It seems like every year, fewer people choose to follow the entrepreneurial path that has guided my life. Here are a few thoughts on the subject:

         • Our little book publishing company is very small operation by any means of comparison. Yet it is truly an example of Wyoming entrepreneurship.

         Not long ago, an agent for the IRS came by and wanted to talk about how we are paying people in our little company.

         I told him that we have one seasonal part-time employee who delivers books. We pay him a nice hourly rate and a bonus for any special sales he generates.

         “Any other employees?” the agent asked.

         Then I told him about the mentally-challenged guy who also works for the company.

         “He works about 18 hours a day. He even works most weekends and almost every Sunday morning. He only makes about $1 per hour but I make it up to him by letting him have all the Scotch whiskey he wants and he even gets to sleep with my wife occasionally.”

“Hmmm,” The agent replied. “That is the guy I need to talk to.”

         I looked him in the eye, paused and said: “That would be me.”

         Sorry about that punch line. I ripped off this story that is often told about ranchers.

         • Every so often the folks at the Lander office of Central Wyoming College ask me to teach a non-credit class on entrepreneurship.  

         And modestly, I must admit it always fills up and the grades they give me are pretty darned good.

         It pretty much involves all my years of owning businesses and starting businesses from scratch.   I have been doing it since a teenager and am closing in on a 50-year anniversary of that first enterprise.

         Funny, though, when I started doing this class I spent most of the time talking about business success. It did not take long to realize that a portion of the class called “stinkers and clinkers” was the most memorable lesson they yearned to hear more about.

         This was a list of poor business decisions I had made or a recitation of just plain bad luck that can haunt you when you are a small businessperson. You know, events like a big competitor coming to town or a national recession.

         It is still painful to recount some of these experiences but it appears that budding entrepreneurs were really tuned in to hear about them.

         • Most of my life has been involved in the publishing business and that always involved selling advertising to small businesses. These folks became loyal customers and dear friends.

         And their seasonal suffering became my suffering, too.

         How frustrating can it be to operate a thriving business in a small town for decades and then have a big-box chain store come into the region and take away all the profit? It happens all the time.

         The longest-running business in Wyoming history, the Baldwin Store in Lander, was pretty much a casualty of that trend. It also did not help when Wyoming and Lander were hit by the worst depression in their history in the 1980s.

         The owners of small, local businesses need to be celebrated. They are my heroes. And they are a vanishing.

         We also celebrate the local owners of national franchises like Ace Hardware, Taco John’s, Gamble’s and stores like this. Although they are part of a national team, they are locally-owned and they suffer through the ups and downs like everyone else.

         My admiration for retailers swelled when you realize they are sort of trapped in their buildings. At least in my business, I could go all over the area selling my wares. And thankfully, they used advertisements in my publications to bring in those customers.  But I always respected their patience to wait for that customer to arrive so they could then to sell to them inside their store.

         • After decades now of big box chain stores and huge malls, it is funny to me to see a resurgence of the tiny retail outlet, at least in some highly populated places. 

         We were in Dallas for a couple of months last winter and one of most successful retail areas was an area populated by tiny little stores surrounded by fashionable coffee shops, restaurants and pubs.

Although literally every stick and every brick in that place was designed and built from the ground up. When it was done, it looked like a small town Main Street. Amazing.

         Perhaps it was the dust blowing off where water used to be in Boysen Reservoir during a downpour that typified what spring means in Wyoming.

         We were on the final leg of a series of road trips throughout the state and had seen about everything over a three-week period.

         If the four seasons of Wyoming were siblings in a family, spring would be the family member the others would describe as a passive-aggressive nut case. Or someone who has no idea where he’s been, where he is now or where he is going. 

Spring could also be called that crazy aunt whose unpredictability means she will always rock the boat and upset your applecart. Whatever you have planned for Wyoming in spring, well, you always need a back-up plan.

         Did I say that spring in Wyoming was unpredictable? Looney, wild-eyed spontaneous is a more reliable description.

         Thus, as Nancy and I departed on these trips over mountain passes and through mountain gaps, it was with the full knowledge that weather could change at any time. We had winter gear stored in the back of the rig along with a cooler of emergency rations.

         The first trip to Rawlins involved some stunning weather – it was not blowing . . . the wind was calm.   Beaver Rim and Muddy Gap are two of the most interesting weather locales in western Wyoming but on this trip, both were just as surprisingly tame as downtown Rawlins.

         Thanks to Jill and Mark Carrico at Bi-Rite Sporting Goods for hosting a book signing.

