They May Be in the Wyoming Stix but These Hix Don’t Nix Capital Pix

TEN SLEEP, Wyo. — This is an unscientific, unselective and perhaps unrepresentative survey about the Iran- contra affair conducted in Wyoming, where the town clerk of Shoshoni, Jewell Asmus, notes: “Even though we’re out in the sticks, we know what’s going on. We aren’t dumb.”

The survey was made--in the days just before Lt. Col. Oliver L. North took the stand at the Iran-contra hearings--in response to President Reagan’s comment last month about public reaction to the scandal.

“I think,” the President said, “that spotlight has been growing so dim in recent days that when you get a mile and a half away from the Potomic River there are an awful lot of people that have gone back to their favorite television shows.”

Certainly the President was not entirely wrong, because out here, 2,116 miles from the Potomac, in the nation’s most sparsely populated state save for Alaska, Bill Cosby on television and Paul Harvey on radio are mainstays of life.

Heightens Suspicion

Nevertheless, people are paying attention to the Iran affair, and although the scandal may have only modestly affected Reagan’s popularity as a man, it has heightened the sense of aloofness and suspicion with which the conservative and independent-minded Wyomingites view Washington and just about every elected official since Thomas Jefferson.

“I think politics stink,” said Wilbur Craig, 53, who owns Dirty Sally’s in Ten Sleep (population 407), a store specializing in hunting gear, fishing supplies and hamburgers. “If I ran my business the way those Washington people run the country, I’d be out of business in nine days, and I’ve been here 11 years.

“The first time out, I liked Ronald Reagan. Now it seems he’s just along for the ride. You’ve got hillbilly places like Iran pushing us around, and our whole country’s losing its discipline. Even in this riddly-dink town you see the change--a kid busted a school teacher in the nose the other day and did he get 30 days? Nope, just a $250 fine and he can take a year to pay it off. See what I mean? The discipline’s gone. It all gets back to discipline. Even Irangate’s a symptom of that. Isn’t that a shame to have to say?”

Like Craig, most Wyomingites enjoy treating Washington, D.C., as a foreign power, and there was great satisfaction here last month when the Legislature turned its back on $11 million in federal highway funds and refused to raise the drinking age to 21, as have almost all other states. “We are a hard-drinking lot and we don’t like people to interfere with that,” said historian T. A. Larson.

In Thermopolis, Butch Cassidy’s favorite bar, The Hole in the Wall, is gone now, but Marge and Rich Evans run a nice saloon with a 100-year-old oak bar a few blocks away. Marge, herself a teetotaler, allows no rough language or boisterous behavior at Mac’s Bar and is reminded of the demands of being a saloonkeeper by a sign near the cash register: “It’s hard to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys.”

Alone in Bar

A few years ago, when Wyoming rode the crest of the energy boom, cowboys and oilmen stood nine-deep at the bar practically every night. But the other evening, there was only Marge in Mac’s, a little woman with blonde hair standing alone behind the deserted bar while the juke box played “A Country Boy Can Survive.”

“I’ve watched some of the hearings from Washington, and I don’t know who to believe anymore,” she said. “That scares me. If you can’t believe the President and the police, then you’re in trouble. . . . I just can’t understand how something like this can go on under the nose of someone who’s head of the nation. If all this took place behind the President’s back, by God, think of what could happen with germ warfare and missiles. What’s to stop someone from pushing the ‘button?’ ”

Down the road from Thermopolis, not far from Hiland (population 10), which recently burned down, is Shoshoni. Mrs. Asmus--the clerk, treasurer and daytime police dispatcher--was in the little Town Hall, telling another caller that the water supply had been turned off only temporarily for some repair work on the pipes. The wife of a retired railroad man, Dorothy Dillon, had stopped by to chat, and Steve Holmquist, who publishes the local newspaper, the Pioneer Weekly, with his wife MaryAnn in the spare bedroom of their home, had come in to pick up the minutes from the last City Council meeting.

