EP 2-34 ALAN OHASHI
Wendy Corr:
Well, hey there folks. Welcome to The Roundup. We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the Cowboy State. We've got one of the most interesting that we've had on this program this morning. I'm very excited to have everybody hear the stories that Alan Ohashi has to tell.
But first, I want to make sure that you all know about the "Business From the Basement" podcast. This is a podcast put on by the Wyoming Business Alliance, and it's meant to be a resource and a conversation about people who are involved in business and who have the resources to help you if you are a Wyoming business person.
So check out the Wyoming "Business From the Basement" podcast that is put on by the Wyoming Business Alliance. But you don't want to go there yet, because first we're going to have a conversation with Alan Ohashi.
Alan has such a great career as a filmmaker, as a journalist, but if you read last week's Cowboy State Daily guest column, he also kind of secretly wanted to be a carny, and so he gave that a try. He also got caught in the Big Thompson Flood, which was a big adventure.
Adventure, Alan, you've had a lot of adventures. Let's talk about how your adventures got started. You're a Wyoming guy from the beginning. And are you still, do you now live in Boulder? Is that right?
Alan O'Hashi:
Yeah, I live in Boulder. I lived in Wyoming probably for 25 years, half my half my career, and then I moved to Colorado in about 1993 after being born and raised in Cheyenne, and when I went to college in Hastings Nebraska, my parents moved on me to Laramie when I was a sophomore.
And that happens, I sat out the post Vietnam War recession and in grad school at the University of Wyoming, and then got my first job in Gillette, in the Gillette city government, and then moved to Lander to work for the Gillette or the Lander city government. And then did a good, a good period of time with the Northern Arapaho tribe before moving to Colorado.
Wendy Corr:
Wow. What did you do with the tribe?
Alan O'Hashi:
My title was the economic and community development director, and so I worked with tribal members to, you know, a lot of sort of entrepreneurial interest that tribal members had, mostly around agriculture, and myself and some colleagues in the tribe put together a 600 acre farm based on small plot.
Small allotments that tribal members had gained when the land was kind of divvied up among families, and then. So that's what I did, plus some big picture, tribal economic development issues around water and some stuff like that.
Wendy Corr:
Wow, my goodness - so how did you move from government then into journalism? Because you're a fantastic writer. I mean, you've got a gift for that and a gift for storytelling. How did you make the jump from government? Because I understand this. I went from city government to radio, so I get this.
Alan O'Hashi:
Well, I always was a writer. I had my first byline in the Cary Junior High School Tumbleweed newspaper when I was 13, and I had edited a column that was called the poets corner, where I went around to all the English classes in the junior high and picked out some poems and and curated a kind of a column about those.
And I started out as a poet, and then, just through general assignment, you know, covered sports and news and the junior high and became the school paper cartoonist, and continued on doing that through high school at the Thunderbolt newspaper, did some general assignment reporting, but mostly was the cartoonist for the paper.
Same thing when I went to college, I was a cartoonist at Hastings for my school paper. And then when I came back to Wyoming, I really kind of shelved the writing and wrote a couple things, maybe freelance things, for the the branding iron at UW but I didn't really do much writing until I went to Lander.
And there was, of course, the Wyoming State Journal there, and one of your writers, Bill Sniffin, he was the editor and publisher at the time. And small town, 7000 people, and so the paper was always open to having community members become writers.
And so I covered, you know, sports, because it was after hours, generally going to basketball, football games and track meets and whatnot. And also started writing columns. And after a period of time, I'm not sure how long I had compiled a like an anthology of my columns that I had written for the journal.
It was called Wyoming Graffiti, kind of after American Graffiti that kind of came out, and that was sent off by my uncle, who has worked for Pioneer printing. My uncle Jake in Cheyenne, and he was a public publisher, or actually a book printer.
And so he worked with a number of publishers and sent my manuscript off, or at least made arrangements for me to send my manuscript to a small publisher in Texas. And, my first rejection letter. They wanted to do something with it, I'm thinking as a favor to my uncle, but they just didn't have the bandwidth for it at the time.
