Post Script

Credit: My-West.com archives

We're just back from our road trip through Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Along the way we passed through about a hundred small towns. And one thing they all have in common is a one-room post office. Here are a few more to add to our prior post, Post Modern Mails.

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Post Modern Mails

By Bennett Owen

Credit: My-West.com ©

My family’s ranch is still pretty remote by today’s standards. By that I mean it is one of the few places left where it’s impossible to get a cell phone connection.  An Uncle recently discovered the only hot spot in the valley but depending on the season you’ll need either a four-wheel drive or a snowmobile to get there.

Credit: My-West.com ©

What the valley DOES have is a post office. Aunt Mary is Postmaster and the single employee at zip code ----- and the ‘stage’ is still a lifeline to the outside world. But wireless Internet has also reached rural America and that’s mighty stiff competition.

Credit: My-West.com ©

Snow and rain and heat and gloom of night are one thing. A party line is another.  But the Internet Cloud is a whole ‘nother kind of monster.

Credit: My-West.com ©

The USPS is deeply in debt, based largely on plummeting demand in the Email age. Statistics show that over half of all bills are paid Online…”the check’s in the mail” is increasingly becoming, “the binary transfer is on the ether.” 

Credit: My-West.com ©

The USPS plans to shutter as many as 37-hundred affiliates in an effort to regain solvency…85 of those are scattered throughout Montana and in some cases closure will leave patrons up to 60 miles away from the next post office.  As one customer in Dixon, Montana said, “a town without a post office becomes a ghost town.”  Not that we have anything against ghost towns, but…

Credit: My-West.com ©

…The My-West team is fighting back in our own small way. The next great My-West road trip gets underway on October first and anyone who sends us an address will receive a greeting card, sent from one of the post offices pictured here. Now that’s a special delivery.  Do it for fun! Do it for nostalgia! Do it for…Aunt Mary!

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

Credit: My-West.com ©

BAR NONE – Round 1 – The Cowboy Bar, Meeteetse, Wyoming

By Bennett Owen

“I drank my share of whiskey…and someone else’s too…”

-    Anonymous Patron         

Credit: zampano!!!

Credit: My-West.com ©

To enter the Cowboy Bar you’ll have to pull on a rifle barrel …

Once inside, your first impression will be the Copenhagen lids lining the ceiling …… the copious collection of firearms adorning the walls

Credit: My-West.com ©

… and some well-placed warning signs … But it’s the bar that will truly capture your attention.

Credit: 3obryans

Produced by Brunswick-Balke-Collender … a 12-foot high neo-classical showcase, hand-crafted by Italian artisans for the Chicago World Columbian Exposition of 1893 and then shipped to the wildest corner of Wyoming by a couple of Canadians who opened the Cowboy Bar in Meeteetse. 

There wasn’t much to the town then ...

Credit: My-West.com ©

And still, the place attracted a veritable VIP list of misfits, castaways and luminaries of their time.  Butch Cassidy was arrested here in 1894 … having run afoul of one of the west’s biggest and blood thirstiest cattle barons, Otto Franc (More in our upcoming series, 10 Germans Who Won the West).

As prohibition took hold, the liquor was delivered in milk canisters and the Sheriff simply “picked up his mail at the bar and looked the other way.”

Credit: My-West.com ©

Legend has it that Al Capone’s personal chef served his parole in Meeteetse and took quite a liking to the place.

By the mid 1930’s high-flying Amelia Earhart was spending time here and … well, more about that in tomorrow’s post … 

Credit: My-West.com ©

The bar is indeed well stocked, in part because it also serves as a liquor store. But the bartender confides most of the clientele tend to favor the wide selection of beers and the ever-popular “Sagebrush.” 

Current owner, Jim F. Blake, is a historian and poker player who wouldn’t confirm rumors of 56 bullet holes in the bar.  But he’s full of stories including the time a howitzer was brought in to fulfill a faithful patron’s dying wish …

The place is quiet and pleasant enough on a late afternoon … fairly dripping with untold history. But one of the regulars mentioned an “incident” a few days back that bunged up our host’s prize antique piano a bit. As if to remove all doubt about the boisterous clientele, Jim then unsheathed a one million volt stun gun … the crackle of the arc alone shied us all back a few feet.  

Credit: My-West.com ©

Yes, the occasional horse still gets rode through the place and Jim says the last shooting incident involved an out of towner with a hat and a slogan that riled one of the locals who promptly used said cap as target practice.

“The funny thing” Jim says, “is that tourist is now a regular here.”

Come Hail and High Water

Still on the road - lots of great posts starting tomorrow!

WESTERN VACATIONS – Discover Your Routes

By Bennett Owen

Credit: SurferSam.com

4 Bucks a gallon be damned, Memorial Day is approaching at a speed that would surely merit a night in jail if Mother Earth were twirling up the turnpike in an SUV.  So with the family outing looming large, the My-West staff has assembled a series of helpful hints to enhance your vacation, entice Dad to stop for something other than gas, food and lodging and perhaps even keep the kids’ noses out of the play station for a few minutes.

In cooperation with my favorite website, Roadsideamerica.com, here are some quirky stop-offs to spice up vacation 2011.  Most are open 24/7 and as we all know, the best things in life…are free.

Our first route takes us from Salt Lake City to Yellowstone Park and our number one roadside attraction is located right in the Utah state capital:

1 - Gravity Hill - E. Capitol Blvd.

Credit: Wikimapia

Also known as “a cheap date” when I was going to school there, Gravity Hill is truly one of the most brain-twisting optical illusions I’ve ever experienced.  

Credit: Way Marketing

You will swear the road is pointing downhill and yet when you throw the jalopy into neutral it will actually roll upwards.  Try it at night and you will feel a strange and irresistible magnetic pull that will soon lead to some heavy necking with your wife. I mean, the view is phenomenal.

Credit: SheldonPhotography

2 – After defying gravity, it’s time to hit the road, and along the way you can admonish the kids that “money doesn’t grow on trees…but shoes do,” at least in Park City, Utah.  Yes, it’s the Shoe Tree at 780 Main St., a monument so moving it is immortalized in poem:

“Symbol of mystery, intrigue and fun...Body for free spirit deep in town's roots (or is that routes? Ed.)...You invite us this summer to throw off our shoes...We celebrate all that you stand for.“  -  Park City Magazine

Credit: Sheneng

Legends abound on the origin of the Shoe Tree and all involve one pair getting tossed up for some reason or another and everyone else following suit.  Say, as long as you’re in town, you might as well have lunch at the High West Distillery, an experience good for the ‘sole.’ But don’t make it the liquid variety or you’ll never get out of Park City!

3 – By mid-afternoon you’ll be driving through the Wyoming wilderness and perhaps wondering how the pioneers survived and thrived in such a forbidding landscape. Well, all the answers are waiting at the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale. It’s a touch off the beaten track but worth the visit for the Beaver Top Hat alone! 

Credit: Museum of the Mountain Man

4 – Of course we try to save the best for last…forget Sasquatch, the elusive Jackalope is the stuff of true western lore…a cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope (I bet they met at Gravity Hill!). 

Credit: Wikipedia                                            

Well, Dubois, Wyoming has captured the creature and even saddled him up so the kids can have a ride.  Everything you ever wanted to know about Jackalopes is right here.

Credit: ChucksToyland

After driving through Jackalope Junction, ya gotta love it, you ONLY have the Tetons and Yellowstone Park to keep the kids occupied. So, happy traveling and next week’s offbeat tour takes us from Yellowstone to Glacier.  

Credit: dog on wheels

Credit: mcfa0773