Gillette, Wyo.
He has only been in college for a few weeks now, and as the wind blows across the prairie in this tough town of coal dust and gritty boots 50 miles from the Montana border, he struggles with the usual fears and concerns that go with freshman life.
Will I fit in?
Will I make new friends?
Will my classes be hard?
Will a drunken coal miner in a pickup back up to my bedroom in the middle of the night, clamp onto the hitch and pull it down the road with me still inside and screaming?
His name is Jason Markiewicz. He’s 18 and living 420 hard, dusty miles from home in Colorado.
Inside his living space he can touch all four walls without taking more than two steps. And he’s wondering what on earth he could have been thinking.
“I want to be a diesel mechanic,” he said. “Some programs were at traditional schools with nice dorms. But I wanted to come here. I guess.”
Here is a wind-battered town of 19,000 people not far from South Dakota.
In 2005, Campbell County, with Gillette at its heart, produced more than 390 million tons of coal – more than 30 percent of the nation’s total.
Which is great if you have a bright light attached to a helmet on your head. But not so great if you have a stack of college textbooks under your arm.
Markiewicz enrolled at the Gillette campus of Sheridan College because, he was told, it has the best diesel program. And family friends who own an earth-moving and excavation business made Markiewicz a great offer. They’d pay the $10,000 tuition for the two-year diesel program if he’d work for them after he graduates.
He enrolled during the summer for the fall semester. Then he and his family tried to find a place for him to live.
The town’s few apartments are filled with coal miners and their families. There aren’t many hotel rooms, either, and the miners and railroad workers are camped in many of them.
The family even thought about buying a small, cheap house.
“A two-bedroom house with one bathroom on a lousy street was $200,000,” said Markiewicz’s mother, Kris Smith. “The miners have driven prices out of sight.”
About a month ago, the family, locked out of all normal living arrangements, came up with another idea.
And last Thursday, Markiewicz smiled as he held open the door of his new place on the outskirts of Gillette and welcomed a visitor.
“This is the living room,” he said. “It’s also the kitchen and the dining room and my study area.”
Home today for Markiewicz is a 38-foot Cyclone travel trailer. The living area, including the kitchen but not the bedroom, is 15 feet long and 8 feet wide.
“I had no idea it would be so boring,” Markiewicz said. “I sleep here and eat here and do my homework here. I watch TV here. It seems like it gets smaller every day.”
Up a step toward the front of the camper is the tiny bedroom. Wadded-up T-shirts and jeans covered the floor. The kitchen, though, was spotless. This is because there isn’t a lot of cooking.
“I do stick things in the microwave,” said Markiewicz, gazing out a small window as his neighbors, coal miners, roared off in a truck.
More than anything, he said, he’s homesick.
“I didn’t think I would be, but I miss my family and my girlfriend and my other friends. And I miss my dog.”
A photo of a big yellow Lab named Hunter is wedged into the side of the microwave door.
Last weekend, his mother and stepfather, who paid $60,000 for the new trailer and plan to use it for travel when they retire, made the seven-hour drive from Widefield, south of Colorado Springs, to visit – and to help college boy move the trailer to a nicer park across town.
“This is a tough town,” Smith said. “It doesn’t seem to accept outsiders very well, outsiders being anyone who’s not a coal miner. It’s so hard to see him live like this. But he’s a pretty tough kid, and he knows what he wants in life. I guess mom just has to grow up.”
Markiewicz slid onto a bench seat at his kitchen table. A warm late-summer breeze swirled around his new home.
“My new friends, the guys who grew up here, started talking about winter the other day,” he said. “They said something about 18 below zero.”
He looked at the thin metal door of the trailer.
“Maybe,” he said, “I should have found a place with dorms.”
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
