I had a conversation just yesterday with a Middle American. One of those people, that is, who is from the Midwest and from the middle class. One of those sorts of folks with a Rust Belt background who has lived the real American life, with blue collar grandparents, lower middle class parents, and who has done better than their parents.
Not like people who were born and raised in Wyoming or one of the neighboring states.
It was really interesting.
And it occurs to me that if you are from here, and we do have our own distinct culture, the way you look at topics like careers are fundamentally different than other Americans, or at least Americans from other places. We're practically not Americans in this regard. Or at least those who stay are not.
And that tends to get lost on people as we're a minority, most of the time, in our own state.
I've noted it here before, but I was once flying into our local airport and two oil industry employees were in the seat behind me. They were both from somewhere else. One had been stationed in Casper for awhile, the other was arriving for the first time. The new arrival asked the old one about the people in the town, and the insightful other replied
What you have to realize is that there are two groups of people here. People who came in to work in the boom and those who are from here.
The new arrival then commented that the natives must dislike the new arrivals. That fellow, however, replied:
No, they just know that you are leaving.
And we do.
I've lived through at least three busts, one of which altered my original post high school career plan of becoming a geologist. If you look at it, oil spiked during World War One, the price declined after the war in the 1920s and collapsed during the Great Depression, spiked again during World War Two, declined following the war but then turned rocky in the 50s and 60s, spiked in the early 70s, collapsed in the 80s, rose again thereafter, and then collapsed again in recent times. Being born in 63, I experienced the 60s, but don't recall, them, experienced the 70s, which I do, and then the ups and downs since then.
Indeed, all over town there are accidental monuments to booms prior. Three downtown buildings are named for oil companies, none of which still use the names they did back then and none of which is still in town. A golf course on the edge of town called "Three Crowns" was named for the three refineries that once were here, one of whose grounds is occupied by the golf course. In certain areas of down when they dig a foundation, they hit oil, not due to a natural deposit, but due to leaks long gone by from those facilities. Across town one still operates.
If you are from here, and have lived through it, you come to expect the economy to be this way. You worry about the future but you don't imagine you can control it.
Middle Americans do.
I hadn't really realized this directly, but I should have.
My friend, noted above, hasn't lived in Wyoming except during good times and the recent collapse. He's been panicked and has related that to me more than once. He can't believe that things could have collapsed, and I can't grasp how a person couldn't. Then, in our conversation, it became very plain.
He's a really nice guy with a very nice family, but he views careers in the Middle American sense. That is, you study to find a "good job", by which that means one that pays well. You go where that job leads you, for the high pay. It's all about the pay. The pay determines what you become, what you do, and where you live.
It doesn't for the long term Wyomingites.
Oh sure, pay always matters. Wyomingites are just as wanting to get rich as anyone else,. . . or not.
As there are limits, and the limits are the state itself.
Wyomingites, those born here, or those here for an extremely long time and probably from a neighboring state, have an existential connection with the state that's hard to grasp. We are it, and it is us.
This is completely different from the "oh, gosh, it's so pretty I'm glad I came here" reaction some newcomers have. Lots of the state isn't that pretty. Some Wyoming towns are far from pretty. No, it's something definitely different.
And it's also different from the belief that an industry must keep on keeping on because it must. We see that with lots of people who moved in when the times were good. If things collapse, it's not because Saudi Oil Sheiks can fill up swimming pools with crude oil if they want to, or if Russian oligarchs want to depress the market because they can, or because coal fired power plants are switching to natural gas. It has to be somebody's fault, probably the governments, and probably the Democrats.
Not too many actual Wyomingites feel that way, even if we worked in those industries or wanted to. We just shrug our shoulders and say; "well, we knew the boom would end", because we did.
Of course, as will be pointed out, we never do anything about that. That's our great planning failure. But frankly, it's hard to when the town's filled up with newcomers you know are temporary, and they don't want to change anything as they like the low taxes, etc., and this will just go on forever, because for them, it already has.
Which takes me back to my friend. He's upset as the boom appears to be over and that means it might impact his take home, which in turn means that he might have to leave, or so he imagines.
Why? Well, that's what you do as an American, right? If the dollars are higher in Bangladesh, you go there. You, must.
You must as otherwise you won't be able to afford whatever it is you are seeking to buy, or do.
I knew an elderly Wyoming lawyer, from here, who in his first years didn't practice law as he graduated law school in the Great Depression when there was no work. I've known more than one engineer who took completely different jobs for the same reason. An accountant I served in the National Guard with worked as a carpenter. A different accountant I knew was a rig hand during a boom, as that's where the big money was at the time.
Which gets back to career planning.
When my father planned his career, he started off to become an engineer, but he became a dentist. It was because he knew he could obtain that job an and come back here, as that's what he wanted to do. I know a dentist is the younger son from a ranch family, and that's what he did too. I know lots of older lawyers who were the younger children of ranch families, who took that path as there was no place on the ranch for them. And I'm often surprised by people's whose career paths were absolutely identical to mine, almost to the t.
Both of my career attempts, the one successful and the one that failed, had the same logic behind them. Geology was field that employed people here when I was studying it, and I thought I had a talent for it and would be able to find a job. When that fell through, on to the law, as I'd never heard of an unemployed Wyoming lawyer.
But the state was the primary focus in my mind. I'm of it, it's of me.
"I want my kids to be able to stay here", he told me. Well, so they can.
But whatever the economy holds for Wyoming's future, if that means you go just for the mega bucks, career wise, that career is probably somewhere else.
And that's why a lot of people leave.
Those of us who are from here and stay, really aren't unique as a population. There are plenty of examples of this in others.
In 1876 the Sioux left the reservation for one last foray into the wild. They knew it wouldn't last. That wasn't the point. People who wonder what they were thinking aren't of this region. The Anglo American culture at the time thought they should turn into farmers. They didn't really think so, no matter what.
In Utahan Robert Redford's adaption of A River Runs Through It, the protagonist, who is moving to Chicago, asks his brother to come with him. He responds
Oh no brother, I'll never leave Montana.
In David Lean's adaption of Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, Larissa notes when she's being transported away from disaster, that Zhivago's absence isn't accidental.
He'll never leave Russia!
We are native, to this place.