So I stuck that in the drawer, and it's probably on top of this shelf someplace, that manuscript, and, well, fast forward to 2019 and I was curious about writing. I had not been a writer, but I wasn't very knowledgeable about the business of writing or any of that stuff.
And so the Wyoming writing incorporated conference happened to be in Laramie in June, June 2019 and not far from Boulder. So I decided to enroll and sign up. And then the port was - a great part about it was that there was a section where you could pitch or talk to agents and publishers.
And so I went up, randomly talked to a book publisher from a small press in the Northeast called Winter Goose publishing, and didn't really talk about anything. I said I was just mostly interested in talking to her about publishing. And she said, Well, do you have any story ideas?
And you know, I was, harkening back to my book manuscript, and also, coincidentally, at the same time, I had seen a TV news segment about the West 17th neighborhood in Cheyenne where I grew up, which also happened to be the Japanese neighborhood where I grew up.
And so well, you know, I did have this idea about where I grew up in Cheyenne and West 17th Street, just kind of the post war way that Japanese were treated and and sort of gave a like a 10 minute pitch, and lo and behold, she said, Well, why don't you send me a manuscript?
So I closed this - my first rejection in 1987, I get my first acceptance, just based on me talking to this woman.
Wendy Corr:
your elevator pitch.
Alan O’Hashi:
Basically the elevator pitch. And then in October, I submitted the 80,000 words. And by November, I had my book contract, which was also made into the documentary, PBS documentary “Beyond Heart Mountain.” So that was my pathway to becoming a starving writer and filmmaker.
Wendy Corr:
Well, you did more than that, though. I mean, because the “Beyond Heart Mountain” was a fantastic documentary, and I was able to do a story about that a few years ago. But you have found your way into filmmaking earlier than 2019 - you have been involved in several films. Tell us about that, because that's fascinating to have somebody who's had such a rich, I guess, diverse career in that so tell us about filmmaking.
Alan O'Hashi:
Well, just after 9/11, maybe 2004, 2005 I was laid off two regular jobs. And so, you know, I just kind of got tired of working for people who maybe weren't that great of bosses. And so I decided, well, I can, and I'm as bad a boss as they are, I can go off and do that on my own.
And so I took some classes at the local public access TV station and learned how to run a camera and run, how to do TV switching and learn how to edit, and took some screenwriting classes with a colleague of mine, who dragged me along to a screenwriting workshop.
And so I made my first short film in 2004-2005 and because my mission, always - I'm very, I guess, sort of mission driven. And my goal always was, okay. I wanted to take a script to screen, and so I wrote this story for the Denver screenwriting contest, and I took fourth place.
And, you know, the thing was, the first three movies they made into films, liberal films, because they're shot on 16 millimeter. But mine didn't. I just got a certificate - but in the meantime, I just decided I wanted to make the film.
And so I got a bunch of my friends together from the TV station, and we made this production all around Boulder. And what was that production? Well, it was called, it was called Stardust, and it was a misdirection story about how an innocent trip to Mexico got mistaken for a drug deal gone bad, and turned out it was not that. So that was my first movie.
Wendy Corr:
So that was your first movie. But then tell us about the movie that you filmed at Jackson, because I think that's really interesting as well.
Alan O'Hashi:
Yeah, that was 2013. In June, my partner and I, Diana, we went to where she was going to, New York, for some reason. Or going to Boston for some reason. But anyway, we stopped in New York and stayed with one of my college friends and went to Coney Island.
And so I've always wanted, I like roller coasters, and the cyclone on Coney Island in Brooklyn. And so I was on the cyclone, and my phone went off. I couldn't really bother to answer it, but I could feel it buzzing in my pocket. So I got down to the bottom and returned the call. It turned out it was this movie director who wanted to shoot this movie in Jackson, Wyoming.
It was called “Mahjong in the West.” And it was a kind of precious script, because it took second place in one of the recent Nichols foundation screenplay contest hierarchy. So, you know, usually it's really hard to place in the top five in that and the only ones that really ever get any notice are the one top two or three films.
