Spying on the South

[Wild Bill]

My wife and I did meet at North Rim of the Grand Canyon. She worked for the concessioner, Utah Parks then, and I worked for the US government repairing the mule trails, not guiding the dude strings. We rode down with tools and spare mules with wooden paniers on the mules that opened up in their bottoms (they functioned like four-legged miniature dump trucks) and kept the trails open so the dude mules could negotiate the trails safely. No one moved until we had done our work so we were very busy, especially after rain storms (summer is the monsoon season in Arizona--as a matter of fact it just stopped raining as I write). The things I could tell you that we encountered as we rode down to repair wash-outs! We had to pass by the damage and work from the bottom up to repair it. Great job and I loved it! I made enough money in 3 months to finance two semesters of state college. I could not do that today with tuition so high nowadays. I got a PhD from LSU and owed $500 to my sister for my dissertation research trip to the National Archives, which I paid off by writing a series of history sections for a history dictionary sponsored by Reader's Digest.