         The following week we journeyed on the newly-constructed federal highway 287 over Togwotee Pass to Jackson. Visited with Mike Gireau at Jackson Hole Airport. It is amazing how big that airport is getting. It is already, by far, the busiest airport in Wyoming but its size is amazing. Gireau operates the Jedidiah’s gift stores and restaurants at that airport and the one in Cody.

         Old friend Suzanne Young greeted us at Jackson Hole Book Traders. Steve Meadows hosted us at the 49er during our stay. 

         The new developments at the Snow King Resort and also out to the Jackson Hole Ski Area were impressive. I attended a Chamber of Commerce mixer at a pharmacy where they contend they can diagnose your ills by looking deep into your eyes. Not sure I had ever heard of that before but they say the eyes are the keyholes into your soul, right?

         The National Museum of Wildlife Art continues to grow and amaze. A can’t miss stop, in my opinion.

         I have always loved the historic Wort Hotel and its Silver Dollar bar. A place for locals and tourists, alike. A fun band was playing on this Friday night.

         Then it was home before heading out again for a loop drive to Sheridan. 

         Ate one of the best scrambles ever for breakfast with old friend Pat Schmidt at the Little Wrangler in Thermopolis. Then up to Worland and Tensleep and over the mountain to Buffalo and on to Sheridan for a book signing. Robby Smith operates one of the best bookstores in Wyoming at Sheridan Stationery. Lots of nice people bought lots of books.

         Was involved in a power dinner that evening at the Powderhorn’s fine restaurant Reminginton’s hosted by local media mogul Kim Love. He invited Sheridan Press publisher Steve Woody to join us. Steve worked for me at the Lander Journal back in the mid-1970s. It felt like old home week.

         I joined Kim on the radio the next morning as Sheridan folks debated restrictions on buildings next to rivers and creeks. The call-in show featured a variety of opinions.

         Rotary hosted me that Friday to talk about my new book. Brooke Barney was the song leader. She is a native of Lander and is an attorney in Sheridan.

That evening we journeyed down to Buffalo in tornado-threatened weather to have dinner with Jim and Mary Hicks at Winchester’s, an outstanding eatery. What is it about these places being named after great gun builders?

         In Casper we loaded up Vicki Burger with more books at Wind City Books. She has sold over 200.

         Then it was on to home where we planned to stick around for a while.

         These cities and towns looked busy and optimistic during our odyssey that started with Rawlins, ended up in Dubois and Jackson and then on to Thermopolis, Worland, Sheridan, Buffalo and Casper. 

         For someone who loves Wyoming as much as I do, this was an unbelievably wonderful adventure.

         I am the oldest baby boomer. By my reckoning, my parents conceived me sometime in June 1945. I was born somewhat early on March 21, 1946.

          Behind me came another 76 million boys and girls, the largest generation of Americans in our country’s history, the Baby Boomers.

         And now, here we are, gray haired, on social security and Medicare and, frankly, stunned. How could this lifetime have passed by so quickly?

         At 67. I am in denial that that person in the mirror is really me.

         Some years ago an ad campaign that targeted folks like us was a big failure. They used models who were gray-haired and our age. The ad folks found that we responded much better to ads featuring middle-aged folks . . . you know, like 45.

         It’s said that 60 is the new 40.

         Well, maybe it’s the new 50.

         And speaking of 50, my family put on a big party for me here in Lander when I hit that magic age. The theme was “how does it feel to have your future behind you?”

         Turns out, there was a lot of future ahead of me.

         The past 17 years have been crammed full of lots of projects and events. What is in store for the next 17? Hmmm, I will 84 at the end of that period.

         One of my projects may be writing a book about those folks I call “FirstBoomers.” To me, this should probably include anyone born during World War II as well as those of us born immediately afterward.

         By my reckoning, “FirstBoomers” are folks born between 1940 and 1953. Anyone now just turning 60 and those inching toward 73 would qualify. This is an amazing group of folks.

If we are talking about these lives using seasons as metaphors, our Autumn is rapidly turning into Winter.

         A biblical prediction is that if blessed, we will be given four 20-year periods in our life. Spring is youth, Summer is the prime years, Autumn is slowing down and Winter is, well, wintery at best.

`        As part of our FirstBoomer’s lives, Spring was wonderful. Not sure any generation of people ever had it so good job-wise as the Firstboomers. Jobs, careers and opportunity were plentiful in America in the 1960s and 1970s.