But anyway, this guy picked out this one movie that happened to be written by a Jackson writer, a pair of Jackson writers. And so there was a production company in New York that wanted to do it, and he asked me if I wanted to help him out with some line production, which is basically doing field work and location scouting and such in Jackson. And I said, Sure, I'd be happy to do it.
And my production company, Boulder Community Media, is a nonprofit. And so we also were the fiscal agent for that. In that time, there were film incentives through the Wyoming Film Commission Office, which no longer exists. But anyway, we were one of the last movies that got made using the film incentives.
So my part was also to keep track of the bills and keep track of the accounting and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, we made this movie and that got shot or got finished and premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival in New York State, but it's on Amazon Prime right now.
But anyway, the kind of the adjunct to that story is, you know, we were talking about my adventures and my first adventure was the Big Thompson Flood, like in ‘76 and about after that, about every 20 years, I always had this flirt with death, and so the next one was in 2013 when I basically ended up on my deathbed that year.
And that was really kind of, I was lucky that I was able to get that production completed. Luckily, there was a good ground crew that was able to finish it, but I was bedridden from December until January, 2013 almost, almost didn't make it.
Wendy Corr:
I want to know more about this, because that's, that's death bed. And yet, here you are. What happened?
Alan O'Hashi:
Well, that June, I was trying very hard to figure, I was working too hard. And so after I found out about this movie, I came back to Colorado and had to go immediately, like the next day on a production trip to Wyoming to work, check out this job in Jackson.
Plus I was doing some work for the Wyoming Arts Council, doing some documentation of artists around the state who had, you know, when they went, they have these contests for writers and artists and visual artists and such. So I was going around doing those.
And then when I happened to be in Buffalo doing one, I think it happened to be about Jalan Crossland, and came down with this case of the shingles. And so then buzzed home. I was with a production partner who actually drove back.
And so after that, I continued. After I got back to Boulder, I just continued doing production. I had a wedding for some friends, the Jensens in Cheyenne, their daughter got married. And so I was doing that wedding. And I had just a bunch of other stuff going on, not to mention this movie in Jackson and whatnot.
Wendy Corr:
All while you were suffering from shingles?
Alan O’Hashi:
Oh, and other stuff I was, it turns out I ended up with this exotic lung disease. It was this pneumonia that AIDS patients would get when their immune systems got shot. And so December 16, 2013, I ended up having to go to the emergency room, and then didn't leave there in rehab until the middle of January.
Wendy Corr:
Wow, oh my gosh.
Alan O'Hashi:
Two months.
Wendy Corr:
And yet you still, all the projects got done. But like I say, it's great when you've got the right team around you.
Alan O'Hashi:
Yeah. And so that's actually one of the life lessons I learned is, you know, you have to learn how to ask for help. And you know, you grow up in places like Wyoming as a rugged individual, I can do this myself. I don't need anybody to help me. I can fight through anything.
And so I knew that my health wasn't that great. But then again, I didn't want to, let people know I wasn't able to finish my work, and so, but you know, as it turns out, you know, people help me out in the end. And so everything worked out great.
Wendy Corr:
My goodness, I want to go back to Big Thompson Flood, to your first brush with death in 1976. I mean, we just celebrated, we just marked the anniversary of that, just this past week.
Alan O'Hashi:
Today.
Wendy Corr:
The 31st - yeah, that's when we're recording. This is the 31st so, 49 years ago today, you were just minding your own business going to work - and tell us the story about this. And if this is a nutshell version, if you want more information, go to Cowboy State Daily and read the story. But tell us what happened, in your words.
Alan O'Hashi:
Um, well, I mentioned I was in grad school at the University of Wyoming, and I was in the political science department and was taking a class. And maybe it was the Millward Simpson chair, then the Ruckelshaus environmental course that was being taught at that time. Anyway, some special course.
And there was a former congressman named Wayne Aspinall. He was a Democrat from the western slope of Colorado, who came and did this seminar. And so at the time, I was this hardcore Republican, and we had these spirited discussions about, you know, free enterprise versus public public goods and all that and so. But for whatever reason we took a liking to each other.
