Thursday, June 5, 2014

Small Town Goings On

Summer is timidly making it's way into SW Montana, the highest temp we've had so far is around 75, at 8am it's currently 37f. My lilac out back is getting ready to bloom, the 15ft high bush has a distinct purple tinge among it's leaves.

My next door neighbor is selling her house, when I first moved into my place here her mother was still there, a wonderful woman, she couldn't remember then if she was 93 or 94, every day she went out for a stroll, walking stick under her arm, right down the middle of the street. We used to sit on our respective porches talking, she'd lived her whole life in the house, her father had built it around 1905, except for 10 years in the '30's when she and her husband moved to San Francisco and owned a bar, the fabled Gold Rush, during the depression era years. She passed on in 2007 while I was in Germany.

My buddy, the cook down the street (AKA Dr. Death, the chair of the chem department), is heading to Oregon this week to see his daughter graduate with honors from OSU, then help her move to Berkeley where she has a research spot in their graduate school.

Some headlines this week in our local paper:

Mauled hunter stable in Seattle hospital; Bear shot dead in SW Montana

A father and son were hunting black bear in Centennial Valley, south of here when a grizzly attacked the son, he's recovering in Seattle. 

 

Police blotter: Drunk wants to beat up bad influences, woman bilked of hot wings, duct tape

I ask you, when was the last time you saw the term 'bilked'? And what kind of low-life would bilk someone out their hot wings and especially duct tape, a item of daily necessity? 

 

And an old photo from the town's early days

 Life moves on apace here, albeit slower than most places. We're just careful when out in the woods, and guard our hot wings and duct tape.

 

 

18 comments:

  1. Enjoyed the items of interest. Hot wings, no thanks, but I have a couple of rolls of duct tape on the shelf.

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    1. Your equivalent would be currywurst I guess. I don't remember seeing many cars held together with duct tape when I lived over there.

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    2. Currywurst, probably. It's mostly Americans that use the duct tape here.

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  2. We still have a couple of hitching posts in town, though the horses don't come past the village line any more. Real concrete posts with a ring. Sadly, the very old timers are slipping away, not much noticed by the young generation. Enjoy your summer.

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  3. As you know from emails, I have a variety of uses for duct tape. My motto is "A girl's best friend is a roll of duct tape. That, and a .44."

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  4. Sad to say, our town of 2,500 seems much more boring that yours. We haven't had a grizzly mauling for several centuries. I would have gone with the headline, " big bear tries to protect little bear" though....:)

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    1. It's still unclear what exactly happened out there, but the guy is going to be undergoing surgeries for some time, he was pretty tore up.

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  5. I like Butte--I've only been there once but having spent many years researching the Comstock Lode, I learned many of those I was interested in heading to Butte when the good ore began to fail. Nice post! Thanks for visiting my blog.

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  6. Butte! I thought you were in Missoula.

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    1. Nah. Mizzoula as we say is 'close enuf to montana to visit'. I came through here with my wife Cary in '71, liked it, asked her what she thought. "You're kidding. You ARE kidding! No!!!"
      Sigh....

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  7. Duct tape and WD40 - modern maintenance essentials. You could keep the wings, hate them being a border-line vegetarian and don't like identifiable body parts on my plates :(
    Have a great summer yerself, sir.
    XO
    WWW

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    1. I've been thinking about doing a post of weird foods I've had over the years, you might want to skip that one.
      You have a good summer too.

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  8. Your summer temperatures sound nice right now. I live in South Carolina. Last night at 10pm it was still 90F and humid. We're having a heat wave right now, so that's kind of high even for us, but even average summer temperatures aren't much fun.

    One good thing, though, is living an easy 60-90 minute drive from the coast. Today would be a great day to go to the beach. :)

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    1. Sounds horrid, the heat I mean. Even on those rare days where it gets to 90 (1 or 2 days each summer) it cools off 30 or more degrees at night. We're in the middle of the Rockies, elevation around 6,000ft.
      The downside is winter.......

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  9. Not only are your posts very well written, you are also very darn funny.
    With duct tape, bailing wire, coat hangers and a hot glue gun and a few tools, just about anything can be repaired. I would hate to be bilked out of any of those items.

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