Frontier Town: The Gambler’s Wife and Daughter Intro: Frontier Town! The saga of the roaring west! El Paso, Cheyenne, Calgary, Tombstone! These are the towns they fought to live in and lived to fight for! Teeming crucibles of pioneer freedom! Frontier town! [music] Glenrock, Wyoming is a Frontier town. Even though the frontier was declared closed in the 1890 census. Even though it’s 2015. The open expanse has been crisscrossed by fences and highways, and the days of setting out to claim a plot of land you can call your own are over. The town originated on the Oregon trail, when people moved here for a better life. And that’s still true today. J: I’m Joann Loos, and I have lived in Glenrock for, uh, 38 years or better. L: I’m Loree Johnson and I’ve been in Glenrock since August 1st so almost a month but I went to high school here This is my grandmother, and my mom. They moved to Glenrock in 1977 because of a man. J: My first marriage? You don’t wanna know about my first marriage M: Why not? J: Because he was an alcoholic and wouldn’t hold down a job. Y’know and we moved and moved and moved and moved. You ask your mom, we moved a lot. I met him at the A&W in Casper, believe it or not. He was, um, selling cookware. and then he went to Montana and called me on the phone and said “Would you marry me?” and like an idiot I said yes. M: He proposed over the phone? J: Yep. J: I was 19. So I and I really I didn’t know that much about him, which was a big mistake. I should’ve ­ I should’ve known more about him. M: How long did you know him before you married him? J: 3 months. They married and began raising a family, my mom and her two younger siblings. L: He charmed people. He was a very charming man and so everybody loved him who knew him, even though he lied and cheated and stole and gambled and drank. He used to take us fishing­ he loved fishing, and I remember when we were too little to work the reel he would tell us “Just run! Just run up the bank!” and so we would hook a fish and we would just take our pole and run up the bank until that fish was out of the water and on the land However, his addictions, alcoholism and gambling, took a toll on the entire family. J: He he was irresponsible. He was­ never grew up. That was it in a nutshell. He thought he was the world’s best playboy. And family meant nothing to him. [music] L: I mean I knew that there was always something­ I mean I knew he drank because he was often drunk in front of me. As far the gambling, I didn’t really know anything about that. J: I knew he’d been in trouble before. But, y’know I just kinda swept it under the carpet. Keep the kids safe. L: I knew he would disappear sometimes for a week, two weeks, sometimes even a month and y’know just leave us. He lived under the illusion as far as I can tell that he was gonna hit it big someday and just be rich beyond belief and then he wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore. I really wanted a rock tumbler. I was into collecting rocks and I wanted a tumbler to make rocks smooth and make jewelry out of them and whatever. So one­ and I had asked for it for christmas for 3 or 4 years running and never got it and then one christmas I got up and there was a rock tumbler under the tree and I was so happy it was like, the thing I wanted for years. I had it for probably two or three months and then one day it was gone and I asked him what happened and he said “we needed the money and I had to sell it.” After years of living like this, my grandfather’s reckless behavior finally reached a tipping point. It was the worst night of my life. Nobody was getting along and everybody went to bed angry that night and, and I think even in tears. And, um, then the knock at the door came at 2 am and it was the deputy sheriff and my mom answered the door J: I was in Colorado, he was Arizona. And they notified me that he’d been shot. That was it. L: And then the sheriff came in the house and sat us all down and told us that my dad had died. And I found out later that part of the conversation that went on between my mom and the deputy sheriff was­ he wanted to know if she wanted to tell us or if she wanted him to tell us and apparently she couldn’t do it and so she asked him to come in and tell us. And I think I’m the one­ I was like twelve years the time­ I think I'm the one that asked what happened how it happened and he said that he shot himself. M: And, how long did you believe that? L: From the time I heard it when I was twelve until I think I was 21 or 22 when I found out otherwise. J: I think he was dealing with the mafia, if you really want to know the truth, I think he was into drugs. I’m not sure, I don’t have the proof and I’m not gonna dig in and find out but that’s what I’ve heard so I don’t know. I probably will never ever ever find out what really happened, but­ and I really don’t care. My mom spent years thinking her father committed suicide, but there were always little things that didn’t add up­ small pieces of information she would overhear when the adults didn’t know she was there. There was no blood in the vehicle, even though he supposedly shot himself there. The bullet wound entered his left temple, even though he was right handed. L: And I sort of put them together a little bit but I never really heard­ nobody ever really told me that it wasn’t suicide until I was in my twenties. I​
