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.

Spring Has Sprung

My neighbor, Joanne shares her lilacs with us – the bushes sit alongside her house and lean over so we can get the benefit of their great smelling flowers. I appreciate both Joanne and her lilacs.

The other day I noticed the flower buds are starting to push out and I got to thinking about all the springs this old house has seen. I suppose the most welcome springs for the home’s residents would have been 1933, the year of the Siberian Express and then The Blizzard of 1949.

The Siberian Express of 1933

A month before FDR took office and in the depths of the Great Depression, a record breaking cold snap hit North America. It began on February 6 with temps of 90 below zero in Verkhoyansk, Siberia. On February 9 Wyoming’s coldest recorded temperature, 63 below was noted in Moran; Montana had its coldest temp ever the same day in West Yellowstone – 66 below zero!

(from: http://www.shmoop.com/news/2010/02/18/6-worst-winter-storms-history/ and http://www.oregonphotos.com/pagetwentyone-Q-1.html#anchor46827)

Original in Carbon County Museum

The Blizzard of 1949

Search the Internet for Blizzard 1949 and you will find photos of the storm’s aftermath – snow piled higher than roof tops, locomotive engines buried, highways with a wall of snow on either side.

New Years Day saw the start of the storm and big sections of central and eastern Wyoming were buried. Some rural residents were marooned for weeks. (from: http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/ROBERTSHISTORY/cold_winters_buffalo_bones.htm)

This year we had a mild winter, but everyone in the region knows the next one may be a doozie. So I join my neighbors who are outside on this lovely March day celebrating spring.

Pillows, Shams, Scarves and Duvets… and Foo-Foos

I’m a pretty normal guy of my generation (I think).  I could live on simple food and in uncomplicated housing.   I’d happily wear jeans and t-shirts all day, have the same boring breakfast, drink two cups of coffee and a Coke daily, then eat a peanut butter sandwhich and a glass of milk for lunch and leftovers for dinner. 

<< An interrupting aside.  You know, a place that sold leftovers would be a great place to shop for a guy like me.  I’d rather not cook, but I like yesterday’s food quickly  microwaved….. just sayin’ >>

I’m married to an amazing cook with a great sense of style who (somehow) feels compelled to take care of me.  Bev makes sure I don’t leave the house (if she’s around) without checking my apparel, hair, beard and whatever.  She feeds me (very well), makes sure my hair is not too ridiculous, tells me if my socks don’t match and generally keeps me from looking like the simpleton I am.

You can tell who decorated (and continues to improve) our house.  If it weren’t for Bev, I’d still have those orange crates and the 1 X10s that served as my bookcase in 1973.  And that old vinyl love seat from my brothers brother –in-law?  I’m sure it would be Ok if I had enough duct tape….

But the B&B has to have an entirely different level of style.

So we recently updated to all new mattresses, pillows, shams, (not scams, but if you saw the price….), sheets, duvets (sounds like “due-vayz”) with and duvet covers.  Oh yes, bed scarves.  These are long things that go across the bottom of the bed to keep the duvets and their covers clean when folks put their suitcases on the bed.  

So this guy (who still goes to India and sleeps on the ground with villagers), now has to (gets to?) move several square pillows (the euro-shams), a bolster (a long cylinder of colorful “don’t-you-dare-get-it-dirty” uselessness), and a bed scarf before crawling in to bed.  And guess what?  In the morning when  I make the bed, these guys gotta go back on, smoothly, neatly, prettily….

Would I change a thing?  No, because all these foo-foos make my sweetie happy.  And when sweetie is happy… I’m happy!!!

Petrified

Bev and I bought this house in 1996.  Not long afterward my son Sam helped me replace the front steps.  That day, while digging around underneath the porch he found a piece of petrified wood.  I always thought the process took hundreds or thousands of years, but what we found was unmistakingly rock-like and undeniably in the shape of a fragment of lumber.  There was kind of a pit dug under the porch where Sam found it and we speculated that for years and years and years water had melted off the porch and soaked that piece of wood, drying out each spring to invest it with a few grams more of mineral deposits.

That chunk of wood kept its shape, even its texture, but when it was done, it had an entirely different character.

An ancient word problem asks: “if you had a woolen blanket and it began to unravel one end, and you took the strands and rewove them into the other end, at what point would the blanket be a different one?

The life of this old house is like that hunk of wood and also like that woolen blanket.

Most people would recognize a 1908 photo of the house as ours – it has the same exterior shape (except for the add-on garage and the Moss Creek Suite).  Yes, the color might be different, but its shape is the same.  But at some kind of organic level it has changed.  

It has gone from having no insulation in the walls, to having vermiculite – those nasty blown-in beads; now the vermiculite is gone from almost every wall and ceiling cavity, to be replaced by fiberglass.  Plaster and lathe has been torn down and replaced with sheetrock.  Hundreds and hundreds of square feet of sheetrock.  The post and tube wiring has been replaced by contemporary vinyl clad cables, and many more of them.  The old iron pipes are gone, replaced by PVC and vinyl tubing.

