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The news item in the Post last Tuesday was brief, but its import was serious, portending the end of Western Civilization as we've known it.
The Medicine Bow Brewing Co. is expected to open a
microbrewery in Cheyenne in late June or early July . . .
the bar-restaurant-brewery will be the first in southern
Wyoming.
Sure, brew-pubs have sprouted near every campus big enough to support a department of multi-cultural self-esteem enhancement studies, and, like overpriced housing and imported low-paid labor, local brews are now a requirement for world-class destination ski resort status. But Cheyenne, Wyo.?
Perhaps this was just an aberration, a result of some marketing consultant's scam. More likely, somebody's idea of an early and cruel April Fool's Day joke. I called the chamber of commerce.
The woman there said she preferred that her name not be used, but confessed that she knew of at least two establishments which openly dispensed mocha latte in the capital of the Cowboy State. Further, she recalled an espresso cart that operated in broad daylight on the downtown mall during Christmas shopping season.
We have several mountain bike shops, too,
she
observed, although I don't think rentals are a big thing
here yet. But I could check.
Instead, I pressed her for further information about the
impending collapse of traditional values. There is a New
Age bookstore and crystal shop somewhere in town,
she
said, but they keep a pretty low profile.
That was some comfort, and I felt even more relieved
after I inquired about vegetarian restaurants. I don't
know of any. It's possible that there might be one or two.
But I really don't think vegetarian cuisine is going to
catch on here -- at least for a while.
But that's really small cause for celebration; the process is underway, as I learned on my last visit to Wyoming.
Last November, I drove up to Cheyenne to interview the governor, Mike Sullivan. They do things right in Wyoming, especially when you've just been in downtown Denver. No traffic jams, and I could park -- for free -- right across the street from the governor's office.
(I managed this appointment, not because I'm a columnist for big-city newspaper, but because my mother, who grew up in Douglas, Wyo., used to be the future governor's baby-sitter. Don't let anyone tell you that connections aren't valuable.)
I mentioned that something seemed dreadfully amiss right after I crossed the state line. Windmills, bison and barbed wire were all in place. The Wyoming wind still roared along at hurricane velocities in about five different directions.
But I was cruising at 75 mph, the old minimum speed limit in the Equality State, and nobody passed me. This had never happened before. No matter how fast I drove during previous visits to Wyoming, I always got passed.
Wyoming really is changing,
the governor agreed
as he laughed. We just did a survey, and found out that
more than half our drivers are now wearing seat belts. That
shocked us. We thought it would be more like 5
percent.
Well, Wyoming is a real place inhabited by real people. It isn't fair to expect the state to be operated as a 97,809-square-mile cow-culture theme park.
But these transformations do demonstrate that it's a
waste of energy to be fighting against the lords of
yesterday
-- the mining, timber and grazing industries,
and their lobbies, in the West.
That war is over, and they're retreating -- even in Wyoming. They lost when they thought they'd won with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Thanks to the emergence of a global economy, the American West, try as it might, couldn't be a profitable low-cost commodity-production zone. People for the West, the Wise Use movement and all those other industry fronts represent nothing more than a nostalgic rear-guard action to cover the retreat.
The real issue is how to grapple with what my wife,
Martha, calls the tycoons of tomorrow
-- the
recreation and entertainment industries. Like all other
industries, they create environmental, economic and
cultural impacts, and yet they appear to be taking over
without anyone paying much attention to the long-term
consequences.
There's where our attention should be going. If there's
a brew-pub in Cheyenne, the lords of yesterday
are
indeed part of yesterday, and we'd best think about
tomorrow.
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