You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"Me trying to downplay the upcoming trip with the guys....."}]

You still here 7 13 26

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

<title>You Still Here? Monday, July 13, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Me trying to downplay the upcoming trip with the guys.....

You Still Here? Monday, July 13, 2026

 Me trying to downplay the upcoming trip with the guys.....

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

Larry Morgan was born in Superior, Wyoming, in the 1940s, the son of a coal miner. Eventually, he landed in Jackson Hole, well enough off that he could build his dream mountain home.

His friends call him “The Closer.” He’s a corporate dealmaker, high-stakes sales producer and, lately, a self-described best-selling author on Amazon with a book revealing how he made his fortune.  

Despite all that, Morgan doesn’t think of his story as a true rags-to-riches tale — though he’ll acknowledge it’s an arc that’s hard to ignore. 

“I never really saw myself as being poor, although my family was very poor,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “My father owned a tiny little cafe in Iowa, and we barely made a living. He always said, ‘We don’t make any money, but we eat good'.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Dusty Old Chevy"}]

Superior today is a semi-ghost town in Sweetwater County. His family didn’t stay there long.  

“My father was a coal miner during the war,” he said. “It was a strategic occupation.”

Two cave-ins later, though, and he was rethinking that strategy. The family packed up and moved to Charlton, Iowa, where he started a cafe. 

“I always liked to work,” Morgan said. “So, when I was probably 12,  he hired me to be the dishwasher. I had to stand on a pop crate to reach the sink and wash the dishes. But he paid me 35 cents an hour, which was the going wage for an adult.”

It didn’t take Morgan long to realize if he wanted to achieve his dream of owning a car when he turned 16, he needed a better-paying job. So, he kept washing dishes but also took a job at the nearby bowling alley. 

“I made real good money in the bowling alley,” he recalled with a chuckle. “I got paid for every line. This was back before automatic pinsetters, so you had to set each one by hand.”

At the end of the night, he could usually count on some fairly large tips, but it was a grueling schedule.

“I went to work at 5 in the morning in the cafe and worked until 8 a.m.,” he said. “Then I went to school and worked at the bowling alley until midnight.”

Before too long, Morgan had saved the $80 he needed to buy a dusty old Chevy — his first car.

Morgan loved living in Iowa. He was in a small rural town he describes as just a few blocks apart, stitched together with the wonderful smell of freshly mowed hay. 

It was a great place to grow up. It was a great place to “be from.” 

But, if he wanted to make the kind of living that would afford a life, he realized it was not a great place to “be.”

For that, he decided he needed to attend college. Which meant he needed an even better-paying job than dishwashing and tips from the bowling alley.

That led him to become what he says was probably the “world’s youngest” encyclopedia salesman.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"No, not Britannica, the top seller. "}]

It was a smaller, lesser-known company called World Book. 

“Most of the encyclopedia salesmen worked in cities,” Morgan said. “The doors are close together … but the trouble was most of those people didn’t have money or didn’t read books.”

Traditional salesman advice says that to get to a “yes” you have to listen to a lot of “nos.” But Morgan didn’t want to indiscriminately knock on doors. 

Every “no” felt too much like a bullet to his heart. He needed a better system. 

“The World Book was designed for children,” Morgan said. “So I started cruising around my little hometown, and if I saw a bunch of bicycles in the yard, I knew I had a buyer because they had kids.”

But, he realized, that wasn’t enough to ensure a yes. He also needed to make sure the family could afford an encyclopedia.

That started him looking for not just bikes but Buicks as well. A family with a Buick in the driveway had money. And a family with both a bike and a Buick had a child on which that money could be spent. 

Morgan also styled his approach so that he was practically closing the deal at the beginning of the sale rather than the end.

“I’d just walk up, knock on the door, and introduce myself,” he said. “And my opening line was, ‘Would you be interested in something that would help your children in school?’ Well, boom, what mother’s not interested in something that will help her children in school?”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Multiplier Effect"}]

Once the sale had been made, Morgan then did something else that ratcheted up his success. He would always ask the woman if she knew any other mothers who might also want their children to have the “World Book advantage.”

