Jack grew up in a part of rural Wyoming where the nearest neighbors were eight or ten miles off and school was an hour's drive each way. Carbon County's income figures from those years actually look respectable on paper — boosted by the coal, oil, and uranium money pouring into the state through the 1970s — but that money never reached families running cattle outside the boom towns. A hired ranch hand in Wyoming in these years could expect $500 to $550 a month, room and board included, against $9 to $14 an hour on … Continue reading about Jack Smith