         What I would call our Summer period was just fine, too. We did not bear quite as many offspring as our parents but we populated the country with quantities of Gen X, Gen Y and Millennial young people.

         Now, as we are nearing the end of the Autumn of our lives with almost-golden wedding anniversaries and grandparenthood, we have found out we can thoroughly enjoy living vicariously through the exploits and adventures, not just of ourselves, but also of our children and grandchildren.

         Even though, at 60, we want to believe this is the new 40, our bodies usually tell us something differently.

         It is astonishing the number of my contemporaries who have turned into bionic people. Artificial knees, hips and shoulders plus hearing aids and new eyeball lenses (due to cataracts) are commonplace.

         Type 2 diabetes is a virtual plague as it accompanies its most common attribute, obesity. Younger folks talk about their BMI (Body Mass Index). Most older folks hesitate to take the test.

         My doctor says I am in pretty good health but he still put me on a statin and other meds he thinks will prolong my life. I hope he is right. Of course, it doesn’t make me feel any better when I have grandchildren that look about his age.

And taking all those meds can’t help but make me nervous. Most of my friends are popping their own regimens of pills each day for real and/or imagined ills.

The good news is that if we have lived this long (if we are not smokers or cancer-prone or heart attack-prone), the odds are we may live for another decade or two.

Despite all the above, personally, this is a very exciting time to me. I can see more books, more travel and more community service. More time with grandchildren. 

Our children, who are in their 30s and 40s, already refer to themselves as “chopped liver” when it comes to relating to us over how we relate to our grandkids. 

My favorite project going forward might be writing that book about FirstBoomers. I have experienced a lot in my life and, as a journalist, I wrote just about all of it down. Stay tuned.

         My recent column about various moose adventures prompted stories from several friends:

         • Up in Buffalo, Jim Hicks recounts the time when two serious local elk hunters parked their pickup on a high ridge of the Bighorns and started walking before daylight.  They were in deep timber far down the canyon when they heard tree limbs snapping in the distance, accompanied by thudding sounds.

         One hunter whispered to his buddy, "I`ve heard that sound before!  Something has spooked a whole damn herd of elk. They are headed toward us."

He jacked a round into his rifle’s chamber and knelt down. The sound got louder. His buddy sat cross-legged to steady his rifle for a shot at a big bull he knew was about to crash into view.

         Their mouths dropped open in amazement as their badly smashed pickup, with windows broken and fenders flapping, bounced past them and came to a halt against a large tree.

In a hurry, the owner had left the truck in neutral and forgot to set the brakes. The weather had warmed enough to melt snow in front of the tires and the pickup began its descent into the canyon through an old burn area populated by small trees.

          Apparently the sound of a $40,000 pickup coming apart is a lot like the sound of 50 head of terrified elk.

         • A popular book in 2013 is Rodger McDaniel’s story about former Governor and U. S. Senator Lester Hunt, a long-time dentist from Lander.

         He uncovered the following:

         After World War II, Gov. Hunt, an outdoor enthusiast, admitted “for the 12 years that I have been working for you as a state official I have not had the pleasure of casting a single fly and have taken only one short hunting trip.”

He didn’t tell the story of that “one short hunting trip” which proved memorable. But Lander writer Blanche Schroer did.  

         Schroer wrote: While riding through timbered area, Hunt came directly upon a large, antlered moose. As the horse turned sharply aside, the moose charged. Hunt. With lightning speed, he jerked his foot from the stirrup on the danger side and balanced himself on the opposite side as the moose gored the horse.

The horse reared and then ran, while the moose thrashed about before plunging into the woods. Hunt was thrown backwards, one foot still in the stirrup. Horrified at finding himself being dragged over sharp terrain, he managed to grab a shrub and jerk his foot free.

His guide was some distance away. Before he could get into a position to act, the episode was over.

Back in camp, one of Hunt’s hunting companions Matt McGuire, hearing of the narrow escape of his bruised friend, yelled at the guide, “Why didn’t you help?”

“Doggone it,” the crusty old guide said, “if you saw a riled moose, a gored runaway horse and a Democrat who’d drilled your teeth bouncing along the ground . . . would you know right off which one to shoot?” 

         • Newspaper guys often go to Jackson for their summer press conventions. Newcastle publisher Tom Mullen recalls a time when Buffalo publisher Robb Hicks, Saratoga Publisher Gary Stephenson and he went to visit the home of Jackson publisher Mike Sellett.

