Roselle enjoys a beer with Raven waitress Stacey Jo.

The Passion of the Wookie By Mike Roselle Golden Brillo award winner remembers Jackson in early '80s.

Josh keeps reminding me that this is a family website. That doesn’t mean we can’t cuss or show pictures of naked people. Though, we never would. We were too well raised for that. It just means that members of our family read this site, and we don’t want them to think we are partying too hard. That’s because I partied pretty hard with Josh’s stepfather, major Gardiner Environmental dude, Howie Wolke, the lousiest roughneck I ever knew. When Howie married Marilyn Olsen, all of his friends were surprised that a Loser like Howie could wind up with a fine, intelligent woman. So was Josh. Back then, we called Howie the Wookie, because he looked like the wild beast in Star Wars.

I met Josh when he was seven years old at an Earth First! Protest against oil drilling in Mosquito Creek, at the Freddy Headquarters in Jackson, Wyoming. Back then I was married to Karen Pickett, the famous Berkeley Earth First! Activist. The day before the protest, I had been out late pulling up seven-and-a-half miles of survey stakes with Gnarly Gino on the proposed Mosquito Creek road in the Snake River Range. Gnarly Gino is the only other member of the famous eco-raider organization, Barmaids for Howie. Gino was not a Barmaid. He was a Roughneck from Little Falls, Ohio. Howie was in Jail down in Pinedale for pulling up stakes on a proposed oilfield road in the Grayback Ridge Roadless Area. When I went to see Howie in jail, I asked him if there was anything I could do for him. He said yes, go out and pull out the stakes on the proposed Mosquito Creek road and organize a demonstration. This is how close we were. This is how crazy we were.

I thought given his situation Josh would surely grow up to be a real Loser, a Poser or would have to be institutionalized. I was only half right. Soon after the protest, Marilyn moved the family out of Poser-Skitown Jackson to the uncool Montana-Milltown Darby, because she thought Josh should grow up tough or not at all. She was half right.

Later, when Howie got out of Jail, they told him about the move, and that he would be living in a Yurt in the middle of nowhere, up the West Fork of the Bitterroot for the next six years surrounded by angry loggers. Nobody told Josh anything. Howie and I are still friends, but Josh is starting to get on my nerves. That’s because we are working most days in his cramped apartment and he makes me smoke outside.

I don’t know if Howie and Josh are still friends. I never see them in the same place. Ever. They say they go hiking together, but I never see them together in photos because they don’t take pictures of each other. They talk on the phone a lot, but it’s mostly about Big Wild Adventures, the guiding business, and about going to places like Alaska. The last time I talked to my Dad he said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes. I saw him again ten years later and asked him if it was OK if I stopped calling him Dad. They call him Stew in Louisville and Lee in Texas. When we finally did speak, at The Green Mouse in Louisville, he had just gotten back from another bad Texas marriage. He was wearing a Cowboy hat as a disguise. At the Green Mouse they called him Beef Stew. That usually caused a fight, but I won’t talk about it here because, after all, this is a family website.

Josh talked about ego yesterday. Like he doesn’t have one. People sometimes even think that I have a big ego. When I was in Whitesville, West Virginia at the Coal River  Coalition office of Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds, I was asked to leave my ego outside. The women had signs posted on the front and back door requesting, well, demanding, that you do this. So I left my ego outside, and when I went out for a smoke I discovered, to my shock and dismay, that my ego was gone. Somebody had stolen it. I went around town looking for it, but it was no use. That’s when I lost my mind. I asked Judy where I should look for it. I can’t tell you what she said, because, like I just told you, Lowbagger is a Family website. What she said was anatomically impossible and I had tried to do it when I was younger. 

The question is: What would men be without egos? And, would the world be a better place without men, now that we are no longer biologically necessary? The answer to both questions is yes. The really big problem with this is that women have now figured out how to do this, and many are working on this important project now. And if they ever go to Charlie’s at closing time, they will certainly redouble their efforts.

But, since we were talking about Howie, I should also mention that he stealth fully recruited me into this evil scheme of his to save the Planet. I have never forgiven him for that, nor should you. He did this by dragging me out into godforsaken desolate places, while carrying a god-awful heavy pack, and telling me that this, too, was an ecosystem.  Then, he would rub my nose into it until it was bloody and abraded, and make me write a letter. Then, he would drag me to a hearing or slideshow. He’s still doing this today, except now they pay him to do it. And now he charges me for it. 