The structure of the house is the same and the purpose is (mostly) the same… and so it is the same.  But it isn’t the same too.

Like that woolen blanket, our old house unraveled, over time its innards came out (plaster and lathe, insulation, wire, pipe) to be swapped for something newer that serves the same purpose.  Trim was removed, refinished, and in some cases modified to fit new thermopane windows.  Is it the same?  Yes, but it is differently the same. The room that was once the parlor where the Benham family gathered became a bedroom; now it has a bath attached – and the maid’s room is gone.  The room serves a different purpose, has new wiring and now plumbing, some trim from a different mansion, a newer floor, and a gas insert in the fireplace.  But it’s the same room, and yes, it’s a different room.

If it could speak, the home of 1908 would tell stories about its family: Harry and Carrie, and Harry Jr. and Isabelle.  It would talk about that new invention the aero-plane, Carrie’s many petticoats and her bustle.  It might tell of young Harry and his buddies building forts on the lump of land across the street that later became know and Hideout Hill.  It seems even location names unravel – Andy, a neighbor boy, never heard it called Hideout Hill.  In 2012 our talking house might describe my grandson Jaden’s PS – a handheld gaming device with two video screens, or the secure WiFi system with a hardware firewall that our Harry installed over Christmas.

The same house?  A different house?  The coal burning, black smoke belching octopus of a boiler’s been replaced by a quiet clean forced air heater and air conditioner.  Somewhere inI between it had been converted to a gas powered boiler.  But the house is still cozy and warm in the winter.  The narrow kitchen with a countertop deficit now has square yards of granite wonderfulness.  The same?  Different?  The mom of the house was Carrie, today it is Bev, with perhaps more than a dozen moms in between.  Mom Carrie and Mom Bev both gave birth to a son named Harry, married a skinny mustached type ‘A’ husband, and rightfully took great pride in their house.  But Carrie lived and died at a time when few women were in the workforce, and Bev’s a hospital administrator.  Bev cooks with clean burning gas but Carrie had to find someone to chop firewood.  Carrie’s house was at the edge of town, the same house, now Bev’s, is considered to be in the middle of Sheridan.

Bev and I have slept in the African Room, the one that was Carrie and Harry’s Master Bedroom.  Have our conversations about the kids, the business, the neighborhood echoed theirs?  Did Carrie remind Harry she’d not be home to cook dinner because she would be with the church ladies, as Bev has reminded me?  Did Harry ever hug his spouse in that room and tell her “she’s the best thing that ever happened to him”?  The night before Harry headed back east on his September 1926 trip to Tennessee, did they talk late into the night like it was the last time? Most certainly it was, for he died in on September 26 in Columbia, Tennessee.

So Sam’s shard of wood was petrified.  But this house?  Its alive.

I think our visitors would agree.

Coal Bin Flag

The dirtiest part of resurrecting this old house was cleaning the coal bin.

If you’ve never been in a coal bin, you may not have a sense of how coal dust can get everywhere. I mean ev-er-y-where.  Coal dust is insidious.  It gets everywhere on your body – even in places you didn’t know you had places.  And it instantly goes airborne when disturbed from its decades-long slumber.

A normal shop vacuum filter has no use in this environment.  Coals dust passes right through the filter.  The only way to capture the dust is with one of the expensive filters.

Our coal bin took two days to clean and dismantle.

The best part about the job was finishing.  The second best part was this old flag.

This 48 star flag is easy to date.  Arizona, our 48^th state was added in 1912, roughly four years after Harry & Carrie Benham built this great old house.   It was replaced by our current 50 star flag in 1960 when Alaska and Hawaii were added to the Union.  So in 2007 when I found this flag in the coal bin it was between 47 and 95 years old.

I can’t narrow it down any more than that, but I like to imagine the flag was placed there about the time the old coal burner furnace was converted to gas – maybe in the 1950s.

As you can see its pretty well worn out, its been wet too. 

So were a couple of boys using the now abandoned coal bin as a hideout? Did the 1950's mom throw a fit when they came upstairs all black with coal dust?  Ah… if only this old house could tell me more….

Spring Storm

Like many parts of North America, Wyoming gets some pretty heavy snow just as winter is thinking about changing to spring.  Unlike the cold dry blow-ey snow storms of deep winter, a spring storm provides lots of wet snow – great for snowball fights, snow forts and snow men.

This kind of snow is a lot harder on an old back like mine, so it takes longer to clean up – you gotta pace yourself and take smaller shovel scoops.

The good news is that spring storms melt fairly fast because warmer weather always returns quickly.

As February wraps up and we head into March, today's snowfall reminds me that this grand old lady has another great summer comin'.  Within weeks we'll be seeing new flowers sprouting in the front garden.

King of the Cowboy Towns...

That's what Western Horseman magazine says (Feb. 2012.).

