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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Thursday Smile: December 22, 2022 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Next stop... MATTRESS WORLD!!!

Thursday Smile: December 22, 2022

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — In some ways, it was the ultimate Mother’s Day gift, even though the gift didn’t necessarily happen on that exact date. 

In 2019, Shareen Brendle’s mother was showing early signs of dementia.

“So I bought Bouquets Unlimited from her, because it was her only out for retirement,” Brendle told Cowboy State Daily. “And then she passed away in 2022.”

Four short years later, Brendle’s independent florist shop faces a tough reality. Her Mother’s Day sales were down 10% this year, even as she heard of a nearby store giving away free bouquets for the holiday as an in-store promotion.

It felt like a sign of the times to Brendle. She’s been helping her mom at the family’s legacy shop for 38 years, and she’s watched independent florist shops dwindle all along the way.

In 1992, there were 27,000 florist storefronts in America. By 2012, that number had dropped by almost half to 14,000. Today, they number 11,750. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Soon that will be 11,749. "}]

That’s because Brendle has made the difficult decision to close her mother’s store in June — one more independent florist succumbing to e-commerce and big-box price undercutting amid ever-tighter margins from rising fuel and other overhead costs.

“I’m broken-hearted about it,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “But think about the hundreds of chain stores that buy in bulk. They have hundreds of stores, so they can get better deals than small stores.”

Oftentimes, Brendle has even seen retail prices at big-box stores and supermarkets that are lower than her wholesale prices.  

“I just can’t do it anymore,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s just become tougher and tougher, and we’ve had to get tighter and tighter.”

Bouquets Unlimited has been part of Cheyenne’s business landscape for 44 years. Brendle’s mother opened the shop, and for decades the store has been as much about family and community as it has flowers.

“We really balanced each other out,” Brendle said, chuckling a little bit. “It was the yin and the yang. I got to see my mom every day. A lot of people don’t have that novelty. We worked together side by side.”

Her mom was the public face for the business — active in the Chamber, Kiwanis, and other local groups — while Brendle handled the less glamorous side of ownership. She did the hiring, the firing, the purchasing, and paying the bills.

“I did all the things that owners don’t want to do,” she said. 

But she also made beautiful arrangements, winning a national floral design contest with Florist Magazine in 1998. On a trip to Hawaii, a stranger even recognized her win.

“It was like my 10 seconds of fame,” Brendle said. “He’s like, ‘Hey, you’re the one who won that design contest.’ And he goes, ‘I love your work.’ My mom was so proud.”

Even though the man was not a celebrity or someone she knew, it was a neat experience that someone from so far away had recognized her work. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Shifting Shopper Habits"}]

For Brendle, the trend isn’t about people falling out of love with flowers. Demand for flowers has remained strong nationally, and she sees that locally as well.

The problem for small mom-and-pop stores like hers is how many people have shifted to online buying strategies, hoping to save a buck or two on bouquets.

Nationwide, marketshare for florist shops has shrunk about 1% year over year, dropping to about $7.9 billion, according to IBISWorld’s Florists in the US Industry Analysis. 

Meanwhile, digital rivals — online marketplaces, floral apps and the big national brands like 1-800-Flowers that live on the web — have grown roughly 9.1% annually. 

On top of that, flowers are regularly available in convenience stores and supermarkets, stacked in mass-merchandiser coolers or supermarket endcaps. 

They’re available through same-day delivery apps that promise sushi with a side of laundry detergent or anything else consumers desire.

Lowe’s giving away flower bouquets for Mother’s Day, a holiday that had typically been a top sales event for her store, felt like the last straw.

“They can take that hit because of all the things they sell,” Brendle said. “So guys will be like, ‘Oh sweet, now I don’t have to go to a flower shop.’ So that cuts us out. It’s just little things like that.”

The fact that such bouquets aren’t custom-designed and won’t last for very long doesn’t seem to matter to customers anymore, Brendle added. They’re cheap, they’re convenient, and for many people, that’s become “good enough.”

Behind those cheap, grocery-store bouquets is a global supply chain that only works on volume. 

The premade bunches now crowding U.S. supermarkets start in places like Colombia and Ecuador where labor is cheap.

Flowers are cut, sorted and assembled into ready-to-sell bouquets, then flown into U.S. hubs, moving through highly automated distribution centers, so they can be delivered in bulk to retail chains.

