Beyond billionaires
Jackson Hole novelist celebrated mountain town's dirtbag heyday

Before Wyoming’s Jackson Hole valley became the province of the ultra-rich, it drew mountain athletes and outdoor enthusiasts enthralled by the Teton Mountains and the wild forests around them. Starting in the 1960s, legions of young people settled in the cowboy community, found ways to make a living and helped it grow into an international ski resort.

In this period between buckskin and billionaires, novelist Tim Sandlin, who died March 29, spun decades of living into 11 novels. Born in Oklahoma in 1950, Sandlin moved to Jackson Hole to build a life, and once there, he established a writers’ coalition and conference, raised a family and wrote regularly at the back table of Pearl Street Bagels on Pearl Avenue.

He plucked his characters’ eccentricities from the skiers, carpenters, cowboys, waitresses, motel maids and climbing and river guides he lived among. He worked more than 40 entry-level and service jobs, including elk skinner, dishwasher, cook at the Lame Duck restaurant, and copy editor and columnist at the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

The New York Times called his last novel, “Lit,” “slightly unhinged.” It’s about book burning, a coffee shop and a dead preacher. Readers shouldn’t be too bent on solving a murder, author Sarah Weinman wrote. “Spending time with the quirky, unforgettable characters is a lot more important.”

Sandlin fashioned many of his dramatis personae from real souls of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s West. He lived in the Glenwood Arms, an aging warren of nine apartments originally built for nurses at St. John’s Hospital. Over time, the Arms morphed into a compound contained by the back wall of the Jackson Hole News & Guide and encompassing Teton Cyclery, plus the headquarters of Jackson Hole Mountain Guides.

Sandlin adopted the slopeside patois of linguistic shortcuts and nicknames that became kind of a local code. “Every idea Sandlin had, he saw from his window at the Glenwood Arms,” K.B., former co-owner of the Cyclery, said. The Arms’ residents included a master glassblower, a virtuoso luthier, artists, musicians, resort workers, and the astrologer and gemologist Janet Planet, whose window flower box fed the neighborhood moose.

From his perch at the Arms, Sandlin could witness the annual departure of the editor of the Jackson Hole News & Guide, which had a sack-happy publisher. He might also have seen two police actions at the compound, one with guns trained on a knife-wielding resident, who was perhaps the third part of a love triangle. The other raid responded to reports of illicit smoke.

Cyclery mechanic Marty lived nearby in a single-wide with walls covered by sarcastic artwork. Three bike riders – known locally as Hajji, the Emir and Peter – left through one door of the Cyclery in 1980, then came back through the other door 6½ years later. They’d ridden around the world.

Jim Stiles, then editor and publisher of Moab’s Canyon Country Zephyr, spent several desert summer interregnums at The Arms. Moseying to the Town Square one day, he caught sight of “the ugliest man I’d ever seen.” It was the villain of the nightly shootout melodrama, one-eyed Clover the Killer, who never wore an eye patch.

Other compound characters left their mark. Dr. Liu built the first machine to mass-produce Croakies, the neoprene strap that saves your spiffy sunglasses when rolling a kayak. Cyclery co-owner Wendell’s special quesadilla is still on the Merry Piglets menu. Flat Ed got his name after his ’69 VW bus slipped off its jack while he worked underneath.

Today, “The Glenwood” stands at the site of the razed Glenwood Arms. It offers three-bedroom townhomes for $6.5 million. Just across the street there’s the Browse ’n Buy thrift store. Second-hand Ralph Lauren button-downs are now up to $8.

Sandlin’s career tells of a just-gone era, reminding me that imagination and literature enrich us as we learn about the humanity just outside our windows. There’s more about him in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, where they drop the paywall for obituaries to allow the living to keep up with the dead. You can find a collection of his newspaper columns that reflect the valley’s weekly dramas in his book The Pyms.

Angus M. Thuermer Jr. is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a reporter at the nonprofit WyoFile and former editor of the Jackson Hole News. A decades-long Jackson Hole resident, he is also a graduate of Sandlin’s "Write Your Novel" class.