Bill Sniffin

By Bill Sniffin

There are old pilots. There are bold pilots. There are NO old bold pilots. – old flyer saying

One of the curses of being a private pilot for 30 years is a bad habit called “airport bumming.” This is where, even when you are not flying anymore, you tend to like to hang around airports.

Wyoming is full of wonderful airports for us older flyboys.  I tend to like the smaller ones like Evanston, Rawlins, Worland, Sheridan, Hulett, Lander and the old one at Thermopolis.  Bigger ones with scheduled airline service are fun, too, but have much higher security in place.

Not long ago, we found ourselves in Washington State visiting our son Michael, his wife Lisa, and their four children.

They live in a little town called Warden just south of Moses Lake where we stayed at a motel. Inevitably I started gravitating toward the local airport, which has the distinction of being perhaps the biggest airport in the country without regular airline service.

But, wow, did I get an eyeful as we drove out to Grant County International Airport.  Almost as far as the eye could see were 221 Boeing 737 Max airliners, lined up, and stacked almost on top of each other.

It appears that since Boeing (which originally started as a Cheyenne company) kept making the ill-fated 737 Max models in Seattle, even though they were grounded, needed some place to store them.

Moses Lake was famous during World War II for storing bombers and training bomber pilots. It has the second longest runway west of the Mississippi River. Vandenberg AFB in southern California is the only one longer. Both were certified as landing sites for the NASA shuttle program.

The planes stacked up in Moses Lake were valued at $6 billion.  The tails and paint schemes were impressive.  I was able to get pretty close and snap some videos and photos. These airliners are scheduled for delivery to just every continent.  Many were headed to India and China and a bunch were colorfully painted with African paint schemes.  One was reportedly earmarked for an Arab sheikh.

Later on I chatted with some weekend staff hanging around in the main terminal. They said the first 737 Max flew in and damaged its engines because of the volcanic residue left over on the pavement from the 1980 eruption of nearby Mount St. Helens.

Boeing immediately instituted a vacuuming plan where every inch of the vast aprons were scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed again. One janitor in the terminal laughed that you could eat off those pavements.  The subsequent jets were flown in and then the engines were shut off immediately. Then the planes were towed into place. The engines all had elaborate covers on them.

The airport was famous during World War II for the way they stored bombers.  They were put in a “Christmas tree” formation, which maximized how many planes could be stored there.

The reason the 737 Max was grounded was because two planes crashed, one in Ethiopia and one in Indonesia. In both cases the pilots had little experience with 737s and the new computer system caused them to make the wrong decisions killing everyone aboard on both planes. It is assumed that American pilots, who have lots more experience with the regular 737, did not have similar problems.

Originally, the “fix” planned for the planes called for each plan to be jacked up off the ground and the engines fired up.  Then the techs will “fool” the plane’s computer into thinking it is flying and then tweak its program to eliminate the glitch.  Once was done, the plane would have been given a test flight and then flown off to its original customer

The whole 737 Max fiasco cost the Boeing Company its CEO and probably billions of dollars.  But the  $80 million (each) planes are hoped to be flying again by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, I had wandered over to a different part of the Moses Lake airport where a giant bright red 747 was parked. It was being retrofitted with some different kinds of engines. Not sure what its ultimately use was going to be. 

So far, there is just one 747 being used as a fire retardant bomber. Maybe that one was going to be the second one?

Our Washington stay was brief and soon we were back in Wyoming. If you see some guy wandering around your local Cowboy State airport, it probably is some old pilot.  It could be me.

Check out additional columns at www.billsniffin.com. He has published six books.  His coffee table book series has sold 34,000 copies. You can find more stories by Bill Sniffin by going to CowboyStateDaily.com.

By Bill Sniffin, Cowboy State Daily

We have all seen this Wyoming guy.

He doesn’t look rich.

But if you examine his life and measure his level of happiness, there is a compelling argument he could very well be the richest man in the world.

This is a man who loves the outdoors.  He loves to hunt and fish. He loves to explore.  He just happens to have a few gadgets around (his wife calls them “toys”), which are not necessarily new, but he keeps them in good repair.  He loves tinkering on them.

This rich man lives in Worland or Cheyenne or Laramie or Rock Springs or Evanston or Riverton or any other Wyoming city or town.  He gets up early each morning to greet the day with a big smile because he is in total control of his universe.

The day starts off with coffee with his buddies.  They meet every  morning,  rain or shine, and spend an hour telling tall tales to each other and a few off-color jokes.

Let’s call this guy Joe.  With all due respect to the University, we might even call him Cowboy Joe because he is a big fan of UW and is rarely seen without some kind of brown or gold apparel that reads WYOMING or COWBOYS.

Joe does odd jobs and controls his schedule.  His wife has a good steady job with good benefits and good retirement. They are pretty frugal and have saved up a little money. They enjoy Wyoming’s outdoor experiences together.

It is well-known that Joe married “up,” which means he found himself a very good wife. People say his wife should not put up with all of Joe’s hobbies, but she accepts them with a smile, because she likes them, too.  They are active in their church and people count on them to help out during times of need in the community. They are always there for others at such times.

Folks like Joe are among the richest people in history.

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett or some Arab sheik may think their lives are better than Joe’s, but do not try to convince Joe. He would not trade his place on the planet with any of them.

He and his wife encouraged their kids to study hard and qualify for scholarships because extra money was hard to find. The kids qualified and they also worked during their years at UW. They graduated almost debt-free. They then taught their kids to be thrifty and to appreciate the finer things in life, such as the joys available to them in Wyoming’s great outdoors.