Because these bouquets arrive premade, retailers don’t need to staff a full floral department with trained designers. They can sell professionally arranged designs at much cheaper prices than a small florist shop like Bouquets Unlimited, which is sourcing high-quality flowers from all over the world — tulips from Holland, lilies from Canada, and hothouse beauties of all kinds from California, Idaho, Florida, Hawaii and more.

Brendle confronts the structural disadvantages in her industry every time she orders flowers from her Denver wholesaler. Her shop, even though it might order 5,000 roses every Valentine’s Day, is still a very small customer compared to the big chains who are buying tens of thousands.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Order Gatherers 'Racket'"}]

Brendle is also frustrated by so-called “order gatherers.” These are national call-center companies and websites that buy up florist-related domain names and search terms, and then impersonate local flower shops online.

“They’re not florists,” she said. “You’ve heard of Ava’s Flowers, From You Flowers, Ruth’s Roses … you look up a florist in whatever city and you’re always going to find them first because they own 99.9% of the domains, and it says they’re local and they deliver.”

But what actually happens when a customer places an order with them is much different than what a customer might imagine. 

“They charge the customer at least $20 for a fee, then turn around and give it to a florist in that city,” Brendle said. “The florist gets half the money they charge the customer, and then the customer gets mad because they’re like, ‘I paid $100 and that is not a $100 bouquet.’”

When Brendle looks up the order, she can see the order she got was actually for a $40 bouquet.

“It’s a racket,” she said. “They promise the customer is going to get something that looks exactly like the picture they see online, and 90% of those pictures are photoshopped. 

"There’s no way we could get a stem to go in that position in a vase like that. It’s utterly impossible. So it’s false promises straight across the board with these call centers.”

Despite all the headwinds, Bouquets Unlimited has never lacked for talented, loyal employees.

Many of her staff have been with her for decades, including one employee who has been working alongside Brendle for the last 30 years.

“I’ve got another employee who’s been here for like 25 years, one for 16, one for eight,” she said. “It’s just been a wonderful place to work.”

Having customers come in and tell her that theirs was “the best flower shop” has meant the world to Brendle over the years. 

It’s been a memorable ride, one that she feels has made the community better. When people can’t say it in words, they come to her store and she helps them say it with flowers.

She recalls customers moved to tears when they saw their wedding or funeral flowers for the first time, as well as the women who threw expensive bouquets into the trash immediately upon receiving them, because they were still mad about something.

Flower shops, she said, see the best and the very worst of people’s lives.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Keeping The Memories"}]

As June approaches, Brendle is focusing on gratitude for her staff, her longtime customers, and for the many stolen years working alongside her mother. 

“I’m so grateful for all of our customers and their patronage,” she said. “I’m just sad we’re letting them down. Actually, we’re not letting them down. The economy is letting them down.”

Brendle doesn’t plan to be idle with her time once the shop closes, however. She’s going to be helping her husband with his business, selling innovative exercise equipment to hospitals, therapy clinics, and home gyms. 

No matter what comes next, a big part of her life will always be measured by the stems and petals of corsages and casket sprays, birthday bouquets and apology flowers from a small Cheyenne shop that was part of shaping and celebrating a community in ways she’ll never forget.

Shareen Brendle florist 2026 bouquets unlimited 4002 5 30 26

<title>Cheyenne Florist To Close After 44 Years, Can't Compete With Online Giant Flower Stores | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cheyenne’s Bouquets Unlimited is closing its doors after 44 years because they can't compete with the online giants. In 1992, there were 27,000 florist storefronts in America. Today, they number 11,750.  “I’m broken-hearted about it,” the owner said.

Cheyenne Florist To Close After 44 Years, Can't Compete With Online Giant Flower Stores

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

When Carolyn Gose Foster went to open her family’s storage unit in Powell, she could tell something was wrong. When she finally managed to get it open, the object she was most worried about was gone.

It wasn’t jewelry or furniture. It was a massive, 60-million-year-old petrified log from the ranch her family homesteaded in eastern Wyoming.

“That was such a blow to the gut for me,” Foster told Cowboy State Daily. “My dad was always afraid someone would steal it, and we told him no one could ever steal it. We never laughed at my dad, except about that.”

Foster isn’t concerned about the monetary value of the petrified log. She just wants her family heirloom back.

“It’s a matter of heart,” she said. “It connects me to my father, my family, and the ranch we homesteaded. I was floored.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Petrified Wood Purloined"}]

The petrified log was in one of two storage units rented by Foster’s parents at Branch Line Storage in Powell. They used to have five units, but the other three and all of their contents were lost in a fire in 2020.

