Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
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In addition to all the gas stations on main street in Worland in the 1950s, there were still more found on 10th Street and further north. Following a hypothetical driver coming from Thermopolis, such a driver could take a left at 10th Street and Big Horn Avenue and head north. The first gas station he’d see would be on the left, approximately the same location as a current motel located on Robertson Avenue and on the east side of 10th. There, Harold Schmidt ran a Chevron station. Across the street and a little further north, where the Subway i...
Last week I talked about how a driver coming into Worland from Thermopolis during the 1950s would first cross the bridge that we now know as the old bridge. The first gas station encountered would be Scotty’s Texaco (or, perhaps, Scotty’s Sinclair), located on the south side of the street, at Second Street and Culbertson. It was owned by Scotty Macintosh and is remarkable because it’s still there! Tipped off by my elite team of geezers, I went to Goyn’s Machine & Automotive. There, Dennis Goyn showed me how the old Scotty’s station was wrapp...
In my short and modest career as a newspaper columnist, I’ve learned a few things. Importantly, I have learned that geezers know a whole bunch of important things. They may not know much about the Theory of Relativity or the artwork in the Sistine Chapel, but they know a whole lot about things that really count. Like how many gas stations Worland had back in the ‘50s. The profound knowledge of geezers is something I’ve suspected more and more as I proceed through my 70s, and recent experience has confirmed it. After my column about Worla...
I’ve noticed how Worland’s grocery stores have changed during my lifetime, but only recently have I looked more closely at this change and realized how extensive it has been. Today, the great majority of the grocery needs of our town are met by two large stores, IGA and Blair’s, although there are three or four convenience stores. But during the 1950s, there were grocery stores of all sizes all over the town. The only large grocery store I remember from the 1950s was the Safeway store, which was located in the building now occupied by Ace H...
I don’t usually write about controversial subjects in this column, but there’s one subject that’s arisen lately that I want to talk about. I’m referring to the Electoral College and the push by some folks to abolish it. I’ve also read columns declaring the unfairness of having a Senate, a legislative house in which each state gets two senators. I can understand why those in states with large populations would object to these arrangements, but it’s incomprehensible to me why anyone from Wyoming would take that position. The United States Congres...
As a boy, I always wondered about the source of the street names in my town, and about the men after whom they were named. My recent investigation into the Worland cemetery has provided me with interesting new information. One of the longer streets in Worland is Howell Avenue. This street, running mostly parallel to Big Horn Avenue for some 20 blocks, was named for J. Ashby Howell, who died and was buried in our cemetery in 1940. Howell was a popular fellow in Worland, with a wide range of friends (including Sadie and Charlie Worland). He...
I took a drive into the Worland cemetery last week, entering by the middle gate. My purpose was to find the graves of some of the prominent people in early day Worland. Close to the top of my list was the grave of C. F. (Charles Fremont) Robertson, the first mayor of Worland, and the man after whom one of our prominent streets was named. That wasn’t a hard task: as you drive into the cemetery at the middle gate, the grave of Mr. Robertson immediately confronts you. The gravestone says that Robertson was born on June 23, 1862 (during the C...
The other day as I was coming home from a walk along the river a young friend drove by and offered me a ride to my house. I climbed in, noticed that my friend had a rifle (he said he was going elk hunting in the coming week) and I asked him the caliber. “7 mm,” he said, which I converted to a .280. My elk rifle was a .270, and so .280 seemed about right to hunt elk. He talked about where he was going to hunt and with whom, and the conversation brought back memories of all the elk hunting I’d done when younger. When I grew up in Worland, in th...
I like to take walks from my home at Sixth and Culbertson to Worland’s River View Memorial Gardens. It’s a pleasant trek, with great views of the Big Horns, and I like to commune with my relatives buried in the cemetery (my grandmother, three aunts, two uncles, father and mother are all up there). But probably the most interesting aspect of the walk is how much wildlife I see. The other day I came out of my house and noticed movement on the roof. It was a squirrel and as I watched it took a run from the roof to a flimsy branch. When the squ...
When this column is published on Oct. 4, I should have just returned from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Let me tell you how this eastward trek came about. My wife and I have collected antique furniture since 1971 and our house is filled with 18th and early 19th century furniture, though as such things go, our pieces are not very fancy. But all those who collect are similar in some ways: There’s always a ceiling and a class of pieces that are unattainable (and, therefore, highly desirable), and this is true for every collector, no matter his means...
I remain fascinated by the weather; it is so wonderfully variable. I recall a meteorological reference to the weather being, “normal; chaotic.” Every year presents its own unique events. This year we’ve had a lot of up and down, especially recently. In general, I don’t like summer. To me, no day can be deemed acceptable if the temperature exceeds 89 degrees. So, I watch the temperature closely in August, hoping that we’ll have cold spells as we await autumn. And I’ve been pleased to note that we had exactly that during August. Yeah, we ha...
After Archie Harvard was drafted in early 1942, he first went to Galveston, Texas, for nine weeks, and then took basic training for another nine weeks at Fort Bliss, Texas. He was assigned to an anti-aircraft battery. Archie’s first duty station was in New York City, at Governor’s Island in New York harbor. For 19 months, his unit guarded the city. He also remembers he and his fellow soldiers built their own barracks. (I told Archie that I knew about such barracks, because when I went through basic training at Fort Lewis in 1968, our bar...
People often ask me where I get ideas for the columns I write. Usually, they come from my own experiences, but sometimes my readers suggest things I might write about. The other day, while I was at the Worland Post Office, Jerry Doerr said I should go talk to Archie Harvard at the Beehive Homes. Archie, said Jerry, was as sharp as a tack at 95 and had led an amazing life. Intrigued by Jerry’s enthusiasm, I called the Beehive Homes and made an appointment to see Archie. I found him in his room, in remarkably good fettle for 95 (actually 96), and...
