The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
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Old habits die hard. The nights are getting chillier, now, and even though I haven't hunted in over twenty years, I still find myself thinking about the coming hunting season. This came from my father, as hunting was his main, if not his only, passion. The season opens near the middle of October, but beginning the first part of September he would start worrying about having tracking snow on opening day. In the 1950's until the 80's, elk were both scarce and wild. Many good hun...
Well it is Monday morning and it looks to be a beautiful day! I have a fishing expedition to get to with my good friend Jason. But first I have to write this column! Some days it is hard to decide what to “Muse” about. But today it isn’t; I want to share some highlights from the Vacation Bible School we had last week here in Lincoln. There were eight young people who showed up, and two of them were teenagers who also helped us out quite a bit with the kids. Plus there were at least six adults who helped during the week every...
During the loose hay years, we kids would get a respite of four days, and that was the tri-county fair in Deer Lodge. It was the high point of our summer. We were in 4-H, so we always had a project, and the custom was to take it to the fair to be judged. Our father ran a farm flock of about 100 ewes, so it was usual to have a lamb which we had tamed and fattened and groomed. Some took cattle and others took horses, but we stuck with sheep. The fair always occurred about the...
Chris was a "pensioner," as they called retired people back in the 1950's. He lived in a little cabin at our place, and died when I was eight or ten years old. I spent a lot of time with Chris, sitting at his creaky table while he sat in his easy chair. He had taken a liking to me, or maybe he was just lonesome, as he lived a solitary life. When his pension check arrived he would walk the half mile to Helmville, always in a well ironed, immaculate suit, and go to one of the...
The old Helmville school house was an imposing structure. It was two stories high, with a bell tower, and sat on the highest point in town. It was probably built in the late 1800's, and still serves as the county shop, having been moved in the last part of the 1950's, when the new one was built in its place. It had two classrooms – an upstairs and a downstairs. When I started school in 1953, only the lower room was used. World War Two had caused a drop in the birth rate, a...
I am sitting here watching the sun come up. It is a beautiful morning. The snow is gone, grass is green, bluebirds are around, and early summer has arrived in the mountains. I often do not take the time to enjoy this part of the day during early summer as I am busy preparing for or having a Vacation Bible School or camp. The stress and pressure of summer ministry is real and challenging. I know that over the years I have got better at trusting God with these efforts. Because t...
If this Universe has a Creator, she must have been having a good day when she created birds. They are colorful and dull, helpful and ruinous. They eat bird seed, harmful insects, even our garbage. They will also ruin your clean car and carry off your cat at night. They nest in trees, on the ground and even underground. Yes, even underground. A friend called a couple of years ago excited that a pair of burrowing owls had taken up residence in an abandoned gopher hole on her...
When I was in Brazil this last time I was reminded of what our mothers, grandmothers, and those before them must have gone through before running water and electricity. I don't know how they did it. Their work load was immense and never lessened. The men had somewhat regular hours – either because of darkness or a need to rest the horses. The women worked from the time their feet hit the floor in the morning until they got the last child to sleep at night. Many of them s...
During the loose hay era it was this time of year that most ranches got their haying equipment ready for the summer's work. In those days the machinery, except for the tractors, were home fabricated or built by the town mechanic. There was a lot of equipment: usually two buckrakes, two side delivery rakes, a winch, and two mowers, plus the beaverslide stacker itself. Most of the machinery was in a marginal state, having been patched together for years. But it worked. My...
Last Saturday morning we were blessed to be able to sit around our kitchen table and talk with some dear friends from Tennessee who have come to assist us with Bible camp. We first met Doyle and Susan in the winter of 1994-95 when we started attending First Baptist Church in Benton. They became dear friends along with several other families. We spent seven wonderful years in that church family learning and growing together in our faith and friendships. But we moved to Montana...
The trip from Sao Paulo to Orlando, Fla. was the ultimate misery. My feet were swollen and wept and burned the entire ten hours of the trip. Every seat on the plane had a TV screen where the passengers could watch a small icon of the plane as it traveled over the entirety of Brazil and the Caribbean. The icon didn't seem to move and I avoided looking at because I didn't need any more frustration. But a lady in front of me watched it constantly. Every time I came out of my...
For most of my life I've considered myself to be a misanthrope, harboring a soft contempt for my fellow humans. I think that philosophy was a contrivance to protect my own fragile and shallow ego. The events of these last two months proved me wrong in my sour opinion of the human race. I lived in Brazil for the last two-and-a-half years, and about a month ago became quite ill with pneumonia and a few other things. To complicate the situation, I found that a fellow I trusted...
Today is my sweetheart’s birthday. He was born exactly three weeks before me, which puts us both under the astrological sign of Gemini – a personality pairing that astrology assures me is either brilliant, or disastrous. Whether or not you set any store by astrology, it’s still fun to read the occasional horoscope or breakdown of your astrological sign. Because each sign encompasses a number of personality traits, one can usually find some example in their own nature to back up the astrological data. Some of us, howev...
