Another Round at the Say When: A Ranch House Out Under the Stars
A journalist moves to the small town of McDermitt, on the Oregon-Nevada line, to learn about why the high school football team never wins, and about the townsfolk who cheer them on, no matter what.
One in a series.
It’s just before 9 a.m. on Labor Day morning as I walk up to Junior and Lorraine’s house, just across the street from the now-closed White Horse tavern, once the craziest place in town, back when McDermitt had a bigger heartbeat.
Today, they’re taking me out to the 1,100-acre spread a few miles north into Oregon they call Rancho Pobre, named by Lorraine’s grandfather who pioneered the land for cattle and sheep more than a century ago.
The couple has been anxious to show me their life in this isolated western town, the reasons they have stayed here in the place they have called home for decades.
Much of it has to do with the historic ranch, along with the unvarnished small-town life.
Junior told me the other day that Lorraine wants to move out to the ranch full-time, so he’s clearing space with his bulldozer for new modular home he’s having built.
I’ve written about Junior and Lorraine, the two animal lovers who have adopted countless dogs and cats from just about everywhere, from strays on the nearby reservation to litters of kittens discovered in abandoned buildings around town.
But their real family are the mixed-breed dogs — Tater, Tickie, Shuggie and Mac — the pack of tongue-lolling companions Juniors calls the boys.
I took to Junior and Loraine right away. I felt comfortable around their easy-going “we’ve been married forever” banter that reminds me of my own parents when they were alive. Junior doesn’t get anything by Lorraine and, well, she doesn’t get much past Junior, either.
As I walk up to the house, Junior races out of the driveway atop his four-by-four, heading in the other direction, outside town.
Then it hits me: Where are the dogs?
They’re usually barking and carrying on, excited by the presence of a passerby.
Lorraine greets me in the yard. Tater and Tickie, the three-legged car-chaser, took off not long ago, when Junior went to meet the beekeeper from Boise who keeps more than a hundred hives on the couple’s property.
For some reason, the bees do well in this area, possibly due to the abundance of greasewood, sagebrush and buck bush. Who knows?
“Those two knuckleheads shot out of here like a canon,” Lorraine says of the dogs.
They usually run over to the abandoned plane runway just over the Oregon line, sniff around, bark at the birds and snakes, do their business, and then come on home.
But not today, and Junior is worried.
“Those are his kids,” Lorraine says, as two of her kittens climb a nearby power pole.
Junior returns a few moments later, without the dogs.
He’s worried they’ve been run over or shot by ranchers who don’t take kindly to stray dogs on their property, especially if they start chasing the horses and cattle.
We get in the couple’s pickup and back out onto the street.
I’m in the back with Mac the dog..
“He’ll get hair all over you,” Lorraine warns from the front seat. “Oh, just look at that hair; we live in the old west. My Dad would be turning in his grave if he saw the back seat of this pickup truck.”
Junior looks over at his wife.
“Lorraine, your dad’s in the grave, been there a long time. No need to worry.”
You can tell Junior is worried about the boys.
We drive several backstreets around McDermitt as Lorraine offers a running commentary of who lives where, while Junior keeps his eyes straight, scanning yards and lots for those two pesky dogs.
“If those dogs aren’t back by now, there’s something wrong,” Juniors says with the worry of father searching the streets for a pair of wayward teenagers. “They’re not coming back. Somebody put traps out on ‘em.”
“Oh, Junior,” Lorraine says.
Four miles north of town, we turn right onto a dirt road. Lorraine is quiet now. She seems to relax, once she’s outside of town and into wider country.
I ask her what she loves about the life way out here.
“I want to be up in the hills,” she says. “In the wide open spaces.”
She tells the story of the time she and Junior ran the family gas station and market in town. It was decades ago and since it was on the Oregon side, the owners were required to pump gas for their customers.
Well, one day, this well-off looking woman got out for fuel and a windshield clean. Lorraine thinks she must have been from New York or something.
The woman looked at Lorraine.
“This is just terrible out here.”
“What do you mean?” Lorraine answered. “The mountains, the wildlife.”
“Oh, honey,” the woman interrupted. “You don’t know what beauty is.”
Well, Lorraine does know what beauty is. She sees it, hears it, smells it, every day.
We pull up to a locked gate.
This is Rancho Pobre,” Lorraine announces. “Poor Ranch.”
She hops out to open the padlock. Junior stays behind the wheel.
“Why do you think I took her out here?” he whispers.
Mac jumps out of the truck cab and takes off, like a furry brown-and-white bullet.
Junior sighs.
“Those two knot-heads,” he says of the missing dogs. “They’d be running here, too.”
There’s a wistfulness to his voice.
“I kind of doubt they’ll come home,” he says. “I’ll be surprised.”
Back inside the truck, Lorraine explains that her grandfather lived on the ranch, while her mother lived in town to raise the kids. He might have been lonely at times, but that’s just how it was.
We ease over a hill and into a small valley to find a spread of houses that Junior has moved onto the site from town over the years.
So, why do they need another house here?
Junior points at his wife.
At 2,400-square-feet, she hopes it might convince her children to move back home to raise their own kids.
“Well, how long are you gonna live in it until you kick the bucket?” he asks.
“I don’t care,” Lorraine says.
The money could be better spent, Junior reasons, for, well, you know, like one of those new small planes he’s been keeping his eye on.
Junior has worked this property as least as hard as its founder did, digging culverts, bridges, fixings roofs blown off in storms.
But there’s always more work. “If I was 20 years younger,” he says, “the things I’d do.”
“Well, I want two new metal gates to replace that old one out there,” Lorraine says. “But it ain’t happening.”
“Oh, honey.”
“Don’t give me that honey, crap.”
Junior gazes out over the homestead.
He misses his dogs.
Lorraine helps out when she can, when she’s not driving bus over at the school.
For instance, she helped Junior put the new roof on the cabin porch.
“She was my slave labor,” Junior winks.
“Well, that project almost led to divorce,” Lorraine says. “I’ve never been yelled at so loud and so often in all my life.”
“Honey,” Junior says in his defense. “I just didn’t want you to get yourself hurt.”
The moment the couple arrives, Junior checks a trap he set to catch mice that have taken to chewing things around the cabin.
There’s a ramp the mice can walk up to a little bucket, where they can have at a dab of peanut butter, before falling into the standing water below.
Junior opens the lid on the container.
Inside is a dead rat the size of a small cat.
“It’s huge!” Lorraine says.
“He is a big bugger,” Junior says, holding it by the tail.
It’s the third rat they’ve caught in recent weeks. Every morning, Lorraine found rat droppings and Junior cursed over gnawed wires in the ranch pickup.
Well, that takes care of that.
Now, back to the good life.
For an hour, the couple sit inside the cabin, counting their country blessings, reveling in their rural life.
Junior recalls buying the cabin from a Reno dentist who used to hunt near McDermitt.
“What do you hunt?” Junior once asked him.
“Ducks,” the hunter said.
“Hell, we ain’t got no ducks out here!”
Well, they’re mud hens.”
“Mud hens! Those dirty, little skinny things.”
“I think they’re cute,” Lorraine says.
Well, they bought the hunter’s cabin in town, only to find out the professional movers wanted $5,000 and a bunch of permits to relocate that building out to the ranch.
So, Junior decided to do it the simple way: He got some good old boys together, put some wheels under the frame and pulled that house out here with his tractor.
And now it’s a little bit of rural heaven, out under the stars.
“What are you going to do out here?” I ask Lorraine.
“Whatever I feel like,” she says.
“Ah, she’ll be in hog heaven,” Junior says. “She’ll be living with me.”
“That could be the problem,” Lorraine says.
On the way back to town, Junior is quiet. His mind is still on the boys.
When we reach the house, they’re still not back.
I hop out of the truck, feeling sorry for Junior, suddenly robbed of one of his life’s simpler pleasures, the companionship of a good dog, or two.
An hour later, he called: The boys were back in town. Who knows where they’d been?
But they were home.
Once again, Junior counted his country blessings.
