From my second sweat I had met a couple that work as horse trainers. One day Ed and Mark took me out to their ranch to talk with their father, by the name of Darrell Winfield. During that first meeting our conversation centered on stories about Darrell's granddaughter and about foods that he used to eat but aren't as commonly consumed today. After the visit was when I learned that Darrell is pretty famous in the advertising world. How many of you would recognize the name and associate this man that lives on Two Valley Road, North of Riverton as the Marlboro Man?
Ed has a picture of one of Darrell’s ads in his house that is of Darrell on his horse running across a field with his lasso high, about to rope a longhorn. Another article traced the Marlboro Man's history and stated the following about Darrell (AKA “D.W.” – the same initials as you dad :) )
D. W. Lights up Marlboro Country 1970’s.
Five or six times a year rancher Darrell Winfield would receive a telephone call that sent him to majestic "Marlboro Country." Pictured in the classic advertising campaign more often than any other Marlboro Man, Mr. Winfield’s bushy mustache, the fine crows feet around his eyes, plus a noble chin, made him a genuine 1970’s personality. Once he was invited to attend a Chicago party. Winfield had a good time, but he really didn’t care that much for city life. What the Marlboro Man did enjoy was shooting the bull with cronies while passing around a bottle of brandy. Yep, a tailgate party held in a dusty rodeo parking lot was truly Marlboro country. This real life cowboy owns a horse ranch in Wyoming, roped steers in rodeos, and modeled for Philip Morris.
Cowboy Marlboro NOW!
Both of these pictures and the article were taken from http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ . (The second picture we aren't sure if it is him or not).
At this website there is a page about the death of the “Marlboro Man”, however this is a misleading article because it states that the Marlboro Man died from lung cancer. Well as you can imagine people began calling Darrel's wife, Lennie, to express their condolences. Lennie said that the first call came from a sobbing woman telling her how sad she was to hear that Darrell had died . It was quite a while before Lennie could calm the sobbing woman enough to say that Darrell had not been killed and was, in fact, sitting next to her drinking coffee. What the article was striving to get across was that the first Marlboro Man, Wayne McLaren, had died from lung cancer and that Darrell is known for having been the Marlboro Man for a long time. http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/marlboro.asp.
What the article didn't mention was that Darrell was diagnosed with lung cancer a long time ago. Ed told me that the doctor's prognosis was that it was fatal and needed to be removed immediately. Instead, Darrel turned to tribal medicine and special medicinal sweats that helped him to overcome the cancer, and now he has a pretty clean bill of health. Another individual in Ed and Roni’s group of friends, affectionately called the “sweat hogs”, has cancer now and has been going through these medicinal sweats to overcome the cancer. I can’t really describe these sweats because I haven’t been to one but I am told that when she has her last medicinal sweat Ed, Roni, and I will try to make it.
Jake Korell
Today we went to the Wind River Heritage Center which was pretty neat because it houses over 50 animals native to Wyoming, each stuffed and displayed in a manner that would be similar to how you would see them in real life for educational purposes. Here I met two individuals: Lou, who walked around and explained all the exhibits and answered all my questions, and a 94 year old man by the name of Jake Korell. Jake is an interesting fellow because he is one of the last true mountain men. Still to this day Jake goes out trapping. When I first met him he was telling Ed and Mark about how he had trapped 16 beaver three weeks prior to our visit. When Mark learned this he asked if he could get the caster glands (the scent glands) to prepare a medicine for the upcoming Native American Sundance. Jake readily agreed, although I heard later that Mark's wife, Leslie, was not as thrilled as Mark over this acquisition. Leslie did not take to the idea of having Beaver caster glands hanging around their house!
Jake has a very interesting background starting with his family living in Germany near the Russian border. Before Jake was born his father was conscripted into the Russian army. While serving he found a way to get his family out of Germany and into the United States. So one night the whole family got on a ship and left for the states. Just by bad luck they got onto the wrong ship and ended up in South America. Over a few years they slowly made their way through South America to the United States and settled in the Lingle, Wyoming area.
Jake was born in Wyoming and attended a school in a one room schoolhouse. He had a lot of problems with school due to attendance issues because he started trapping at the age of 7 years. He said that before school he had to check his traps and a lot of the time he would get sprayed by skunks. He would show up to school after being sprayed, which is worse in the winter, when the heat was turned on. The teacher had to throw him out of school often due to his fowl stench. Back at his parents' house his odor was so overwhelming that his parents made him sleep in the bunkhouse with the hired hands. According to Jake, this is where he learned dirty stories and how to cuss. Back at school he started to get thrown out not just for his smell, but also for repeating these cuss words, telling dirty stories and fighting with the kids that called him a “dirty Russian”. His teacher helped him pass the 6th grade but then he quit, and as he puts it, "was done with school forever."
There is a whole book written about Jake and his adventures. Some of what it entails is his marriage to Martha, his wife of over 60 years; Martha passed away a few years ago from natural causes. Other stories in the book are still told by Jake today, but it is difficult to hear one twice because Jake has so many it will take a while a to hear them all. Mark tells me that one day at rendezvous he ran into Jake and was asked to join him, Jake, for a beer. As Mark puts it "if Jake asks you for a beer you never say no". Mark sat talking and drinking with Jake from around 9am to 5pm, a great experience as he puts it.
Ed told me that one day Jake was leaving a store when a group of teenage boys attacked him with a baseball bat yelling for him to give them his money. This 94 year old man took the bats from the boys and had all of them restrained by the time the police arrived to take them into custody. The only mark Jake had was the first hit he got from the bat that gave him a black eye for a week or two.
Everytime I saw Jake around town he greeted me with a smile, a couple stories, and a song or two. He isn't hard to find as his welcoming personality and intriguing background has made him a celebrity in Riverton where he can usually be found wearing his mountain man regalia atop a float in a parade, throwing axes at a rendezvous, or even hiking in the mountains where his age doesn't hinder him from still doing what he loves ...hunting, fishing, and trapping.
I lived beside Darrell and Lennie as a child and was the best friend of their daughter Linda. In fact I still have a letter from Linda dated 1967 I believe right after their family moved to Daniel, Wyoming. My name is Laurie (nee)Burgess and my dad T.J. worked at the same ranch (Eastside Ranch). They were such a nice family. Darrell taught me to ride a horse and Lennie fried for us our first mountain oysters which we loved. The only son I knew they had was Brian whom was about 5 or 6 when they moved to Wyoming. I did read where they had another daughter after moving there. I was never able to return Linda's letter because we were so used to writing letters to each other in school with a return address of "Me" which is what she did when she sent me the letter from Wyoming. Darrell Winfield is my claim to fame in life. lol
ReplyDeletebeing the son of the woman who stated the comment above, I can honestly say that she is telling the truth, as I was forced to hear her retell the above story dozens of times over the course of my life thus far, told dozens of different ways. By the time she tells it the next time it's going to end with her having married the marlboro man. Haha, just kidding mom. (She does tend to over exaggerate her stories though) Haha.
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