Roughlock - In The American West #2
My Adventure Motorcycling Journey Brings Me To Some Western Bad-assery
BobbyJane Gregory walks into the saloon at Roughlock Resort in her pink robe, her short pink hair down, and backs into the antique space heater wedged into the stairs that lead to the “brothel” rooms on the second floor. “Urrr’, she grumbles, but her chills in this early Fall morning soon fade away in the comfortable temperature of the Line Camp Steakhouse Restaurant, the downstairs portion of the saloon.
At this hour, she has already checked that raccoons haven’t snatched any more chickens during the night (six were taken during the past two months), picked up the eggs they’ve laid, inspected the property, and has milked Spearmint, one of her three Nigerian dwarf goats – which along with pregnant Juicy-fruit and Double Mint, were named after gums. “They chew on everything, you know.” explains Bobby. Goat milk and cheese are served to guests for breakfast.
Modeled after a 1920’s saloon, when Bobby’s great-grandfather homesteaded in the region, Runnin' Iron Inn is a hotel with a restaurant downstairs that serves dinner a few nights a week, and a “whorehouse” upstairs, with five rooms named after prostitutes. The one where I’m staying, called “Miss Kitty,” was named after the brothel owner in Larry McMurtry’s 1985 Western novel Lonesome Dove. It is flanked by “Miss Dolly” to the right, and “Miss Belle” to the left. “Mad’am Roz,” and “The Shady Lady”, around the hallway, are larger rooms and have private balconies. The former has a king-size bed and a sofa, and the latter, two queens. All five rooms have their own bathrooms.
Roughlock Resort is a little Western town that sits on a 70-acre property. Besides the hotel, it has a lodge with three bedrooms, two baths, kitchen and living room that accommodates up to ten people, and a campground with basic cabins and space for tents and RV’s. The resort was named after a device – either a chain or pole – used to slow down or stop heavy wagons while going downhill in the rough roads of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Expecting a boy, who was to be named Robert, BobbyJane’s family gathered in town nearly forty years ago as they waited for the delivery of Bob and Jane’s sixth baby. The last expected heir, nine years younger than its previous sibling, turned out to be a girl. The name Robert was recycled into Bobby, and joined with her mother’s middle name, Jane.
A multi-dimensional woman, Bobby tells me that she can “change a toilet and take down a tree.” (She also trained for five years as an MMA fighter.) Bobby is the third generation to own and run Roughlock Resort, which she inherited along with five siblings when her father, Bob Musselman, passed away in 2018. She was brought up on the property and has just returned after leaving in her twenties. Before her return to Roughlock Resort, she and her husband, Jarrod, had worked in Napa Valley, California, for ten years, she as a massage therapist, he as a sommelier.
Inside the saloon, protected from the cold front that brought below-freezing temperatures to Utah, I am shielded from the weather, and embraced by the textures of the Western Lifestyle of old. The rough-cut lumber of the walls, the unmilled round log beams and railings, the saddles, antlers and large elk trophies, smoothly usher the exterior ranch experience into the interior of the saloon. Restaurant tables, with embroidered linen cloths and napkins, kerosene lamps atop, add to the refinement and the delight of my old west historic episode.
Roughlock Resort’s raison d’être is to offer its guests an authentic Western experience. All the artifacts in the premisses – which include cowboy hats, Hopi and Navajo baskets, tapestry, antique American flags, tools, bows and arrows, and other weapons, are authentic, and were either used by “cowboys” or “indians” in the past. Bobby’s grandfather, Rusty Musselman, had an antique store and propping company that leased original artifacts, along with his stagecoach, to John Ford, the American director who imprinted the look and feel of the region’s landscape into what is known as the Western film style. Many of Ford’s movies were shot in this region, as well as most Western movies ever produced, between Moab, to the North, and Monument Valley to the South.
But Roughlock and the Musselman (Bobby’s maiden name) family’s intersection with Hollywood doesn’t end with John Ford. Bobby’s father, Bob, participated as an extra in 1961’s Comancheros, starring John Wayne. In his only scene in the movie, Bob is thrown across a table by John Wayne.
Proudly, nearly giggling, Bobby tells the story of a foreign guest: “One night he came down to dinner dressed to the nines like a cowboy. He had on cowboy boots, and wranglers, and a big ole bowie knife that went half way down his leg, and a big ole huge hat. And you should have seen him walk across the floor...” Which he capped (or topped?) with a “Howdy!”
The context is different, but the pursuit is similar: an authentic experience of either a historic, or a fictional era. Bobby equates Western aficionados to Trekkies and their Star Trek conventions. Both groups are after either fantasizing or role-playing their favorite cultural experience. In the case of the “Western Fairy Tale,” as she calls it, individuals seek a taste of the ruggedness of the terrain, the fight for food and territory, the chase of outlaws, all in the eye-candy context of red-colored stone, arches, plateaus and deep canyons.
Between mid-December and late February, Bobby and Jarrod close the Steakhouse, chosen by locals as a “fancy-date place to go,” to rest from their 6-1/2-day work weeks the rest of the year, but Roughlock Resort is open year-round for stays, both for tourists as well as for stranded locals fleeing Winter’s challenging weather and road conditions.
I was exposed to some old Western movies which my father used to watch during my childhood, but my Brazilian origin offered me little connection to the old American West. Before Roughlock Resort, I had never particularly sought it. But my week here has brought a special appreciation for this lifestyle, in both its history and its inherited present, with the opportunities and hardships it presented, the beauty of this land, and the adventures that it did and does host to its visitors.
As I close the door of the saloon behind me, I smell a scent from my childhood in Brazil since forgotten. I recall having seen Bobby in her office sitting at a 1950’s IronRite mangler, a machine coveted in households of that era for its status and versatility while ironing shirts, bedding and linens. What I smell is the scent of washed linens in contact with the hot iron of the mangler.
If in the 1950’s this activity and machine were part of the job-description (and identity) of many a 50’s housewife, in 2019 it is a wise purchase and one of the many hats that a business, self- proclaimed tomboy-ish woman has to wear for the feasibility of her enterprise, mostly staffed by husband and wife.
My stay here was comfortable and unique, and I felt welcomed by the owners and their goats, cats and dog alike. It was beautiful to see Bobby’s commitment and dedication to preserving and transmitting to future generations of her family the values and the culture in which she was brought up. I am very grateful to Bobby for accepting to host a stranger and for joining Inward Ride as a sponsor, while offering me such comfortable and delightful shelter as I waited out the cold front.
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Stays at Roughlock can be booked directly through AirBnB. Room’s range between $65 and $89 depending on size, and the lodge for $135 per night, plus tax. For dinner reservations, call 435-587-2351
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LineCampSteakHouseRunninIronInn/
