Showers and trucks.

August 28, Rifle.

Walking down for a late lunch in Rifle, a few blocks from the fairgrounds, a two-street downtown really but a European-style bistro (good food, refined deco and casual atmosphere,) next to the Western wear shop with cowboy hats in the window and the pawn shop with various machine guns for sale. Up the street there is an apothecary. The Winchester Motel, a small sign hanging under the name: "Showers." This is truck country, big heavy-duty trucks, or rather trucks-that-are-actually-used country.
We're not in California anymore, if not quite Kansas.
This afternoon a boy, ten years old maybe, was riding his horse in the dirt ring around the arena, and he couldn't quite hang on to his hat, a big white cowboy hat. When he rode past the second time around the hat was gone.