Born in St Louis, grown from the milk bottle in Nitro, West Virginia, finding Sunday School in Lyons, Kansas, and finally the world in Orange County California. Aeropace brought my father out of the mines and into the boom of the 60's in that former great State of California.
I was the last one out alive, leaving in the early nineties with my wife for Idaho and a better life. We worked like hell to get out and worked like hell to stay but it was not to be. We moved to Wyoming and a small shop outside of Big Horn Wyoming. There I met another mentor, the late great John Camprose, owner of Powder River Engine Works. Wyoming busted us pretty good, and we moved after another 3 years with our baby to a farm outside of Chinook Montana. "Don't wanna work on Maggies farm no more," was my theme song for the skin flint and rich cheat who rented us the house. Another 3 years and we moved to a tiny mining village in the mountains.
I knew a lot about the West now, maybe more than even those grown in it, because I'd seen so many different sections and 'eras' of development.
In every place you had to prove you were not a yuppie there to end the Cougar hunt. After the first place, I stopped trying. I'd known too many fine men and women to give a shi- what some hidey holes thought of me in their fear and warding.
I wasn't like 'anyone' anyway. I told stories and looked all kinds in the eye, and only the good saw me for who I was, the rest taking a little more time.
If you spend your time worrying about the barriors, you aren't moving fast enough.
This was the smallest of the lot, though, tiny tiny ------------ Montana, pop swinging between about 30 and several hundred depending upon the season and holiday. And the yuppie thing started over again.
We got Ray in the little general store, about one of the nicest fellows you could meet. The post office in the size of a large Bozeman home's closet, and is open half time. Its built onto the side of the store like a small backpack on a large hiker. There's the Bar, and the shootings have stopped, though there's a fight outside every once in awhile, doesn't amount to much. The ndns sleep drunk under the tables of the nearby campsites when the weather is good, and sometimes when it is not. A certain tree on the road leading out of town has been struck so many times by drunken drivers that a permanent patch is missing from the bark and the tree leans a little. Massive tree, though, it's going to take a Semi to bring 'er down. Twenty years ago when a drunk left their vehicle in the ditch the locals would tow it away and tear it apart- punishment for disgracing the town and running for sanctuary back to the Res. AIM is no longer as big as it was in the 70's, when so many died at Wounded Knee, and so many tourists were needlessly abused and harrassed by those disenfranchised on the Res who were being 'free'. They were 'free' enough to blow up a helicopter on the emergency pad right outside of town, a drunken drug epic story long since turned into local legend.
We have a hotel that looks dumpy on the outside but is meticulously clean on the inside, and any of you wishing to visit would get reasonable rates and fine accomodations.
There are cabins to rent, and cabins where people still live without plumbing. Cougars walk around town sometime in the small hours when we are asleep. A local graveyard has the souls of small children and old miners, soldiers and ranchers wives who gave their all and died anyway. Some of the children were a day or month old and perished of the things that used to take manyh of us before modern medicine beat it off a couple generations. Some of the bodies are more than a hundred years buried, and many have long since lost their marking stones and are lost to the large trees growing over them.
Fourth of July is big, and dangerous here. Thousands of dollars of fireworks, many lit by intoxicated celebrants go every which way. The mining offices are long closed and sold, but if you stand in the street at this time the sound from the fireworks sound exactly like bullets whistling overhead and it is very hard not to jump.
There remains a certain amount of blind ignorance here, hatred and the needy mentality, the attrition thinking so common a generation or so ago during the Great Depression. Bigotry, certainly, as some still cling to old hatreds and call the local Gros Ventres and Assiniboine "Prarrie Niggers".
And in truth, those that choose to stay on the Res are not in the best shape, drinking, drugs, child molestation, murder, hatred and woman beating very common. The ones who want a life leave and never come back, afraid like crabs in a bucket, the others will pull them blindly back down to death and rot.
It snowed for three days, and my drive was getting bad- about a foot of snow. -------- came by in his green John Deere tractor and plowed it for us without asking. Such kindness is stilll everywhere in the West.
My wife is steadily painting the interior of our home to leave her someday. Her work is uncertain here, and for reasons I'll not explain is not assured, and some day she wants to leave for a town of say, 10,000, where our children could play football and join a theatre arts group. I and the kids do not wish to leave, but one must follow the money as surely as one follows the bread which feeds us.
