I've Had Better Days

Introduction:  In an issue of the Progressive Rancher, Becky Prunty Lisle has a cautionary tale illustrating the importance for ranchers in remote areas of owning a personal tracking device as well as subscribing to an air ambulance service. 

      A few years ago, while checking the winter horse pasture with their friend Randy, her husband Rolly had a wreck on his motorcycle.  He broke his neck and back.  Becky notes, “fortunately his spinal cord wasn’t severed.”  When Randy got Rolly back to the ranch, Becky called 911.  Because they subscribed to an air ambulance service, a helicopter ride shortened the time it took to get her husband to the hospital in Elko.  He then was flown to a trauma center two-hundred miles away.  It must have been one of the worst days of their lives.

     It reminded me of a story Sharon Packer Rhoads told me nearly twenty years ago about one of the worst days of her ranch life.   Husband Dean’s, too.  When you read Sharon’s story,  you can’t help but think that if satellite personal trackers had been around or if they had helicopter service back then, so much of Dean’s pain and suffering would have been avoided. 

                                                      I’ve Had Better Days

       Recently, I ran across a journal I kept in 1995, when we first bought our place in Tuscarora. Sharon Packer Rhoades was the postmistress and Julie Parks the assistant postmistress.  Sharon and I were pals at Elko High, my senior year and her junior year.  She boarded in town to go to high school, as most ranch kids did.  My family had recently moved back to Elko from the Marble Ranch headquarters in Deeth. 

     As a teenager, Sharon had a fearless, spunky way about her.  I’m not surprised that those qualities deepened into the courage, stamina, and self-reliance it has taken to run a ranch, raise a family, and oversee a rural post office, especially during the alternate years when  her husband, State Senator Dean Rhoads, was in Carson City representing the Northern Nevada District in the biennial Nevada State Legislature.  

      After unpacking the car and getting settled in, I walked up to the post office to collect  my mail and to visit with Sharon.  As always, I started the conversation by asking, “What’s new around Tuscarora?” 

      “Not much,” Sharon said.   As an afterthought, she said, “Last August, Dean was thrown from a horse and broke his leg pretty bad.”  She handed me the contents of my box: a stack of sale advertisements, a special hunting supplement of the Elko Daily Free Press, and a wad of papers addressed to Boxholder.   “He was out in the sagebrush nine hours before we found him.” I gave her a look that said she better tell me the rest of the story. 

     Sharon said they were gathering steers on the Wilson allotment. By midday, she and the two cowboys had brought in the strays and figured Dean would be coming along any time.  “We didn’t know he was in trouble because his horse didn’t come back to the ranch.”  She paused,  ”You know, like they do in the movies.”  I nodded, understanding what a far cry ranch life is from the Hollywood version.  She shook her head.  “It just stood by the horse trailer up in the foothills, waiting for  a ride.”

      Sharon explained that Dean’s horse stumbled and pitched him into a scree slope.  His leg got wedged between two rocks, and, as the horse scrambled to get upright, it came down on Dean’s leg and broke it in two places. She continued, “It wasn’t until late afternoon that somebody stopped by the ranch and said, ‘There’s a horse about eight miles back just standing by a trailer.’”

     Sharon said,  “We knew we better go look for him. I don’t know if you know that country or not.  The Wilson allotment is a stretch of land about twenty by twenty-five square miles.”  While I didn’t know that particular area, the cliché, “needle in a haystack,” came to mind.  The needle, in this case, was a middle-aged rancher with a badly busted leg, lying for nine hours in a rock pile indistinguishable from a thousand others.   “We finally found him,” she said, “but it was rocky and slow going.” 

     They got him back to the ranch, and Sharon headed for Elko in an old Suburban borrowed from the young couple living on the ranch. Sharon said, “I thought Dean would be more comfortable  because we could lay him out flat in the back."

       All the time Sharon was talking, she was occupied at the worktable sorting mail.  I was leaning against the counter, absorbed in her story.  At this point she stopped, looked at me, and said, “Then I got a flat tire.”

     “I’ve changed plenty of flat tires in plenty of vehicles, “ Sharon continued,  “but I could not get that hood open to get the jack.  I tried and tried and finally said to myself, ‘I’m going to have to drive it to Lone Mountain on the rim.’  Finally, about a mile and a half on this side of Lone Mountain some bow hunters came along, stopped, and changed the tire for me.”

     I breathed a sigh.  Sharon had gone thirty miles from the ranch to Lone Mountain.   She only had another twenty-five to the Elko General Hospital.  Imagining poor Dean Rhoads in the back of that rattle-trap ranch vehicle, I listened for the conclusion. 

     Sharon continued:  “We got to the Emergency Room at Elko General.  There weren’t any bone doctors.  They told me Dr. Patricia Wright was on maternity leave and the other doctor wouldn’t be in ‘til Monday. We ended up flying him to Reno.”  She paused.  “There were more complications,” she said.  “He has three pins in his leg, but he’s doing pretty good now. ” 

     That was it.  End of  story.  Sharon gave me a smile that said in no uncertain terms, “Gotta get back to work.”

      The post office is open half a day on Saturdays. I went back to say hello to Julie Parks, who did the Saturday mail.  Julie was folding the canvas mailbags that go to the fourteen mailboxes  of the Independence Valley ranches.    I told her about hearing Sharon’s story.  

 Julie nodded and said,  “That happened on a Thursday.  About 6:30 the next morning Sharon called me at home from Reno.    She wanted to know if I would work for her.  When I answered the phone, we exchanged greetings, you know, the way you do.   Sharon said, ‘Hi, Julie.  How are you doin’?

      I told  her I was fine and then I said, ‘How are you?’ 

     “Of course I knew nothing about what had transpired the previous twenty-four hours  or why she was in Reno. All Sharon said was, ‘I’ve had better days.’”  

      When I think about Sharon, there is no technology yet invented that can replace the  strength of character and the stamina manifested in her story told in a way that we, the listeners, understand that “some days are like that, but we’ll get through ’em.”  Regardless of  gps systems and helicopters, to survive let alone succeed at ranching in remote areas, it takes discipline, grit, and a sense of humor, even if the latter is  manifested in a low key way.  Oh, and best not to bellyache, except about the weather, the price of cattle, and the BLM.  It won’t do you any good.

 Dean died in 2017.  Sharon is the heart and soul of the family ranch.