Interview with Ty DeVault Click for bio
Ty DeVault
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James DeVault: This is James DeVault. I'm here with Ty DeVault, who grew up in the 60s. Do you want to tell me a little bit about where you're from?
Ty DeVault: I was born in Casper, Wyoming. My parents, my dad was born there. My mother moved there when she was in junior high. So my grandfather homesteaded outside of Casper, Wyoming in the 1920s. 1920s when he moved there. I grew up in town a little bit on a ranch in the summer times, up in Northwest Wyoming. I went to school there, all 12 years and kindergarten, too. Went to the community college there in Casper and then went to the University of Wyoming.
JD: Okay, and you were born in 1962
TD: Today? 6 years ago. Today's my birthday.
JD: All right. We'll start off with what kind of shows or movies did you watch?
TD: Anything we could get on the TV. We watched Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, Wonderful World of Disney. We had to watch the news with Dad. Let's see. Some of those sitcoms back then. Dick Van Dyke and Bewitched. We didn't watch much because, well, one, we couldn't. And two, we had too many other things to do. We did used to go to the movies. Me and my friends, we'd go, it was 25 or 50 cents. We'd scrape together and go down to the theater and watch the popular kid shows of the day. I can't remember what they were. Cartoons mostly.
JD: You mentioned the news. Do you remember anything specific about the news when you were a kid?
TD: The Vietnam War, of course, was on the news every night. There was footage from that. That was pretty publicized war. Then there was about the same as today. A lot of people blaming somebody else for whatever their problem was. I think it must sell the news and the doom and gloom. You didn't see too much positive news. I think you saw a little bit more than you do today, positive news, where somebody did something good. Then we'd watch the national news and then we'd watch the local news. You got some more variety there. They would have the news for 15 minutes. Then they would have the weather for 10, and then they would have sports for five. Pretty much the same as it is today, I would guess.
JD: Okay, with Vietnam, how did you or your parents or your community see it? What was their perspectives?
TD: Vietnam, the war? My family, my dad and my grandpa, they missed out on the wars. They were either too old or too young to this war or that war. I did have some uncles. I had one that was in World War II and in Korea. Then I had an uncle that was in Vietnam. Of course, you know, we were a conservative town. We supported our troops. I had a neighbor across the street who was in Vietnam for three tours. He got captured and escaped from the Vietnamese. His dad was in World War II. He captured and escaped twice from the Germans. So, you can imagine when you hear stories, you grow up hearing stories like that. I get to talk to these fellas, you know, on the front porch. You begin to empathize with them and their plight and the sacrifice that they did make. Even as a young boy, I could understand that. They were over there fighting for somebody else, and I'm one of them.
JD: Okay, interesting. We're gonna go sort of back to family. Were any of you religious or did you attend church?
TD: Yes, my dad wasn't, my mom was. We went to the Lutheran church there. We didn't attend all that regularly. Then we moved out of town, you know, a couple miles. Dad bought two acres. We built a house out there, he was a contractor. We built a house outside of town, and we were like a mile and a half from a church, and my mom started going there. It was a less liturgical church. It wasn't a charismatic church, but there were some really honest people there that took their faith to the next level. You might say they loved on their neighbor, like "I love your neighbor as yourself" kind of thing. My mom took a shine to that. So we started going every Sunday to the chagrin of my dad. I think he felt kind of left out. We went every Sunday, Wednesday night, Sunday night, Sunday morning, and potlucks and all that, you know. Out to the lake, up on the mountain. We were involved into that church. Dad wasn't. He fought it for 20 years, and then he finally gave in and accepted the faith.
JD: You mentioned your dad was a contractor. Can you go into a little more about what your parents did for a living?
TD: Well, he was a plumber, and he worked back then. You had to work as an apprentice, and then you became a journeyman. After 10 years of, I think it was four years apprentice, six years journeyman, you could apply for your master's license, where you could own your own business. And he did that, and he started his own business. Mom was a stay at home mom. She raised us until we were out and all the kids were in high school. Then she worked in the school system as an aide. But dad provided most of the money. Mom provided the insurance through that job. Of course, he hired me, I learned how to be a plumber. My older brother, he still owns the business, and he's retiring out of it. But that was the family business. Everybody just kind of flocked around that. You know, answering phones, and going on calls, and stuff like that. That's how we made our living, that's how we ate. He started the business in Casper I think in 1973. And at that time, there were a bunch of oil companies that were drilling wells. I mean, there was over a thousand wells going at any one time in Wyoming for about, I would say, six to seven years. So the housing market just exploded. Casper doubled in that six and seven years. And that's what he did. We plumbed a lot of houses, and made a lot of money doing that. I didn't say he didn't get rich, but he fed his family in about a house, that kind of thing.
JD: So how did town change over that time?
TD: Well, it expanded, I hunted a lot, and where I would go hunting, they would throw up a housing development. So then I would have to go further out of town, you know, and find more deer and animals, rabbits, or whatever it was, that changed, that impacted me. Going out to the fishing holes, we grew up on the North Platte River, and there was some reservoirs and fishing holes got more crowded, we just had to get more creative on where we went and stuff like that. That's how it affected me. And of course, you know, you had that food on the table because of it, but that was always a drawback.