It’s hard not to think of Howie when I see what’s happening to the Biscuit, in the Siskiyou. Right now those Freddy Butchers are in there chopping down old growth. Howie doesn’t like jail as much as I do because he doesn’t like to play cards and watch TV with a bunch of grown men all day. He did this for six months in Pinedale, Wyoming. He’s proud of the courage and dedication the people in Southwest Oregon are displaying. Even though he doesn’t want to be in jail with them, he is glad that they are there. Really, he thinks the Freddy’s should be in jail. Then, maybe, just maybe for a couple of days, he might want to be in jail with them, if he could go home for the nights.

Howie taught me many things, but dancing wasn’t one of them. Tim Sandlin taught me how to dance. But, that was before he started to act like he wrote the book on it. Since then he has written an excellent book on dancing in Jackson called Western Swing. He’s probably still mad at me for the time that he and Christie placed third at the Great Cowboy Bar Western Swing Dance Contest of 1982, behind Rene Askins and I. Rene had just hit town and was working for the Audubon Society. She was very much responsible for the fact that you can hear a wolf howl in Yellowstone. Back then you couldn’t, because they weren’t any. She had never danced Western Swing before, and is now married to Tom Rush, the famous singer-songwriter dude.

Tim, Howie and I were all working together at the same restaurant. I ran the salad bar. The first, and only, salad bar in Wyoming. Tim was the second best dishwasher in Jackson, and a three-time winner of the Jackson Hole Dishwashers Association’s annual award, the Golden Brillo. Although I only won one Golden Brillo, Tim knows that I’m a better dishwasher. I have bigger hands and can reach further. Tim, it’s finally time to Admit this! Howie was the busboy. 

It was Tim and Howie who insisted I read their well-thumbed copy of the Ed Abbey’s “The Monkeywrench Gang”. That book would have changed my life, but by then Howie had already done that. Back in the day, when the Freddies wanted to log, they would create what Howie would call a “Touchy Feely” group. The Freddies would put their people in a group with a bunch of concerned citizens, and then lie to everybody. Howie didn’t like these groups, and they didn’t like him. At least the Freddy plants, timber-industry stooges, and oilfield goons in suits that were in the group did not like him. That’s because Howie never failed to speak the truth, whether people were ready to hear it, or not. The Freddies thought he was too emotional. They tried to marginalize and isolate him. And he married the most major babe in town. 

Armed with knowledge and passion, and fueled with liquor, Howie led a successful campaign to keep oil drilling out of the Gros Ventres. And I continue to take credit for it today. We wrote letters, we went to hearings and meetings. We organized demonstrations and actions, and planned our campaigns on the last two barstools at the west end of the Cowboy Bar, before they put in those ridiculous saddles. We tore shit up. We raged against the machine.

Most people were against just one of the two proposed exploratory oil wells for Granite Creek and Cache Creek. No one wanted to fight both. They thought if they did, they might lose both battles. Howie insisted that they stand up and go for the whole enchilada. He got Gerry Spence, famous Jackson Hole TV Lawyer dude, to agree. Because of that, and a lot of other stuff that had nothing to do with Howie or me, today the Gros Ventre is a Wilderness. I still couldn’t find it though, unless Howie agreed to be my guide, and I can’t afford his services anymore. 

Those activists in the Siskiyou are showing more backbone than all the Democrats and enviro Posers in Washington. As my friend Lance Olsen, the great, old-bear dude, told me yesterday when we spoke at the Raven, “This battle will not be won without emotion. Emotions are what make a mother run out in front of a speeding truck to save a child. We need passion. No Compromise and back up your talk with action. Take risks, and ignore those who are too weak or comfortable to fight for this dying planet. Never give up. Do the groundwork. Leave no stone unturned.”

This is what the Earth Firsters are doing in Oregon and have been doing for almost three decades. This is what Lowbaggers everywhere are doing. The only thing they are not doing is writing for this website. This must change. Without content, Josh and I will have to work, and you will have to read more of these stories about our fathers. We haven’t heard much from Howie or Marilyn in a couple of days. As for my Dad, I heard he was a cook in Las Vegas.

Roselle admits that there may be factual errors in this column, but not when it comes to his  dishwashing skills.