CHAPTER 8

In 1895 Clem Hoolahan’s grandfather, Ezeriah, and Ezeriah’s son, Horace, had come to Colorado where they had  planned set up two hundred-and-eighty acre homesteads next to a homestead owned by Jube Crawlback whom they had met in Kansas City, Missouri when they were all traveling west.

Clem had been two years old in 1901 when Ezeriah and Horace had won the war to bring the railroad directly into Jerkwater.  The greatest opponents of the project had been the Board of Directors at the Jerkwater Community Bible Church.  The JCBC’s objection was not so much to the project itself, but rather to the placement of the tracks, which would cut them off from the majority of their members and leave the church on the “Wrong” side of the tracks.

Eventually, Horace and Jube had a falling out which ended in moonshine-induced fisticuffs and Horace buying out Jubilation’s entire spread - all but the fifty acres closest to town, (though Jube always claimed he cheated; whether on the fight or the price of the land was never clear.)

The bad blood between  the Hoolahans and their community had remained, in one form or another, for as long as Clem could remember, though Ezeriah and Horace had spent years laughing about it.  And although, in later years, they were rumored to be “salting” their cattle to make them heavier at the stockyard scales, nothing could ever be proved.

Rancher Clem did not deny or confirm any of his family’s many activities, he knew that there were many corrupt and depraved people in Jerkwater, and he was quite sure he wasn’t one of them.  He was positive that he could never meet the true definition depravity because, despite the occasional theft and scale rigging at the cattle auction, everyone expected some kind of shenanigans and he wasn’t really doing anything wrong to anyone.

Clem would not describe himself as indifferent, he tended to prefer the term his grandfather had always used” Anti-Avid.”  Clem just couldn’t see the point in asking people things about how they were feeling or how their children were because then they would actually try to tell him and he would have to bother to pretend to listen.