Continued from Lovesick again
Yry pressed on through the month of February, alternately mooning over the tragedy of love and throwing herself into her studies. Her Farm Materials and Tools projects drug along as she waited for supplies for her spurs and chaps to arrive. “Because of the war, one needs to be prepared,” she wrote in Yry Press. “I bought 2 pair wool pants, 2 pair cotton gabardine, 1 pair boots.” The plan was to be fully stocked with cowgirling necessities by the time her classes were finished. She spent hours in the library reading about horses and horse training, and she stockpiled fistfuls of pamphlets and government bulletins on horse and cattle range, feeds, vegetation, etc. Her friend Mrs. Miller warned that she would have to buck many prejudices along her path to cowgirling and ranching. But Yry was optimistic. She was excelling in school, and her professors seemed impressed with her spunk, some rather grudgingly so. Her dairy professor gave her a lead for a job, but she wanted to hold off till her coursework was completed rather than grabbing the first thing to come along.
April 2, 1943: Well, I’m off again. I expect to land in Cody, Wyo to get some more experience at ranching, practical this time. But first I’m going to Sheridan for a few days, mainly to see the Dentist as I’ve a silver filling coming out. I hope I’ll get to see Claire and family.
Ya, I bet she wanted to see Claire and family! She wrote copiously in Yry Press about the bus ride through Cheyenne, Torrington, Lusk, Newcastle, Gillette, Sheridan, Billings to Cody. In her notes she described the sights and the people she encountered.
From Gillette to Sheridan was a very long ride. Saw 2 dead cows on the way. Road bad as a result of snows. The Bighorns were in sight long before we got there. Sheridan to Cody! The wait in Billings was 7 hours—very long. Waiting room not comfy . . .
Notice how she mentions Sheridan in once sentence and without a pause, she’s on to “Sheridan to Cody”? She filters her ramblings even in her own diaries. But as we shall soon see, she spent several days in Sheridan before resuming the bus trip.
Utterly surprising and disturbing are the comments about two Japs riding the bus on their way to the Jap camp near Cody. This terminology assaults the very principles this woman taught me. But it was written in a journal and it was the common vernacular of the time; she made laborious copies of the Yry Press and mailed them to her friends back east, so perhaps she amended the ethnic slur—or perhaps the slur never occurred to her at that time. When I was a child, she corrected my friends when they recited, eeny meeny, miny moe, catch a nigger by the toe!
“That’s catch a tiger by the toe!” she would reprimand with a penetrating stare.
I assume Japs was an abbreviation to save her pen hand. But I’m also surprised to find no diatribe about the Heart Mountain detention camp in her papers. I wonder—was she so eager to assume a cowboy identity that she turned her back on her previous convictions? Is it possible she did not know that America was dumping Japanese Americans into concentration camps? But she knew about the Jap Camp. She’s not here to defend herself, but it is difficult to accept her apparent racism.
Rangewriter 
I went to the home of my childhood recently and was besieged by memories, one of them about that rhyme when we were playing “Kick the Can” or Hide and Seek” We changed it to “Tigger ” the character in “Winnie the Pooh” once our parents enlightened us to the fact it was not a nice word and what it meant. We kids made a group decision to change that one. Once enlightened, I never called my mean neighbour’s black dog by its name again-was disgusted, but it wasn’t the dog’s fault, so I always greeted him with “hi fella. ” In following years things have slipped out of my mouth that have shocked me and I challenged myself to change my thinking and words and grow and am still working on myself. I heard that term for the Japanese and never knew about the internment camps until a Japanese-Canadian friend informed me back in the 80’s. As I approach Canada Day it is with a lot more humility, as it has been a rude awakening to discover the atrocities that have been committed in the not-so-distant past and even the present. We can only hope and grow, and speak up, as it is obvious your Mother did.
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We hear a lot of lip service given to the idea that words matter, these days. (no pun intended) But it really is true. Words have the power of swords or salve. How we use them and put them together can be lethal.
Honestly, I was non-plussed by my mother’s apparent insensitivity and lack of knowledge in referring to classes of people. If she were in her teens or 20s when she wrote these things, I could perhaps overlook the transgressions. But she was approaching 30. And she KNEW about a “Jap Camp.” What did she think that was, a summer retreat for Japanese families? Whoever she was at this point in her life, she was a very different person by the time I came along.
And, btw, I didn’t learn about the internment camps till I was in my mid twenties. And when I learned about them, I was horrified to think of my really good Japanese friend from central Wyoming in the context of how a Japanese family ended up in that odd country, surrounded by Caucasian ranchers. Upon learning of the history that had shaped her family, I felt like a traitor for having been so ignorant about their pain. And of course, because she was my friend, I didn’t really think of her as “Japanese.” She was/is simply Teri. But that bit of back story filled in some perplexing issues that I had never understood before.
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Always learning and growing, my friend.
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Mooning over the tragedy of love is not recommended. She did well to throw herself in studies. My study days are over but often try and re-balance myself by doing housework. Especially vacuuming. Yesterday I had to deep-freeze chicken necks for our Jack Russell’s ‘Milo’ daily dinner. Not a pleasant job putting individual necks into its own little plastic sandwich bag. Even so, I felt good afterwards. Swooning over lost love is life -sapping. Love is overrrated!
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I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: You crack me up Gerard. You and I have both lived long enough to know how truly overrated love is. Now go thaw out a neck for Milo.
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