A while back I was looking around at stuff about Oklahoma and stumbled upon the Waurika Rattlesnake Roundup which is actually going to be this coming weekend. I wrote a little post about it then and as April came around, I remembered it was coming up and decided to revisit the website. I saw that James White and the Outlaw Handlers were going to be putting on a show – a “continuous” show. He sounds interesting and I guess he has been doing this snake business for a number of years – as in decades. I found one article about a Sharon Springs roundup in which he appeared, although then the group was known as the Fangs and Rattlers.

I don’t know much about what they do, but I think he puts a lot of snake tails in his mouth . . . and the rest of the snake is attached to each tail. I think I would be too nervous to watch. Actually, I don’t know if I would feel compelled to go if I lived close enough . . . When I was little and we would go to a zoo, I always wanted to visit the reptiles first. Was that because I was so frightened of them I wanted to get it over or because I wanted to look at something which could freeze me with terror.

I think the fact that they don’t have legs bothers me the most – the fast, fast slithering and the head and upper body being able to spring forward in the blink of an eye. I guess arms on a human could snap forward and punch me in the nose pretty fast, but I don’t think about that for some reason.

I can’t remember not knowing about the Rudyard Kipling stories of cobras and the days of ropes that could be pulled to summon servants and a murderer putting a poisonous shake through the hole in the wall so it could crawl down the rope and bite a sleeping person. See, I am upset enough to write run-on sentences again.

When my grandfather was farming and they cut and baled hay, my uncle said there would always be a rattler in one of the bails . . . that was his least favorite job on the farm – helping with the hay bales. Rattlesnakes are scarce here now – although a hundred years ago when my grandmother moved into a house by a lake, the family discovered a snake nest in the cellar. One big snake crawled up into a wall and stuck his head out a hole in that wall. My grandmother used a broom to keep hitting it back until someone came, got a shotgun and blew its head off. Wait a minute – they fired a shotgun in the house? That seems odd. Well, desperate times lead to desperate measures, I suppose.

Maybe I would be drawn to the festival as I am sometimes drawn to watch scary movies. I might have to duct tape myself to a wall for that weekend to keep me from going. Yet, I live in an old house with a fruit cellar – what if a snake gnawed a hole in the wall right where I was taped? Oh, Lordy!

Now I am thinking that these Oklahomans just go out around where they live and find these snakes for the roundup. So for me, if I lived there, every day would be snake day. I would buy a shotgun, maybe two . . . and wear boots . . . and not sit in the grass.

I am a wimp . . . or Indiana Jonesette – Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes? I hate snakes!

Now that I have done a little exploring of the town and learned a little about things there, I have the urge to check in and that resulted in my wanting buttons – the kind you wear on your shirt or jacket. A company operating with an Albin, Wyoming address makes them – I want to think of a neat idea and put in an order.  First, what would I put on my buttons that I would give away?  They are only one inch in diameter so it can’t be a novel, but it should be something original and, well, novel. Now I have a project.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the name of the company is Grade Three  Merch.

I am kind of curious as to where the name came from, but I’ll think about that later.

Okay, I first happened on Thermopolis, Wyoming and it was just a little town, so I thought, “Gosh, I may have to look hard to entertain myself here.” Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw Yellowstone and gave the name Thermopolis a second thought. In my mind, I had been seeing the Spartans at Thermopylae – then thought thermo and Yellowstone. Hot spa place, I wondered.

Well, they have a slick webside – “Home of the World’s Largest Mineral Spring.” They have a Dinosaur Center there, as well; so I am going to look for another small town in Wyoming. I guess I’m not in the mood for the tourist attractions.

Let’s try Albin – I found it right up against the eastern border in the southern part of the state. And here’s a  fact:

Distance to major cities:
Cheyenne : 41 miles
Casper : 194 miles
Denver , CO : 141

(They do have a missile base, though, and it’s really close.)

I’ve been doing a little aerial exploration and I think there is one paved road going through town – is it Main or Broadway? I should have known – it’s Cheyenne. Then I see a length of road one block long coming off it to the south. Not much here, I think . . . but, ACK, I’m in it up to my eyeballs, now. Well, that’s okay; there are interesting stories everywhere and I like looking for them.

They don’t have cell phone service in Albin (and you can read the article in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle Online ) because they don’t have a tower. You see, Albin is right along the Union Pacific train tracks – if they were near an interstate, they would have a much better chance of getting a signal. My mother lives in a little village but part of my grandparents’ farm was sold to the state when the Toll Road came through. That baby comes out of Chicago and heads all the way east. She has great service.

I keep getting off the subject here and maybe in doing so I can of experience Albin. It’s a group of houses with the high plains all around them. You do have to turn inward there and ponder things – I suppose a person there talks to the other people (120 total) there and then he/she tells it to the countryside and listens to see if it talks back.

My granddaughter has been watching Alvin and the Chipmunks and I’m starting to think of the town as Alvin. Oh, but, gosh . . . I would never have expected this:

University of Wyoming electrical engineering student Julie Sandberg of Albin received the Scholar of the Year award from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC).

Sandberg was notified for the honor at the recent annual ACEC meeting in Washington, D.C. The award includes a $10,000 scholarship for the 2007-2008 academic year and a trip later this semester to the association’s 2007 fall conference in Maui, Hawaii, for the official presentation.

Sandberg’s family resides in Albin, a small farming community 42 miles northeast of Cheyenne. She says her greatest support comes from her family, including parents Terry and Joanne Sandberg, sister Lori, also a UW College of Engineering and Applied Science student, and grandmother Bertha Sandberg.

“All the people in Albin are more like family than friends,” Sandberg, says.

(You can read the entire article HERE.)

Hunters Trace Kennel is in Albin; they breed award winning Golden Retrievers. Uh . . . they don’t list a cell phone number that I can tell, but they say the best way to reach them is email – that would be Internet satellite, right? Probably. But I think they have cable TV so I’m not really certain.

And just when you start to joke around, you click on a topic and find tragedy:

ALBIN CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL, ALBIN: Candace Yuill (11) and her brother, Brett Yuill (8), were killed when an oncoming snowplow veered into the path of their school bus on an icy country road. The impact peeled off the right side of the bus, flattened the first four rows of seats on the right side ejecting both victims from the bus.

A future NASA scientist, top dogs . . . and tragedy. Life is the same everywhere.