When Wyoming’s Governor Ruled Cloud 9, Cheyenne's One-Of-A-Kind Airport Bar

His name was Edgar Herschler, but they called him Gov. Ed.

He’s Wyoming’s first and only three-term governor, serving from 1975 to 1987, and he’s credited for deftly managing the muscle pains of a major economic growth spurt.

But ask around about Herschler, and his policies are not usually first to mind.

“Gov. Ed liked to drink,” said Buck McVeigh, a longtime Wyoming politico who got his start with Herschler and went on to become the state's chief economist.

You could have found Gov. Ed at a “three-martini lunch” down at the Hitching Post Inn or sipping whiskey at any number of haunts across the state.

But his go-to watering hole was always the Cloud 9, a restaurant bar inside the terminal of the old Cheyenne Regional Airport a few blocks north of the Capitol, whose rare parabolic architecture earned it the nickname “Jetsons Memorial Airport.”

Everyone interviewed for this story said they consider Herschler one of Wyoming's best governors. Voters agreed, as he was elected an unprecedented three times.

Herschler also was a legend outside the Capitol, spending so much time at Cloud 9 that management hung a plaque above his favorite seat — Gov. Ed’s Booth.

“I’ll never forget one night at Cloud 9,” said McVeigh. "I’m there with my brother, and we look over and there’s Gov. Ed at his table. Here’s the man in his suit with his head down on his hands.

“The interesting thing was, he was passed out. He pushed it with the drinking”

Because it was Herschler’s favorite spot, legislators and other officials came too, and the place became a sort of off-duty-cop type of bar for Cheyenne’s political set.

As for the actual cops, they had a special duty at Cloud 9.

“The bartender had the Capitol Police number to call for Gov. Ed,” said McVeigh, explaining what happened when Herschler conked out.

“Lo and behold, they came in and got under each of his arms and escorted him out the back door,” he said.

A Whisky Man

Herschler was a whisky man, and his brand was Cabin Still. They teased him by calling it “Stab and Kill,” an example of loose humor that made the place feel like a corner bar.

It was a neighborhood bar improbably perched next to an airstrip, smack among travelers — yet trafficked by locals, said Mike Moser, former owner.

It was a place that served food from scratch and drinks stiff enough to make a Scotsman blink. It was light-filled and smoke-filled at once. It was both blue collar and elite. 

It was a spot where a state Supreme Court justice could share a bar rail with a worker in Carhartt, and neither would bother to note the difference.

“You’d have a Supreme Court justice sitting at the bar next to a blue-collar guy, and nobody cared. Nobody had to be anybody, because it wasn’t a class-conscious place,” said Moser, who ran the bar from 1985 to 2000.

“The unspoken rule was that politicians checked their attitude at the door. It didn’t matter if you were a Democrat or Republican or what persuasion you were. That was the agreement — at Cloud 9, everybody got along,” he said, not quite accurately.

Moser must have had off the night McVeigh almost came to blows with a state legislator.

‘Talking Crap About State Employees’

It was a slow night. Dusk over the tarmac. McVeigh nursed a scotch and soda at one end of the bar. A legislator nursed a personal grievance at the other. 

“This guy was talking crap about state employees,” said McVeigh, at the time a state economist in the executive branch, reason enough to snap back. 

“So I said to him, ‘The real problem is bullshit legislators.' Then we started exchanging words. We were about to go outside, but the bartender broke us up,” he said.

It wasn’t the only Cloud 9 dust up.

The bar’s rec-league softball team, Cloud 9 Bombers, saw some trouble during a Cheyenne charity game against former Denver Broncos football players.

It started when the umpire made an outrageous call. 

Coach Gov. Ed didn’t like outrageous calls, so he kicked dirt at the ump. 

The Broncos didn’t like seeing umpires disrespected, so they scooped Ed up like a kettlebell and hauled him off.

The scuffle was staged, of course, and the crowd loved it — though it’s not hard to imagine how a squad like Cloud 9 Bombers, sponsored by both Cheyenne Beverage as well as their eponymous pub, might get a little rowdy.

“We were kept in good hands,” said McVeigh. "We’d have beer at the field, and when the game was over, it was on to Cloud 9."

Guns Around The Governor

Moser described it as a place where “the average Joe could talk to legislators, or the average Joe could see the governor, just by being at the bar."

The average sportsman could meet the governor, too, while packing a Remington rifle no less.

Wyoming political columnist Rod Miller met Herschler at Cloud 9 for a job interview for a role in the Office of the Governor.

Though, the governor that day was keener to interview a group of out-of-town hunters who’d just got off an airplane.

“Herschler called these guys over to the table and said, ‘Hey, where are you boys going hunting? What are you using?’” Miller said.

“They opened their cases and showed him their hunting rifles. Absolutely no security in sight,” he added. "I’m sitting there doing this interview, thinking, 'What the hell are these guys with guns doing around the governor?' But he just didn’t care.”

Miller was stunned, and he wasn’t the only one, said Moser.

“Travelers would be sitting at the bar, and they’d ask this gentleman what he did for a living,” said Moser. "Then they’d think he was drunk or slightly mentally lost when he told them he was the governor, because he had no bodyguards and he was simply having a drink with friends."

