink. Should I just wash out my mouth (not giving the germs access to my stomach) or should I take the deep, long drink my body craved? The latter won out and every last bit of caution was thrown to the wind. For the curious, a dead jackrabbit does not at all affect the taste of stock water, and at least this particular rabbit added no deadly germs to the tank.
Those of you who haven’t really been paying attention might think that, having been humbled by the experience, we changed our ways and starting acting less cocky. You would be wrong. You naturally forget that nobody else saw this adventure, other than the dead rabbit, so nobody needed to know. It was back to life as normal. We got a lunch with ample ice water at the Caliente diner, where I won big at the dime slots. Then it was an hour drive back to camp, where we jumped out of the van (“smiles, everybody, smiles”), got our running shoes, and took our usual Saturday afternoon run.
***
That’s it. There is no over-arching moral. Just a simple story. I was glad I drank the jackrabbit soup in 1980, and I remain glad to this day.
An archaeologist, Chris Espenshade branched into creative writing in 2017. He’s had creative non-fiction accepted by The RavensPerch, , Georgia Outdoors News, The Raven Chronicle’s Journal, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and the mobile app of Life in the Finger Lakes magazine. Chris lives with his wife, Linda, in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania.