More Memories: Neat People I've Met Along the Way

This is the 24th in an ongoing series of personal memories. The others are listed below.

In a long journalism career spanning some six decades, I’ve encountered countless thousands of people willing to grant me some moments of their life. In some cases, we were together for days.

Each of them patiently answered probably far more questions than they envisioned or preferred. I was seeking more than enough detailed information to adequately tell the story of their lives that, frankly, few of them thought worthy of a newspaper story.

I fear many of them are no longer with us, which is sad. They each touched my life with warmth. And I hope, perhaps in some small way, recounting our times together becomes a little prose tribute.

John Riffey’s driveway was 57 miles long. I briefly considered abandoning the unguided safari when approaching the first obstacle in the middle of nowhere in northwestern Arizona.

It was a 25-foot-wide, flowing river, maybe a foot deep. The family station wagon slid and tilted askew atop and in between smooth, melon-sized river rocks.

Fortunately, I did not give up.

Sixteen gates and 54 dirt-road miles later, I saw him waving by his modest, stone cabin on a mountainside close to the northern Grand Canyon rim. Ranger Riffey’s turf was some 200,000 acres of Grand Canyon National Monument, as the most isolated ranger in service at the time. He'd seen me coming for miles.

He worked from home before most of us knew such a thing. “I’m too busy to get lonesome,” he said.

The lone ranger watched for fires and stranded tourists, monitored abundant wildlife, and just generally relished existing in the midst of such immense natural beauty. Once a day, he radioed in to headquarters, if he felt like it.

“I like people fine,” he told me, “But I don’t seem to miss ‘em.”

Ranger Riffey was a local legend for his 30-year residency. He saw no one from January to April. But he did not lack for company. An eagle visited occasionally. And Robert, an abandoned infant rock squirrel he nursed with an eye-dropper, moved into the toolshed.

“Let’s take Pogo on a little tour,” he said. I figured a four-wheeler. He meant his very old Piper Super Cub with holes in the floor. The runway was anywhere Riffey wanted.

We bounced into the air. But not high, maybe 40 feet above the rough grassland across the endless landscape. He was smiling.

Then, strangely, Ranger Riffey told me to look out the window, straight down, nowhere else. There was the ground disturbingly close, flashing by beneath.

I stared at the ground blurring past. It was still very close. Now what?

Maybe 30 seconds later, suddenly, the entire world fell away. At 130 miles an hour, we’d flown over the sharp edge of the Grand Canyon. In an instant, from 40 feet high to 3,000 feet down to the Colorado River.

I gasped. Riffey chuckled. He’d done this before.

We flew down inside the canyon for several minutes, then soared back up and out.

When we landed, I realized it was getting late. “Stay over,” he said. So, I did. Sandwiches for dinner. Flapjacks in the morning. I slept on the couch.

After dark, he said, ”Come with me.”

He turned off both lights. But did not have a flashlight. We went into the front yard. “Look up,” he said.

Holy smokes!

I had gazed up at stars in wonder since childhood. But never horizon to horizon. In all directions. Not a cloud. Not a dot of artificial light. Billions, trillions of stars streamed everywhere we looked across the entire sky.

So bright collectively we needed no flashlight. Some of those twinkling beams had been traveling at the speed of light through endless space to our eyeballs since the dinosaurs died.

“Not bad,” said Ranger Riffey.

He was five feet tall in his caribou-skin boots. His hands were scarred, his face wrinkled and weathered. His eyes sharp like an eagle.

Snowbird, a 77-year-old native guide, took me and a seven-year-old son on a four-day, 103-mile dogsled journey into the genuine wilds of what was then called Canada’s Northwest Territories.

Snowbird lived life according to sunrise and sunset. He knew the days of the week, just not the one we were in. He'd never had a watch. He could not read words on paper. But he knew four languages – Cree, Chipewyan, English, and Dog. He could read tracks in show, broken branches on trails, the telltale movements of dog tails and heads, and what afternoon clouds foretold of tomorrow’s weather.

He loved the bush and was eager to escape the crowd of Fort Chipewyan (Pop. 1,400). He told my son, Spencer: “I keep you one month in the bush. Boy, I show you how to live pretty good."

The six dogs, in harness and rhythm, pulled the three of us and our 600-pounds of wooden sled and gear creaking and rocking along through deep snows at four miles an hour on frozen rivers and lakes, along animal trails through thick woods.

We’d head out about 8 a.m. until the March sun turned the snow sticky. Then, back on the trail after 3. We had sleeping bags for the floor in shacks and a tent.

One day, the dogs each got a large frozen fish from a hidden stash delivered by my son, dubbed Little Snowbird. The other days, dry dog food soaked in hot water.

He taught Spencer some native expressions and trail signs, as his father had before him. He told us of tribal legends with deep reverence.

We had prepared meals on wood stoves, including rabbit, duck, and buffalo. We listened politely to the joys of trapping muskrats, skinning, and roasting them on an open fire. “It’s nice, I tell you.”

He showed us wolf, fox, lynx tracks and, from a great distance, a herd of 200 buffalo. At one rest stop, Spencer stepped off the trail and instantly sank hip-deep in snow. Snowbird lifted him out by his parka hood and taught him how to snowshoe.

The last night, we ran into slush on a seemingly frozen river. Snowbird simply jumped into it. Knee-deep in freezing slush, the old man sloshed his way up to the inexperienced lead dog to guide him toward safety.

At the cabin, after feeding the dogs, Snowbird shared more Cree legends, as he casually peeled an inch of ice off his bare ankles. That was 1 a.m. Then, he rolled up in a buffalo blanket on the floor.

At 6 a.m., I found Snowbird outside in sub-zero temperatures, chopping down a tree for firewood to make tea and oatmeal.

In the mid-eighties, the Heartland was stricken with an immense farm financial crisis. Thousands lost their family lands. Some turned to violence. I ended up covering much of it and wrote a book on the rural convulsions that shattered a way of life and one famous homicide case.

Later, another shooting erupted in a tiny town in rural Iowa. The initial details were sketchy. Reportedly, a 63-year-old farmer named Dale Burr had fatally shot his wife, a banker, neighbor, and himself, possibly over money troubles.

I arrived on the downtown sidewalk of Hills about 10 p.m. None of its 550 residents was in sight. Not a single person. It began snowing. Where to start reporting? Not even an open gas station.

Talk about helpless desperation. Pressure to produce an original, accurate account. Time deadline. I stood there alone, maybe 20 minutes, trying to think of something, anything.

Suddenly, the door of a nearby bar burst open, spewing smoke, steam, loud music, and two men into the empty street. Now, every big-city reporter feeling my desperation would swiftly pounce on them with endless questions.

But I grew up in another small town. So, I didn’t.

"Evening."

“You’re not from here,” said one of that town’s 546 surviving residents. I agreed.

“Where are you from?”

“Chicago.”

“Why are you here?”

“I heard about the bank shooting.”

“Yeh, that was bad. Why would you come all this way?”

“I’m a newspaper reporter, and I want to get the facts right myself.”

“Oh, yeh? What newspaper?”

“The New York Times.”

“No kidding!” Except he didn’t say “kidding.”

The two men looked at each other for a few seconds.

“Wait here.”

“O.K.,” I said. It wasn't like I had somewhere else to go.

They got in a car, started it for heat. I stood in the snow, still desperate. Also cold. A few minutes passed.

The driver’s window rolled down. “Get in.”

I got in the backseat.

Turns out, the driver was the farmer’s best friend. He was shaken and wanted to talk, if I wouldn’t use his name.

He knew everything – the farmer’s $800,000 debts, the looming loss of his land, stored grains, livestock, machinery, and beloved quarter-horses, the property dispute with a neighbor, and his marriage strains.

We talked more than an hour. I was no longer desperate. Next day, I would visit the bank, verify the rest, and write my story that began:

When the radio news flashed across the snow-covered prairies here Monday for the noon meal, it carried a bulletin that John Hughes, president of the Hills Bank and Trust Company, had been shot and killed.
One farmer just outside this town of 550 people turned to his wife and said, ''I wonder if it was Dale Burr.''
It was.

This is the 24th in an ongoing series of personal Memories. Please share yours in the Comments. Links to the others are below:

Unexpected Thanksgiving Memory, a Live Volcano, and a Moving Torch

The Horrors I Saw at the Three 9/11 Crash Sites Back Then

The Glorious Nights When I Had Paris All to Myself

Inside Political Conventions - at Least the Ones I Attended

Political Assassination Attempts I Have Known

The Story a Black Rock Told Me on a Montana Mountain

That Time I Sent a Message in a Bottle Across the Ocean...and Got a Reply!

As the RMS Titanic Sank, a Father Told His Little Boy, 'See You Later.' But Then...

Things My Father Said: 'Here, It's Not Loaded'

The Terrifyingly Wonderful Day I Drove an Indy Car

When I Went on Henry Kissinger's Honeymoon