And so I asked him if he would be willing to write me some letters to the Department of Interior, the Park Service on my behalf, and, you know, take advantage of a bit of patronage level that I had at the time. And sure enough, he did that favor for me, and I got a job working for the National Park Service as a seasonal ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park.
And so I started there that summer, and as a Ranger, and decided to go up to Cheyenne Frontier Days, which is my general course of action every every year, every July, every final week in July, and went to stay with some friends from from some college, classmates from UW and probably went on a Thursday. May have had the weekend off.
But anyway, decided to come back on Saturday, the last day, rather than stay over at my friend's house and so I hopped in my car, it was probably seven o'clock at night, dusk, and drove west back to Colorado, south and west.
And by the time I got to Loveland, you turn off on highway 34 and then there was, you know, even this is like monsoon season around Wyoming. And so this was typical of that, there was a band of black clouds and a red band of orange clouds above it, and looked like a great, beautiful sunset.
Drove towards towards Loveland, through Loveland and got past the dam store, and on my way up to to the park, cars were coming in the opposite direction, and I ran into a police officer, sheriff or highway patrol, and he told me, Well, you better turn around up ahead, because there's some bad water.
I didn't know what that meant, but anyway, I drove up and was getting ready to turn around. But you know when you're driving on the road and you can kind of see a, like a trickle of water going across. Well, I saw that, and then all of a sudden, I banged into it, but by that time, it had become a wall of water, and, like, within seconds.
And so my car suddenly was inundated with water, rain, mostly. And I caught my bumper, for whatever reason, caught a porta potty and floated me kind of sideways towards the canyon wall, rather than down towards the riverbed, the Big Thompson River.
And I waded out, and there was a state of Colorado truck had pulled down looking for people, I suppose, and I walked out, walked out of the water and climbed into the bed of the truck, and they took the bunch of others to this other place, higher ground, called Rainbow Bend, and that's where we spent the night.
Wendy Corr:
Saved by the Porta Potty.
Alan O’Hashi:
Yeah, by save by Porta Potty. So enough, you know, sort of reverse PTSD. Whenever I go to some place and and see porta potties, like at the Bolder Boulder, or at the or at the Frontier Days park, or wherever, I always get thrown back to that moment where I saw the porta potties floating down the way.
Wendy Corr:
Wow, oh my gosh. And so, I mean, so many people died in that and you so easily could have been one of them, had it not just been for your bumper getting caught.
Alan O'Hashi:
Yeah, it's kind of a way of pleasant awakening, I guess, that you just don't know how life is going to play out. And, you know, I even think back at, you know, had I not gone to Cheyenne for the Frontier Days. You know, how would my life have been different? You know, chances are, I would have worked for the park service.
I wouldn't have gone to take this job in Gillette, which meant I wouldn't have gone to Lander, which meant I wouldn't have come to Colorado. And I probably, you know, I would probably still be working for the park service someplace.
Wendy Corr:
Forks in the road.
Alan O’Hashi:
Lots of forks in the road, and you just don't know what - even now, when I'm confronted with choices like that, like, I just was offered free plane tickets on an airplane - do I take that, or do I stay on the airplane? And so those are just these strange life decisions that I might that I make now and think about, okay, what might be the consequences?
Wendy Corr:
Absolutely, oh my gosh. I was just having that conversation with my kids this weekend, so I completely understand that.
You know, one of the movies and the book that you wrote, Beyond Heart Mountain, focuses on your childhood in Cheyenne in a Japanese neighborhood, but it was not anybody's typical childhood. It was your typical childhood. It was the way you grew up.
But what was it about growing up in that community that influenced you going forward with your filmmaking, with with a lot of the decisions that you made about your career? Because it really was a unique way to grow up - for the rest of us in Wyoming anyway, to have this little pocket of culture in Cheyenne that received, I mean, it was on the wrong end of a lot of racism.
Alan O'Hashi:
Right? You know, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, there was this sort of mass hysteria that was pervasive around the United States. And I was born after the war, but my parents, aunts and all of my relatives and all of their friends, there was quite a vibrant Japanese community in Cheyenne at the time. That would have been in the 50s, 40s through the 70s, I suppose.
