Episode Details

EP 2-13 MIKE BELL

Wendy Corr:

Well, hey there, folks, welcome to The Roundup. We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the cowboy state - but in this case, we're making a bit of an exception, because today's guest is not actually in the cowboy state. But he is, can I say, an obsession, Mike Bell?

He is in Birmingham, England. Mike Bell is a member of the English Westerners Society, which is a group of people who are fascinated by the stories, the people, the tales of the Old West.

And Mike is with us today because we did a story recently - one of our wonderful reporters, Jackie Dorothy, did a story about the English Westerners Society, and their real focus on preserving the history and celebrating the history of the Old West, particularly here in Wyoming. It really caught my eye, and I thought, well, we've got to talk to Mike Bell. So, we're talking with Mike Bell.

Hello, Mike from Birmingham, England, we're glad to have you here.

Mike Bell:

Hi. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Wendy Corr:

Time Zones make no difference when we're talking about zoom calls. I love technology in that way that we can connect across the pond, as they say. Mike, thank you so much for being with us today. Tell us about your first introduction to the Old West that captured your imagination and that just has been a thread throughout your life.

Mike Bell:

Well, that goes back. I know I don't look it, but I am in my 60s now. But that goes back to the 1960s when I was a kid. And at that time here in the UK, there were three, two or three television channels, but they all ran as entertainment. They ran black and white western TV series. So I grew up on a diet of rawhide Bonanza, Laramie, you name it. There were dozens of them at the time.

And then when I was at high school, my history teacher, who's responsible for a great deal, he said, well, if you're really interested, you know, we could write to some of the places that you're interested in, write to the libraries and museums and see if you want to find out some more, which is, so he helped me do that.

So by the time I was about 12 or 13, I'd been writing to places in the West for a couple of years, and some I never heard from, but many of them replied courteously, and they sent me little newspaper clippings or the old Xerox copies of articles.

So by the time I was about 13 or 14, I thought, well, I know quite a bit about the Old West. And then for my 13th birthday, a friend of mine said, we're going to go and see a movie because you're interested in the Old West. Okay? Said, What we going to see? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

I had never heard of Butch and the Sundance Kid, but when I came out of that movie, I thought, How come I've never heard about these guys? And that's really what kicked it off. That got me.

I was always interested as a child in the history of the West in its broader sense, you name it, mining, women's issues, outlaws, Indian Affairs, whatever. But for some reason those two outlaws had passed me by, and that got me fascinated by them.

And that's what got me back in the early 80s, on my first trip to Wyoming, falling off a horse in the hole in the wall. But actually, because horses move faster than I do, and I tend to stop, but they keep going. But yeah, so that's what kicked it off.

Wendy Corr:

So we can thank Robert Redford and Paul Newman for your interest.

Mike Bell:

The film doesn't wear well as history, but it's great entertainment. And decades later, I'm still fascinated by the Wyoming outlaws.