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.