Only one word can describe my feelings about a quarter of a century just passing by – YIKES!
On a personal level, when this century started, I was in my prime and I was going very, very strong.
Today, at the end of that same quarter century, I am approaching 80 years old.
If my life was a baseball game, I have already rounded third and am headed for home.
Where did all that time go? What happened?
The Big Picture
On a global scale, this quarter century was fantastic. The biggest and best news is that the world didn’t kill itself. No big wars. So far, so good.
However, this was a period of our lives that saw 9/11, wars in the middle east and the Ukraine, and a worldwide COVID pandemic.
Here in Wyoming, we started the century with the national presidential election of the George Bush-Dick Cheney ticket, which had a profound influence on the Cowboy State economy.
I will always give Wyomingite Cheney much credit for causing the energy boom that occurred here between 2002-2012, which might have been the biggest financial bonanza in the state’s history.
As energy boomed, Wyoming finally pulled itself out of the malaise that haunted this state from 1982 through the next 20 years. We saw this state suffer stagnant growth during these two decades. We endured the disappearance of an entire generation of worker families who fled the state for economic reasons.
Wyoming was the hole in the donut of the Rocky Mountain Region as the states around us flourished. No, we do not want to endure another period like 1982-2002.
So, while middle class people fled the state, Wyoming saw a big influx of the 1 percent – the richest people in the country. They flocked here to wonderful places like Jackson, Sheridan, Cody, and others and, in several cases, spent money here to improve the state.
Here is a positive event of the last 25 years: Leadership Wyoming celebrated its 25th anniversary and that group, started by Bill Schilling, has evolved into the most important incubator for leaders in this state’s history. Its 1,000 grads are literally a who’s who of the folks who run Wyoming. Mandy Fabel now runs it.
Big Bank Account
Our state government’s biggest source of income is money made off investments. Is that not amazing?
Smart people starting with Gov. Stan Hathaway in the late 1960s pushed for severance taxes on minerals leaving the state. We charged a “severance tax” because these items were non-renewable. Coal, oil, natural gas, trona, and uranium were “severed” from us and left the state forever.
Despite looking much like a colony, we were able to make money year-after-year from these taxes and now our bank accounts amount to over $30 billion. For a state with a tiny population of 580,000, this is a serious amount of money. Much of that money was piled up this quarter century.
Vast amounts of money were also spent on education. We have the finest elementary and high schools in the country and our university of Wyoming has fantastic facilities, as do our community colleges.
Gradually our test scores are going up. And yet, still, far too many young people are fleeing our state.
Where Did Time Go?
Time is such a mysterious thing. Most of our lives, time can really drag.
But not as you get older. Every night as I climb into bed I think back, what the hell happened today? I just got up!
Back in my prime, I used to complain that I was living on hamster time. It seemed like the world was one big hamster cage and I was running just as fast as I could just to stay in place.
Not so much anymore. Now, like most of my coffee buddies, I wonder if the world has passed me by? Perhaps our time is up?
Huge National Events
This quarter century started with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That action and the War on Terror resulted in an almost non-stop period of unrest and disaster in the middle east. Our country spent trillions trying to figure out how to deal with it.
The National Security programs that went into effect after 9/11 filtered all the way down to sparse Wyoming. We all lost privacy and personal rights from that.
And who would have thought with modern medicine we would endure a world-wide pandemic? Such a crazy time. Hard to believe that was just four years ago.
My wife Nancy loves to watch early seasons of the TV series Grey’s Anatomy. She is now watching shows where everyone is wearing masks (even outside the hospital) – the episodes were filmed back in 2020-2021. All that masking looks surreal.
Looking Ahead
Now, we worry about all the time we spend on our cell phones. We have a younger generation that might be different than any before it, because of constant social media pressures.
Artificial intelligence threatens jobs and even the very fabric of our lives. Will we become slaves to machines like some crazy science fiction movie?
I hope to be around for most of this next quarter century. I just wish time would slow down a bit.
With all the bitterness between the political left and right these days, it might be nice to follow some advice my friend Dave Reetz up in Powell told me: “Maybe it’s time to heal up and hair over,” which describes how a calf recovers from the pain of a branding.
Now that is a good Wyoming thought going into the next 25 years of this century.
Bill Sniffin can be reached at bill@cowboystatedaily.com
