Until the End of the Ninth

TUESDAY, JULY 24: CHEYENNE, WY

I used to live in Cheyenne.  I was a news reporter there, then went to law school in the Washington, D.C. area, then came back to Cheyenne to be a law clerk for a federal judge.  I love Cheyenne.  I loved it when I first lived there, and I loved moving back there. I wanted to stay the second time.  I cried when I moved back to D.C. 

I don’t regret leaving Wyoming.  By leaving, I was able to live in the Nation’s Capitol.  I practiced law on a national level.  I got to play softball too, on makeshift diamonds at the base of the Washington Monument.  It was quite a sight, that tall white marble stretching into the sky in amongst the crisscrossing of diamonds (where one game’s right field runs into the next game’s third base line), as if George Washington himself were peering down from the heavens to see how the game was going.  So I did love D.C.  And then Spokane became my home in 1994.  So no regrets.  Still, there’s something special about the state of Wyoming.  It’s a state of mind, they say.  Windy.  But also a state of mind. 

The highlight of the day that Tuesday is going to the radio station for the sports radio program.  The poor kid set to interview me – he doesn’t seem to know whether to be jovial or respectful or what.  When I walk in to the station, I’m taken back 22 years to when I used to hang out in the very same station.  That’s where I was in 1985 when a flood killed 12 people – hanging out with the DJs at the radio station.  We even tried to chase the tornado that caused the storm before we realized how serious everything had gotten.  When I tell my interviewer how I used to hang out in the station 22 years ago, he chooses his tone and decides to go with respectful.  After all, I’m an old lady who used to hang out at the radio station around the time that he was born.  The interview goes well.  The downside to respectful, though, is that I don’t get to stay on the air with him after the interview.  It would be fun to talk with people calling in (including my friends’ son).  After all, I have plenty to say about Michael Vick, and what a courtroom arraignment is.

That evening, I leave one stalk of wheat from the crop circle at the ranch.  Of course.