Note the back pockets on the jeans on the cowboy all the way to the left, in the foreground (black hat). They are set way off to the sides, towards the hips, unlike today's jeans with pockets near the rear-end mid-line. Wouldn't want to be riding with your wallet between you and the saddle.

This image is plastered on a poster around town here in Montreal, advertising an exhibition at the McCord Museum of the photographs of Horst P. Horst (1906-1999). The photo is of Muriel Maxwell and was featured on the cover of American Vogue on July 1, 1939.

Sheridan College is in the old Woolworth's building, across the alley from the historic Mint Bar.
About 1990, Queen Elizabeth II visited Sheridan for the horses. She shopped in a fishing-gear store, next door to the Mint. It was said that she visited the Mint, but I never believed it. Instead, she crossed Main and stopped in the King Ropes store for a visit to the renowned rope, tack and saddle emporium. Her host was WY Sen. Malcom Wallup.

Oscar Thielen of the Dutch Lunch.

And that's the way we like it around here.

The straw-hatted cowpoke in profile, left of frame, with his hand resting on the letterbox looks a lot like an old cowboy I chanced to meet over a game of “8 Ball” in a little bar in New Mexico four decades to the month from this photo’s date.

We played a couple games swapping dimes on the table while he smoked hand-rolled cigarettes hanging from the corner of his mouth just like the guy in this photo. After setting me up by letting me win one we bet a beer on the next game and as he was running the table on me, calling pockets by gesturing with the tip of his cue or a nod or his elbow when indicating a long-green, corner pocket shot banked off first the long then the short rail and all the way back down the baize to the corner at his right wing, I introduced myself and he said his name was “Doris”.

I though I might have misheard and used his name when I bought him his Coors and he answered to “Doris,” thanking me for the beer with a touch of his hatbrim and squatted to retrieve the balls from the slot near the jukebox end of the table and put them in the triangle and returned it to the hook below the ball return.

Doris took a couple long draws from his beer and wiped the can’s condensation from his hands onto his shirtfront and took out papers and tobacco from his left breast pocket (just like the photo cowboy) and rolled another smoke and I asked him how he got the name “Doris” and he said he was the seventh of nine children and his parents ran out of names at about number six. "After that they wrote some names on little slips of paper and drew them from a hat when babies were born," He said as he struck a big wood kitchen match on the coin slot of the pool table, “If you think 'Doris' is funny, you ought to meet my sister '6 7/8'".

Goober Pea

It's not quite contemporary, but I remember just such round-lensed heavy-framed sunglasses from around 1950 as having two polarized lenses over each eye so that one lens could be rotated to vary the amount of light getting through.

I'm sure I brought the baby...

I wonder if "Dutch lunch" meant the same thing there as it did in the Detroit of my grandparents' era - a lunch taken with a beer (or two)? In fact, sometimes the "Dutch lunch" could be just the beer, no lunch. My grandfather, though Irish, was certainly not adverse to enjoying an occasional "Dutch lunch."

Located at 151 Main Street (US 14). The buildings across the street are intact, but the shops on the right have been replaced by "storefront" school -- Sheridan College (in what appears to have been a former department store).

No hat, no coat, no whip; just hanging out in front of The Mint chatting up a pretty lady.

The riding-heel boots on them two ol' cowpokes to the left ... they's wearin' more heels than the women are!

Pretty fly for a cowboy guy.

From a postcard (below, circa. 1945): "Renowned for its unique beauty and western atmosphere. Visitors never tire of the unusual red cedar decor; the western pictures and photographs; cowboy paraphernalia and the North America game animal trophies. Wayne W. Elkin and Leon L. McVean, Proprietors."

Musician Ben O’Connor on his visit in 2002: "The Mint Bar is the coolest thing about the great cowboy town of Sheridan, which is in a part of northern Wyoming that’s too cold and too remote for all the Californians to move there and ruin it. You wouldn’t want to say anything bad about John Wayne at the Mint. Real cowboys hang out there."

Love the bubbly-circles design on the dress of the woman with the white hat. They're a perfect match for the "sun goggles" worn by the trooper a bit to her left.