Did he do the talk at the Rim Visitor Center?
There was another gathering spot. I would take the horse trail up to Rim Village and I would show up near the lodge, by the campground (6). If I remember right, the gun was in the visitor center. I wouldn’t carry the gun all the way up and back. I would drop off my pack with my lunch in it and I would grab the gun. It was kind of like the Pony Express, I guess. As the horse came up, the interpreters in the Rim Visitor Center knew that they were going to take the pack and give me the gun. Then I would go out to cafeteria parking lot and do the program. I’d come back by and grab my day pack, and then go sit under a tree. There were three of those programs in a day. You reminded me that early in the summer there was a time when I gave one of the first evening programs in Rim Center (7). That was a wonderful meeting place for people who ate in the cafeteria, stayed in the lodge, or just walked around. The first evening programs I did on the rim were actually in the lodge. The dining room of course, is right next door in the Great Hall. There was a screen, a slide projector, and everything was set up for you. We would all do our programs right there in the lodge. A year or two later, maybe in 1980-81, we were using the Rim Center in the evening with the wood stove going. During one of these early programs, I asked a group of people, if they had any comments or questions about the park. One lady stood up and yelled, ‘Someone should tell the superintendent that we need toilet paper in that bathroom.” And I said, “I think that the superintendent has heard your pleas.” Jim Rouse was sitting in the audience and he didn’t move a muscle. I kind of looked at the ceiling so as not to give away his position. He was like that, I could joke with him, and he would appreciate it and know that I wasn’t really trying to trip him up at all. He didn’t give himself away that night, either. He didn’t stand up and say, “We will do something about this,” but he was alert.
Did the Hillman program last as long as you were an interpreter?
I want to say it ended soon after my five years. I think it went right to the end of my term. It might have been somewhere around 1982 that the living history programs was cut. When it was cut, I remember doing a picture for the little journal that the interpreters did at the end of the summer.
