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Biography of Doug Roberts Policeman to be and Partier always. by Travis Hart Doug Roberts has lived in Wyoming for twenty three years. He is an extremely colorful character with a seemingly endless supply of anecdotes and hilarious remarks. Added to this is the fact that his ability to come up with a new and interesting story any time he wants is unfathomable. Unfortunately, part of the interview was lost due to a taping error. Among the lost stories was his story of enrollment in the police academy and all of the interesting happenings at that institution. Also lost was an extremely amusing story of his favorite camping trip, which literally had me rolling on the floor laughing. Although I rescheduled the interview with Doug, I could not convince him to repeat the previous stories. Still, the second collection of stories, although not completely covering his life,are interesting and amusing. The length of the biography dissapoints me, but the content was great. I hope you get as much of a kick out of it as I have. ~- - · As I looked across the desk at one of my best friends in college one of the comments that you get used to after you spend enough time around him floated out of his mouth. "Take it from a young bucks point of view. all we do is drink, get drunk and fall down." A moment later, I started the tape expecting an interesting hour of interviewing, and it went like this ...

T-So you've been in Wyoming twenty three years now right? D-I've been in Wyoming twenty three years, I was born and raised in Kemerer Wyoming, fifty miles away from anything and once you get to anything, there's nothin there. I tell you it's true. T- So what all have you done in those twenty three years of living in nowhere? D-Well, lots of things ... Lots of fishin, huntin,causin trouble, raising hell, typical things we do. T-Yes ... Any major things that kind of stick out? D-Well, not really, my senior year I really didn't do much of anything, just uhh ... Well my senior year of high school if you wanted to get ahold of me you just left a message at Seven Eleven. I was always gettin gas, or gettin ... copenhagen so ... they new me, so that's where people left messages for me, cuz I was just beboppin up in the mountains. T-So they were kind of like your answering service? D-Mm hmm, kinda, they were like that and see I graduated in 86 so they were my answering service for one ... two ... probably three and a half years, cuz I'd just come into town, fill up with gas, grab a twelve pack or case of beer and go up into the mountains again. I'd go back around up there until I got stuck then I'd get myself out, then come back, get more gas and go try again. T-And more copenhagen? D-More copenhagen, okay, saw some interesting country though. My friend ... A friend of mine told me once, he was always up in the rocks too,except he was an idiot, he always got stuck. He says he was never worried about him gettin stuck up in the mountains cuz he knew that if he just waited long enough, pretty soon, Roberts would find him. He said that he'd been stuck at least six or seven times that he could remember, that he was stuck and couldn't think of any other way to get out, and hear a truck comin', and over the hill here'd come Doug in 01' Pepe, his little mule. An old black dodge would come up over the hill and yank him out. I had to do it six ... No eight or nine times. T-Well, like what's some of the most memorable stuff you've ever done? D-Oh, one time me and a friend took the truck, and uh ... we just grabbed some beer and headed up in the mountains for a ride. Well we got down this road that neither of us had ever been on, and we got to the bottom of this big canyon, and the road kinda dissapeared, but on the other side of the canyon we could see a fairly good road goin up the other side, and it looked better than the one we'd just come down, but the only way to get to it was to cross a creek. We tried to go upstream and got stuck, so we got out, tried to go downstream and got stuck, and we poked a hole in the radiator with a tree ... that we ran over. The beaver dam, the water was kind of murky and muddy from the last time we'd tried to cross already and we didn't wanna put that in there, so we put in a couple beers into the radiator and two full fifths of whiskey that we had with us. And then we drove across the beaver dam. Got stuck across the beaver dam. Right in the middle of th~ beaver dam, we're stuck. And we're in his bronco, and I thought oh jeez, I know I'm never gonna get out cuz my dodge won't come up over the hill, it ain't here. So we got on the C.B., I didn't think it would work. Got on the C.B. and started tellin everybody where we were, ya' know, and how to get to us. Bout an hour and a half later, my buddy comes down the road in his truck, got a winch on the front of his truck. He said , shit he said we were eighteen miles north of town, up in the mountains, and he said he was in Kemerer, just leaving his sisters driveway when he heard us. He said he called and called us, but we could never hear him, he said he could hear us plain as day. And he winched us out of there and we drove eight miles out of that canyon and all the way to the marina with whiskey in the radiator. Made it to the marina, and that's where we parked the bronco. Went and got all sorts of shitfaced. And the senior parties were always fun too. My senior party started on monday and it ended the following monday. We had four kegs of beer each night, and the cops, they knew where the party was, so they set