Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
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Not only are Wyoming’s female deputies not wearing protective vests, but they are showing too much of their breasts. That was the conclusion drawn by a Californian who called Fremont County Sheriff Skip Hornecker’s office recently. The Sheriff was being criticized for one of his deputies “having three buttons loose” on her shirt, and obviously not wearing a protective bullet-proof vest and “showing too much skin.” Sheriff Hornecker thought he better get to the bottom of the complaint a...
The recent late September and early October snowstorms in Wyoming sure seemed like an anomaly. In recent years, this time of the year was just about the best time you could imagine. The Aspens are turning and the days are warm. Hunters are usually complaining about the lack of snow, which would keep the elk higher up the mountainsides. But not in 2013. And not in many places all over the region. During a recent trip we witnessed a scene reminiscent of those images of the buffalo slaughters back...
The whole concept of what a lighthouse is and can mean has always been a big deal to me. The idea of a place serving as a beacon of hope and safety to desperate folks enduring their worst possible times forms a perfect metaphor to how a person may want to position himself or herself when it comes to aiding their fellow human beings. Over the years, Nancy has bought me models of lighthouses, photos of lighthouses and even a chess set made up of lighthouses. Until two weeks ago, I had only seen...
After 33 years of one cold case and 16 years for the other, it has always been easy to believe that some unsolved disappearances will just never be explained. In Lander, we have pondered about two gals who vanished. Virginia Uden and Amy Bechtel both disappeared and I wrote the news stories about them while I was the local newspaper editor. Amy is still missing but the horrible fate of Virginia Uden and her two sons is now known. Ironically, both women worked for me at my newspaper. It seemed od...
From land and from the air, the outline of Devils Tower can be seen from a long way off. In the early 1980s, I owned a newspaper in Spearfish, S. D., and flew a private plane across Wyoming taking care of business there. Even though it was slightly off course, I always tried to fly directly over Devils Tower. It is tucked away in the Black Hills of Wyoming in northeast part of the Cowboy State. What a strange sight. And a great many other people from across the country share my thoughts about... Full story
It is almost stunning to see how healthy Dick Cheney looks the first time you see him with his new heart. The former Vice-President, Defense Secretary, Wyoming Congressman and President Ford’s Chief of Staff was in Lander and stopped by the Fox News All-Stars for breakfast recently. He was in Lander competing in the One Shot Antelope Hunt as Gov. Matt Mead’s designated hunter. His greeter Dave Kellogg brought the former Veep by to have some coffee and meet and greet some of the locals. Sev...
For decades, Wyoming has basked in the glory of being the country’s energy breadbasket. But that was before the developing of a bedrock-fracturing drilling system known as “fracking” which has opened up most of the country for oil and natural gas drilling. Getting used to this kind of national energy production has been an absolute shock to the national consciousness. Heck, the USA is now a net energy exporter! Who could have possibly thought this could happen just a decade ago? Over 160,0...
One of Wyoming’s retired Speakers of the House said the following: “I used to say I could go to Cheyenne and mess up with roads, health, K-12, etc, but if I messed up Game and Fish, I was dead! As to Liz Cheney’s problem with falsifying a fishing license application, in my opinion, it is a fatal error here in Wyoming. Her campaign is DOA.” In what is being called fishinglicensegate, the revelation that U. S. Senate candidate Cheney supplied false information for a resident fishing license and pa...
Is this hell? Or is it Yellowstone? That was my exact thought as I piloted a small, single engine airplane over the vast expanse of Yellowstone National Park in August of 1988, during the horrible fires that year. Flying with me on that day was the late Larry Hastings, one of the best pilots and instructors in Wyoming history. Also along and helping take photos was the late Mike McClure, a legend in his own right, as a premier photographer. Both men lived in Lander. We had been talking about mak...
Newcomers might find this hard to believe, but a common form of measurement a few decades ago, when it came to traveling Wyoming’s long distances, was: “How many beers does it take to get there?” For decades, our state did not have open container laws. It was accepted that folks traveled distances with a cooler of beer to sustain them. Thankfully, this culture of combining alcohol with travel has virtually disappeared. The toll of killed and injured people left in its wake enlightened our lawma...
This week marks the 76th memorial anniversary of the worst forest fire disaster in Wyoming history when it came to loss of firefighter lives. In an obscure and difficult place to reach called Blackwater, a group of forest rangers and Civilian Conservation Corps firefighters lost their lives on Aug. 21, 1937. Lightning started the fire that burned some 1,700 acres in the Shoshone National Forest west of Cody on that fateful day. Although the fire began on Aug. 18, it slept and was not detected...
What possible connection could a bunch of ducks have to do with Wyoming’s current political situation? Well, let me explain. My relatives refer to me as “The Duck Whisperer,” since we have tame ducks that qualify as our pets. No dogs. No cats. No parakeets. No hamsters. Just ducks. And we have odd ducks, sitting ducks, lame ducks and we even have daffy ducks. Here are some thoughts on the current political situation, duck-wise: • Sitting Duck – Although he is far from being a lame duck, U....
