Wyoming, on a first-name basis

I have written about how everyone waves at each other around here and I have detailed some of the curmudgeons scampering about the Valley.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is a friendly place.

I had it illustrated to me again the other day, but in an entirely new way this time.

I was sitting in the back room of the Sun eating some lunch and flipping through some past articles when I caught the tail end of an interview our new reporter, Mike, was on.

Mike wrapped up the interview by saying “ Thank you, Mr. Streeter for all your help with this and if I have any more questions I’ll be sure to call.”

For a moment there I could hear the reply in my head as surely as if I had been on an extension with them.

If you have lived here for any amount of time, you know what the reply was too.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Mike’s next sentence was something like, “Oh, okay. Well, thanks again for your time, Jeff”.

Jeff had obviously told our new cub reporter to “Just call me ‘Jeff’”.

That is pretty much the way it is all over Wyoming and especially our little corner of it.

Our mayor is “John”, our town clerk is “Suzie”.

If you want to be formal you could call our mayor “Mr. Zeiger”. If you want to put him on guard you could even go with “Mayor Zeiger”.

But mostly it’s just “John” and he seems to like that just fine.

Calling someone by their job title and last name here is kind of like your mother yelling your entire name at you: You hear that, you know you’re in trouble.

All the former mayors and business high muckety-mucks are just first-name guys too.

Joe runs Shively North, Mike runs Shively downtown, Doug and his family runs the Wolf, Brad runs New York Life, and Tim owns the grocery store.

Erik doesn’t “run” anything (he doesn’t even scamper any more) but he does own and often frequents the Rustic bar.

I can’t even think of anyone who is a Mister or Missus someone on a regular basis.

You might get introduced to someone using their full name but that speedily devolves into a first-name conversation.

Most of the time you just get introduced to “Kathleen. She owns the Country Store” or “Joe. He’s ‘the guy’ up at the conservation district”.

Local politicians are on a first-name basis too. Jeb was always “Jeb “ when he was our state representative (he probably is still “Jeb” today) and Jerry is still “Jerry” now that he has taken over the position.

I did think of one local mini-exception.

We do call our doctor “Doctor Bartholomew”. But then, he answers to “Doctor Dean” too, so there you go.

You kinda get used to it after a while.

The picture I get in my head for someone using my last name any more is generally a bad one:

“Mr. McLendon, do you know why I pulled you over?”

“Mr. McLendon, the IRS would like to inform you …”

“Mr. McLendon, you have been diagnosed as having terminal flatulence.”

You get the idea.

All of this both helps and hurts when you are a newbie to our stretch of the woods.

If you just moved here, you will meet a ton of folks pretty quickly and while they have one new name to learn, you will have many.

It doesn’t help that sometimes you will be introduced to someone by their nickname .

“This is Hack. He owns Hack’s Tackle and guides fly trips too”.

Only to be confounded when someone refers to: “Mike. You know … runs the fly shop … Mike Patterson!”

The last name will only be used as a last resort.

Sometimes you even are introduced to someone by their nickname and that is the only name anyone uses—including their family.

“Oh, hi. My name is Chilly.”

His dad calls him “Chilly”. All his friends call him “Chilly”. His mom even calls him “Chilly”—most of the time.

Every once in a while he gets called “Chris” though. My reaction is to start looking around for this “Chris” guy.

Life here can be confusing that way.

The only time I can think of for sure that we might use a whole title and name is when we get visiting politicians on the high state or federal level.

When Senator Enzi stops by he’s “Senator Enzi”. When Governor Mead comes to town he’s “Governor Mead”. Of course, the exception to that rule was former Governor Freudenthal who was popularly known as “Gov. Dave”.

So when you move to a little Wyoming town get prepared to be called by your first name a lot. If you want to be called by a nickname, we can do that too. It is not intended as disrespect, it’s just that we’re friendly and don’t care to be that formal.