Sheridan featured on Wyoming Public Radio

Wyoming’s best (and only) university is the University of Wyoming.  Originally a land-grant college, it is pretty darned good.  U-Dub (UW) had a pioneering extension program whereby railcars / classrooms would set up for Ag Extension classes for farmers and ranchers around the state

The tradition of reaching out continues today – partly through our statewide public radio system – the only Wyoming media that covers all four corners and everything in between.

This month WPR is featuring Sheridan: http://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/programs/best-wyoming .

These are nice pieces.  Check them out.

Where did you go, Harry T.?

Harry Towner Benham was born in 1908, the year his mom and dad (Carrie and Harry C. Benham) finished the big house on Thurmond Street.

1908 was the year Baden-Powell started the Boy-Scouts, Connie Mack sold the pitcher Rube Waddell to the St Louis Browns for $5,000, Oklahoma became a state, Nathan Stubblefield patented Wireless Radio Broadcasting, and the first production Model T was built.

Harry might have looked like this as a boy.

And oh yes, Mayor Mark Breith stood before the Cincinnati city council and announced that, "women are not physically fit to operate automobiles" (these facts courtesy of historyorb-dot-com).

We’ve named a guest room after Harry (and our own Harry, born eight decades later).  I can imagine him growing up in that home and that neighborhood.  Undoubtedly he played on the hill just outside his back door and watched new houses being built on Residence Hill while hoping a boy his age would move in.

When Harry was nine, Linden School was built at the bottom of ‘his’ hill.  The school served the city for seven decades.  So Harry had the town’s best sledding hill in his back yard, and the worst excuse for being late for school.    The 1930 census shows him living in the same house with his mom.  By this time he was the man  of the house, as his dad, Harry C. died in 1926.

I’ve tracked Harry and his mom to Los Angeles, where she lived with him even after he married Isabelle.  In 1936 Harry lived at 1157 E. 20th in Los Angeles, CA.

But then, the trail grows cold.

So where did you go Harry T.?  What was the rest of your life like?  Did you have kids and grandkids - do they have stories of you?   

And Harry, are there any photos of this great old house on Residence Hill in a grandson’s attic?

Upside Down and Downside Up

Bev and I moved to Sheridan in 1990.  It took me a while to understand the economics of this rural/energy/tourism-focused state.

This is not the car, but it is the right year, make and model.

My first clue should have been that old station wagon.   It was a 1958 Plymouth.  I noticed it putt-putt-putting around town as if it had sticky valves.  It also needed rings and about a gallon of Bondo.

Now I lived in a station wagon for part of a summer after college, so I could tell by looking inside this ol’ wreck it was the “Plymouth  Hotel”.  An unrolled sleeping bag, a ratty old pillow, boxes for clothes and a picnic cooler were all the evidence I needed.

The clue of Wyoming’s economics wasn’t inside though.  I found it on the tailgate: a peeling and sun-faded bumper sticker said:

“Dear Lord, please send another boom, I promise I won’t @*!% this one away”

Later on, I learned that Wyoming often lags behind the economic ups and down ’s of most of the fifty states.  We’re an exporter of energy, so when the price is down the rest of the country likes it, but we don’t, and vice versa.  An upsurge in energy demands across the nation creates a delayed boom in energy development in Wyoming.  But booms don’t last, they turn into busts which raise unemployment.  That’s when Wyoming ‘s community colleges see their highest enrollment, as unemployed workers try to learn marketable skills in a changing world.

When winter weather turns cold and nasty for a long time across the US, we sell more coal and gas and oil.  That’s good for Wyoming.  When winter weather turns cold and nasty for a long time in Wyoming, cattle freeze, and calving season is a disaster.   That’s bad for Wyoming.

A very deep snow pack in our mountains is good for Wyoming – it is the antidote to our too frequent droughts.  But it is bad for many towns down river – because our rivers, the Yellowstone, the Powder, the North Platte, the Bighorn and Tongue feed the Missouri and eventually the Mississippi River.  The floods from our snow melt are legendary.

So upside is down and downside is up.

What’s in a Name? Part 2

I was taking another stab at finding descendants of the Benham family who build our great old house.  I discovered that the middle initial of their son, Harry T. stood for Towner, his mother’s maiden name.  Carrie Towner Benham was born in Kentucky, and via ancestry dot com I found another family tree that listed her.  I’ve contacted the owner of that tree.  Fingers crossed……

A person can spend Waaay too much time searching for and finding family info on Ancestry dot com.  But there are several collaborators in the family who take on branches of the family tree.  Their help is appreciated.

I’m still semi-stumped with the Benhams though.  I lose the trail in LA in the 1930s.

What’s in a Name? Part 1

I was browsing a web site (city-data dot com) that claims to gather important data about communities across the US. This info, deemed “reliable but not guaranteed” includes a section titled “Most common first names in Sheridan, WY among deceased individuals”.  I’m sure somebody thinks this important, but I cannot imagine who.

Still, the purpose of a blog is to write whether anyone reads it or not.  And so….

John, Mary, George and James were the top names, George (141) and James (140) were nearly tied for third place, Mary held 2^nd place among dead ladies with 170, and John comfortably held the coveted first place spot with a whopping 203.  

So I presume that if you went to our local cemetery and combed the headstones for names, or you brought the local radio station’s sound truck to the cemetery and cranked up the sound (enough to ‘raise the dead’) you’d have many more Johns, than Merles, Mikes or Mahmouds show up.  As a matter of statistical irrelevance, the average Georges tended to live longer than the Johns or the Jameses, but the Marys outlived them all.

Last names?  Glad you asked.  Smith, Johnson, Miller and Jones took the top four spots, but the fifth place Wilsons outlived them all (on average).

Let it snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow (in the Bighorns).

Our friend Penny Becker of Sheridan Travel and Tourism makes it her business to troll the media looking for good write-ups of  the area.  From her recent Sheridan Press article, we learned that SnoWest Magazine has ranked the Bighorn tail system as number 7 of the top 15 snowmobile trail systems nationally.  As of April 12, new snow was still coming down. 

That’s good news for snowmobilers, fisherman and ranchers.

Doors

Bev and I have been refinishing doors lately.

These doors, from the upstairs hallway, are over 100 years old, and the wood is quite dry and brittle. But underneath layers of paint and varnish is some wonderful old wood. Our goal is to average a door each weekend - because it is so time-consuming. All those detailed edges take a long time to clean up, even if we frequently replenish the chemical stripper.

In August we’ll have been working on this house for six years. It simply not the same house – and yet it is.

Two wallpapers from two eras.

While prying off one door frame I came across a wallpaper pattern that must have been popular in the late 60s or early 70s. The blue in the pattern explains the horrendous blue paint that was two layers down in the door trim. Bev found pink underneath the blue. Imagine! Elsewhere we’ve found other layers of home décor wonderfulness – from painted Masonite wall coverings in a bathroom to plaster imprinted with real tree leaves is what was a breakfast nook. Such diversity, such color, such….

Our goal is to take it back some parts back to the elegance of Carrie Benham’s time – while we may not have the colors right, we can unearth the wood, strip the metal, restore the wood and give it the grace it one had. Other parts of the house, like the kitchen, have all the benefits of our modern era, but done in a classy style that Carrie would probably appreciate.