t was a huge relief to know that he didn’t purposely leave me behind. I was very angry at him when I thought it was a suicide. Because I was his girl, y’know, I was the oldest child we had probably the closest relationship and I was very, very pissed off that he would just... off himself and leave me like that. J: It was a shock. But y know? And I’ve said this many a time. It was a blessing in disguise, because I was in the process of getting a divorce from him. It was easier to raise a family without him, after he was killed. I mean, kids did good in school, we had a good life, there wasn’t any arguing or anything like that, like you do when you’re a drunk. I did not like being married to a drunk. And I swore up and down I’d never marry another drunk. And I didn’t. [music] I had recurring dreams for the longest time that it was all an elaborate hoax. That my dad didn’t really die, that he had to­ y’know like a tv show, like he had to fake his own death in order to escape these people that were after him or wherever. And he would show up in my dreams and explain to me the story of why he had to do what he had to do, and how sorry he was that he had to do that, but it just had to be done. They began a new life in Glenrock. A year after moving here, my grandmother remarried­ making sure not to repeat her mistakes. J: It was really nice having a relationship with no alcohol. After finishing high school in Glenrock, my mom’s boyfriend at the time proposed to her. But she turned him down. She couldn’t imagine staying in Glenrock the rest of her life. L: I felt limited here I felt like this was y’know just the little podunk town in Wyoming and I and there was such a big wide world to see I wanted to see big cites and other countries and y know and I felt like if I settled down and got married I’d never see anything. My grandma, meanwhile, stayed in Glenrock and found a hobby. What is there to do in Glenrock we don’t have a theater, all the bars have bands and you dance and stuff, that’s all there was. So now we do our own thing. Her husband owns an immaculately restored classic car, which they take to car shows all around the Western US every summer. J: Well, since 2000 I would say we have probably been close to almost 200 car shows. M: And, what do you like most about car shows? J: Bragging about Les owning the car. My grandma, like those 300­something names written outside of town, came to Glenrock in search of a better life. She wanted stability. And she found it in Glenrock. J: Uh, What do you think is your favorite part about living in Glenrock? Being married to Les. Having a happy life here in Glenrock. Glenrock’s a neat place, and people are nice very friendly and we know a lot of them and we’ve been here forever, we will be here forever. We’ve thought about y’know “well if we sell this place, where would we move?” We probably wouldn’t be happy. It’d be just the idea, it’d be all new and you’d have to start all over. We’re kind of in a rut. Not really. I mean you know we’ve got our place here and we can come and go as we please. M: Do you feel like you’re in a rut? J: No. I don’t have a chance to get in a rut! We keep­ well, like this weekend we’ll be going to Torrington to a car show. And then we’ve got one in Rapid City and I think we’ve got one left in Edgemont South Dakota. My mom also found a stable life, but some part of her always wanted more adventure. L: My dad was the ultimate wanderer. He wandered around.. forever and he took us with him and you know there were times where we didn’t even know we were gonna wander he would come home and announce that we were moving and we would be moved by the next morning. And so I sort of went the opposite end of the spectrum when I got older and I wanted to settle down I wanted to be stable I wanted financial security and I wanted all those things that I didn’t have growing up.​
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You’re sold a bill of goods of, y’know, this is how life should be­ you get a job you get married you have a family and then y’know you end up in rocking chairs on the porch and that’s sort of what everybody dreams of and I don’t know if that what everybody dreams of because that really what they want I think some people just dream of that because they’re told that that’s how it should be. And for me it was kind of a realization that it doesn’t always turn out that way and so what do I want my life to turn out like, and that’s when I started thinking about there might be other options. A year ago, she quit her job, sold our house, and has since been traveling around the country, pursuing a new career as a nature photographer. I went back to the wander lust and I’m not my dad by any means but I do have part of him in me. Which is why, after staying in Glenrock for a month this summer, she decided to move on, and indulge in that oldest American urge: to light out for the territories. [music] L: I don’t see me stopping honestly. I’m having a good time I’d like to keep doing this I know I’ll do it for at least another yeart. I’ve learned that life is fickle and just when you think you’ve got it figured out and you’re gonna do this it throws something else at you and everything changes and you change your whole trajectory. [music]