OSEA and EMILY, HOSTS EXTRAORDINAIRES

Our destination on this leg was the small town on the far side of the Sawtooths, Sheridan, Wyoming.  There’s not much there to attract the average tourist, but we were after a couple of special items:  Osea and Emily.

I first met Osea when we were freshman at Stanford, occupying the same dorm floor in Trancos House, drinking (and then cutting with water for resale) RonRico 151 (as in proof) rum.  Oh, the hangovers!  Later, when we were both juniors, we were roommates at Stanford’s France campus at Tours for six months.  The campus consisted of a former hotel that had been modified somewhat as a dorm and classrooms setup.  Being French, each room of course had a bidet, a foreign concept to we less-than-savoir-faire American students.  What the rooms did not have were ensuite bathrooms.  Osea rectified that oversight: the bidet became a urinal.  Fast forward 40-odd years, during which we had no contact, me being in California the whole time, and Osea lost in the wilds of darkest Wyoming, teaching English to college students.  Osea was coming to Los Angeles for a few days, and we got together for dinner at the house.  We looked at slides of our days in France and generally reminisced.  But Emily had not come along on that trip, so we were yet to meet her.  I think we spent nearly half of our total time there around this table, either eating with gusto or gabbing endlessly.  I swear we talked nonstop for two days, and still had words left over.

Osea and Em live in a small house that they’ve added to and remodeled over the many years there.  It is a gem.  I was particularly impressed with Osea’s carpenter skills evidenced in the huge back porch he designed and built himself.  Yikes.  I can’t even assemble a decent bookcase.

There are steps that meet and lead off both the right back and right side.  Very nifty.  Their lot is a couple of hundred feet deep, with plenty of room for Albatross to hide at the very back.  We were even provided with an electrical hookup!  Ah, but the real hosting took place in the kitchen.  In a word, we ate like pigs.  Happy pigs.  Osea does most of the manning of the stove, except for Em’s homemade breads.  And what a cool stove it is.  I love it.

Osea made “garage chicken” the first night, so named because, well, he cooks it in the garage so that it doesn’t smoke up the house.  Heck, he could cook it on his engine manifold for all I care.  It was good!  The next night was his famous 7-layered casserole, this time whipped up inside.  The chef gets to eat while he works.

Way too much food.  W-A-Y too much food!

On the right is breakfast the next morning.  Em’s homemade bread topped by poached eggs, backed by sausage patties.  Oh, yeah, there’s a fruit salad hiding out of the picture.  I don’t think Loni and I ate for the next two days after leaving Sheridan.  Except to have the homemade pumpkin bread that Em gave us before we left.  Yum.

Sheridan may be a small town in the middle of nowhere, but it is the beneficiary of some sort of trust fund grants that allow it to do things not available to the rest of the cash-strapped cities in this country.  Like nifty new public buildings and college facilities, and public art.  We thought these were very cool.  Note the water dripping off the cowboy’s hat.  Nice touch.

While walking around the main street in town, we stopped in at a shoe store as Loni was still looking for a comfortable pair to wear around Paris next month.  Unfortunately, she found a brand she really liked.  Fortunately, they were out of her size.  But now she had the bug, and we would spend time later investigating outlets of the same brand (SAS) looking for her size.  She found them at last at a store in West L.A., at Paris prices.  Ouch!

We were sorry to have to move on, but for once we did have a real timetable to keep to in order to see what we wanted and still get back with sufficient time to prepare for our next jaunt.  So, to Osea and Em, a bientot (and sorry for the yellowish skin tones that I can’t figure out how to get rid of).