That usually produced a nice list of likely prospects, where he had a better than average shot at making more sales.

In no time, this thoughtfully targeted approach made him the company’s top salesman and he became, in his own words, the “richest kid in town.” 

This job didn’t just take him to college. It took him there in style. He had plenty of money to trade in his old Chevy for a shiny new Oldsmobile convertible.

He didn’t know it yet, but he’d learned everything he was ever going to need to succeed in sales beyond his wildest dreams. Later, he’d use those same principles to close multi-million-dollar deals.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"First, though, came a few wrong turns."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Learning The Wyoming Way"}]

Navigating past those wrong turns is something Wyoming helped Morgan with. 

“The most influential character in my life was my uncle, Ken Shelton,” Morgan said. “He lived in Rock Springs and was a real cowboy.”

When Morgan was 13, he ran away to Rock Springs to spend a summer and part of another year with his uncle. They’d go up to White Mountain to catch wild horses, fish and tell jokes.

Shelton was one of the best storytellers Morgan has ever known. 

“For Uncle Ken, his stories didn’t have to end up the way they actually did,” Morgan said. “But they always ended up the way they should have. And that’s the way he viewed life.”

Morgan’s favorite Uncle Ken yarn is about the time he was roping wild horses on White Mountain a bit too long. He caught a wild mustang just as the sun set, was bucked off in the dark, and ended up tangled in his own rope as a storm rolled in.

He saw a nearby cave for shelter, but what he couldn’t see inside that cave was the mountain lion living there.

“Before he manages to finally strangle the mountain lion to death it bites off three of his fingers,” Morgan said. “Now, even the casual observer is aware that my uncle has all of his fingers. But when I brought that up, he says, ‘Yes, and that’s another amazing story, but I’m trying to finish this one!’ ”

Morgan sums up the wonderful lessons he learned from his story-telling uncle in a chapter he called “Never Sell Your Saddle” in his bestselling Amazon book, “The Closer: An Inside Look at the World of High-Powered Sales, Big Money and Big Egos.” 

“The chapter ends up being a warning to people who are about to merge with a larger corporation and, for a few dollars, sell their life’s work,” he said. “They find themselves with nothing to do … In other words, don’t be quick to sell your saddle. Life’s a long, long ride.”

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

A long ride is often filled with a few wrong turns. For Morgan, his first wrong turn took him to Northeast Missouri State University in Kirksville.

“I was really captivated by academia,” Morgan said. “And I’d always wanted to be a college professor. To do that, you pretty much had to have a Ph.D.”

Knowing that, he took an extra-heavy class load, determined to earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s at the same time. 

“But the Vietnam War was going on,” he said. “And I had a very low lottery number.”

This all but guaranteed he’d get drafted into the Army. So, he took control of his own destiny by pre-emptively enlisting in the Marines. 

Like many who served in Vietnam, Morgan doesn’t talk about it much. 

“We’re all still conflicted over the Vietnam War, and so am I,” Morgan said.

After the war, he returned to his education, earning his Ph.D. at St. Louis University in child psychology — a notable accomplishment in and of itself, particularly given he was the first person in his family to even graduate from high school.

But it didn’t take long for him to realize his dreams of being a professor had been something of a fantasy. He taught for a year at the University of Wyoming, and was bored.

To solve that problem, he tried an administrative position in Southern California — and that was even worse.

Somehow, in spite of his best intentions, he had not landed in the right profession at all. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A New Door Opens"}]

The solution came from a little problem known as San Diego traffic.

He was stuck in a sea of cars for 10 miles. 

So, he turned on the radio and became a captive audience as a booming voice emerged from his speakers offering him a free trip to Lake Tahoe. All he had to do was look at a recreational land development.

“Free is a powerful word,” Morgan said with a chuckle. “So I went home and called the 800 number and then my wife and I decided to take the trip. We got the free trip to Tahoe, and that was the first time in my life I ever met a professional, hard-close salesman.”

The project, Tahoe Donner, was being developed by a larger-than-life entrepreneur named Justin Dart.