JD: What was watching the civil rights movement unfold like? Did that affect you at all?
TD: In Casper, Wyoming, there wasn't much of a civil rights movement. They're just, and I'm not saying that because it wasn't, you know, there was people of color there and other races and that wasn't it. It was everybody was just too busy working. So nobody had time to play the victim or to play the victor or whatever it was. I just remember the grown-ups shaking their heads and saying, "What are they doing out there? You know, what are they doing in the cities? What are they doing wherever it was?" And it was hard to get accurate, what was true and what was accurate. You know, they're not necessarily the same thing, true and accurate. So we were kind of shielded from it because it didn't happen in our own front yard or on our streets. We'd see it in the news and people would shake their heads and couldn't understand much of it. And or make heads or tails of who's telling the truth. There were several views out there. Now, the civil rights movement, everybody said it was about time that, you know, stop the segregation and that. I remember everybody talking about that and they were glad to see that coming. But then the movement, the policies that changed or the laws that changed were good, but the movement itself was destructive. People were hurting themselves by doing those things. I lived in South Africa in the late 80s and early 90s at the same time that they went through their democracy change. And so I got to draw the parallels and, of course, there were older folks there that I worked for that would, that from America, that would say, "Yeah, this is the same thing that's going on, you know, here and going on there back in the 60s and 70s." And it was the same problem. There were people there, you know, that were fighting for true democracy, but then there were some there just fighting to cause problems and they were power hungry and they wanted fame and they wanted something when it was over. They weren't in it for the, not all of them were in it for the democracy. They were in it for own personal gain. And I think that's true in our world and just about everywhere.
JD: Do you remember anything about, you're a little young for Kennedy, but you remember anything about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s or Robert Kennedy's assassinations?
TD: No, I remember when it, you know, I remember people talking. Yeah, Kennedy, I was a year old when he was assassinated. I know people talked about him, even, you know, years old, too bad, Kennedy got assassinated, you know, because he would have made a good, and that would, he would have made a good president or he did make a good president. That was even in the conservative field. If Kennedy was alive today, I think he would be a Republican because his views, you know, he would tell people to hold themselves up and get themselves going. But he was a champion for the civil rights. And I remember people who were staunch conservatives singing his praises because he was, he was one president that was, as I understand it, and as history pointed out, he was fighting for those rights and trying to get all men created equal, but he was also telling people to help themselves and stop hurting themselves. I don't remember Bobby getting shot. I do remember people talking about it, and you know, what a tragedy. They had empathy for the Kennedys. They, the poor parents lost two kids. I mean, that was terrible.
JD: What was the Cold War like in Casper?
TD: It was, I think the same as everywhere because it was cold and there wasn't any flare-ups. So I think everybody had the same experience with that. You know, Russians this and Russians that. And I remember going over the hydrogen bomb in science class and how many people was going to kill. One teacher told us that if they nuked Denver that it would wipe out Casper, which wasn't true. I mean, a thermonuclear bomb is pretty big, but it's not that big. And of course, everybody's town was a target. Ours was a target because we had three refineries. It was a crossroads, blah, blah, blah. Well, you lived in fear the entire time. Running fear is popular with teachers. I know I was a teacher too, but it creates discussion in the class and you like to get that going. And there was a lot of that that was passed on, but some of it was true. I mean, all it took was somebody to do something stupid and we'd be at war. Of course, nobody wants that because once that button is pushed, everybody's dead. So what's the point? I don't know. The Cold War. And people were dying. I remember that. There would be these little flare-ups like in Panama or in, well, in Yuba. I don't remember that battle, but it was one of them. And little ones in Africa that you would hear about. And it was a result of the Cold War. So people were dying, but there was no battle to fight. And then, of course, who knows where everybody was dying at. You didn't hear about them because it was all covert.
JD: Did you have to do duck and cover drills in school?
TD: Yes, we did. In grade school, we did.
JD: What was watching the space race like?
TD: Oh, that was cool. That was fun. We got to watch TV in our classroom, I think, twice or three times if a launch or a landing took place during school hours. Plus, there was only one TV in the whole school. So your teacher had to be the one to go down and request it and make sure she reserved it for that. But I remember watching Apollo 13 come. You know, that was the one that almost died. They had some problems, but they made it back to Earth. We got to watch them enter the atmosphere and the parachutes open. We did watch, we watched most of them at home because it happened at that time. And I don't think the school had a TV, so during Apollo 11 or anything, there just wasn't a TV available. But we were always cheering them on. I remember we'd play in the playground pretending we were Buzz Aldrin or Neil Armstrong or whatever.
JD: Did you get to watch Apollo 11 live?
TD: I don't remember. I think so. I remember watching them on TV. I can't tell you if it was 11 or 12 or 13 or whatever. I think so. And of course, I had to go to bed at a certain time.
JD: Sid you go to a lot of rodeos as a kid? And what were those like?
