Front Stage/Backstage in Jackson, Wyoming
Jackson, Wyoming has a reputation for being “the last of the old west” and capitalizes on this fascination with cowboy and frontier life through its “old west” downtown. Jackson is nestled within the larger Jackson Hole valley, famous for its ski resorts (and much less so for being the traditional home of the Mountain Shoshone people). Northwest of the town rise the Grand Tetons, a range of stunning beauty, and from certain angles, looks like a passing pod of Orcas , their metamorphic dorsal fins poking skyward. The confluence of natural beauty and tourism has made Jackson very wealthy (and expensive), indeed.
The Tetons (looking east from Idaho)
We arrived in Jackson on a clear Sunday afternoon. Joanie had found a decent WiFi signal in the Teton County Library parking lot to get work done. She wasn’t the only one there borrowing the signal: parked next to Olympia was a sedan whose driver was watching a movie on his iPad.
It had been a short day’s ride (just 33 miles) but one which required climbing Teton Pass (8,450 feet), the most cardio-challenging of all the ascents on the trek. Aside from the steep (10%) ramps that looked like I was climbing up a ski jump and caused my heart to beat so loudly that it turned my ears into subwoofers blasting a Dr. Dre song, I had to contend with traffic on the narrow, mostly sinuous road (and they had to contend with me). A mile from the summit, however, traffic was at standstill. There had been an accident on the pass, but I was able to climb past parked sedans, pickups, recreational vehicles, engines off, with their passengers slumped in their seats or out walking their dogs. I admit to taking pleasure in realizing the “last shall be first” New Testament phrase as I happily overtook the internal combustion crowd and eventually pedaled past a wrecker on the summit lifting a destroyed motorcycle. Thanks to the stopped traffic, the descent was blissful: I enjoyed a swift downhill on what felt like my own private road, a reward commensurate with the pain I endured uphill.
Looking down at the ski jump slope I was only halfway finished climbing.
It was too early to drive to the pricey RV park where we had booked a spot for the night, and so we rode our bikes to check out the scene at Jackson’s iconic old west Town Square. Serendipitously, our route took us past the Jackson Hole Rodeo. The road adjacent to the rodeo was closed to traffic for a festive event. There may have been a rodeo on tap later in the day, but the people we saw weren’t the Stetson hat and cowboy boot crowd. Instead, we discovered a moderately packed crowd perusing demolition derby vehicles of varying shapes, styles, engine sizes, and states of repair (and disrepair), parked at odd angle on the closed road. Milling around the cars was a crowd of salt-of-the-earth white skinned, copper-skinned, and brown skinned locals. People munched on hot dogs and sipped beer. Country music blared from loudspeakers, enveloping the raw but jovial carnival atmosphere in a layer of sugary yet earthy sound. Despite the irony of having a car-centric event adjacent to an arena dedicated to skills of the western saddle, the ambiance and its audio-visual iconography (souped up cars, canned beer, hot dogs, and country music) spoke of good, down-home American fun. It’s been said that serendipity is the traveler’s strongest ally.
After soaking in this warm face of Americana, I must say I was appalled as we coasted downhill to Jackson’s town center. We met with what I can best describe as a three-dimensional projection of the old west wrapped in a touristy, commercial veneer. Downtown Jackson’s architecture retained its old-west charm -- nineteenth century storefronts with raised wooden walkways -- but the streets were choked with out-of-town traffic and clusters of mostly pale-skinned tourists gawking at storefront merchandise. Amidst the vehicular traffic, a horse-drawn carriage clopped by with a costumed stagecoach master clutching the horses’ reins. The streets were lined with bars, restaurants, and gift shops selling oversized bags of caramel popcorn.
Outside the rodeo, we had witnessed Jackson’s backstage crowd – area residents having a good time. But Jackson town center was front stage, the end-product of an individual or collective vision to sell the western myth. Never mind that your typical downtown western town smelled of horseshit and was either dusty or muddy, and people literally froze their butts to do their business in makeshift outhouses. Where life was defined by back-breaking labor and perpetual difficulty. Since suffering does not sell well (except, perhaps, in theater and literature) the commercial and civic leaders of Jackson have produced a sterile, fun image of the west that invites us to suspend our disbelief and leverage the dreams created in popular books and Westerns.
The down-home locals we saw at the rodeo were probably service industry workers who propped up front stage Jackson enjoying their time off. But where exactly could they afford to live in a town where the average home value is 1.7 million dollars?
Our heavily service-based economy creates this front stage-backstage dichotomy. I recall my stint working at a restaurant after college. I started as a dishwasher where my duties were exclusively backstage – I wore sloppy clothes that could get greasy and wet and didn’t have to worry about combing my hair or arriving at work clean-shaven. When I became a waiter, I dressed for my front stage role per the restaurant’s three-ring operations manual: Hawaiian shirt, dark slacks, and docksider shoes. Nightly, I crossed the threshold between front and backstage numerous times, putting on a customer-pleasing sycophantic smile when I was front stage, and grimly muttering obscenities backstage when, say, a diner stiffed me with a single-digit percentage tip.
Beyond the front stage-backstage dichotomy, the difference between the scene at Teton County Rodeo and Jackson Town Square could not have been starker. The backstage rodeo was unpretentious and laid-back. Nobody had to be “on.” Front stage Jackson, on the other hand, felt manufactured, a G-rated Westworld theme park, whose goal is to entertain and provide ample opportunities for tourists to spend their hard-earned cash. The front stage employees in Jackson are always on stage. When we bought ice-cream, aside from a side-room and a supply closet, there was no backstage for the hourly wage workers to go and escape the obsequious M.O. they must maintain.
The fact that I felt more comfortable in Jackson’ backstage milieu is not only because of my aversion to tourist traps and entertainment facades that are mainstays of the tourist economy, but because I had consciously set out on a 3,500-mile excursion through backstage America. I am not interested in the type of curated fun of Disney or a Las Vegas. I savored soaking up that which goes on in America behind the curtains, the sites, scenes, and events that aren’t glossy and which reveal the grit closer to the bone. I look forward to my next encounter with my invisible amigo, serendipity.