“He started Rexall Drugs and Tupperware and Vanda cosmetics,” Morgan said. “It was all pretty exciting.”

The property was rustic elegance of the kind that whispered wealth and success. It was electrifying.

In the beginning, the sales pitches were all low-key. But soon, pushier salesmen took turns convincing Morgan and his wife to buy. 

“You accepted our free trip,” one of them said. “You said you could afford the price, and you agreed that if everything we told you lived up to what you saw, you would make a decision to buy before returning to San Diego. Isn’t that true?”

Morgan was reaching for his checkbook when his wife, Connie, interrupted.

“We didn’t say we’d make a decision to buy,’” she told the salesman. “We said we’d make ‘a decision.’”

The property was great, she added, but just too far away.

On the way back, one of the salesmen, named Cal Hackett, offered Morgan a new deal.

“I’ll give you $250 for every lead you give me that buys,” Morgan recalled. “I was making $1,000 a month at the college. Four leads is a thousand dollars.”

Morgan had a cushy, safe job so he wasn’t sure about taking that offer. But he was also bored.

Once home, he noticed an ad in the Sunday paper that talked about selling real estate in Lake Tahoe for $50,000 a year.

“I thought to myself, this can’t be a coincidence,” Morgan said. “This must be the project that I just visited. And $50,000 a year is a lot more than $1,000 a month.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Morgan decided to answer the ad."}]

“When I called, they said, ‘Are you interested in selling some real estate in Lake Tahoe?’” Morgan recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, actually, I’ve just been up there. I just visited a project at Tahoe Donner.”

The recruiter wondered if Morgan had purchased a lot. When Morgan said, “no,” the recruiter seemed delighted. 

“They thought that I meant I understood the project, but wouldn’t have to be talked out of my own lot,” Morgan said. “They figured I wanted to send them leads.”

“I said, ‘No, no, I don’t want to send you leads. I want to sell it myself. I want to be the guy doing what that salesman was doing,’” he said.

At first, the recruiter was interested by that idea. Until he found out Morgan didn’t have a real-estate license.

“His welcoming demeanor quickly evaporated,” Morgan said with a chuckle. “So I went off and got a real-estate license and then I started selling recreational land.”

That development has since turned into one of the largest homeowners associations in the United States, Morgan said.

“And I very quickly became the top salesman,” he added. “I was making probably six, seven grand a month and you could buy a new car for $5,000 back then. So that’s what really got me hooked.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Becoming A Ski Bum"}]

The real pivot in Morgan’s life didn’t come from a commission check, though. It came from a paperback book he picked up at random because the title intrigued him. It was called “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World,” written by Harry Browne.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Morgan came away with one main point. "}]

“Having a lot of money won’t make you free,” Morgan said. “But being free gives you the opportunity to make a lot of money.”

Within six months of reading the book, Morgan quit his job, divorced his wife, and hit the road to see the world.

“I became what I jokingly call a ski bum with money,” he said. “I skied all over the world. I traveled. I did whatever I wanted to do.”

Larry Morgan The view at Larry Morgans mountain home in Jackson Hole 7 12 26

<title>From Wyoming Coal Miner’s Son To Closer: How Larry Morgan Achieved The American Dream | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Born in a near ghost-town in Wyoming, Larry Morgan’s life is a rags to riches story that begins and ends in Wyoming. Yet he insists the real story isn’t about money so much as freedom — and he's got a best-selling book on Amazon that tells his tale.

From Wyoming Coal Miner’s Son To Closer: How Larry Morgan Achieved The American Dream

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

He was a strategist and leader at the July 26, 1865, Battle of Platte Bridge when a young lieutenant named Caspar Collins was killed by Native warriors.

A fort and city went on to be named after the fallen soldier. 

But after the campaign from 1866-1868 to stop settlement and incursion into tribal lands in central Wyoming, Red Cloud had a war, Indian agency, town, tobacco brand, mountain in Colorado, comic book villain and more named for him.

