James Rawles - Founders

The deal was sealed with a handshake, and no papers were signed except for the quit claim deed on the ranch. The ranch was paid off in 2007. Kelly’s uncle, who lived in Rapid City, still came each November for elk season and to collect an aged side of beef.

Kelly asked, “What about your family?”

Joshua began, “My great-grandfather Watanabe immigrated from eastern Japan to Hawaii in 1890. He was a farmer. In 1927 he moved to eastern Washington, in what is now called the Tri-Cities area, near Kennewick. My grandparents and great-grandparents were spared the ignominy of being placed in an internment camp during the Second World War. Only Japanese families who lived in the Coastal Exclusion Zone were required to relocate.”

Kelly nodded, and Joshua went on. “There was a great irony in this, though, since the family farm was just twenty miles east of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where plutonium was produced as part of the Manhattan Project. But very few people knew that the plutonium used in making the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki came from the Hanford site. Most of the locals didn’t find out about that until the 1950s.”

He laughed, and continued, “So now, seven decades later, I’m entrusted with the maintenance on MIRVed strategic nuclear missiles that are capable of wiping out millions of people in a matter of minutes. And for all I know, those warheads include plutonium that was originally processed just twenty miles from where I grew up.”

Kelly nodded again, and said, “That’s doubly ironic.”

“It also shows you that we are living in the greatest nation on earth. In almost every other country, immigrants get treated like dirt. Here in America, any citizen who is willing to learn English, study, and work hard can be successful.”

Kelly smiled and nodded. Then she asked, “Tell me about how you got Shirley.”

Joshua leaned back in his booth seat and said, “On my first leave after getting reassigned to Malmstrom—that was right after I got promoted to E-4—I told my folks how bored I was and how I missed being in the saddle. I basically begged my dad to lend me one of his Bashkir Curlies. He breeds them, you know. He said he wouldn’t lend me one, but he would give me one—his ‘problem child,’ Shirley. Originally, he wanted to keep her as a brood mare, but she didn’t get along well with the other horses, even for that. She’s a biter, at least in a pasture with other mares. So my dad gave me both Shirley and his old two-horse trailer. He helped me wire the trailer lights to my pickup, and off we went. I had to board her at a stable near Belt for the first few months. Then I found the rental house out by Fife. That, of course, required permission.”

Kelly cocked her head. “Permission?”

“Let me explain a recent change of policy. Traditionally, once you became an E-3 with three years of service, you could live off-base. But last year, as a cost reduction measure, anyone who was unmarried that was E-4 or below was required to live in on-base dormitories. Under the new policy, you can’t live off-base until you become a staff sergeant. That’s an E-5. So I guess I’m the ‘exceptional exception,’ because of Shirley. But I had to get permission from my squadron commander. He was willing to approve it, after my NCOIC vouched that I had, quote, ‘exceptional maturity and potential for commissioning.’”

Their steaks and baked potatoes arrived and they dug in. Kelly was pleased to see that Joshua asked only for a glass of iced tea with his dinner. Their conversation shifted to religion and they spent a half hour discussing Christian doctrine. They were in full agreement on Calvinist principles except for the issue of election. Kelly believed in election, but Joshua held to free will.

“Someday, let’s do a Bible study,” Kelly suggested. “We’ll take a concordance and go through each instance where the words ‘chosen,’ ‘predestined,’ and ‘elect’ are used. There are a lot of them, believe me. After that, I’m confident that you’ll come around to my way of thinking.”

Joshua countered, “So when I was twelve years old and I recognized that Christ is the Son of God and I asked for forgiveness of my sins, that wasn’t my choice?”

“No, I believe that what we have is the illusion of free will. We were chosen unto salvation by God before the foundations of the earth. How can God be truly all powerful and all knowing if he couldn’t see into the future who would ‘choose’ to be saved, and ordain it? Yes, it is mysterious, but if God truly is Sovereign then there is only one explanation. God’s predestination of the Elect is a mystery that we need to accept without fully understanding in this mortal life.”

Joshua grinned. “You are a woman of powerful conviction.” After a moment he added, choosing his words carefully, “We may have a minor difference on election, but when it comes to the other aspects of God’s guiding hand, I believe that nothing happens by chance. I want to make it clear that I am courting you for marriage. I don’t believe in flirtations or trifling relationships. I wouldn’t be sitting across from you right now unless I thought that you were someone worthy of marriage. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation if it wasn’t God’s will. Nothing happens by chance.”

Kelly threw in, “My point, exactly.”

Joshua’s first visit to the Monroe ranch came a week later. The ranch house had been built in the 1970s, following a chimney fire that had destroyed the original homestead cabin. The house was utilitarian, furnished with indestructible brown Naugahyde chairs and couches. Kelly had grown up hearing a standing joke about “those poor, defenseless Naugas that gave their lives for our furniture.”

The living room and family room were lightly decorated with a few Charles M. Russell western prints that seemed almost obligatory anywhere within a 100-mile radius of Great Falls. The walls of the living room and family room were lined with mounted trophies and antlers from more than a dozen mule deer, elk, and antelope. There was also a black bear skin and two bobcat hides.

Kelly was the Monroes’ only child. Her mother, Rhonda, was lean and energetic, and a great cook. Her health, ranching background, and her temperament made her well prepared for hard times. Jim Monroe’s only active preparation, early in the Crunch, had been acquiring a four-year-old Guernsey milk cow that had always been hand-milked. He got the cow in trade for six 1,200-pound steers that were eighteen months old. Jim had grown up hearing his father and grandfather talk about the Great Depression. So getting a reliable milk cow seemed a logical thing to do. Rhonda had stocked up on canned goods, bulk rice, and beans as best she could as the buying power of their savings evaporated.

As the Crunch set in, the Monroes had sixty-eight Charolais and Charolais-Hereford cross cattle. The ranch had at one time carried more than 100 head, but Jim had scaled back, in part to discourage the advance of noxious weeds—since more intensive grazing encouraged weeds to gain ground—and in part because Jim had a bad back and could no longer tolerate the extra hours working outdoors to manage a large herd.

They also had four saddle horses, including Kelly’s gelding, Fritz. Rhonda Monroe owned a Paint mare named Beverly. The horse was named after the western artist Bev Doolittle, whose paintings often featured Paint horses. The master bedroom in the house was decorated with four serialized Bev Doolittle prints, all depicting Paint horses.

As Kelly showed Joshua around the ranch, the only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was a Unimog truck. Kelly mentioned that her father had become fascinated by Unimogs when he was stationed in Germany. In 1995, he bought one from Cold War Remarketing, a military vehicle dealer in Englewood, Colorado. This Unimog had originally been a radio vehicle for the West German Bundeswehr. Jim Monroe used the “Mog” as a snowplow in the winter (with chains on all four wheels), and as a mobile hunting cabin each fall. He had equipped it with a tiny woodstove that had originally been designed for use in hunting guide wall tents.