https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/1793a6952e0f089f41eab218f1db5826.pdf 4b6f2b06c3952412c92c2c6377094e38 PDF Text Text rkc Erosion ofAhs. Montgomcy Jamie L Smith Fiction Wind and sand had long eroded the shuttered and boarded up businesses of the small town. Old signs, once brightly painted, were stripped, coated with grit dulled to gray. Now, the edges of the town had begun to erode with the strength of the wind. Wayward tumbleweeds gathered at the corners of derelict buildings that held a lifetime of memories. Buildings like The Strand, the first and only movie theater which stood at the edge of downtown. Once a popular destination now left to the elements, left to the erosion, left to mark the end. The old movie theater held many firsts: kisses, breakups, love, lust, and laughter. Mrs. Montgomery remembered her first kiss with Mr. Montgomery, as she drove by on her way to nowhere, away from everything. She stopped in the middle of the grocery store's parking lot. The cracked and sunbleached charcoal-gray lot was empty except for the carnival workers putting away rides and packing up prizes. She watched as the wind tore at the workers, the visible grit from the windstorm made the packing and moving of large sections of the rides much more difficult. She gripped the steering wheel—angry, frustrated, sad, and feeling very much alone. Tears refused to form; they had formed so much lately that she felt crying was a waste of time. Large tumbleweeds blew by catching her attention. She watched them disappear into an empty space of closed industrial buildings, and a knock at the driver's window startled her. A man bent over as she opened the window, the wind whipping her hair around, “Yes.. .?” *** As a young girl, Mrs. Montgomery lived sandwiched between the boom and bust cycles of Wyoming. Her father had been a coal miner in the little town of Honor, Wyoming. The land had been divested of its trees for the trains when it ran on wood, in the first decades of the railroad’s existence. What remained was sand, sagebrush, and coal. Patches of grass could be seen, but not many, and certainly not in abundance. The Montgomerys lived in a trailer owned by the mines, never having a home of her own. Her family eventually moved to Carbon for work. **« “Honey, I bought a new Magic card for the game tonight. It’s supposed to level up and destroy, giving me more mana,” said Mr. Montgomery, as he proudly displayed a card with a zombie and scythe. XLVIII Cxf'iesstoti Magazine �The C'lasuin of M'ls. Atnntgomci^ Annoyed, Mrs. Montgomery began folding clothes. Each shirt somewhat mangled in bitter frustration. Snapping a red shirt forcefully, “First, darling, didn’t we decide on no more Magic cards for a while? Maven has a choir trip to New York in a month and Mark Jr. is getting braces in the spring. Second, dear, didn’t we decide to have more family time. You're gone more than you’re home.” «** Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery were high school sweethearts with a future laid out before them. After high school, they married quickly, and Mr. Montgomery went to college to become a chemical engineer. She took a job in the same college’s alumni association’s office. The job provided a living, while her husband studied. Before Mr. Montgomery’s graduation from college, Maddox was born. He was fair-skinned with soft, chestnut hair. His hazel eyes sparkled with intelligence, even at a week old. After Maddox came Maven and Mark Jr. Maven had stunning, glacier-like eyes that pierced through anyone who met her gaze. She was softer in her nature than either of her brothers. Mark Jr. had deep, brown eyes with secrets behind them, Mrs. Montgomery was sure of it. She thought their family was finally complete. After a while, Mr. Montgomery found a job with a drilling company. A few years later, Mrs. Montgomery quit her job to take care of her young children. With only one person working, money was always tight. He provided adequately, but it wasn’t enough for the grand future Mrs. Montgomery planned, and year by year, her plans eroded, like the soil of the nearby windswept Wyoming prairie. The Montgomerys lived in one of many trailer parks inhabited by oil field workers. Theirs was a fancy, modular home, the contemporary version of a double-wide, made beautiful by a garden, white trellis, and ivy covering the deck. Wild yellow roses grew on either side of the porch. The yellow dulled by constantly-shifting sand, grit, and wind. She was first-generation in a town full of legacies. She could only reach a certain