And they, you know, it was one day, my parents were just, my dad was the foreman at the Coca Cola Bottling plant, and my mom was a stay at home mom, and she worked in the State of Wyoming. And then the next day, suddenly, people were looking at them, wondering if they were part of the conspiracy and part of the enemy infiltrating Wyoming as a secret cell of some sort.
And so that was, that was a tough time for my parents. In fact, when my sister and I were born and my cousins were born, it was this idea of having to kind of grow up straddling two worlds. And I think ultimately, thinking back, it was a good thing.
But, you know, we were forbidden to learn how to speak Japanese. My parents spoke limited Japanese around the house, particularly when my grandparents were around. But you know, there's the only - No, Japanese anything, no Japanese books, no Japanese food, but the only thing that we had that was Japanese was rice, and that was in a limited, limited family holidays.
But then we were, you know, my parents went to great, great efforts to be sure that my sister and I were, you know, Americanized, and became, True Blue Americans. You know, we even moved into one of the East Cheyenne neighborhoods. I call them the suburbs, but it was so that my parents would be able to keep us in the same grade school.
And so even then, you know, we had two birthday parties. We had the neighborhood birthday parties, which was, you know, sort of hot dogs and baseball cards and all that stuff. And then we also had the family birthdays, which was more traditional, more Japanese and that sort of thing.
And so I think that experience really gave me a good understanding on how to, you know, have to live in the dominant world, and then, at same time, understand people who are not like myself, or how to get along with people who are unlike myself.
And so I think that was one of the themes that has been pervasive in all my work, my books and in my movies, really is to show how people who are not the same, they're - you know, people say, Oh, well, I just look at everybody as equal, or everybody is the same.
And the point is, nobody is the same. Everybody's different. And so it's this matter of, how do people understand that they also need to learn how to straddle both worlds, and that's really hard work.
Wendy Corr:
Finding the value in in all of the differences, rather than being afraid of the differences.
Alan O'Hashi:
Right? And even you know where I live now, in Boulder, and having grown up in Wyoming and both very homogeneous places, for the most part, it's been not really a struggle, but it's always, you know, I find myself more comfortable now really on working with people and assisting people and providing people insight on how they can become more understanding by finding common ground.
Because particularly this day and age, when things are so polarized, when people are so unwilling to, you know, move even a little bit closer to other people's perspectives that I think that's one of the one of the things that I've learned through my over the years and still continue to carry that forward.
And in fact, that's one of the teaching moments that I think that happened from natural disasters, because the floods in Texas and the Big Thompson Flood and any kind of the tornado that happened in China many years ago.
Also, you know, disasters, for whatever reasons, bring people together. And it's too bad it has to take something like that to get people to understand the humanity of one another and understand that people are, you know, it just transcends, you know, whether or not you're this, or whether you're not that, and whether or not you're pointing fingers at this agency because they didn't do something, or this politician because they didn't show up after the scene.
You know, that's all immaterial, and the people who are on the ground, and you saw the empathy on the TV when, those major floods happen in Texas, and how people came together and people worked with one another, regardless of who they were. Same thing happened during the Big Thompson.
So I think unfortunately, it takes these sort of critical events to happen for people to come together. But what if people came together otherwise and exercise the same amount of of empathy and and giving and caring and sharing rather than taking and wanting.
Wendy Corr:
Absolutely - then that separation, putting those walls up, those boundaries up.
Alan O'Hashi:
Breaking down the boundaries, rather than building them.
Wendy Corr:
I think that's fantastic, that that has become just kind of a heart mission for you, and that comes through in your work. So tell me, I have to say, I read today, I read your column that you had written about Cheyenne Frontier Days and about you're trying out the Carny life for just a little bit.
And tell me if this is something that you don't want to talk about, but you mentioned it, and you brought it up in your column. You had a UFO experience in Laramie.
Alan O'Hashi:
Oh, yeah, in fact, a lot of people had a UFO experience in Laramie.