up roadblocks to catch everybody goin from the parties. Well that's all fine and dandy except my grandpas cabin just happened to be a mile away from where are party was, so I knew that area like the back of my hand. I was makin anywhere from sixty to seventy five bucks a night runnin people into town so they could get around the police blockade, it was fun. Then one time we were up there at the class of eighty sevens senior party, and they had it at the top of this mountain called sheep mountain, and down on the side was where all the cabins were ... my grandpas cabin. But the road to get from the cabins, up to the party, its a two track jeep trail up a steep, rocky hill. But we got drunk and took a volkswagen from the party down that road to the cabins. We got stuck several times, but we'd just pick up the car and • put it back on the road and drive off, and we made it through with a volkswagen. T-That's pretty much everything everybody does in Kemerer for fun? D-Yeah, they tore down our only movie theatre to build a parking lot. And the uh, we had uh, oh what do you call'em? An arcade in town and it went out of business. Of course the guy who ran it was kind of a dink anyway, he put all of his money from profits, instead of puttin it back into the business, he'd put it into his pocket, so that kinda went under. So now all everybody does is party. T-Party and go out in the hills. D-Yep. T-Okay, so are there mines and stuff outside of kemerer? D-Kemerer is chock full of old mines, that's what founded Kemerer. T-Did you ever run around and play in those? D-Well alot of them are closed up because they mined so far and hit gas, or not so far and they hit gas and the mine exploded ... and they're all abandoned mines. You can get to some of them, you can walk into'em so far, to where they closed'em down. Then uh, there's one spot up on Oyster ridge, just outside of Kemerer, we was screwin around up there and there's this natural hole in this rock, and we climbed in it, and it's a natural airway down into the mine shaft. So we went back in there as far as we could, and we got in there , I don't know, as far as we could, and you could feel the heat from the coal that's already ... that's still down there burnin, so we didn't go much further. Cuz there's been uh ... there's one guy, his name is Warnoth. He was ridin his motorcycle up on the ridge, and he hit a jump and landed and the ground gave way beneath him, and he fell into a burnin mine shaft. And he climbed out, he had third degree burns on his arms and on his legs, and the motorcycle was eighty sixted, but he climbed out. In the winter time it's cool cuz you wake up in the morning, you look up on the ridge, and there'll be bare spots where the grass is green, and you can see steam comin outta certain places and stuff, it's ... it's cool. T-I've seen some of those places over in Green River too. D-Really? Oyster ridge is chuck fulla sink holes and stuff. See we're not like Green River and Rock Springs, we don't build housing subdivisions on top of old mines. We know where they're at and just leave'em alone. T- Sounds logical to me. D-I think so, ya know, starvin in the deserts. We have deserts too but we don't live in'em. T-Well, what's like the most memorable thing you've done in Wyoming? D-Most memorable thing I've done in Wyoming? Well I don't want to go into the Windriver story again. But that ... ! don't know, I dunno. Everything is memorable if you do it right. T-Exactly. (We had done a previous interview that, I think was most of the more interesting stuff. But I couldn't get Doug to go over the same stories as before. Something that I think made my paper suffer.) D-Umm, most memorable, the most memorable thing? Well It's gotta involve the Windriver mountains though,that's, I mean that just sticks out in my mind. The trip up to the Windrivers. T-Well, I've already heard one story about the Windrivers. (I was trying to lead him into telling another.) D-Yeah, that one I told you not more than two hours ago,that didn't get recorded. That was just five days of torturin tree huggers and getting drunk, and amazing friends and neighbors, and .... T-Mostly neighbors? D-Mostly neighbors, yeah. Floatin out on a glacier fed lake in a two man rubber raft full of beer. The tree huggers were quite amazed by that one. T-Tree huggers have a tendency to be amazed by small things. D-Yeah, I remember once, we were up at Newfork lake, and we was paddlin a canoe. We paddled up to the upper lake, we were screwin around up there and a friends dad came by in his boat, a big ol' racing boat, capsized our canoe. We lost all our sleeping bags and all our ... we had our wrist rockets with us at the time, we lost everything. T-So did you stay in his camp? D-No cuz we were at the boy scout camp at the time, we weren't allowed. Not to say we didn't try though, cuz the girl scouts had their camp at the same time, and they were up at the other side of the lake. So at least twice a week, kids from different boy scout, different campsites would all get together at night, they'd run down to the waterfront and try to steal canoes and paddle across to the other side. We'd almost make it but security would catch us up there. They had rangers up there who'd catch us. T-Rangers ruin all the fun. D-I know. T-Unless their cute. D-Authority figures ruin all the fun, maybe that why I want to be one. I've had so much fun I wanna ruin it for everyone else now. I wanna be an authority figure. T-Just don't live in my town. D-That's another problem, my friends tell me, well if you're gonna be a cop