I don't remember this Mayor at all, but then in 1974, the year this is sort of tied to, I was eleven years old.
Still, this gives a really good glimpse at the Casper that was, even when it tries to portray the city as sort of a typical midwestern slow city, and its not a pretty picture at all.
“Casper in the ‘70s was pretty much an idyllic, all-American, apple pie, pickup truck, horse-riding, cowboy-hat-wearing type of community,” Cody said almost two months after his father died.
Charles came to Wyoming from Michigan. He shot guns and rode his motorcycle and took his kids up Casper Mountain. Under the all-Americanness, though, was the tender underbelly of a family fraying at the seams.
“He was the Hunter S. Thompson in the Casper world of mayoral politics,” Cody said of Charles. “He really was like the party mayor,” he added.
Charles spent his free time drinking, doing hard drugs and chasing women. Everything he did, he did to the fullest extent. He told Cody once that he never lost a case as a litigator. He had a “narcissistic” drive, Cody said, to be the best at what he did, even if it was at the expense of others.
On June 28, 1974, the Casper Star-Tribune reported that Charles had declared a bid for a state Senate seat as a Democrat. The mayor believed that “city and county officials are best equipped to solve impact growth problems.”
I think the "drinking, doing hard drugs and chasing women" was a lot more common amongst Casper's elite in the days than we might want to admit. Not the slow little town some what to claim they remembers.
The author apparently went on to be a lawyer in the Southwest.
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