Wendy Corr:
I want to hear about this, because that stuff fascinates me. UFO experience in Laramie. Tell us about that.
Alan O'Hashi:
Well, there was a newspaper article, you know, I've always been kind of interested in that sort of thing since I was a kid, and about cattle mutilations and stuff like that. In fact, we remember taking a road trip down to Monte Vista, Colorado. And then there are these articles about cattle mutilations on farms and ranches and whatnot, and really intrigued me.
And after that, in college, there was this phase of pop culture. Eric Von Daniken wrote about Chariots of the Gods and talked about how his speculation was, is that people from other dimensions or other places have been visiting here since time and time immemorial.
And so then, when I was living in Gillette, this would been, you know, after few years, after I graduated from college, there was a past story in the Casper Star Tribune was written by Greg Bean and about he going down to the Morton Pass farms and just outside of Laramie in the on Highland in the canyon the State Road between Wheatland and Laramie.
I think it's 34, and there wasn't a photo, but there was a color illustration of this flying, this unidentified aerial phenomenon that was on the front page of the paper. And so I said to my friends, we got to go check this out. And so we loaded up my friend's van, and we all drove down to the Martin Pass farm and wanted to see what was going on.
And at that time, there was a TV show called “That's Incredible.” Was on ABC with Fran Tarkenton and John Davidson. So anyway, they were down there with the film crew. And while we didn't see any of the spectacular shows that were reported in the Casper Star Tribune, there certainly were some nocturnal lights, and so I did take some pictures of those.
It was similar. They were red, yellow and blue lights and white lights that were flashing, moving around in weird patterns. But anyway, after that, I kind of befriended Pat McGuire, who was the owner of the ranch. And there's quite a story, you know.
There's a lot to it about him being abducted several times, and he being instructed by an archangel to drill this well on this previously arid piece of prairie, just outside of Laramie Peak. And so he drilled this gusher well, and that's a lush field of alfalfa hay. And he was flying this, this red flag of Israel, because, I guess this Archangel, one of them, happened to be Michael, that he mentioned.
And he would wear around this belt buckle with the Star of David on it, because he said, that was the buckle that these beings who abducted him wore. In fact, I have one in one of my boxes someplace, myself, one of these. And so was a very incredible, very remarkable story.
And so we were staying in touch for many years. He eventually did some good, some kind of off the wall things, ran for governor, and bunch of things, and he ended up, he's passed. I don't know what year, but I've often wondered what happened to Pat and whatever happened to his family.
Wendy Corr:
And his collection of Star of David belt buckles and things like that.
Alan O'Hashi:
I'm not sure who ended up with the property, but it seems like maybe the state of Wyoming ended up with it, or the University of Wyoming. But anyway, that's that story. And then, well, how we got into the conversation with my carnival mentor was, yes, this idea that Billy Graham wrote a book called “Angels, God’s Secret Agents.”
And he has this, wrote this book about how he believes that angels and visitations from other places, there are good angels, and there are bad angels, just like it says in the Bible.
Wendy Corr:
I had no idea that Billy Graham wrote a book like that. That's crazy. Wow. I mean, crazy cool to me.
Alan O'Hashi:
Yeah. And so then he was, for some reason, he was in Cheyenne and gave a talk at Frontier Park. Now, Billy Graham, so for whatever, I was in town, and I went to listen to him and listen to his talk, just to see what he had to say. Very charismatic guy, actually.
Wendy Corr:
The brushes with, really, history that you have had, Alan is just fantastic, and the ways that your life has touched on these major events, whether it's the the Heart Mountain and the the Japanese internment issue, whether it's Billy Graham and UFOs, whether it's the Big Thompson Flood, you've just had such amazing adventures.
Really, tell us real quickly as we wrap up here, tell us about what's next for you, because you're obviously still active and still doing projects.
Alan O'Hashi:
Yeah, I'm working on some additional books. In fact, I just finished this book here. It's called, Views From Beyond Metropolis. And this is actually kind of an updated version of Beyond Heart Mountain, and has more details about the stories that were in Beyond Heart Mountain, including the UFO story that I spoke of just now, and also about the Billy Graham crusade story.
