Lou: How I got to Wyoming starts off really when I was 14 years old in Cliffwood Beach, New Jersey.

And I was downstairs in my bedroom by myself with one speaker that worked on my stereo listening to a John Denver album. I'm laying there on the floor, and I'm listening to “Rocky Mountain High,” and I go, "I gotta get out of here. I really do need to..." There's nothing wrong with New Jersey. I wasn't a good fit for it. It wasn't a good fit for me. 

So I'm 14 years old, and I go, "I'm gonna get out of here." Fast forward to 16 years old, and my best friend at the time, Jeff Kenyon, says to me, "I'm gonna go out and see my grandfather in Longmont, Colorado. And I'm gonna stay there about two weeks. Do you want to go?" And he has a little farm. And I go, "Yeah, I would go."

So neither of us had enough money to fly, so we got bus tickets, and we took the bus from Matawan, New Jersey, to Denver. Then we took another bus to Longmont, at his grandpa's farm. While we're driving up into Denver, my friend knew this area, Jeff said, "Look to the right. When we come over this little hill, look to the right. You're gonna see the Rocky Mountains." So I'm 16 years old. I look out the side of the bus, and I see the Rocky Mountains, and inside of me, I go, "I'm gonna live here. This is where I'm gonna live."

So we visit his grandpa, and part, it was just luck timing, the Longmont County Fair was happening during our visit, and I am stone drunk…16 years old and stone drunk, sitting around a Longmont County Fair fire (laughing). I got an earring in my ear. I got long hair. I'm a New Jersey hippie kid, and I'm sitting across the fire from this... I remember, he was a cowboy from Montana, and he had brought sheep to the county fair. He's drunk as a skunk. I'm drunk. He says to me, "What do you think of Colorado?" I said, "It's great except there are too many people here." This kid, he was a kid. If he was 19, he was a lot. He says to me "Go up to Wyoming. There's less people there." I'm stone drunk. I go, "Okay." I leave, and this is before the internet. This is before anything, so it's a basic unknown except a prompt.

I go back home, and I applied to only three schools. I applied to Princeton, I applied to Northern Colorado, and I applied to UW. I was accepted at all the schools. I sit down at the dinner table. I'm 16, 17 at this point, and I say to everybody, "I'm going to go out to the University of Wyoming." And my dad says, "Uh, no, no, you're not. You're accepted to Princeton." I said, "No, Dad, I  really am." And he says, "Lou, if you go, I will not support you."  And I said, "Okay, Dad. Understood."

So my dad…The year passes, and I'm corresponding with UW, never having seen the university except back in their catalog pictures. And I go, "That's where I'm going." I graduated in May, and by the end of June, I was living in Laramie, Wyoming. My dad had put my little Volkswagen—a 73 Volkswagen Bug—behind the car, towing it. I loaded everything I owned into the back of the Volkswagen! My sister Anna and I are very close. She's two years younger than I am. She's in the car, Dad's in the car, and we drive out to Wyoming.

And Nancy, really, I'll never forget being an 18-year-old kid and coming up over the hill and looking…that was almost 50 years ago now!...looking down at this little beautiful town. And I didn't want to hurt my dad's feelings. I didn't want to do anything like that, and I just thought to myself, “You’re doing the right thing, Lou. You're doing it right.” And I just knew inside. I looked down at this beautiful little town, and I go, "This is right." 

We come down and…the school wasn't open yet...so I have to find a place to live. I had about $200-300 on me. And the cheapest place I could rent was on 4th and University. It's still there. That house is on 4th and University.  Well, it's where people who were unemployed would ...yeah, and they would drink themselves…oh, boy...into oblivion.

Well, I stayed there for the weeks prior to the dorms opening. Dad says, "Okay." Dad just dropped me off, didn't know where I was going to be. Dad and Anna get in the car and drive away, and I'm like, "I gotta have a place to live here." So I find this...it was so inexpensive, but I had all these drunks living around me And I thought, "Here's my chance before school starts." So I would get in my '73 Bug, and I would drive myself up to the Snowy Range absolutely by myself and go for hikes.

I found a job. I think one of my early jobs was at McDonald's. They had just built McDonald's on East Grand, and I went and got a job. And when I wasn't working, I went up to the mountains and I hiked. And I remember, I think they're cicadas—but they may not be—there's this kind of sound in the mountains, “bbrbbrbbrbbr”. I thought it was rattlesnakes because I'm from Jersey and I don't know anything about the mountains. So I'm like, "Wow, a lot of snakes around here!" But I would walk up there, never saw a snake. Imagine that. (laughing) And I walk and then I would drive back to Laramie and go to sleep, then I would go work. And I waited six weeks for the dorms to open.

When the dorms opened, I moved in. My roommate was a cowboy from Mountain View, Wyoming named Ed Overy. His mom had died when he was a young boy. We got to be friends very quickly, and he said, "My dad needs me to go over and help on the ranch most weekends, do you want to go?" And I thought, "Well, yeah."

So we got in his junk car, and we would drive to Mountain View on many Friday evenings and work till Sunday afternoon and then come back. And I thought I was in heaven. Living and working on a ranch was like nothing this Jersey kid had ever seen. And those were the first moments of falling in love with Wyoming, with the geography, with the weather.

And I've been here 48 years now.

Nancy: Wow. That's a beautiful story. Thank you. You mentioned your roommate, who taught you how to be a cowboy…? And what was his name?

Lou: Oh, Ed was his first name, Ed Overy, and his family was so kind to me. I really didn't have any money. And his dad said to me…we were sitting in the kitchen one day and his dad paid me $10 a day, including a place to stay and all I could eat. And we were sitting around at the dining room table, and he said to me, "Lou” (we were by ourselves) he said, "If you ever need money, you let me know. I will give you money." And I said, "Mr. Overy, I'm fine." And he never did give me anything that I didn't work for. But he would have had I asked. And that was very helpful to me, when a kid says, "Do I have a community of people really caring for me, or don't I?"

Nancy: That was an important moment.

Lou: Yeah.

Nancy: I hope if one of my kids' friends ever needs me in a moment like that, I do the right thing and step up and say, say the right thing in the moment too.

Lou: It was truly medicine.

Nancy: Yeah, good medicine.

Lou: Yeah.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.