When I arrived at church this past Sunday, there were some there whose faith and emotions had been terribly upended. They had found out about the couple who had lived in Lincoln that had many struggles which resulted in their lives being shortened by death this past weekend. I did not know this couple but my heart goes out to them and their families. I have had similar pain in my life and family. We were all very sad to hear of this, and prayed for the children, family and...
You don't have to be an ancient mariner to see we have plenty of water around us. People are filling sandbags, checking flood insurance policies or waiting for fields to dry up so they can plant. From a recreation point of view, too much water makes it difficult, impossible or downright dangerous to boat or float or fish. That leads to a lot of grumbling about something we have no control over. Life underwater is exciting, too, but sometimes in a good way and for different...
Authors' Note: This piece is excerpted from a report Clyde Fickes wrote in May 1944. It appeared in "Volume 1 – Early Days In The Forest Service." His words are excerpted with light editing. Fickes retired from the U.S. Forest Service in 1947. He died at age 103 on Dec. 29, 1987 – from an accident on the dance floor. For a Ranger Station, no more isolated or lonesome spot could have been found. Visitors were practically unheard of for months at a time. The nearest nei...
Investing money for retirement is a good and noble goal. After all, who does not want to have a bit of a nest egg to retire on? Social security is ok; it will help you some. But it was not intended to be the main source of one’s retirement fund. For many of us living in rural Montana, there is not the “old-school” safe and secure retirement program that people who worked in industrial areas have often had. Of course even the pension funds that were thought to be secure and s...
At a recent book signing, a gentleman who knew quite a bit about the Judith Basin country explained how Utica, a small town in the basin on the road into the Little Belt Mountains, received its name. He mentioned that one of the early arrivals onto that landscape thought folks would have to be crazy to live there. (We can't figure out why, as it's a beautiful piece of geography, but perhaps he showed up in the winter when strong winds were blowing and piling up drifts of...
As we move through the month of May there are many things worth celebrating. If you are being inundated with water right now, you will be celebrating the lowering of the run-off, and assistance from neighbors and friends. Speaking of which, please do not hesitate to call me if I and the folks who make up Community Bible can be of any help to you. Being new to the community I do not know many of you yet, but hope to. If. Like me, you are a motorcyclist, you celebrate warmer...
Call it 670 miles – or perhaps more precisely 674 miles – but either way, the Yellowstone River remains the nation's longest undammed waterway. It's a great river that meanders through some of the finest mountain and prairie topography on the planet – peaks reaching past 12,000 feet in elevation, the largest high-mountain lake on the continent, dense evergreen forests, buttes, colorful badlands, deep canyons, and sweet-smelling sage and juniper covered hills. A good porti...
My last “Musing” was titled “A New Beginning” and in it I shared some thoughts on being in community, and also on a new chapter in life as pastor of the Community Bible Church of Lincoln. I am very excited about that! But then again we are all excited about new things, new relationships, and the newness that springtime brings to our lives. But with new things there is change, and we often do not like change. Change causes us some feeling of discomfort doesn’t it? But to gr...
Authors' Note: This piece is excerpted from a report Clyde Fickes wrote in May 1944. It appeared in "Volume 1 – Early Days In The Forest Service." His words are excerpted with light editing. Fickes retired from the U.S. Forest Service in 1947. He died at age 103 on Dec. 29, 1987 – from an accident on the dance floor. The Sun River country comprises some interesting and spectacular topography. The river comes out of the mountains in a due east and west course for some 8 or 9 m...
The calendar says that spring has come to Montana, but it does not seem like it has come to the high country. I must say that I was spoiled last week as Lisa and I travelled to Cannon Beach, Ore. to attend our mission’s annual conference. We enjoyed a few 60 degree days, a fair amount of wind and rain, and the greenery of western Oregon. It was a nice time away except for the driving, but well worth it. Spring brings renewal to the land and the people, and so does attending a conference with over 140 like-minded m...
It's like this. I'm now bankrupt in one country and stone broke in another. That takes some work. I've written about Beré. She works in the restaurant on the weekends and occasionally other holidays. When I first arrived here, I took note of the horrendous tasks she faced, almost always alone. When she arrived on Saturday mornings, she walked into a four-foot-high stack of dirty sauce pans which had to be cleaned with cold water and steel wool. After two or three hours of...
Looking back, it’s surprising to realize how hazardous our ranch childhoods were. We had scores of attractive dangers to lure us into difficult situations. We had horses, defensive cows with new calves, our pond, plus myriad things our urban friends didn’t. We were unsupervised most of the time, our fathers being at work and our mothers tending other children in those days of large families. Most of us were driving, or at least steering, tractors by the time we were seven or...
