Page 147 On Barlow’s Ranch

Summer ‘77 was the summer when Elvis died. It was the summer I took a two week trip to stay with the Barlows in Wyoming. I was there during July & August with the Perseid Meteor shower. Carol Rankin had a little house in Cora, and we slept out watching the show at night. The Bar Cross seemed to be a place where folks could come to feel the earth as it is when it is mostly left alone. While I was there, the guests consisted of myself, a Californian; an Australian brother and sister; friends of Mims, John’s mother; Gerrit Graham, our pal from Hollywood; Wade Barlow, John’s cousin; Steve Watson, a Carmelite monk; and a father and daughter from the East Coast, I’ve forgotten their story. All visiting John and Elaine, seemingly at the same time. This is totally aside from the crew that was hired to hay. We all sat down together to meals. Wonderful ranch meals, lots of stuff all piled steaming hot, mouth watering. I would feel so full after lunch that I’d think I couldn’t ride that old tractor bumpity, bump. But, out we’d go. I was ‘helping’ at the Bar Cross Ranch with haying. I ‘helped’ by raking the windrows when we could work, but it was wet that summer. I learned the meaning of ‘Make hay while the sun shines.’ There were too many days of no sun, no haying. Old Joe, on the Bar Cross hay crew for years, had to go on to Oregon to pick apples in September; and Barlow would lose more workers as the season went on. But, he managed to stay in the highest of moods, and seemed able to cope with all the adversities. John was (possibly still is) Sublette County’s fastest Sweeper. So, if all the equipment ahead of him was working and the bailer laid them down right, John could fly! Being at the Bar Cross was as close as most of us will ever get to the old ways of the West. It’s traditional there, all things have an order; and life is not easy – Sue Swanson