The other day I was thinking about how things have changed during my lifetime. One of the things I mused about was the Cold War with the USSR. From a very early time, maybe as early as 1949, when I started school, it was obvious to me that Soviet Russia was an enemy. I remember a headline when I was 8 or 9 about the Russians exploding a hydrogen bomb, and that people were upset about it. I remember also some films demonstrating what to do in the event of a nuclear attack; essentially, the advice was to get under your desk. Even as a small boy,...
Last week, my wife and I spent three days in Three Forks, Montana, at the Sacajawea Inn. Three Forks is a charming little town and the Inn is a splendid example of arts and crafts architecture. Celia and I, having lived in an arts and crafts house for the last 35 years, are partial to such structures, and we greatly enjoyed this hotel. But what captivated me about the place was its history. The town got its name because there three large streams come together, the Gallatin, the Madison, and the Jefferson, and they form the Missouri River....
What is there about some boys (and some men) that compel them to classify things? My younger son, Dan, when he was 12 and 14, would put together lists of the greatest running backs, the best basketball players, and, as I remember, the highest mountains in the world. He came by this odd tendency honestly. When Dan’s father (moi) was a boy he was fascinated by airplanes. I was 12 in 1955 and this was a time when a ton of new, strange, and wonderful airplanes were being developed. Before and during World War II the science of aeronautics ran a...
Last Sunday morning about 6:45, a car pulled up next to my house, and it included Sharon Garrity and Jan Corbin, each a granddaughter of William Minnick. For the last several weeks, Sharon has been sending me emails telling me of her great desire to see Minnick Basin and the land that her grandfather patented far south of Worland (almost to the headwaters of Nowater Creek). As I wrote in my last column, Minnick Basin has a significant history for these folks. It was there in 1903 that their great-uncle, Ben Minnick, was gunned down while he was...
My wife says that I’m a slave to my habits, but you know how wives exaggerate these things. A little while ago she pointed out that on each day of the week I go to the same place to eat lunch, and that, no matter what, I have a TV dinner on Monday, Chinese on Tuesday, Ranchito on Wednesday, Subway on Thursday and the IGA deli on Friday. And, she proclaimed, “you always eat the same things!” Well, maybe so, but you’re overlooking some important details,” I sputtered. “Like what?” “Well, that I’ve been known to vary my TV dinners on Monday...
My wife, Celia, during her long exile to Tennessee, longed to see the Big Horn Mountains, and so this last Sunday, we got in our Suburban and went east. It was warming rapidly in Worland when we left, and I recall that the temperature just outside the city was 88. Soon we arrived at the hill overlooking Ten Sleep, and, as always, the view of the Ten Sleep Valley as we came down into the town was inspiring. But the town was crowded, especially at the Pony Express. Vehicles were backed up to get into the store and the gas station. We wanted to...
I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the last two or three months. Whenever I’m looking at a period of inactivity, I start shopping for books. When in Nashville in April and May, I went to a Barnes and Noble store just off the Vanderbilt campus. In such bookstores I just drift around the place looking for likely titles, which usually end up being histories. I buy more than I’m likely to read, because I know that about half will not prove out. But I also find good ones in my stack of books, and this time I found a real gem, a book by David Halbe...
I read with some consternation the other day that Worland will be losing scheduled air service after this summer. It’s not that much of a surprise, as it’s been talked about for years. Losing our airline service still bothers me, as much as anything because it’s yet another blow against small town America. It bothers me for another reason, that for my entire life I remember airline planes coming in and out of the Worland airport. I did a little research on this and learned that as early as 1947 (when I was four), Challenger Airlines, a Wyomi...
If you recall, in the last column I mentioned that at almost every stop of my Tom Horn tour, the first question was: “Was he guilty?” Well, this was the first question I heard in all but one stop in phase II of the tour: “Was he guilty?” demanded each first interrogator. So said people in my audience in Casper, Cheyenne, and Laramie. And the people at the one place that failed to ask the big question were all from Colorado, so they probably didn’t understand the proper protocol. I told each of my interrogators the same thing I’d told people...
When you’re 72, you’ve owned a lot of cars in your life. I bought my first car when only 14, a 1951 green six cylinder Chevy two-door sedan. I thought it was wonderful. I was almost 15 and sure that the day of my birthday I’d get a driver’s license, so the minor impediment of my age would be quickly removed. And it would have been had it not been for a blankety-blank clerk at the Wyoming Highway Department office. I confidently appeared at the highway department and the clerk threw down a short written test. But then he took a look at me and...
I like to walk. We’ve always lived close to downtown Worland and so I developed habits of walking to the grocery store, to my office, and to the courthouse, bank, post office, etc. Unless a trip is more than, say, seven or eight blocks, I walk. And when I walk somewhere I look for changes. Worland’s downtown alters quite a bit, sometimes very rapidly, and I can always find some new feature I hadn’t noticed before. But more interesting to me are the patterns in the residential areas close to downtown. I think I’ve mentioned before that until s...
I’ve done quite a bit of reading during the last few months, starting with a stack of books I bought in Salt Lake City in November when my wife and I had to travel there for medical reasons. And then I got my usual bunch of books over Christmas. Those who give me Christmas gifts have learned that all I really want for Christmas are books. I’ll start with some comments. In an earlier column I wrote about the superb writing of Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American woman whose first book won the Pulitzer Prize. Other books also received great acc...