level in the small-town society, until she was reminded that she would never quite belong. Mr. Montgomery stood, arms crossed, jaw jutted forward, looking belligerent. Wednesdays were his days. He provided for the family, worked overtime for Christmas, and she got to stay home. It was his only night to play Magic: The Gathering. He admitted to himself that he had not wanted to be home for any length of time, for a long time. 64th EdUianUteiaticic XLIX �The TiasuM afM'is. Mont^omc'y Wind and sand had long eroded the shuttered and boarded up businesses of the small town. Old signs, once brightly painted, were stripped, coated with grit dulled to gray. Now, the edges of the town had begun to erode with the strength of the wind. Wayward tumbleweeds gathered at the corners of derelict buildings that held a lifetime of memories. Buildings like The Strand, the first and only movie theater which stood at the edge of downtown. Once a popular destination now left to the elements, left to the erosion, left to mark the end. The old movie theater held many firsts: kisses, breakups, love, lust, and laughter. Mrs. Montgomery remembered her first kiss with Mr. Montgomery, as she drove by on her way to nowhere, away from everything. She stopped in the middle of the grocery store’s parking lot. The cracked and sunbleached charcoal-gray lot was empty except for the carnival workers putting away rides and packing up prizes. She watched as the wind tore at the workers, the visible grit from the windstorm made the packing and moving of large sections of the rides much more difficult. She gripped the steering wheel—angry, frustrated, sad, and feeling very much alone. Tears refused to form; they had formed so much lately that she felt crying was a waste of time. Large tumbleweeds blew by catching her attention. She watched them disappear into an empty space of closed industrial buildings, and a knock at the driver’s window startled her. A man bent over as she opened the window, the wind whipping her hair around, "Yes...?’’ ★ ** As a young girl, Mrs. Montgomery lived sandwiched between the boom and bust cycles of Wyoming. Her father had been a coal miner in the little town of Honor, Wyoming. The land had been divested of its trees for the trains when it ran on wood, in the first decades of the railroad’s existence. What remained was sand, sagebrush, and coal. Patches of grass could be seen, but not many, and certainly not in abundance. The Montgomerys lived in a trailer owned by the mines, never having a home of her own. Her family eventually moved to Carbon for work. *★* “Honey, I bought a new Magic card for the game tonight. It's supposed to level up and destroy, giving me more mana,” said Mr. Montgomery, as he proudly displayed a card with a zombie and scythe. Annoyed, Mrs. Montgomery began folding clothes. Each shirt somewhat mangled in bitter frustration. Snapping a red shirt forcefully, “First, darling, didn’t we decide on no more Magic cards for a while? Maven has a choir trip to New York in a month and Mark Jr. is getting braces in the spring. 1_ Txp'iesdott Magazine �The T'losion ofM'lS. Mant^ome'i^ Second, dear, didn’t we decide to have more family time. You're gone more than you’re home.” **« Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery were high school sweethearts with a future laid out before them. After high school, they married quickly, and Mr. Montgomery went to college to become a chemical engineer. She took a job in the same college’s alumni association's office. The job provided a living, while her husband studied. Before Mr. Montgomery's graduation from college, Maddox was born. He was fair-skinned with soft, chestnut hair. His hazel eyes sparkled with intelligence, even at a week old. After Maddox came Maven and Mark Jr. Maven had stunning, glacier-like eyes that pierced through anyone who met her gaze. She was softer in her nature than either of her brothers. Mark Jr. had deep, brown eyes with secrets behind them, Mrs. Montgomery was sure of it. She thought their family was finally complete. After a while, Mr. Montgomery found a job with a drilling company. A few years later, Mrs. Montgomery quit her job to take care of her young children. With only one person working, money was always tight. He provided adequately, but it wasn’t enough for the grand future Mrs. Montgomery planned, and year by year, her plans eroded, like the soil of the nearby windswept Wyoming prairie. The Montgomerys lived in one of many trailer parks inhabited by oil field workers. Theirs was a fancy, modular home, the contemporary