WAG - Why I Sometimes Don't Miss People
I’ve often remarked to friends, especially those who work at Wal-Mart, my former place of employment, that one of the biggest perks in my job is that I rarely have to deal with people.
It’s not that I hate people, but the greater number of people you come into contact with, the greater number of idiots, freaks, and weirdos are encountered.
The number fluctuates, so I can’t give you a precise equation to help you calculate your exposure level, but it’s a given it rises exponentially when you’re surrounded by people.
When your truck is your office, inter-department politics isn’t really a factor. Picking which radio station to stick with is often the biggest debate I have with myself (promptly followed by “Should I really be going 70 MPH on this gravel road?” and “What are the odds the bank teller could identify my getaway vehicle?”).
I do run into people occasionally. Landowners are sometimes curious to know why a state truck is paused beside their fence line (though I’ve found some to lose all interest if I say I’m going to put a trap up on the opposite side of where their land lies). I’ve had local gossips stop me to tell me the character of the people whose land I’m driving past (and it’s a rare occurrence when people are bragging or recounting honorable things about their neighbors [“Oh, the Johnson’s? Fine people. Their girl is set to be top of her class. And the son, a prince. He’d never think of cheating on his girlfriend of the past four years.”]).
I’ve had people tell me a local pig farmer’s livestock was… um… you don’t need this mental image about what was floating in the river around your head so I’ll jump to the next paragraph before anything sticks like…
I don’t get to talk to many people, but the one thing about working for the Department of Conservation is that many people assume you’re an expert on all subjects of nature (or at least, the one they have questions about).
This afternoon, I was filling up the truck with gas before heading home, and I was greeted by a person who asked, “Catch any fish today?”
I turned around and politely informed the man I was in forestry, so I don’t get to do that very often (I did participate in a fishing day for a local summer school program last year, so I can’t say it has never happened, but I didn’t mention that because I didn’t want to complicate a simple matter).
He then went on to ask me a question about an old railroad line that once ran over state owned land, to which I replied I was only a summer intern and couldn’t answer his question.
This has become a common reply/cop-out for me when I wish to shut down a conversation I fear is going nowhere or that I deem shouldn’t be proceeding any further. It’s rarely as effective as I would hope, but I use it for lack of a better response.
After to his listened to my comments about temps not knowing much, he started telling me a story about lost bandit gold.
Missouri is to far inland to have stories about pirate gold (Blackbeard and his peers never took a cruise up the Mississippi). We’re also too far East for any gold deposits (we have lots of iron and ore, but who ever heard of following a treasure map where there were mounds and mounds of coal?). History wise, this local area was settled late, so there aren’t many tales of Wild West gunslingers being around (with the exception of Frank and Jesse James, but they were two-bit, lower marquee players who carved out a niche audience, but didn’t really gain national status).
What the area can boast about are Civil War bandits: the rebels who quarreled in a state that never supported either side 100 percent. Being a border state was hard enough without the state being morally conflicted (which would lead to a greater number of raids being started by neighbors rather than armies drafted of people from out of state). Even today, I am surprised by the number of confederate flags I’ve seen in people’s houses, or even flying on a pole in their yards (for some of these people, it’s not “The North won,” it’s just that “The South” has taken an extended time out and is merely biding its time).
Returning to the gas station, the man at the pump told me a tale of a shipment of gold stolen of a train during the Civil War. The name “Bloody” Bill Anderson will mean little to people who haven’t had Missouri history (and even then, it would only apply to people who stayed awake in class that day), but it means a lot in our area.
To some he was a cold-blooded marauder who killed innocents out of gratuitous pleasure. To some, a three-line, obscenity laced sentence wouldn’t totally cover the condemnation some think he deserved. I know some people who call him a great-great-repeat-a-couple-more-times-great grandfather.
Opinions aside, the man told me how he’d read that Bloody Bill and his men had held up a train and made off with a large shipment of gold coins and bars, but couldn’t transfer the whole cache at one time. Supposedly, they buried part of the load near the tracks, and made off with what they could on their weary, overloaded horses.
About that time, there was the “CHUT” sound of the pump turning itself off after filling most of the tank. I squeezed the pump one more time and let the man finish his tale.
He said no one had ever found the bars – they’d been stamped so they should have been able to be tracked down – and the gold was still out there somewhere according to a book written for gold coin collectors (he couldn’t recall the name).
After referencing the book one last time, he then smiled and said, “But the whole things’s a myth,” before walking away to pay for his gas.
Several questions filled my head. One, could the tracks he be asking about truly be at the location of the heist? Two, couldn’t the robbers have returned later and melted down the gold – rendering it both harder to trace and easier to transport. And three, was the story a fake, or was he telling me it was made up merely to throw me off the trial?
The one thing I know is that I still keep running into people who are a bit loopy, but at least they give me a story worth recounting every now and again.
And that the South will rise again… when it feels like it… just not right now.
'thanks_for_the_reminder_mister'
