Taking our Wyoming ways to the big city

“I think I’ll go back to Wyoming and live on my grandpa’s farm. Let high mountains surround me. Keep me safe from earthly harm.” Unknown

The quote above is from a song a band from Lovell sang in the mid 1970’s. I was home in Wyoming visiting from Washington State. The band was singing at the Hanging Tree in Greybull. One of the band members wrote the song after a hard breakup. He obviously did move back to Wyoming. 

 Those are the only lyrics I remember. About 10 years ago, I posted the words on Facebook on some of the Lovell pages asking if anyone knew the writer. No one responded. 

Every time I travel out of Wyoming and start the journey home, those words come to mind. As mentioned in last week’s column, I was in the D.C. area for a week. One day was spend on Capitol Hill and included a visit to Senator Barrasso’s Office in the Capitol itself. It is the office that became his when he became the Senate Whip.  He still has an office in the Senate Building. 

JFK and LBJ occupied this same office at different times in history. Did you know that President Johnson would conduct meetings while seated on the toilet? He would leave the bathroom door wide open and would invite people to come in to continue the conversation.  It is still there. If you go to the Senator’s Instagram page, find the reel titled “Explore the Historic U.S. Capitol Office of Senator John Barrasso.” 

However, I digress. The whole point of the opening was to talk about how much we should love and appreciate Wyoming. We walk down our streets and through the store looking people in the eye. We say hello. 

This doesn’t happen in the more populated areas. I freaked people out on the Metro, in the stores and on the streets by looking straight at them and saying, “Hello.”  Even some of the Capitol police were taken back.  The cool part was everyone said, ‘hello’ back. Many smiled. 

 Wherever we go, we should take our Wyoming way of life with us. A friendly howdy and smile could make a difference to a stranger. In the meantime, we can let our high mountains surround us and keep us safe from earthly harm. God bless Wyoming. (Gosh, hope the song writer sees this and gets in touch).