don't arrest me right. Yeah, we'll see. T-If you do live in my town, just have fun with me. D-Okay. T-Tell me not to break laws or anything. D-I know how it is when your friends is cops and stuff, cuz we was gain to police academy. I was livin with my cousin, at his house, and one of his friends that he graduated high school with worked as a policeman in south Ogden and that's where we lived. We'd be ... ya know we'd party, and all the cops would come to our parties, cuz my cousin worked for the sheriffs department. So I'd party with all these cops, but it might be we'd be sittin there watchin T.V. or playin cards or something, and it'd be eleven or twelve o'clock at night. All of the sudden, a spotlight would shoot through the living room window. Every time Jeff would go by, he'd stop by the house, every time. It didn't seem to help though, my truck still got broken into while I was down there. It was parked right in front of the house. I remember another party we had at Ogden, I was livin with my cousin up in this condo, outside of Ogden, up by Pine view raceway. And we had a beach party during the day. There were eighteen units in that condo, and everybody ... every unit was partyin with us. And we mixed up this drink called a green monster, and it knocks your dick in the dirt after a while. Well about two o'clock in the morning, we decided to go skinny dippin. So we took the speakers and put them on the beach. And we ran, we measured this out, we ran a hundred yards of speaker wire. From the house to the beach, and we played music. The only problem was, you had to run back to the house to change music. We woke up the next day and every apartment, every condo was a mess. The guys ... my cousins house, that the party started in ... He lived on the second story. All his living room furniture was out in the yard, we tossed it over the balcony, I don't remember that. There was a ladies shoe in the microwave. Somebody stole his toilet, I mean picked his toilet up off the ground and stole it. He never found it. Didn't know where it went. There was just a hole in the bathroom floor, the water was turned off, the bolts were just unbolted, and they stole his toilet. And the carpet was covered with peanuts and popcorn and beer cans. Therefore it was quite the party. T-Well, you've been in college for like ... how many years have you been in college? D-Well, Weber State College, I went there but that was like, well I went to police academy there, so I don't ... I guess I count that. That was six months, so there's a year. Well six months, then I went to the University of Wyoming for two years. Now I'm here, and I'll graduate this May ... hopefully. T-Well what happened in Laramie? D-What didn't happen in Laramie? Well the reason I'm not still in Laramie is because uuh ... T-You're wanted in the town ? D- No, I kinda escaped. No they fazed out my degree program. That's the official reason I'm not in Laramie, the unofficial reason is I hated it. Of course it might have something to do with a jealous husband, I'm not sure. T- I want to hear this story! r·-

D-Urnrn ... This girl that I worked with ... who's married. She was cute. the first year I was in Laramie I met her and we just ... I'd give her a hard time at work and vice-versa. And then company parties ya know, we'd go out and have a few ya know, that was it. Just became friends, but the second year I worked there, we got to be really good friends, and I knew that she wanted, so I just stayed away from her. Well it had to do with this note that she slipped me one day, that said she wanted me, and then gave me her horne address and everything. That was a subtle hint. So I kinda ... I didn't wanna do anything cuz she was married, and I knew she was married, and so did everyone else, they all knew that she was married. Well this one night, her husband was in Arkansas. Was in Arkansas for national guard. He was there for six months. And this one night I went to a party that was thrown by one of the other employees at the store I worked at, and Kim was there. That's no problem, I've been to parties with her before, but hell it got late and we got drunk, and the next thing I know, I'm kissin her. Well to make a long story short, I ended up drivin her to work that day, the next day, cuz she spent the night with me. And it was every other night we'd get together while her husband was gone. And everyone in the store knew it, and I kinda have a feeling that when her husband carne horne he knew it too. But I kept a real low profile when he carne back to town. And then he'd go over to Cheyenne on war maneuvers. My last two weeks in Laramie he went to Cheyenne for, uhh, maneuvers, and she was at my house for every night while he was gone, helpin me pack, helpin me clean the house ... I don't know. T- But did you urnrn? D- No, I never did, I think I pissed her off because I knew she wanted to and I wouldn't do it. When it got to that point I'd say,"Well Sud, Kim wants to play a game." Kim would look at me kinda funny and I'd grab a couple of beers and leave. I'd walk out the door and go to a party. Bout got shot there that one night too. Walked out into La Bonte park, and drank a couple of beers by the pond, and I walked ... They have this fort that the kids play in, it's a fort, it's scaled down ... but I walked over by it and I . .

' looked in one of the towers, and there was an old burn in there sleepin, had a gun pointed right at me. I said"Oh, see ya," and left. Bout got my ass blowed off. But that's one of the reasons Laramie doesn't have much of an attraction for me.