Now I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, so I'm no cowboy.  But Bev spent lots of time on her dad's ranch in California and knows which end of a horse... oh never mind.

But Sheridan and cowboys?  Now there's a match.

Western Horseman magazine names Sheridan "King of Cowboy Towns"

Here's a bronc rider catching some serious air at the 2008 Rodeo.

Sheridan-WYO Rodeo - 2008n

The Ladies Shall Be At The House On Wednesday

What was life like on Residence Hill on the early days?  It seems that Mrs. Carrie Benham, of 450 S. Thurmond (the current home of the Residence Hill Bed & Breakfast) sometimes hosted her church group.  Perhaps in this way she was like her husband Harry, perhaps both were involved in their community. 

All within that one generation, hardworking families became Sheridan’s leaders.  Some business leaders started out pushin' cattle as John Kendrick did others hauled and sold lumber, as Harry Benham did.  In that one generation Sheridan grew from a few log cabins to a bustling town.  

So on May 10^th 1910, the Ladies Circle of the Congregational Church Ladies met a Carrie’s house.   I wonder what they talked about? I'm blogging in the expanded kitchen, and the door to the great room is half open.  Do you suppose, if I listen carefully, I can hear the echos of their voices?

Harry Benham is Doing Better

On December 27, 1911, just one hundred years plus two weeks ago, the Sheridan Enterprise reported that H. C. Benham was somewhat improved. His "greatly aggravated attack of quincy" seems to have lifted.

'Quincy' or 'Quinsy' seems to be an archaic term for tonsillitis run amok. A more modern term (and definitely less palatable) is 'Peritonsillar Abscess'. If you truly want the gory details, go here.

Sadly - his father, Jacob died while Harry was sick, as was reported in the Enterprise of December 22, 1911.

The good news is he got better, going on to become (from his bio):

director and v-pres. Sheridan County Bldg. & Loan Assn., since organization, 1912; director and pres. Sheridan Business Men’s Club, 1914; director and v.-pres. Sheridan Commercial club, 1912-1914; first president Denver-National Parks Highway Assn., 1913; pres. Sheridan Good Roads Club, 1913-1914; mem.  Masons, York rite;  Past High Priest R. A.  Masons.

Surfing in Wyoming (in January?)

A lazy Sunday afternoon with too much time on the Internet sometimes reveals nice surprises.  I happened upon wyohistory.org a project of the Wyoming State Historical Society.

I read about the Johnson County War.  It was the baiss of the 1953 movie Shane, with Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur.

When one adopts a place as one’s home, there is always much to learn.  In my case I was also looking for more information on Harry Benham, who built our home.  No luck there, but the web site has a lot of neat stuff.  Check it out.

I Played With the TripAdvisor Travel Map.

I know I missed a lot of spots - especially in India, where I've traveled.  Still it was a lot of fun.

John B. Kendrick

Sheridan County records indicate that John B. Kendrick was the first owner of the property that later became known as Residence Hill.  His influence in Sheridan is still evident.  Sheridan's delightful City Park is Kendrick Park, and generations of kids have splashed in Kendrick Pool.  Kendrick Mansion regally overlooks the old part of town (see Sheridan's Trail End State Historic Site), and visitors can golf at Kendrick Golf Course.

His biography from the Men of Wyoming reads:

John B. Kendrick, governor of Wyoming; cattleman; (Dem.) b. Sept. 6, 1857, Cherokee county, Texas; s. of John Harvey and An.na (Maye) Kendrick; educ. pub. Schls. Florence, Williamson county, Texas; raised on a Texas ranch; cowboy on the Texas Trail, beginning March 17, 1879; trailed cattle from Matagardo Bay, Gulf coast, to the head of Running Water, in Wyoming, 1,500 miles; was employed by chas. W. Wulfjen, whose daughter he afterward married; arrived in Wyoming Aug. 27, 1879; continued in the employ of Mr. Wulfjen until spring 1883 as foreman of his outfit: built what is known as the Ula ranch in eastern central Wyoming during this time; in 1883 he returned to Texas and invested  his savings in a small bunch of cattle and placed them with another  herd belonging to his former employer, trailed them to the head of the Cheyenne river in Wyoming; acted as foreman for and became an owner of the Lance Creek Cattle Co., 1885-7; range manager of the Converse Cattle Co., 1887-97; succeeded the Converse Cattle Co., in business 18097, buying their ranch and herd remnants; has continued actively in the cattle business since; interested in the coal mining fields of Sheridan county and is heavily interested in Wyoming real estate; pres. First National Bank, Sheridan 1900-2; Wyo. State Senator, 1911-15; Democratic candidate for  U. S. senator, 1912; pres. Wyoming Stockgrowers’ Assn., 1909-13; v-pres. National Livestock Assn., 1910-15; governor Wyoming 1915-1919; mem. 32 deg. Mason; Elks. Home Sheridan, Wyo. Address:  Cheyenne Wyoming.