In cities and towns across Wyoming, people see July 4 as a time of fireworks and blowing things up. But one town tops all the rest in the state and perhaps the nation. While watching televised images of the nighttime bombing of Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I turned to someone and said: “I’ve seen that before.” It looked just like a typical night of July 4 in my hometown of Lander. The Independence Day holiday has always been a big deal for Lander since it is the home of the oldest p...
Communication may be even more vital among family members when you live in Wyoming, the lowest populated state in the country. But not every generation thinks of communication in the same way. Older folks think of using a telephone for that craziest of all reasons — making phone calls. Some will even write a letter through the post office. To their credit, many seniors occasionally use email by using the Internet on their ancient home computers. But Facebook? Twitter? And the biggest biggie o...
It seems like every year, fewer people choose to follow the entrepreneurial path that has guided my life. Here are a few thoughts on the subject: • Our little book publishing company is very small operation by any means of comparison. Yet it is truly an example of Wyoming entrepreneurship. Not long ago, an agent for the IRS came by and wanted to talk about how we are paying people in our little company. I told him that we have one seasonal part-time employee who delivers books. We pay him a nice...
Some 63 percent of the 579,000 residents in Wyoming own guns. This is the highest percentage of any state in the USA. Perhaps it makes some sense to describe what living in the heart of America’s “gun culture” can be like during this time of national debate about guns and whether or not there is a need for national registry of gun owners. Having spent time in places like Great Britain where even the occasional hunting shotgun is a rarity, our gun culture can begin to seem a little odd, I suppo... Full story
It’s easy appreciating the energy conversion efforts by Texan T. Boone Pickens. His campaign to increase the use of natural gas powered vehicles is having some big effects across America and in Wyoming, too. Another champion of natural gas-powered vehicles has been Gov. Matt Mead who recently had his new state-authorized GMC Denali converted to run on compressed natural gas. A good example. A lot of state vehicles are making that switch, too. So why would Wyoming be logical place to use more n...
A mid-winter trip from Dallas, Texas, to Lander, Wyoming should be routine. Almost boring. Well, not so fast. Nancy and I had been enjoying some warm weather in our old motorhome (called FollowMyNose) at an RV Park in Melissa, Texas. The night before my flight to Denver, we were awakened by a ruckus. In typical wifely fashion, my main squeeze demanded: “Go check it out. I hear something.” After struggling awake and opening the blinds, the sight in front of me was scary and breathtaking. It was...
This statewide column-writing idea started when Wyoming Tribune Eagle managing editor Reed Eckhardt asked me to write a weekly commentary about the 2002 statewide political races. And here we are, some 520-plus columns later, and we’re still going strong. There were two reasons why he asked me to do this job: 1) Wyoming Republicans had just overwhelmingly voted for Eli Bebout over some guys named Ray Hunkins, Bill Sniffin and Steve Watt in the August, 2002 governor election. My participation i... Full story
“Seems I am enduring the horrible life that living in a blue state can portend I’ve noticed that whenever you do an “I love Whyoming” column, you take a cheap shot at other parts of the country, mostly my home state. Why is Whyoming the least populated state? Maybe nobody wants to live there.” — Jim Sniffin, my grumpy little brother, of Cedar Falls, Iowa (which is a wonderful place in which to live, I’ve been told). My relatives and friends from other states are sick of me continuing to...
The ritual of reading the local newspaper is alive and well here in Wyoming. Whether it is daily, twice-weekly or weekly, folks are reading their local paper as soon as it is delivered. Newspaper readership is growing. And yet, for some reason, the conventional wisdom is that newspapers, if not dead already, are certainly dying. In home after home, it is not just grandma and grandpa reading the local bugle, but rather grade school kids, high school kids and busy moms and dads. And college...
It has always been a mystery to me why millions of people are not moving to Wyoming. For decades, I have expected our borders to be pounded by the influx of all these people who finally saw the light, packed up their belongings, kissed their hometowns good-bye and headed to the Promised Land. Our promised land. A vast majority of my Wyoming friends would exclaim that they are really (I mean, really!) happy that this invasion of newcomers has not happened. As the least populated state in the coun...
For a state whose destiny is linked to energy prices, the year 2012 in Wyoming was turbulent. Looking back on the past 12 months, the biggest news story affecting the most people in Wyoming is the fall of energy prices, which resulted in steep declines in tax revenue. This might be an exaggeration since I am assuming that the world did not end on Dec. 21. You are hopefully alive and really reading this column. We are assuming the Mayans were wrong. Next week, I intend to write my annual column...
Cody native Shelley Simonton, while volunteering as a Salvation Army bell ringer, makes this observation: “Those who appear to have the least, ALWAYS find spare change or a shaggy dollar to put in the bucket.” Her Facebook post caught my attention as I was doing research for my annual column about “the perfect Wyoming Christmas gift.” It sometimes takes a lot of years before people truly learn that “giving” makes you feel a lot better than “receiving.” An example: for the past two decades-plu...
Election thoughts: • Tuesday’s presidential election sure feels similar to another one back in 1980. That election featured a weakened Democrat incumbent Jimmy Carter being contested by an aggressive Republican Ronald Reagan. And yes, turmoil in the Mideast was rampant and the economy at home was flat. Polls had the candidates close on election eve with Reagan slightly ahead. It ended up a near-landslide for Reagan. Self-described casino odds maker Wayne Root recently recalled that earlier elect...