Foster, who lives outside Denver, Colorado, swung up to Powell to look in on the units when she was in the Bighorn Basin for work this week. She immediately sensed something was amiss when she approached.

“When I drove up to work on my parents' storage, and I couldn't get the door open,” she said. “It had been pushed off the side rails on both sides, so it was jammed.”

That’s when she noticed “a shiny new lock” on the door that she’d never seen before. Strangely, the new lock had the same combination as the old one.

When she managed to open the unit, her worst fear was realized. Her father’s petrified log was gone, and someone had gone through a lot of effort to get it.

“You could see the scour marks on the concrete floor,” she said. “They didn’t just mark it. They put grooves in the concrete.”

Foster assumes whoever stole the log must have used a winch to remove it from the unit. It’s the only way her father could move it.

“It was impossible to move by hand, no matter how many people,” she said. “It was too heavy and dense. They had to have used a winch or heavy lifting equipment.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The log wasn’t the only object stolen from the unit."}]

According to Foster, the other items missing include an antique double-handed copper boiler, filled with pieces of petrified wood and agate, a cream can, and a set of deer antlers.

Naturally, Foster hopes to recover everything, but nothing matters more than that heavy piece of  petrified wood.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I never thought anyone would steal it,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Eyes On The Skies"}]

Robert Oren Gose was a Wyomingite with an exceptionally accomplished career. 

He was born on the Gose family ranch, which straddled Crook and Weston counties, in 1921.

He joined the U.S. Air Force during World War II, serving as a B-24 bomber pilot and lead combat pilot in the Eighth Air Force — known as the “Mighty Eighth” — through the end of the war. 

He went on to be a flight instructor and test pilot during the Korean War.

After earning a Master of Science degree in jet propulsion engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Gose worked for several aerospace and energy companies. 

He helped develop the MINUTEMAN I, II, and III ICBM weapon systems and collaborated with NASA as the agency prepared for and eventually launched the Apollo missions.

“He credited the one-room schoolhouse on the ranch, with only his siblings as classmates, as being what got him started and made it possible for him to achieve so much,” Foster said.

After retiring from aerospace, Gose served as joint chair and CEO of the Wyoming Business Council. Even after he moved out of Wyoming, he remained highly respected in the Cowboy State.

“He was honored by the commander of the 20th Air Force in Cheyenne about 10 years ago,” Foster said. “He loved propulsion, working cattle, and being part of the fabric of Wyoming.”

Gose loved the historic homestead where he grew up, which was first settled by his ancestors. He worked as much and as often as he could while pursuing his career.

Selling the ranch in his twilight years “broke his heart,” according to Foster.

“He hated selling the last part of the ranch, but he was in his late 90s and wasn’t in the  physical shape to run it anymore,” she said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gose died in Littleton, Colorado, on Sept. 15, 2020. He was 98 years old."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“He was an amazing man,” Foster said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Artifact, Heirloom, Touchstone"}]

Foster said her father found the massive chunk of petrified wood on the family ranch decades ago. It was probably from the trunk of a 60-million-year-old metasequoia, as

 fossilized forests of these prehistoric redwoods

 are scattered throughout northern Wyoming.

“It was very dense and beautiful, and he really valued it,” she said. “Wherever my parents moved, he always moved with them.”

Gose and his wife, Vivienne, lived in Powell for a time. The log ended up in one of their storage units, and Foster oversaw it when her parents decided to move out of state.

Foster was devastated to see that it had been stolen in what, she assumes, was a targeted theft. 

“Someone knew exactly where it was,” she said. “I checked with the owner and the manager, and they said that there had never been thefts there. I made a report with the Park County Sheriff’s Office, and nothing’s come of it.”

Foster has shared images of the petrified log in the hopes someone will let her know if they’ve seen it. She said it was stolen within the last year, since that’s how much time had elapsed since her visits to the storage units in Powell.

Foster isn’t interested in the scientific or monetary value of the lost log. For her, it’s a sentimental “touchstone” to her family and their history, both the good times and the bad.

“My brother, Robert, died on our ranch when he was 19 and I was 17,” she said. “We were very close, and I never got to say goodbye. That’s why I cherished that thing. It was my connection to my late parents, my brother, and our ranch. It was my touchstone.”

Petropfied log stolen inset IMG 5304 5 30 26

<title>Huge 60-Million-Year-Old Petrified Log Stolen From Powell Family's Storage Unit | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Someone has stolen a massive, 60-million-year-old piece of petrified wood from a storage unit in Powell. “My dad was always afraid someone would steal it,” said the daughter of the WWII pilot who treasured the artifact, which had become a family heirloom.

