The Old Trapper

So, I keep making posts in my head and not on the computer! Running a store is busy work. (That is, not busywork. Who decided that those two needed to be such similar words??) BUT! My new goal is to post once a week. Lets see if I can manage it.

Yesterday, an old vet came in. He had originally come in with a VA tour. In the store, he had became enamored with our Rendezvous posters and said that he'd be back (yeah, yeah. I haven't heard that before). And he didn't come back when he said he would. BUT he came back yesterday. I didn't recognize him at first; just some grizzled guy in a feathered cap walking out to the exhibits without paying admission. I chased after him and he turned to me "Sweetie, I just came back like I said to get another look at the posters." Rough voice, feathered cap, posters. Riiiight. Sometimes I wish I remembered faces better. >.<;

So we wandered about the store together while he tried to choose a poster (we have 9 or so different Rendezvous ones). I believe that if I'd known the deal to sell them all together, he may have gone for it. Though he really wanted the shrink wrapped ones so they'd be safe during his walk back to the VA, so perhaps not. Either way, he talked some. Not a lot, though. His voice was rough and he spoke like he thought about each word as it came out. This is how I learned that he's a trapper (and hence the interest in the posters).

For those of you who don't know, "rendezvous" refers to a yearly large fur-trade related meeting. A rendezvous might include several fur trading companies, and array of fur traders, mountain men, and Indians. A lot of deal-making and trading occurred. They often developed into temporary "towns"  which offered the fur trade workers and participants ways to spend their money on supplies and revelry. Historical reenactments, such as the one this museum held for over 10 years, had some elements of fiction (living history actors) and some elements of reality (as real trappers came to sell and trade their goods). 

I learned that he once had a mule spook on him and it took him two weeks (or so) to track the thing down. That was my first real clue. And then he went on to tell me about how there used to be rendezvous all over the place, including the one here, but now not so much. Apparently there was a small trade in Pendleton just recently, but that's what it has been reduced to. He seemed a bit sad about that. Then he took his two posters in hand, tipped his hat to me, and walked out. After paying, of course!

These pictures are of two of the prints from the rendezvous posters I stole them from here.