Lucille Patrick

Lucille Patrick
born April 23, 1924

Lucille Patrick wrote the book about Cody's early days. Literally.

"The Best Little Town by a Dam Site" looks at Cody's first 20 years, while her "Caroline Lockhart: Liberated Lady" examines another female writer whose roman a clef chronicled some of the town's most colorful early characters.

Patrick grew up on the Diamond Bar Ranch before later moving to the Belnap Ranch, both located along the South Fork of the Shoshone River.

A self-described tomboy growing up, Patrick still wears a colorful beaded vest that once belonged to her father, James Calvin Nichols, who in his youth worked as a professional wrestler as the "Candy Kid."

If Patrick seems a bit like one of the local characters she has written about, she's quick to point out that Cody today is a crowded city full of bland newcomers compared to its days as a haven for rough-hewn pioneers.

"Cody was a small town and it acted like one. Now it's gotten too big for its britches," she said.

"It used to be a place where you could walk down the street and meet 50 people and they all knew you, and they were of every ilk," Patrick said.

"Everybody knew everybody, and we used to have so many old guys not too long ago, who would come up to me on the street and embarrass my friends — rough looking old guys, and I would know them. They were great guys," she said

"It was a great town, but it has lost something in its growing up," Patrick said.

"My mother used to get upset with me because I knew the old-timers and drunks, and they were all my friends," she said.

Patrick said her mother made attempts to reform her tomboy ways, "but it didn't work."

"I took my mother riding one day. We had been insisting she go for a horseback ride," which her mother did not want to do, Patrick said.

"I got into a slough where it was kind of boggy, and the horse started going down. My dad was yelling at me, trying to tell me what to do, but my mother was hysterical," she said.

"The horse threw me off in the mud, which was kind of fun, but my mother never went on another horseback ride. She said it was just too dangerous," Patrick said.

Patrick learned about art and knitting, and her mother influenced her in other ways, she said.

While she enjoyed horses, the best way to get around was in her blue Pontiac convertible, Patrick said. Before that, there was her friend's Model T Ford, which was nicknamed "Shasta."

"Because she has to add oil, she has to add water, she has to push it up a hill," she said, adding that the only way the car would make it up the switchbacks in Sunlight Basin was in the lowest gear — reverse.

When asked her advice for newcomers to Cody, Patrick is quick with a one-liner: "Go back home!"

"But seriously, I think you have to become part of the town," she said. "If you think you're hot stuff or too good for everyone, you may as well go back home. That ain't the way Cody is, and it never was."