Huge 60-Million-Year-Old Petrified Log Stolen From Powell Family's Storage Unit

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

CASPER — More than a year after Gloria Fuller’s death, her daughters have begun dismantling a world she spent nearly 80 years building.

Down in their mother's basement, beneath exposed studs, cobwebs and insulation, they found a vintage 1950s Coldspot refrigerator still humming with life.

Glowing softly in the dim light like a mirage of mid-century America, the old appliance not only was still running, still held 30-year-old cans of Schlitz — cold to the touch.

In another life, the refrigerator held grenadine, soda bottles and trays of hors d’oeuvres for the cocktail gatherings Fuller hosted downstairs. 

Angie Hoven, one of Fuller’s daughters, remembers her mother as a meticulous hostess.

“She was well-known,” Hoven said with a chuckle, tears welling in her eyes.

If refrigerators could talk, this one would recall laughter rising through smoke, the crack of ice trays and somebody asking Gloria for “just one more” drink before heading home, Hoven said.

Now it sits in a basement frozen between eras, still doing the job it was built to do nearly 75 years ago.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Machine That Wouldn’t Die"}]

The Coldspot itself belongs to another chapter of American manufacturing entirely.

Built by Sears before Kenmore overtook the brand, the refrigerator represents the thick steel, rounded-edge philosophy of postwar appliances — heavy, mechanical and intentionally durable. 

No touch screens. No computer boards. Just compressors, fans and stubborn engineering that doesn’t quit.

At 88 years old, Thermopolis appliance repairman Martin Andreen — 

—still speaks about old refrigerators the way ranchers talk about reliable pickups.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They were good machines,” he said. “Simple.”"}]

Andreen said the old Coldspots were built simply enough that most problems can still be repaired decades later. 

The biggest headache, he said, is when the freezer fan goes out, though even that usually isn't difficult to fix.

His brother owned a Coronado refrigerator that ran for more than 60 years before eventually being moved into a family member’s shop in Douglas.

[{"type":"text","text":"“For all I know, it’s probably still running,” Martin said."}]

Hoven recently listed her mother’s Coldspot on Facebook classifieds for $1,000 — a figure she admits is ambitious. 

Before the listing went public, she said somebody once offered nearly double that for it, though the deal eventually fell apart.

The Coldspot's longevity is impressive, but Andreen laughed at the idea of paying $1,000 for “that old thing.”

Even $200, he admitted, feels high to him, though he acknowledged vintage refrigerators have become collectible for people chasing retro aesthetics and mid-century Americana.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I’d probably try to get the price down,” he said with a laugh."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Empire Of Trinkets"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The old refrigerator isn’t the only monument to another era."}]

Inside the Fuller home, antiques spill from shelves and tabletops like the lacy buttercream frosting of a 1980s wedding cake.

Cream and burgundy wingback chairs face each other beneath crystal chandeliers, doubled in the reflection of gold-framed mirrors. Dappled sunlight filters through gathered lace curtains and bounces off old vases bursting with artificial roses.

The dining room table remains crowded with shimmering glass pitchers, crystal bowls, ornate candlesticks and floral centerpieces arranged as though guests might still arrive at any moment.

“She was a perfectionist,” Hoven said of her mother. “And a collector.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The deeper you move into the house, the denser it becomes."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Lampshades wear fringe and lace collars. "}]

Decorative stained-glass flowers cast rainbow light across bedrooms crowded with brass bedframes and heaps of blush-colored pillows arranged for the heads of sleeping dolls in gauzy dresses that drift toward the carpet like fog.

“Mother would’ve turned over in her grave if she could see what we’ve done to the place,” Hoven said, turning to the cleaning supplies and boxes stacked in every corner, explaining her mother always kept an immaculate home.

“It has been extremely hard,” Hoven said. “Our mom was our world. At first it was hard to part with anything.”

Hoven now moves through the home attached to an oxygen tank, frequently stopping to rest while battling the same COPD that ultimately killed her mother.

[{"type":"text","text":"Still, she continues sorting through thousands of objects piece by piece."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Weight Of Inheritance"}]

Across America, adult children increasingly find themselves inheriting homes like this — houses dense with objects tied to another era of domestic life.

China cabinets. Crystal bowls. Crochet tablecloths. Figurines. Curio shelves. Heavy wooden furniture built well enough to outlive multiple generations.