Jeffrey Means, University of Wyoming Department of History chair and an expert on Great Plains Indian culture, told Cowboy State Daily that Red Cloud definitely ranks near the top of significant Native American leaders.

“He’s on the top of the Lakota Mount Rushmore for sure,” he said. “His legacy of just being that guy that’s always trying to make things better for his people translated into having schools named after him and even a town. These kinds of things are part of that respect.”

However, when Red Cloud returned to Casper about 30 years after his famous win at Platte Bridge and the Red Buttes, he was no longer a conqueror but under escort from lawmen and facing potential jail time for illegally taking game out of season.

Means said the incident in 1894 is interesting because at that point in Red Cloud’s life he was going blind.

“Him out on a hunting trip is pretty amazing,” he said. “Maybe he was just there to get off the reservation because he didn’t like it there.”

An article in the Argus-Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on June 2, 1894, reported that Red Cloud, then 68, and 50 others had stopped in Oelrichs, South Dakota, to trade with merchants before heading west into Wyoming for the Shoshone Reservation.

“They plan to go on a hunting expedition,” the newspaper reported.

When the group rode into Natrona County, reports that they were illegally taking game out of season filtered into town.

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

Alfred James Mokler, publisher of the Natrona County Tribune from June 1897 to October 1914, wrote in his history of Natrona County published in 1923 that the chief was broken in health.

He also noted that Natrona County and Casper residents “decided” Indians needed to comply with the same laws as everyone else and that the “wholesale slaughter” of game needed to stop. 

Mokler’s account states the chief and his band were camped about 30 miles west of the city in the Pine Mountains. On June 10, a Natrona County Sheriff’s deputy and Casper town marshal were sent with warrants to arrest Red Cloud, his son Jack Red Cloud, and Dreaming Bear for killing game out of season.

“When the authorities came upon them, the Indians had broken camp and all of them except the big chief and his son were traveling in a westerly direction,” Mokler wrote. “There was an abundance of antelope meat and pelts in the chief’s wagon.”

The chief, his son and Dreaming Bear were shown the warrants and the Natives on the road were signalled to return and soon everyone was back in camp. Red Cloud and the others agreed to return to Casper but only if they could bring their guns.

Mokler’s account states that the trio spent the rest of the weekend in jail while Red Cloud’s wife sat outside mourning and armed Natives went through town scowling. 

At a hearing Monday morning, the prosecuting attorney argued for a conviction and heavy fines. The Indians countered they did not know the law, were without food and hungry.

Both Mockler and a man who visited the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in July 1894, who likely heard about it from accounts of Natives, concur on what happened next.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fines And Freedom"}]

Mockler wrote that the three men were fined $20 each by the judge. But given Red Cloud’s status and promise they would not kill any more game, they were let go without having to pay. The group then went to the Wind River Indian Reservation and, after the visit, came back through Casper and had again killed game along the way.

The three were arrested again and brought before the judge for trial. After initially refusing to pay the fine and with some of the Indians “making dire threats against the people of the town,” they asked the sheriff if he would take Red Cloud’s team, wagon and harness in exchange for the fines.

Mockler wrote that the sheriff agreed and made a bill of sale. The Natives returned to Pine Ridge.

In a story published in the Kansas City Weekly Journal on July 26, 1894, Charles A. Finlay was quoted as visiting Pine Ridge when the annual allotment of $100,000 was being distributed to the tribes. He reported Red Cloud “got into a little trouble.”

“It seems that he and his son have insisted from time to time on invading Wyoming and killing game there,” he wrote.

Several other newspapers also had stories on Red Cloud’s arrest and fines. The Sioux chief’s notoriety from Red Cloud’s War had not faded. 

During that war the chief led efforts focused on preventing travel on the Bozeman Trail and white settlement in the Powder River area of Wyoming and southeast Montana. The Natives’ victory in the Fetterman Fight against troops from Fort Phil Kearny near what is now Sheridan in December 1866 claimed 81 soldiers’ lives.