“I know your husband likes the wrestling on TV, Dorothy, but do you pay attention to the news and this Irangate, too?” Mrs. Asmus asked.

“I listen to Ted Koppell quite a bit if he’s interesting,” Mrs. Dillon said. “When I first heard about the secret deal with Iran, I said, ‘Oh, oh, there we go again.’ I’ll tell you, I haven’t trusted Ronald Reagan since. I used to listen and he’d say this and he’d say that and then his people would say he didn’t say that at all. Well, I heard him say it.”

‘Ronald Reagan Country’

“This is Ronald Reagan country,” Holmquist said to an out-of-stater who had wandered in. “Used to be he couldn’t do any wrong. When you hear a Republican lady like Mrs. Dillon criticizing him, you know she’s done one hard double turn.”

“I really haven’t trusted anyone back there in Washington since Nixon,” Mrs. Asmus said. “In the East, you find out that all the people know about us is Yellowstone and they’re not even sure if it’s in Wyoming or not. I was in New York last month and I learned a few things. Who was it, Mr. Reagan, that said there are no hungry people in the world? Well, in New York, I saw hungry people.”

“You get too far back East and you find the people don’t know too much,” Mrs. Dillon said. “They don’t even know New Mexico’s a state. They think it’s a country. I read that in an article and I said, ‘Oh, you stupid people.’ ”

What seems to disturb people most about the Iran-contra affair here is not the domestic considerations of a possible cover-up or diverted funds. It’s the implications of dealing with Iran. “They’ll probably just turn around and use the weapons we sold them on us,” said Shirley Widmer, who runs the general store in Waltman.

‘Got Carried Away’

“To me, the only concern I had about Reagan was his age,” said Allen Tolley, the police chief in Worland. “It appears to me the President had too much faith in his department heads and some of them got carried away. That’s all he’s guilty of. This thing wouldn’t change the way I vote. What about you, Ralph?”

Ralph Seghetti, the sheriff of Washakie County, put down his mug of coffee and said: “I agree. You have to have confidence in the people working for you. Personally I have a lot of confidence in Reagan. I base that on the job he did in California as governor. What worries me more than anything, though, is the impression foreign countries must have of us now.”

“I guess we’ve got to get our hostages back, but I don’t know how you do it,” Tolley said. “I realize we’re not dealing with rational human beings in Iran. The A-Team has been canceled. Maybe those guys could go over and get them out.”

“Or Rambo,” the sheriff said.

Wyoming’s view of the world is, no doubt, tainted by the sudden reversal of its financial fortunes. During the energy boom of the 1970s, Wyoming’s population grew 41% and coal production increased. When international oil prices collapsed, Wyoming’s boom went bust.

Miners Grant Concessions

Ed Smith and his friends, Pinky and Patrick, walked into the Elks Lodge in Sheridan for a beer the other evening. Coal miners, they wore their red and white UMWA hats. They had just left a union meeting to discuss the implications of concessions they had made to management that would cost them $10,081 a year each.

“Sure I’m concerned about Irangate and what’s going on,” Smith said. “It all ties into OPEC. Why, 500 people have been laid off at my mine cause of those SOB’s. If oil gets back to $26 a barrel, we can boom again. Until then, we’re going to keep hurting. I’ve been poor people all my life and I can live with that.

“But after Vietnam, people came back here to good jobs and good money for the first time. Now people are leaving again, going to California or wherever, cause there’s no work. Just look at Sheridan. Stores are closed up, the streets are quiet, there’s hardly even anyone in here at the Elks having a beer cause folks got no money.

“It wasn’t too long ago that Sheridan was some town. You could walk down Main Street and, all in a block and a half, you could buy a saddle, a Pendleton shirt, the best filet you ever tasted. Outside of 1st Avenue in Billings, Main Street in Sheridan was as good a place as a man’d ever want to go.”