I left Ogden at 10 this morning and arrived in Cheyenne at 5:30.  The trip was uneventful except for getting a speeding ticket outside of Rawlings, Wyoming.  It is Labor Day weekend after all and the WHP were out in force.  After I got my ticket I noticed a few miles later someone else pulled over.  The people here drive like bats out of hell and believe me every other person is exceeding the speed limit by at least 10 miles.  I was trying to pass two trucks which were going slowly up a grade and accelerated to pass them.  Bingo.  He got me!

The most exciting part of the day was crossing the Continental Divide.  That tells you a lot!  Scenic it’s not.  Lots of sagebrush and low hills, vast amounts of acreage turned over to sheep and cattle.  Rarely see a home or a person from the highway.

The road stretches into the distance like a conveyer belt.  I’ve never seen so many container trucks in my life.  They move in herds–rectangular, long and big; sometimes a tanker comes along to break up the monotony.  Where are all these “goods” headed?

I did have Jack K. to keep me company again along with his pal, Dean Moriarty, and the gang.  Whooeeeee!  Wow!  EEEEEawwww!

Tomorrow is another 400+ mile day ending in Lincoln.  It will be my last really long day until the Texas piece  but that’s weeks away!!

I left Ketchum and drove north on Idaho 75 into the Sawtooth mountains– a spectacularly beautiful drive on an excellent highway.  Split rail fence marches in uneven lines to enclose cattle grazing on fields that stretch for miles.  The jagged mountains in the distance live up to their name–sawtooth.  The Salmon river rushes along the side of the road.  I saw fly fisherman thigh deep in the river casting their glistening lines visible in the sunshine like a spider’s web sunlit and dew drop embellished.  Norman Maclean‘s lovely book A River Runs Through It came to mind.  As the mountains move closer to the road they lose their sharp form and resemble sensuous folds of velvet draped over soft hills.

I was headed for Challis.  Troy Deneen Smith registered in Challis for the draft in 1915.  Challis is the Custer county seat–a small town clean and quiet.  It is about 50 miles from Mackay where my grandfather lived most of his life.   As I continued toward Mackay I imagined my 30 year old grandfather riding a horse or bouncing along in a wagon on a rutted dirt road in 1915 going to register for World War I.  He didn’t serve in the war.

His draft card says his occupation was “farming;” his employer Augusta Paetsch; nearest relative Sallie Smith; blue eyes, brown hair.  My friend, Carol, an avid genealogist,  helped me find his draft card when I first began this research and observed that it would be easier to trace Paetsch than Smith!  She was correct.  I found out a lot about this man–a mystery to us all–by going to the 1900 census for Custer County and looking for Paetsch.

Augusta and Ernst Paetsch and her father Chris Rogers were born in Germany.  They had three children: Albert, Marie and Helen.  In the next census, she was a widow and her elderly father Chris Rogers was living with her and the children.  The Paetsch homesteaded this land as many immigrants did in the late 1800’s.  Augusta was born in 1876 or 1878 making her at least 10 years older than Troy Deneen.  They did not have any children together.

Troy started working in the area during haying season in 1912.    By 1915, Augusta was his employer.  In August 1919 he and Augusta were married in Hailey, Idaho, near Ketchum.  He is listed as head of household on the 1920 and 1930 census records.  In 1930 only Helen, age 22, lived at home with her mother and stepfather.  I imagine that Troy started out living in the bunkhouse and later moved to the larger home.

He was twice elected to the State Legislature in 1935 and again in 1937.  He was a Democrat.  He was a successful cattleman.

In October 1939 the Boonville Advertiser ran the following: “Mr. Smith was killed last Wednesday, Oct. 4, at his ranch home near Mackay when a shotgun was accidentally  discharged into his body as he was preparing for a deer hunt.  He was 50 years old.”

As I wandered around the deserted property I found myself wishing I had known of this man long before now.  I understand that my father had no desire to acquaint himself with a man who had deserted him, but I wish we could have at least been aware that our grandfather had lived a full and interesting life.  I don’t think I’ll be able to figure out why he left his wife and child but I cannot believe that it was simply wanderlust.

If you’ve lived on the Pacific side of the US for long enough you begin to think you’re in the West.  You’re not.  The west is here as you cross the prairies, the mountains and the deserts.  As I left Oregon for Idaho and headed for the Sawtooth and Ketchum I listened to On the Road written by Jack Kerouac in the early 50’s.  He describes leaving New Jersey and heading west to San Francisco via Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado.  I’m going the same way but west to east.  I’ll be passing through some of the same cities he did but not hitchhiking!

The book is terrific and so is the reader!  I think the individuals who narrate audio books are very talented.  They modulate their voices as different characters speak and have such animated and amusing deliveries that I laugh out loud.  It’s wonderful to have them as companions.

My destination today was Ketchum.  A beautiful town with beautiful weather today–warm and sunny.  A dear friend welcomed me into her home.   I left Baker City in Oregon at 6 a.m. leaving behind the Powder River and the Geiser Grand Hotel.  Much of the road I followed was the Oregon Trail.

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What brave and strong people those pioneers were.  I’m not sure most of us could make the journey today.

I was interested in the wheat fields which are being mown and baled.  My grandfather, Troy Deneen Smith, arrived here in 1912 in time for the harvest.  He was about 27 at the time.  Kerouac describes seeing the “boys” along the roadside waiting to be chosen for a farmer’s crew.  Hard to make a living–hard work!   Tomorrow I drive north to the town where my grandfather spent the rest of his life–Mackay. 

I close with a picture of a beautiful painting seen today in the Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum. ” Light on Silver Creek” by James Cook.

I left this morning with everything from ear plugs to travel candles to enhance my stays at the multiple motel rooms where I’ll be staying  for the six weeks.  Thoughtful gifts from dear friends and a wonderful gift On The Road in audiobook format from Ken.