And, you know, my childhood hero is Superman. And so I wanted to say, Okay, well, how did my life at all parallel Superman's life?
And sure enough. Superman was an illegal immigrant himself, and was always having to deal with much of the angst around him, having to either hide out or or be forthright and risk being found out. And so I saw a lot of parallels in Superman's life.
Then he also came to the rescue, or came to the assistance of disenfranchised people or people who needed a hand up. And so I write about Superman's life in this updated version. And so I'm trying to sell books, actually.
And then there's this other book called Libby Flats. This is a kind of a novel, historical novel, that takes place, actually, they're all my experiences. It's about, it starts out at a ranch outside of Lander. One of the characters runs a bed and breakfast out near Sundance by the Devil's Tower.
And the characters all come together at the University of Wyoming, and they end up trying to reconcile a long lost feud in Boulder at a funeral at one of the protagonists.
Wendy Corr:
That’s great. And where can we find these books? Are they on Amazon, or where can we find it?
Alan O'Hashi:
You can find them on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble or, I think you can go down to go to your local bookstore and order them. I know that Windy City Books has them. You can get them through there. You can get them, I think, through Blue Mountain Books and Laramie Barnes and Noble, of course, in Cheyenne, any number of places. You can get them at the Pioneer Museum Gift Store in Lander, various places.
Wendy Corr:
That is fabulous. That would definitely keep you busy. So is anything in particular that you're excited about coming up, any projects?
Alan O'Hashi:
Well, I do have, there was one we didn't talk about, Beyond Sand Creek, which is a story about the Arapaho tribe in Wyoming, and it's Oklahoma trying to regain access to property in Colorado that was taken after the Sand Creek Massacre. That aired on PBS.
And I'm working on a kind of a corollary to that called Beyond Fort Chambers, which is about the the officers and the soldiers who trained at a fort near boulder to go and fight Indians at at the Sand Creek Massacre, and really kind of figure out how to balance these two kind of diametrically opposite histories and motivations.
And so I have that that I'm working on, plus another historical novel that's a kind of a sequel to Libby Flats. One of the character’s story, it's called Vengeance at Stone Creek, which is about a murder that happens at an internment camp in Colorado, or one of the in this book would be flat stayed before he moved to Wyoming.
Wendy Corr:
That is absolutely fascinating. Alan, you have just lived such an interesting life and continue to bring us fantastic creative projects and great stories. Thank you for your time today, and thanks for sharing all of these great stories and for sharing your experiences through your books, through films and through conversations like this.
We are really grateful and very proud to have you as a Wyoming native and to be able to say he's one of us. We love that.
Alan O'Hashi:
Yeah, people, in fact, people still think I live in Wyoming.
Wendy Corr:
Well, you do kind of wear your Wyoming pride on your sleeve, Frontier Days and all that. You're very proud of those things.
Alan O'Hashi:
Oh, yeah, even my brown and gold t-shirt. This is a movie that I made in Cheyenne called Jack Kerouac in Cheyenne.
Wendy Corr:
So, okay, another movie, and it's in your Wyoming prep. We are just grateful that you're able to share these stories and that you were able to share some time with us today. Alan, thank you.
Alan O'Hashi:
You're welcome. I appreciate it, and never want to - you know my slogan is, have opinion, will travel. So if you ever want to talk to me again about anything, you can just drop me a line.
Wendy Corr:
Got your number now. That's great. Perfect. Alan, thank you today, and folks, thank you for tuning in today into a glimpse of a life again, so many interesting people in the Cowboy State. And The Roundup, we do our best to shine those lights on those people whose stories you may not have heard, but that need to be told.
And so we're grateful to have had this time with Alan today. Tune in to our other - if you've missed any of our other stories, of our other conversations, go back to our archives. We're going on two years now of these conversations with The Roundup. So, great conversations with people from all over Wyoming, the Wyoming landscape.
Have a great week. We'll talk to you next week from the perspective of another really interesting Wyoming character. So Alan, thank you, folks, thank you. See you next week.