No Recipes, Eye-popping Pours

Louie Kutsulis, an Old-World-Greek-style chef who helmed the restaurant, refused to abide by recipes.

“It was amazing to watch. He never followed any kind of recipe. He’d just throw handfuls of stuff in, and it would come out incredible," Moser said, speaking of Kutsulis’ scratch soups, and reportedly the best prime rib in town.

You wonder, however, if the food might have tasted a little ashy on occasion; there was no such thing as a “no smoking” section in either the bar or connecting restaurant.

The place was heavy with secondhand smoke, and a good deal of it came from a single man. 

“Gov. Ed smoked three packs a day, and these were unfiltered cigarettes,” said Phil Noble, campaign manager for former Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal.

“In his small working office, (Herschler) had a large ashtray that his main secretary, Bonnie Griffith, used to have to empty about five times a day,” he said.

Noble himself preferred cigars, and by Moser’s account you’d have found him at a Cloud 9 corner table obscured by a thick ring of his own stogie smoke, like a mountain top wrapped in fog.

Like Kutsulis, bartender Rich Magor also had a magic touch — which is to say the guy’s pours were heavy.

“I’d order a scotch and soda and pour the scotch in until it was almost full, and at the last second he’d give the soda gun a tiny little click,” said McVeigh. “I’d tell him, 'Jesus, Rich!' And he’d say, 'What? Too much soda?'”

It casts Herschler’s blackout in a new light. It also makes you wonder what goes through a bartender’s head when it comes time to cut off a governor.

'Superpower'

Noble said that Herschler’s ability to put gripes aside and connect with people over a drink was part of his success as a politician. 

"It was a superpower in a way, because everybody loved him. He had an approval rating that was through the roof. He was our only three-term governor,” he said, adding that his time in office was mostly moderate. “It was mostly during his last four years that he drank more.”

Miller believes Herschler was impactful as governor because he understood the Legislature, and more importantly, he understood the legislators.

“He got things done because he understood who he worked with. He didn’t throw tantrums or threaten people. He was always thinking four moves ahead,” said Miller, who wonders if the governor's reputation for vice may be exaggerated.  

“Maybe he had a hollow leg, because I never saw him unsteady,” he said. "Never heard him slur or lose any part of his composure.”

Not The Hitch

Cloud 9 is often compared to the Hitching Post Inn, another longtime redoubt of Wyoming’s governing set. 

The Hitch, as they called it, was a place where accidental intimacies between legislators — like late-night pajama encounters — fostered a culture of civility, compromise, and ultimately stronger public policy, former lawmakers said.

Cloud 9 also fostered relationships, according to Paul Ulrich, vice president of Jonah Energy, who got a start in government working on Gov. Jim Geringer’s reelection campaign.

“For those of us that were learning our way around the Legislature and state government — and honestly, just how to carry ourselves in the state of Wyoming — we learned a tremendous amount from the people there,” he said. "And it helped us build relationships on trust."

‘Who Should Walk In The Door?’

Relationships are everything in the world of government, especially in a small capital city like Cheyenne, where it’s hard to avoid people even when you try, as McVeigh discovered the night he almost boxed a state legislator. 

“After the bartender broke it up, my brother and I said to hell with it, and we left and went to a restaurant called Little Bear,” he said. “Right when I got my steak, who should walk in the door? 

“It was the same guy 
we had words with at the bar.”
 


Nothing escalated that night at Little Bear, and in time those two patched things up — over drinks at Cloud 9.

‘Enjoy This While You Can’

Different from The Hitch, Cloud 9 had less agenda. 

Conversations were freer, and so were top buttons. Politicians didn’t have to act like politicians, and that’s why they loved it.

“It was a place where you got to know the people rather than the politicians,” said Moser, wistfully. "You didn’t go there to visit with legislators or with the governor as much as you went to visit with that really nice guy with great stories who happened to be the governor.

“You wish that somebody would have come back in time — in 1985, 1990, 1995 — and said, ‘Enjoy this while you can, because it’s as good as it’s gonna get.’ It was a really collegial time.”

Former Gov. Dave Freudenthal, speaking on Wyoming PBS, said it this way: “With Herschler, there was a kind of (attitude of), 'I don’t agree with you, but we can fight about it, and then we’ll go have a drink.' Now, it’s (an attitude of), 'We’re just going to fight about it, and I don’t like you … and we’re not going to have a drink.'”

There’s a willful half-blindness in Moser’s golden age thinking, however, like driving tipsy with one eye closed, a common practice among folk who enjoyed this golden age a little too much.

Better Left In The Past

The night Herschler dozed off in his booth at Cloud 9, and after Capitol police taxied him home, Rich Magor came up from the parking lot with an unforgettable look on his face, according to McVeigh.

“He said, 'Buck, you gotta come with me outside. I need to show you something,'” said McVeigh.

It was Gov. Ed’s car, an Oldsmobile with a license plate “S 1,” which indicated he was state employee No. 1. He drove himself everywhere in that black sedan, and that day it appeared he’d driven himself to Cloud 9 after a multi-martini lunch.

“There was the infamous ‘S 1,’ parked in a yellow zone in front of the airport,” said McVeigh. “The right front tire was up on the sidewalk."

Some golden age behaviors, perhaps, are best left in the past.

Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.