"Meanwhile, back at the ranch..."

Straight out of my memory of a Western radio show episode of perhaps Red Ryder or the Lone Ranger or whatever. I was a big fan of anything with a Western theme which involved a 6-gun, galloping horses, cattle, stage coaches and talking like a cowboy. 

Of course in 1959 I got a dose of reality. My paternal grandfather had lived in Buffalo, Wyoming around the time of the Johnson County Cattle Wars. He might have stayed and lived happily ever after except Margaret Lothian declined his proposal and instead married the guy with the ranch. Decades later when they both were widowed he asked again and this time she said yes. 

That was in 1956. My recently widowed grandfather sold his property in Santa Cruz, California and moved lock, stock & barrel to Buffalo where he married Margaret and lived with her in the rear apartment of the Occidental Hotel. Margaret had owned and operated the hotel since her first husband won it in a high stakes poker game. It was a resurrection of sorts: he was on familiar turf and he had a new job telling people what to do. I suspect he was in hog heaven.

Occidental Hotel in Buffalo, Wyoming before the Busy Bee Cafe relocated to the
left side of the building in I believe 2005.

In 1959 I turned 21 and was a student at Northrop Institute of Technology. I took off that fall quarter and drove to Michigan where I met up with my roommate, Jim Deyoung. Jim was staying at his parents place in his hometown of Muskegon, Michigan. We toured the area a bit including a brief look-see of Canada (just enough to say I'd been there), then we drove back to Inglewood, California to finish school. 

On the way to Michigan I drove through Buffalo to visit my grandfather and meet Margaret Lothian Smith Bowman. Margaret's sons, Alfred and Robert, were operating the ranch at that point but keeping a residence in town. If there was ever a role model for a cowboy, these 2 guys had to have been it. The first thing I heard was not so much a Western accent but rather an incredibly s-l-o-w speech cadence. I felt compelled to finish a sentence for them as I waited for them to come to the end!

Brief story about Margaret Lothian Smith Bowman. Margaret was born in
Stow, Scotland in 1881.

But that was Robert & Al Smith. Others in town talked like I did in terms of cadence and pronunciation. I've been told I have a Western accent inferring, I suppose, I talk like everyone's image of a movie cowboy. Nothing I heard in Buffalo sounded like the movies with make-believe Hollywood accents which told the world how cowboys talk. Except they don't. I suppose the reason I don't hear the difference is because I talk the same way.

Back on subject. Running the hotel was a perfect arrangement for J O who thrived on telling others what to do. He and Margaret lived in and operated the Occidental Hotel till his decease in 1967. I didn't get to see him before he died but I did manage to fly back for his funeral.

Nowadays the hotel looks about the same except the Busy Bee Cafe, which was originally on the corner out of the image to the right and would have been out of sight in this shot, has moved between the hotel and the creek. It's now up against the left side of the hotel in the image below. This is where author Craig Johnson describes fictional Sheriff Walt Longmire and his crew going for breakfast or lunch at The Busy Bee. A real place for a fictional sheriff.

The Occidental Hotel in more recent times. If you read the Longmire novels by Craig Johnson you know about the Busy Bee Cafe. It's the dark brown structure on the left side of the Occidental Hotel.

When I visited in 1959 the hotel had free matchbooks emblazoned with the hotel name. They read: "Occidental Hotel- Where the Virginian Got His Man!" A reference to the writer Owen Wister, author of The Virginian and himself a former resident of Virginia. Wister visited a friend who was a US Army officer stationed at a fort not far from Buffalo (possibly Fort Sheridan). That fort could not provide temporary housing for visiting friends and family so Wister stayed at the Occidental Hotel during his visit. It was during that time (1900? 1901?) he wrote that book which was published in 1902. His characters for The Virginian were based upon locals he met at the hotel, in the hotel bar, and around town both in Buffalo and later in Medicine Bow. Margaret, a former school teacher, historian and avid reader knew about his extended stay and made sure I left Wyoming with that piece of local history.

The jacket of Owen Wister's The Virginian

It was in the Occidental Hotel bar that Wister witnessed the card game where one of the players called someone else a son of a bitch and folks around the card table laughed. The tenderfoot was nonplussed at such an insult going unmentioned and  decided to try it himself. No one laughed; they all just stared at him. The Virginian looked at him and said "You better smile when you say that pardner." Smiling made it teasing; not smiling made it an insult that demanded a fight. 

The Occidental Hotel circa 1890 (check the sign above the vertical window). Probably close to what Wister had for accommodation in 1900.

That line of dialogue has been repeated over and over in Western movies during my childhood though lacking the insult- 'son of a bitch' was censored from the script as offensive language even though it was a piece of Western history.

So now you know!