Red Cloud’s efforts leading the Lakota, Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho resistance forced the U.S. back to a negotiation table at the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 and the removal of forts from the Powder River area. Native control of the region held until the wars of 1876 at Rosebud and Little Big Horn.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Promise Made"}]

Means said what is not as well known is that Red Cloud kept his word that he would never take up a weapon against the U.S. again. He made that promise during negotiations for the Great Sioux Reservation that occurred at Fort Laramie in 1868.

“His method of fighting from then on was taking trips to Washington to talk with Congress or the president, or the secretary of the interior about conditions on the reservation and what the nation needed for supplies,” he said.

In 1895, Red Cloud’s influence in Washington apparently had its impact. A story in the Cheyenne Daily-Sun Leader on Nov. 26 reported that Wyoming Gov. William Richards received communication from a Col. George, who was an attorney in Washington, requesting the state return the fines and costs paid by Red Cloud and others in Casper after their arrests the previous year.

The request was made due to a court decision in another case involving a Bannock native named Race Horse who took an elk. A judge ruled that the Indians had the right to hunt game. 

The governor replied that the case cited by George was under appeal “and that his request could not at present be considered.”

The case ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that states had the authority to regulate hunting.

Red Cloud’s promise not to fight also meant he did not take part in the Battle of Rosebud or at Custer’s Last Stand, Means said. But one thing he advocated for was to put cattle on the Great Sioux Reservation, which would allow the Sioux to maintain their lifestyle similar to the years they enjoyed before bison were killed off by the whites.

“A lot of Native leaders wanted to do this,” Means said. “They wanted to harvest cattle, just like they harvested bison … that way they could maintain their cultural structure, their political, social, and economic structure."

Means said the U.S. government was not interested in allowing that to happen.

The chief was one of the last of the Lakota to accept his allotment of acreage that came out of the Sioux bill of 1889, which broke apart the Great Sioux Reservation and took away 11 million acres. It was then that the smaller reservations were established, including Pine Ridge where Red Cloud lived.

“He fought that for a long, long time,” Means said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Spokesman For His People"}]

The historian said that during the early 1890s Red Cloud never became a proponent or advocate for the ghost dance. 

However, after the Battle of Wounded Knee, newspapers quoted the chief as advocating for change in the federal government’s Indian department.

“Red Cloud blames the Indian troubles largely on the Indian department,” the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal reported on Jan. 11, 1891. “Red Cloud gives us to understand that these agents and officers of various grades are looking out for themselves well, making no end of money and letting the Indians starve.”

As he aged, Red Cloud continued to advocate for his people, and though he and his wife lived alone he was surrounded by family and other Natives would seek him out and he was invited to events off the reservation.

“Oftentimes what he did is he had his grandchildren help him,” Means said. “They would hold his hand and lead him around because he really couldn’t see as he got older.”

In 1903, newspapers across the country had stories predicting the chief’s death was near and that he was in a teepee. But the chief rallied and went on to live six more years.

At his death on Dec. 10, 1909, the Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee published a story Dec. 14 from the Pine Ridge Agency that quoted a Col. William McCune, who reportedly knew the chief for many years and characterized him as the “greatest Indian of the 19th century.”

“We all loved him and none more so than Colonel Cody, ‘Buffalo Bill,’ who knew him most intimately. It was always the pleasure and desire of Colonel Cody to present Red Cloud with some substantial remembrance twice a year,” McCune said. “And that duty was entrusted to me. The old chief was grateful for it, because he was a poor man.”

Red Cloud and Mule deer 7 12 26

<title>Wyoming History: Chief Red Cloud Was Locked Up In Casper For Killing Wild Game | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In 1894, Chief Red Cloud and a band of 50 Indians came through Natrona County on the way to the Wind River Indian Reservation and killed some wild game for food. He was arrested and spent time in a Casper jail while his wife mourned outside.

Wyoming History: Chief Red Cloud Was Locked Up In Casper For Killing Wild Game

It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s worth more than that at the Bone Daddy Outlaw Bar and Grill in Dubois, which has undergone a dramatic transformation since it was purchased last year by Ben Barto and his wife, Sherry.

Hanging in one corner of the bar is a picture that says it all, even if few might guess at all the layers of meaning it holds for its owner.