I spent most of the day with Guido Brunetti, Commisario of the Venice Police Dept. listening as he solved another fascinating mystery written by his creator, Donna Leon.  Brunetti makes Venice live as you follow him through a story as tangled as the twining calles of Venice.  He is an urbane, witty, and kind man–a very different detective than those featured on American TV.  It was great fun to listen as I drove along.

I made good time stopping to view the Stewart Range and enjoy the sun.  I got to Baker City at 4:30; took a walk along the Powder River and had dinner at the Geiser Grand Hotel.   Tomorrow I head to Ketchum staying the night with friends.  Then on to Challis and Mackay to see the place where my paternal grandfather spent most of his life.  Last summer my brother visited there with his son and found the ranch where Troy Deneen Smith spent his life.  I’m looking for clues as to why he might have left his baby son (my father), and his young wife in Kansas City and moved to Idaho in 1912.

I recommend a fascinating article published in The New Yorker August 15 & 22 pp. 64-75 by Elizabeth Kolbert entitled “Sleeping with the Enemy.”  She describes in great detail the work of Svante Paabo who heads the department of evolutionary genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.  He has been working for years trying to untangle the genetic details of 50 thousand year old bones by extracting DNA from them.  He is attempting to discover what happened genetically speaking which allowed our genes to prevail and those of the Neanderthal’s to die out.  You can read the details for yourself but what I found interesting in light of my genealogic research is that he believes that our team intermarried with the Neanderthals and we, thus, carry some of their DNA around with us.

A year or two ago my brother and I submitted our buccal cells to a DNA lab for analysis under the aegis of ancestry.com.   After six weeks or so the reports came back.  Since that time more sophisticated DNA testing has come on-line but the reports we received were interesting.  Our paternal line goes back to “The Artisans–R1b” an ancient haplogroup which came to Europe from west Asia about 35,000 – 40-000 years ago at the dawning of the Aurignacian culture.  A culture known for its subtle technological progress and its decorative beads and jewelry.  Some anthropologists believe that the Aurignacian culture was responsible for the cave paintings in France, Spain and Portugal.

My DNA produced information about our maternal line  The results placed the women in my tree in “The European Travelers”–haplogroup J.  These folks emerged around 50,000 years ago in the Near East around the time the first modern humans left Africa.  About 10% of today’s European population belongs to this group even though they did not arrive until the end of the last major ice age, about 10,000 years ago.  The “European Travelers” ushered in the rise of advanced farming and herding techniques.

Aside from all this providing scintillating dinner table conversation, why did we do it?  Our father fervently believed that he was part Cherokee.  We grew up believing that we were Cherokee–or part Cherokee–even though there was not a scrap of evidence to validate Dad‘s unwavering belief.   We have never met a soul who was a relative of Dad’s except for one moment 58 years ago when we were passing through Vinita, Oklahoma from Kansas City on our way to visit family in California.   My brother and I remember Dad introducing us to a middle-aged woman he called “Aunt May.”  We remember her as someone who fit our idea of an “Indian”–dark hair, dark complexion, dark eyes.  Aunt May said little; we drove away never to hear another word about this remarkable occurence.  How I wish I could have a “do over” and ask her “Who are you?”  I would really like to know.

I was startled to see Pella Iowa mentioned in Maureeen Dowd’s colume last Sunday in the NY Times.  She was in Pella covering the  Republican contenders for the party nomination  in the  2012 election.  I was especially delighted to learn that she had witnessed Mitt Romney‘s hair move!

I’m going to be spending the night in Pella which is near Oskaloosa and Rose Hill where my great great grandparents Calvin Jones Jackson and Eliza Hood Jackson raised their family.  My father was raised by their daughter, Alice Lillian Jackson Sherer.   I decided to stay in Pella because it had a motel.  I never dreamed it was the city of choice for the Republican contenders to delight and entertain their Iowan supporters.

I begin my big trip soon and have plotted an itinerary that takes me from Seattle via Mackay Idaho, Pella and points south over a 6 week period.  I will need to call upon all my resources to complete this adventure and am both anxious and excited.  I hope to learn a lot about my parents lives and am open to new experiences.   I hope you’ll follow along with me!

I read in yesterday’s Seattle Times a full page story on the U.S. ATF’s gun-running sting dubbed “Fast and Furious” which has come under criticism.    The ultimate goal of the operation based in Phoenix was to identify the higher-ups in the Sinaloa (Mexico) drug cartel.  I was surprised to see a big photo of the border crossing from Hidalgo, Texas to Reynosa, Mexico.  Why was I surprised?   I’m going to be there in October!

The cartel is based out of Sinaloa, Mexico.  I know where Sinaloa is because I lived there.  It’s on the Baja side (west coast) of Mexico.  Hidalgo and Reynosa are on the Gulf of Mexico side and I’m going there–at least to Mercedes, Texas which is in Hidalgo county.  Mercedes is about 30 miles from Reynosa across the river.

The photograph suggests that the gun runners cross into Mexico with the guns they purchased in the U.S. at Hidalgo and then head west across the entire breadth of Mexico with the guns.  That would be quite a trip!  There are many pipelines into Mexico and this may be one of them.

My dad grew up on a ranch in the Rio Grande valley and went to grade school in Mercedes!  Reading this story makes me ponder the changes in one hundred years since my dad was a school child in Mercedes.  He would be startled and saddened to learn about the carnage which takes place in Mexico over drugs, money, and power.  He always spoke warmly of the Mexican cowboys who worked on the ranch.  My time in Sinaloa made me equally fond of Mexicans and I’m sorry that many Americans have negative impressions of our neighbors.  I wonder if most Mexicans view us with equal distain.