What changes has Bobby Reeder seen since coming to the West End more than 40 years ago?
“Too many people,” he said, adding that it’s really about too many people moving in and wanting to change things.
He also said he’s amazed at the number of people who say they want to have a place, but they don’t realize how much work it is, that having an acreage and a house takes work. Work has been a way of life for him.
“That’s the way it always was,” he said.
He used to know everybody in the area; that’s changed.
“Down in the West End, I don’t know anybody,” he said. “Where they came from, I don’t have a clue.”
Add in “high tech, computers and everything,” and that’s another big change. Though, the roads are better now, he admits.
“Everything changes,” he said. “Nothing stays the same.”
He remembers when at 100,000 miles a car would wear out and “you’d better be looking for something else.” That’s not so true anymore.
So what’s the same?
Reeder laughs remembering a story of a Montrose County picnic on Iron Springs by the highway and Divide Road. They gave out name tags, and he walked up with wife Sherry and introduced himself, “Bobby Reeder, Road and Bridge, West End.” The woman giving out name tags remarked that West Enders didn’t look “so much” different than East Enders. Though it was the mid-1990s, Sherry sarcastically announced they’d soon be getting phones and electricity.
Reeder said even back then people perceived the West End as backward, though the Uravan, Nucla and Naturita area helped build the whole county.
Reeder thinks about uranium. He said if nuclear energy is so bad, he wonders why so many are moving to Phoenix. He said if Tesla used electricity for the electric chair first, that type of power would be considered bad too. He said Fred McKinney had Southwest Ready Mix in Naturita, and anyone working on concrete is getting more radiation than mining uranium. Back then, there was no ventilation in the mines, or dust control, and everyone was smoking.
He’s got many memories of the local place and of his days back in Texas.
He thinks about Raymond “Mex” Snyder and his saying, “A a man oughta have one good dog, one good horse and one good woman.” Someone once told Mex he had his priorities mixed up, but Mex always said, “No, Phyllis (his late wife) knows where my priorities stand.” Reeder smiled thinking about Mex Snyder.
He’s grateful for such memories, like the time he was nearly run over by a cow elk. He and Joe Garvey with wife Sherry were up moving cows, riding down a trail, when the dogs took to barking.
“Joe and Sherry and myself looked around, and here come that cow elk out of the brush running,” he said.
It ran into Reeder, knocked his horse around, ripped the reins out of his hand, and his horse turned quickly. The cow elk ran off, and Sherry and Joe Garvey said Reeder let out “a blood curdling yell only a Comanche could duplicate.”
Reeder was left stunned with elk slobber on his chaps, along with the elk cow’s hair.
He smiles thinking about his family too, his daughter, son and grandchildren, including his brother who died three years ago, and his sister who just recently came to see him.
He remembers his dad in the juke box record business for the beer joints down in Texas in the early 1950s, traveling to Oklahoma and Louisiana, later getting into picture machines, like photo booths.
He’s got memories of his granddad, salt boxes of pork, the hot Texas summertime, the scent of Bull Durham tobacco, pots of peas, beans and greens, thick grease and biscuits to mop it up with. He’s got memories of the beach in Galveston too, as well as Playa del Carmen with wife Sherry.
He thinks about his dad: “Don’t trust a man that doesn’t drink out of a square bottle.”
Sour mash whiskey, likened to sourdough and started from a previous fermented batch, comes in square bottles, like Jack Daniels and Jim Beam.
Reeder is not drinking his whiskey and cokes anymore, but he smiles looking back on past times.
