Wyoming, by Craig Johnson:

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Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine included an excerpt from my third novel, Kindness Goes Unpunished. It's an article called Find Your Mystery: A Collection of Favorite Whodunits, Not Just For the Stories But For the Places. They Make Ideal Vacation Reading, Full of Plot Twists and Travel Tips. There were nine selections that used excerpts, and only two that used dialogue, including the following...

The wedding cake that is the City Hall of Philadelphia was designed to be the tallest building in the world, but by the time it was finished, the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument had surpassed it. On four and a half acres of Penn Square, its domed tower tops out at just shy of 550 feet to the top of Willy Penn's hat. There are two hundred and fifty other statues that adorn the interior and exterior of the building to keep him company.

We got out of the cab at the west side of the building and walked across the sidewalk with Dog as though approaching some fantastic ship that had been docked in the center of the metropolis.

"I hate this building."

I ignored her and studied the façade. "It's Second Empire, the same as the Louvre."

"It's fruity."

I make fun of Philadelphia a lot in the book, but it's still one of my favorite cities. I always make fun of the things I love, it defends me against them. I love Wyoming, but from time to time I get in trouble there, too. I got asked at the Wyoming Book Festival if I'd ever gotten into trouble from the places I've written about and confessed that I'd once referred to Cheyenne, the state capitol, as ‘Des Moines with a rodeo'.

I admitted this in Cheyenne.

In a room full of people from Cheyenne.

The funny thing about Wyoming is that everybody's proud of the state, at least their part-no matter how crappy it may be, and believe you me, there are some crappy parts. It's not all Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park like in the car commercials. I once asked a guy from Lost Springs, Wyoming, population 1-that's right, 1, what the best part of the state was and he said, "Waaall... Right here."

So, I decided to challenge myself by saying something not-so-nice about everywhere in the Equality State. As near as I can figure, the dynamic goes like this-Cheyenne figures it's the capitol and deserves respect even though it's barely within the confines and it's greatest geographical feature is I-80 closely followed by I-25. Casper thinks it's the center of everything since it's in the geographic middle of the state, but I figure it's because the wind just blew it there. Gillette powers the place and wants more credit but as soon as Friday comes they all back their forty thousand dollar SUV's up to their sixty-thousand dollar boats and get the hell out of there. Laramie educates Wyoming and figures we all ought to know better, but if they were so damn smart they wouldn't have built the only four-year university on the tundra of the most God-forsaken, windswept plateau in the place, making Stalingrad look like San Diego. About Meeteetse I have nothing bad to say other than they recruit some of the shadiest individuals to be the Grand Marshals in their Labor Day parades. Rock Springs makes everybody feel better, since whenever something horrible happens statements begin with the phrase "Well, at least it's better than Rock Springs..." Evanston's not so bad, and the Mormons have to have some place to go buy liquor and porno magazines. Rawlins is okay, if you're doing five to twelve. Jackson? Well, everybody hates Jackson just on principle. Sheridan's stuck-up. Cody's nice but it's the place where a guy once brought a shod mule to an elk check-station and we let him take it home, figuring he'd learn by eating it.

Then there's my little part of Wyoming, Ucross, population 25.

Gimme a minute.

...I'm thinking.

Best,

Craig

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Craig Johnson

Kindness Goes Unpunished

Sherriff Walt Longmire

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Penguin Books

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