The problem is that while the emotional value remains enormous, the market value often does not.

Estate sale organizer Robyn Cutter has spent so many weekends clearing out people’s homes she has earned an unofficial Ph.D. in the business of “stuff”: what Americans save, what strangers covet and what nobody can seem to give away.

China cabinets, she said, are notoriously difficult to move. Crochet tablecloths can be hit-or-miss. Dolls fluctuate wildly depending on the buyer.

[{"type":"text","text":"Cast iron cookware almost always disappears quickly."}]

Looking at a photo of Fuller’s Coldspot, Cutter estimated it would probably bring somewhere between $100 and $200 locally.

Still, she understands why people become attached to objects like that refrigerator.

“It’s too gut-wrenching,” Cutter said of families watching strangers buy pieces of their loved one’s lives.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Last Goodbye"}]

An auctioneer from Buffalo is expected to sort through the Fuller house’s remaining heaps.

The family also sells items through Facebook Marketplace and eBay, including the refrigerator.

They haul boxes to antique expos at the Ford Wyoming Center, arranging and rearranging fragments of their mother’s collection beneath fluorescent lights while strangers wander past.

By the end of most estate sales, Cutter said, families usually stop focusing on individual objects and start feeling something closer to relief.

[{"type":"text","text":"The stress lifts. The house empties. Life begins moving again."}]

“They just breathe,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Wow, this is great.’”

That sense of closure is still a ways away for Hoven and her sister inside their late mother's home, where mountains of clothes, cups, quilts and figurines still wait to be sorted.

[{"type":"text","text":"And downstairs, the refrigerator keeps running keeping the Schlitz cold."}]

Coldspot composite 5 30 26

<title>75 Years Later, a Casper Woman’s Fridge Is Still Running, Cold Schlitz Inside | Cowboy State Daily</title>

More than a year after a Casper woman died, her daughters found a 75-year-old Coldspot refrigerator, hidden by cobwebs and insulation, humming with life. In fact, the fridge from the 1950s, was keeping 30-year-old cans of Schlitz ice-cold.

75 Years Later, a Casper Woman’s Fridge Is Still Running, Cold Schlitz Inside

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Politics

Wyoming laws governing which state and local Republican Party officials can vote for  leaders are constitutional, and the state Republican Party’s rights to dictate its own membership don’t trump those laws, a judge ruled Friday. 

Uinta County District Court Judge James Kaste’s Friday ruling gives a concrete, though appealable, answer to the state GOP’s yearslong agenda to shrug off the restrictions Wyoming law places on it and behave as a private group.

The dispute in this case started in March of 2025 when Joe Martinez and Phillip Scheel won election to the seats of Hot Springs County Republican Party Chair and state committeeman, respectively. 

But the state party’s Dispute Resolution Committee, after a controversial mediation process, then arbitration process, ruled that two “provisional” ballots of former Vice-Chair Brayden Harvey and former Secretary Mary Ann Jager should have counted in that election.

The ballots tipped the scale and made Harvey chair, and Russell Lewis state committeeman instead. 

But Harvey and Jager weren’t precinct committee people, meaning, they weren’t elected to the county central committee by their Republican neighbors as of the most recent primary election. 

State law says only people elected in that fashion can vote for the county party leaders. 

The Wyoming and Hot Springs County GOP bylaws, conversely, say the officers can vote even if they’re not precinct committee people. 

The state party asserted that because the First Amendment confers to private groups a right to dictate their own membership, the party’s bylaw should defeat state law. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Kaste disagreed. "}]

The state GOP’s most-referenced case in this matter, Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Party Central Committee doesn’t fit this case, the judge ruled. 

That case, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1989, conferred broad associational rights on political parties. 

But it stems from a situation in which the state of California laid much heavier restrictions on the Democratic Party, Kaste noted. 

He ruled that Harvey and Jager’s provisional ballots don’t count. 

“Martinez and Scheel won the election and should have been installed in those offices,” wrote Kaste. “The Dispute Resolution Committee made a manifest mistake of law in concluding otherwise.”

Kaste ordered that Martinez and Scheel should be installed “immediately” into the offices of Hot Springs County Republican Party Chair and state committeeman, and the case dismissed. 

In a setback to the Wyoming Republican Party’s long mission to gain independence from state law, a Uinta County judge Friday upheld multiple Wyoming election laws, dismissing the state Party’s claims that its rights trump them.

Thursday Smile: December 22, 2022

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