Joe and his wife are the best grandparents in the world. They take their grandkids fishing, hunting, and camping. They have lots of time to spend with them and are never in a hurry.  They listen to the kids’ problems because often the kids’parents are too busy trying to make a living.

At some point, one of Joe’s children will lecture the old man about how if he had worked an extra job or invested in the stock market, he probably would have ended up rich. And when he is 70 he would have time to do all the fishing and hunting he might want to do. 

Joe looks at him and shrugs.  You can almost tell that he is thinking, rather than argue over this it is probably time to go fishing.

The Cowboy Joe described here is a stereotype of a lot of people I know in Wyoming. I wish that I could have been more like him.  In business, my wife Nancy and I have tried to get it all done but I missed out on a lot because of pressures associated with running a number of companies. Sure would have liked to have spent more time hunting, fishing, and camping.

Perhaps the closest I ever came to the perfect life was when I aspired to be a newspaper publisher at a young age.  I made it at age 24 here in Lander, which was sort of incredible, at least to me.

A friend back in those days invited Nancy and me to dinner where a third man showed up and gave us a pitch about how we could make all this money with some kind of multi-level marketing sales scheme. I think it was Amway.

“Just think, Bill,” the man exclaimed. “If you make all this extra money, you can be whatever you ever wanted to be!”

My answer to him was: “Sorry, but I already am what I always wanted to be.”

Now that is what Joe would have said had he been asked that question. 

Is it really 2020? Back at the turn of the century (yeah, 20 years ago at 2000), our little town put together Project 2020, which was a guide for the town’s future.

That Project 2020 is the topic of a future column, but my point here is that we are now at that far distant place that we used to identify as “the year 2020.” 

My wife Nancy and I are very active and I just continue to deny how old we are – we keep busy, we keep working, and we keep traveling.  No slowing us down yet.

But this column is about growing older and also watching my beloved Wyoming grow older.

Heck, I have been around so long I worked on the original Wyoming Futures Project back in 1986. That Futures Project was headquartered in tiny Ucross, Wyoming, and we were an optimistic bunch.

Our moderator was a youthful TV anchor from Casper named Pete Williams. He is now that mature, graying legal correspondent for NBC News.  During these times, he is on national TV all the time. He does a great job, but I digress.

Further back in 1974, Wyoming was starting to boom. Our Gov. Ed Herschler, a Democrat, won election with a slogan “Growth on Our Terms.” 

Wyoming’s chaotic economy, because it is tied to energy, was about to hurdle through eight more years of spectacular growth. It was a boom and we all loved it.

Crash!  Arguably the worst bust in Wyoming’s history hit in 1982. It lasted until 2002.  Everything went wrong.  Oil and natural gas prices plummeted. Coal was still in its infancy.  Uranium crashed after a huge boom and 2,000 jobs in Fremont, Carbon, and Converse counties disappeared. 

Gov. Herschler said our town of Lander was hurt the worst. We saw an iron ore mine close that had 550 highly paid workers.

The economy was so bad one year the Legislature would have had a tough time balancing the budget had not a wealthy Jackson woman died, leaving millions in estate taxes.

The year 2020 was just a far away gleam in peoples’ eyes.  Around 2002, we saw oil prices surge, and natural gas (and coalbed methane) really take off.

Congress put in regulations against smoky coal plants so Wyoming’s coal, which burns cooler and pollutes a lot less, suddenly became the fuel of choice for power plants across the country.

With 300 years of coal in the ground, it seemed like this was a gravy train that would never end.

Along about this time, a couple of drilling entrepreneurs named Mick McMurry and John Martin of Casper struck big time with a deep natural gas well in the Pinedale area in 1992. They used a new technique called fracking. Little did anyone know what that technology would mean to the future of energy.

Ultimately, because of fracking, natural gas could be drilled anywhere.  Besides natural locations like Wyoming, Texas, and North Dakota, new states like Ohio and Pennsylvania became leading producers.  Natural gas prices continue to plummet to lowest levels in memory, right here in 2020. Gov. Gordon announced to a group of press folks Friday that prices hit a low of $1.87 MCF.

Wyoming is not in a bust right now as these are a different kind time. Towns all over the state are benefitting from the local diversification that has occurred in the last 38 years – over a third of a century!

Although the above dissertation is about some past history, this story is prompted by where I am at writing this column. Holed up in my room at the beautiful Ramkota in Casper, we are getting ready to attend the early bird cocktail hour for the Wyoming Press Association.  This is my 50th year of being in the Wyoming press.

When I attended my first press convention, I was a 24-year old publisher, the youngest in the room. Unless Pat Schmidt or Jim Hicks shows up this year, I will be the oldest attendee at this year’s event.  What a life cycle.

Back in 1970, a majority of the newspapers operated with what is called “hot type,” a system of page formatting that actually is not that far removed from what Gutenberg invented in the Middle Ages.

Today, they all still print on paper but most of them also have digital and video offerings. 

Based on national contests, Wyoming has the best newspapers in the country.  This is something of which to be proud since our state has just 44 newspapers.

It’s always fun hanging around with the Wyoming journalists.  They are a confident and optimistic lot. 

Sure there are a few sour lemons here and there but most of these folks love their towns and cover them enthusiastically.

Wyoming is a far better place because of their efforts.  Happy 2020.

Check out additional columns at www.billsniffin.com. He has published six books.  His coffee table book series has sold 34,000 copies. You can find more stories by Bill Sniffin by going to CowboyStateDaily.com.