         Tom writes: “At a summer convention in Jackson, Gary and Robb and I decided to surprise Sellett at his home early one morning. We found him enjoying juice, reading the morning paper in the breezeway between his home and garage, which overlooks a beautiful backyard. Mike poured us some refreshments and we were relaxing when Mike`s dog started barking and running back and forth. 

“Suddenly, a bull moose came galloping into the yard, maybe 20 feet in front of us, chasing Mike`s dog. I was in shock and awe - this was the first time I had ever seen a moose and he was magnificent. And frightening.

“Not knowing how to react, I looked to my right where, just seconds before, Gary and Robb had been sitting but now were nowhere to be seen. They must have sought shelter in the garage.”

Tom recalls: “I looked to my left and Mike was gone too, so I scrambled toward the sliding glass door that leads to his kitchen. I felt sorry for the poor dog but obviously it was every man for himself when there`s an angry moose a few feet away.

“I tugged at the sliding glass door. Sellett had locked me out.

       For a state with such small population, people with strong Wyoming ties have been in the news lately:

       • After the smoke cleared, one journalist was singled out at doing the very best work in covering the Boston Marathon bombings.

       It was Wyoming native Pete Williams, who is the primary judicial reporter for NBC News. Pete was the one national reporter “who got it right,” it has been reported repeatedly.

       This was the biggest terrorist disaster to hit the USA since the total change in the internet social network landscape, where everyone in the country is literally a reporter. Williams somehow managed to keep the story accurate while just about everyone else went live with wildly inaccurate reports that often had a basis in social networks such as Twitter.

       The Huffington Post reported:      

       “NBC`s Pete Williams has emerged as the reporter out in front of all the rest during the coverage of the Boston bombing.

Williams famously stuck to his guns when rival reportersmost prominently CNN`s John Kingsaid on Wednesday that there had been an arrest in the case. He was proved correct.  

       “Early Friday, as the suspects killed a police officer, stole a car and engaged in a deadly shootout, Williams broke news again and again. He was among the first to say a suspect had been killed; the first to report the men may have had overseas connections; the first to report they told the man whose car they stole they had carried out the bombing; and the first to report the men were brothers.”

       Williams is a Casper native and former long-time anchor for KTWO-TV before heading to Washington, D. C. where he worked for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney before landing his current post at NBC News.

       • One of the region’s wealthiest and influential people died recently. Earl Holding developed the Little America properties west of Green River and in Cheyenne. He owned vast stretches of Wyoming plus was the owner of the Sinclair Oil Company and Sun Valley Ski Resort.

       Forbes listed him at the 155th wealthiest man in America with $2.6 billion. He was 86. Gov. Matt Mead said:

       “The passing of Earl Holding is a sad day for Wyoming. He and his wife, Carol, have lived the American dream. Their accomplishments, excelling in business, and giving back to the state and the country epitomize that story. Earl was an extraordinary philanthropist. His is a great American success story, because, for him, the two business achievement and giving back were inseparable.”

       Cheyenne Mayor Rick Kaysen could not "imagine what Cheyenne might be like if we didn`t have the Little America resort. The things that we don’t see are the guidance that he provided as a human being, as a businessperson and his relationships with many people in Cheyenne over the many decades. He treated people just like they were longtime friends. He leaves quite a legacy.”

       • The man responsible for building Wyoming Catholic College in Lander is retiring. 

       Fr. Bob Cook, 73, has been on a nine-year journey that started when former Wyoming Catholic Bishop David Ricken proposed the creation of a new four-year college in Wyoming.

       The school held its third graduation ceremonies last weekend in Lander.

       WCC Board Chairman Dave Kellogg heaped praise on Fr. Cook during the graduation ceremonies. Kellogg gave Fr. Cook credit for being a major force that got the college started and who has put the four-year on a solid footing.

       Bishop Ricken, Fr. Cook and Dr. Robert Carlson, formerly of Casper, were the founders but Fr. Cook served as president of the college from its inception and has been the main fund raising force, which has kept the doors open.

       My wife Nancy and I have had a front row seat to watch the college grow and flourish and certainly know first-hand what a wonderful and consistent job that has been done by Fr. Cook.

       • Two recent cover stories in major national magazines had Wyoming connections.

       Casper native U. S. Sen. Tom Coburn was featured in Time Magazine’s most influential list. The author writing about him was none other than President Barack Obama.

       Sports Illustrated’s cover story about Jason Collins being the first major sport athlete to declare being gay included the fact that he changed his jersey number to 98 to honor a Wyoming man. Matthew Shepard of Casper was killed south of Laramie in 1998 in what was determined to be a hate crime because Shepherd was gay.