version of a double-wide, made beautiful by a garden, white trellis, and ivy covering the deck. Wild yellow roses grew on either side of the porch. ITie yellow dulled by constantly-shifting sand, grit, and wind. She was first-generation in a town full of legacies. She could only reach a certain level in the small-town society, until she was reminded that she would never quite belong. Mr. Montgomery stood, arms crossed, jaw jutted forward, looking belligerent. Wednesdays were his days. He provided for the family, worked overtime for Christmas, and she got to stay home. It was his only night to play Magic: The Gathering. He admitted to himself that he had not wanted to be home for any length of time, for a long time. "Now, we talked about this... It's the only downtime I get when I’m home.” “And,” Mrs. Montgomery raised her eyebrow, matching his stance. She was fixing to go- a-round with Mr. Montgomery, but she stopped herself. ★** 64th. Teiitlim.Ute'iatieit Li �Maddox would graduate with a welding certificate, and nothing more to offer the world. Maven was a junior varsity cheerleader that could sing, but not well enough to compete on American Idol. It was her aspiration to become a pop singer like Arianna Grande or Selina Gomez; to have a brand of her own like the Kardashians. However, no one would tell her the truth: she was destined to become a single mother at 18, pregnant by a transient roustabout who would disappear with the oil, like the vast number of oil field girls before her. As for Mark Jr., he was the least-favorite child. Mrs. Montgomery loved him, but didn’t like him, and she felt guilty every time she looked at him. She pitied him and spoiled him as a result. His father tolerated him, but Mark Jr. laughed at fart jokes and had a constantly-running nose. He did little to dispute that his future wouldn’t involve more than working graveyards at the C-store just off the only exit ramp to Interstate 80, a highway and a boy going nowhere. *** Mr. Montgomery watched as Mrs. Montgomery mangled the clothes. He was certain that he had triumphed over her, and his face smirked as she scrutinized him. Jaw clenched, the red shirt balled in her hand, Mrs. Montgomery took a deep breath, preparing to continue the argument. Suddenly, she clenched the shirt tighter and a hot, liquid rage burned bright, as she reached for her purse, “Well, fine, just fine. Fine,” is all she said. When Mrs. Montgomery gets mad, the rage stiffens her back. Her face grows angular, her lips compress into a thin, colorless line, and her cheekbones more pronounced. She walked with stooped shoulders to the front door, refusing to look back. Mr. Montgomery knew he won the fight; however, Mrs. Montgomery won the war. She walked out of the modular home and disappeared with the wind. As the gauzy days of August passed, the wild grass faded to yellow, tumbleweeds formed. Wind storms moved the dirt of summer through town, coating everything in its path with discomfort. Mrs. Montgomery disappeared, just as the carnival left town. Some say she was murdered, others whispered that she was involved in a love affair and had run off with a carnie half her age. The Ladies Auxiliary Club gossiped that Mr. Montgomery had something to do with her disappearance. Still, others thought she might have been the latest victim of a witch’s coven that met on the nights of new moons. The little old ladies of the Baptist Revival Church, who drank a spot of tea with a snifter of brandy, murmured to one another of sinister deeds. Al they knew was that a menacing wind blew through the streets of town the day Mrs. Montgomery disappeared. LI I Exfiessian Magazine. � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Erosion of Mrs. Montgomery Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></p> </div> </div> </div> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns offset-by-two"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns offset-by-two"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns offset-by-two"> <p><em>Expression</em><span>&nbsp;</span>claims first North American rights to submissions selected for publication. All rights revert back to the author/artist after publication.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2024 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jamie L. Smith Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Expression Literary and Arts Magazine, CCA 04.ii.c.2022.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.c.2022.01_Exp_2024_Prose_06 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Casper College