TD: Yeah, well there was the Central Wyoming Ferron Rodeo which was in Casper, and it always took place a week before Cheyenne Frontier Days. And Cheyenne Frontier Days was in the top three rodeos in the world. So the Central Wyoming to Casper Rodeo has always played a week before Cheyenne. That way we could attract all the big cowboys. And the Chamber of Commerce or somebody came up with money for big rodeo purses to attract the big rodeo stars. And of course, it's Wyoming, and rodeo was a big thing there. So we would get the big old stars and we would get big headliners, you know, like Tonya Tucker. I remember seeing Doug Kershaw. He was a fiddle player, but I didn't watch those. But the rodeo was there and a big deal. And we got to see some of those famous ones. I can't remember their names, but you cheered them when they pulled out their cow or their horse. And then it influenced me enough. I did rodeo when I was in high school. I did it for the girls. Didn't pan out very well, but I wanted to be a cowboy. Went to them and in high school you could do high school rodeo. And the national finals high school rodeo was in Douglas, which was 50 miles away. And the college national finals was in Casper too. I mean, so yeah, we got to go see a lot of rodeo and those people are very patriotic. And talking about people who love their neighbor, it's those country folk, those rodeo hand, I mean, I saw him literally give the shirt off their back to somebody. So that was my heroes
JD: How did technology change? Like did TV get a lot better? Household appliances, stuff like that?
TD: I remember buying a 19, I was in seventh grade. I mean, 74, 75, my dad going down buying a microwave for mom for Christmas. I remember getting a color TV about that same time. In high school, I remember going and looking at the first computer I ever saw. It was in the office. They did attendance on it. I remember, early technology is one of those things that goes on an exponential curve. You know, it's not linear, it doesn't have a slope. It, the faster it goes, the faster it gets. So it's logarithmic. And I remember that growing up. Our first phone line was a party line, which means you pick the phone up and listen to other people talking. But then, you know, that went away. So, oh, hey, we get, you know, we can dial our own number. And cable TV came sometime in the early seventies to, we couldn't afford it, but some friends who had it. And then, of course, here we are now talking over a computer. And some little things waving at me. I don't even know what's going on. So, you know, artificial intelligence is now on the news. I mean, where's it going to stop? I have no idea. I don't, I got to say something about it. I'm not a fan of it. I liked it back in the 60s and 70s when your car ran on a carburetor and when it broke down, you knew why. You might have had to walk someplace to get somebody to give you a ride home. So you could go get your dad to tow you home, but it was much simpler. And it wouldn't sit on their butt as much staring at a screen. Well, we didn't, we didn't do that at all. We were outside.
JD: Do you remember any sort of fashion trends at the time that were kind of just like weird or different now? Anything influential to you?
TD: Oh yeah. Bell bottoms. I remember my mom would go repair my jeans, you know, that tore on the legs and just sewed them up with American flag, kind of red, white and blue patches. And then she flared the bottom with the same red, white and blue. And I was in tall cotton then with that pair of jeans. Yes sir. Ah, yeah, it's cool. And then of course the stupid look, you look at it back at them and I'm looking at a picture right now of me and those, some bell bottoms. I'm about 12. I'm holding a string or a fish and I got bell bottoms on and it looks just terrible. Long hair. Now most of the people where I grew up had short hair. If we saw a long haired person, we were like, hey, look. So that's where we lived. I think I'll wrap it up with this one.
JD: Do you remember any particular like toys or gadgets that you played with that were popular for kids at the time?
TD: Well, I remember some. We played with the football most of the time in the park, but I remember Kenny. Kenny was, they were a little richer than the rest of us. He got the evil Knievel and you could crank it up and jump. It was a little evil Knievel that you'd put on a little motorcycle and then you'd put it in this gizmo and crank it up and then release the brake and he goes zooming off. I remember that one. That was about 1969. GI Joe is what we played with a lot. We'd take them down the creek and throw them in, you know, hit them with a bat. We didn't have a lot of toys. Kenny did, but most of my friends didn't because we just didn't have the money for it. There's more money here now than there used to be. People are overall wealthier. They can afford more luxuries. So, you know, we got to eat and we had a football. I think all three of us had a football, the same one and that's what we did.
- Title:
- Interview with Ty DeVault
- Date Created:
- 2024-09-04
- Description:
- This interview covered many different aspects of the 1960s. These include, but aren’t limited to, culture, politics, and major events.
- Subjects:
- civil rights rodeo culture religion vietnam
- Location:
- Moscow, ID
- Latitude:
- 46.72821545
- Longitude:
- -117.0124598
- Type:
- text
- Format:
- record
- Preferred Citation:
- "Interview with Ty DeVault", The Long 1960s - 2024 Fall, Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL)
- Reference Link:
- /thelong1960s/items/devault.html
- Rights:
- In copyright, educational use permitted. Educational use includes non-commercial reproduction of text and images in materials for teaching and research purposes. For other contexts beyond fair use, including digital reproduction, please contact the University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives Department at libspec@uidaho.edu. The University of Idaho Library is not liable for any violations of the law by users.
- Standardized Rights:
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/