I wrote a PhD at the University of Kansas about meat packing. Now, I'm learning about the production side of things. And, eventually, ruining a few colts. I mean, working with a few colts. Eventually.
I started hanging around in North East New Mexico sometime in 2020, while my Mother was still alive over in Taos. My sister is still there. Prior to that (a long time prior to that) I worked on an MA in Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. Did some historical archaeology on sheep camps and railroad camps, here and there, and wrote about regional and temporal variation cowboy gear after diving into the photo archives at the U Wyo library. Wrote a Master's about Vietnamese young people in Garden City, Kansas, the home of the worlds' largest abbatoir. That's a slaughter house, but it sounds prettier as abbatoir.
I've been fired (well, in one case, I quit) from two of the coolest old ranches in Wyoming (the Pitchfork and the Oil Can), and worked here and there moving cows or running a swather in summer, because that's just what you do when you're from Wyoming. That, or be a hotshot for those oil rigs. But I didn't have a decent set of wheels, just a 1963 Ford pickup. With howdy lights. It would pass anything on the road except a gas station: not suitable for delivering oil-field tools as a hotshot. The cab rusted out so bad that Dad had to jack it off the frame and put a couple two-by-fours under it so the clutch would work. Not a classic to brag about, but it got me from Casper, Wyoming to the Okanogan country in Washington State and back, one time, when I did summer work up there. Nice country, too.
I was at the University of South Carolina for a while, but now I'm not. No, they didn't run me off, and yes, I miss teaching. But now I'm mostly in New Mexico.