It is a photo of motorcycle handlebars looking out at a scenic vista. The words say simply, “Life Behind Bars.”

“I was in junior high when I had my first motorcycle,” Barto told Cowboy State Daily. “And I had a neighbor with a faster motorcycle. He always used to brag about how he would outrun the cops when he was speeding.”

The brag turned out to be just that — as Barto soon discovered.

“We were riding together one time and we decided we were going to take off and see who was faster,” he said. “No sooner did we get started than there was a highway patrolman coming at us.”

The patrolman flipped his lights on, and the neighbor who loved to brag about outrunning the law meekly pulled over to the side. 

Barto, who’d never made such a claim, kept right on going.

“So the cop chased me for a while, and I couldn’t take a corner very well,” he recalled. “I had to lay the bike over and he caught up to me.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"'He Was A Friend Of Mine'"}]

Barto knew this was bad in every possible way, but he didn’t know just how bad until he got a look at the officer’s face.

“He was a friend of mine,” Barto admitted.

It was a friend who was shocked to see just who he’d been chasing.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It grew worse as the night went on."}]

“My uncle, who also happened to be a policeman and lived right across the street from me, was at the jailhouse that night,” Barto said. “And my folks were on vacation.”

While his uncle was disappointed in Barto, he decided not to throw the youth in jail, saying he knew his dad too well. He knew what would happen to Barto when his father found out his son had been arrested.

“He did issue me a ticket,” Barto said.

When Barto’s dad did come home, it didn’t take him long to hear through the grapevine what his son had been up to while he was away. 

“He took me to the jail and had my uncle take me downstairs to the jail,” Barto said. “He had me put in the jail and shut the door.”

For a moment, all was silent but for the echoing clang of the heavy door closing.

Then his uncle said words Barto has never forgotten.

“The way you’re going, you’re going to spend a lot of time behind bars,” he told him. 

And then he left Barto there to think it over for a while.

Barto decided then the only bars he ever wanted to live behind were the right kind — his motorcycle bars or, in this case, the bar he’s purchased in Dubois and is restoring. 

The photo is his reminder every day that he chooses the life he wants to live. That includes staying away from the wrong kinds of bars. 

“I haven’t outrun any cops since then,” Barto said with a chuckle.

Decades after that lesson in “life behind bars,” Barto has traded the threat of steel jail doors for steel blades married to custom-carved antler bone handles — a business he calls Bone Daddy Knives. 

The business has quietly been putting Dubois on the map for almost three decades, starting with a contract he picked up after a Montana gift rep died, leaving a shopkeeper with a demand and no knives.

Today, 2 miles inside the Wind River Indian Reservation, Barto buys about 25,000 pounds of antlers a year from local “shed heads,” or antler hunters. The best of the pieces become Bone Daddy knife handles, while the rest become part of the booming antler dog-chew trade.

He and his small crew turn out a couple thousand knives a year, each one a custom job, which sell well across the West.

Barto also at one time carved ornaments from bone antlers, as well as hat pins and figurines, which were sold at gift shops in Yellowstone National Park, Gardiner, West Yellowstone, Sturgis, as well as to larger chains such as Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shops.

Barto jokes, like a lot of craftsmen, that making knives was something he once liked — back when it was still a hobby.

“Now it’s a business,” he said with a chuckle. “But when you’ve got a business that provides you the funds necessary to keep going in whatever adventure you want to go off into, I guess you still have to keep doing it.”

It’s all about the kind of bars Barto wants to live behind.

The knife business is bankrolling his transformation of the Outlaw Bar from a dive — where 

 in Cowboy State Daily noted people might be concerned for their safety — to an establishment where the opposite is true.

When he and Sherry bought the bar it was, to say the least, not exactly turnkey.

“This was just a dump when we bought it,” Barto said. “But they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Dubois craftsman Ben Barto owns Bone Daddy Knives, a hobby turned big business that’s now bankrolling a transformation of Dubois' Outlaw Bar and giving the once-seedy watering hole a new vibe. “This was just a dump when we bought it,” Barto said.

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