[Leica] Pioneer Day - OT and long

[SthRosner@aol.com]

Happy Pioneer Day to all Luggers who live in or have any attachment to the 
Rocky Mountain West. Today celebrates the anniversary of the day when Brigham 
Young and his co-religionaries in the Church of the Latter Day Saints - the 
Mormon Church - first gazed down from the Wasatch mountain range upon the 
valley of the Great Salt Lake and said: "this is the place."

As a kid, over 50 years ago I worked for two summers on a ranch in eastern 
Idaho (LDS country) on the west slope of the Teton mountains, five miles from 
the southwest corner of Yellowstone National Park. It was owned by Jack 
Young, a direct descendant of Brigham Young, and he worked us hard and he 
played us hard. Up before sun-up, big ranch breakfast, then out wrangling the 
horses, working the cows, rigging fencing, digging potatoes, dirt-under-the 
fingernails stuff. Dinner and collapsing into our bunks by 8:30. Most 
Saturdays we either played softball with kids from Ashton ID or went on 
day-rides into the Targhee Forest or further up into the Teton foothills.

But on Pioneer Day, we trucked down to St. Anthony or Idaho Falls for the 
Rodeo. And toward the end of the summer Jack took us on a two-week horseback 
pack trip through the Tetons, Jackson's Hole and Yellowstone Park. At that 
time the word awesome had not become common currency. The trip was awesome. 
As were the entire summers. One of the great forming experiences of my life, 
specially for a kid growing up in the relatively protected and privileged 
suburbs of New York City.

There is even a Leica hook here. My dad let me borrow his Leica IIIa with 
50/2 Summar. What ever became of the 20-odd rolls of Kodachrome I shot (ASA 
10 if I remember) I do not know. Maybe my ma threw them away when I was in 
the Navy.
But I so fell in love with the Leica that when I came home after the second 
summer I  asked my dad if I could buy it, thinking that he might give it to 
me for my next birthday. He was smarter than that. He said okay, let's work 
out a price; my first negotiation. Couldn't afford it of course, so we worked 
out a hire-purchase plan! It took me over two years to pay off that IIIa with 
allowance money saved, shovelling neighbors' snow, raking neighbors' leaves, 
delivering newspapers and other odd jobs. But when I finally "owned" that 
camera, it was really mine and I treasured it. And Dad taught me some lesson.

Sorry this has been so long.

Seth        LaK 9 (not contained in Summar lenses)
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