The sun is shining today. The snow glistening. The cliffs overhead towering in beauty and splendor. Who would want to leave?
If I'd published a book I might have managed to keep the house, but fame isn't here and neither is it's dollar.
more later,
munk
I was the last one out alive, leaving in the early nineties with my wife for Idaho and a better life. We worked like hell to get out and worked like hell to stay but it was not to be. We moved to Wyoming and a small shop outside of Big Horn Wyoming. There I met another mentor, the late great John Camprose, owner of Powder River Engine Works. Wyoming busted us pretty good, and we moved after another 3 years with our baby to a farm outside of Chinook Montana. "Don't wanna work on Maggies farm no more," was my theme song for the skin flint and rich cheat who rented us the house. Another 3 years and we moved to a tiny mining village in the mountains.
I knew a lot about the West now, maybe more than even those grown in it, because I'd seen so many different sections and 'eras' of development.
In every place you had to prove you were not a yuppie there to end the Cougar hunt. After the first place, I stopped trying. I'd known too many fine men and women to give a shi- what some hidey holes thought of me in their fear and warding.
I wasn't like 'anyone' anyway. I told stories and looked all kinds in the eye, and only the good saw me for who I was, the rest taking a little more time.
If you spend your time worrying about the barriors, you aren't moving fast enough.
This was the smallest of the lot, though, tiny tiny ------------ Montana, pop swinging between about 30 and several hundred depending upon the season and holiday. And the yuppie thing started over again.
We got Ray in the little general store, about one of the nicest fellows you could meet. The post office in the size of a large Bozeman home's closet, and is open half time. Its built onto the side of the store like a small backpack on a large hiker. There's the Bar, and the shootings have stopped, though there's a fight outside every once in awhile, doesn't amount to much. The ndns sleep drunk under the tables of the nearby campsites when the weather is good, and sometimes when it is not. A certain tree on the road leading out of town has been struck so many times by drunken drivers that a permanent patch is missing from the bark and the tree leans a little. Massive tree, though, it's going to take a Semi to bring 'er down. Twenty years ago when a drunk left their vehicle in the ditch the locals would tow it away and tear it apart- punishment for disgracing the town and running for sanctuary back to the Res. AIM is no longer as big as it was in the 70's, when so many died at Wounded Knee, and so many tourists were needlessly abused and harrassed by those disenfranchised on the Res who were being 'free'. They were 'free' enough to blow up a helicopter on the emergency pad right outside of town, a drunken drug epic story long since turned into local legend.
We have a hotel that looks dumpy on the outside but is meticulously clean on the inside, and any of you wishing to visit would get reasonable rates and fine accomodations.
There are cabins to rent, and cabins where people still live without plumbing. Cougars walk around town sometime in the small hours when we are asleep. A local graveyard has the souls of small children and old miners, soldiers and ranchers wives who gave their all and died anyway. Some of the children were a day or month old and perished of the things that used to take manyh of us before modern medicine beat it off a couple generations. Some of the bodies are more than a hundred years buried, and many have long since lost their marking stones and are lost to the large trees growing over them.
Fourth of July is big, and dangerous here. Thousands of dollars of fireworks, many lit by intoxicated celebrants go every which way. The mining offices are long closed and sold, but if you stand in the street at this time the sound from the fireworks sound exactly like bullets whistling overhead and it is very hard not to jump.
There remains a certain amount of blind ignorance here, hatred and the needy mentality, the attrition thinking so common a generation or so ago during the Great Depression. Bigotry, certainly, as some still cling to old hatreds and call the local Gros Ventres and Assiniboine "Prarrie Niggers".
And in truth, those that choose to stay on the Res are not in the best shape, drinking, drugs, child molestation, murder, hatred and woman beating very common. The ones who want a life leave and never come back, afraid like crabs in a bucket, the others will pull them blindly back down to death and rot.
It snowed for three days, and my drive was getting bad- about a foot of snow. -------- came by in his green John Deere tractor and plowed it for us without asking. Such kindness is stilll everywhere in the West.
My wife is steadily painting the interior of our home to leave her someday. Her work is uncertain here, and for reasons I'll not explain is not assured, and some day she wants to leave for a town of say, 10,000, where our children could play football and join a theatre arts group. I and the kids do not wish to leave, but one must follow the money as surely as one follows the bread which feeds us.
The sun is shining today. The snow glistening. The cliffs overhead towering in beauty and splendor. Who would want to leave?
If I'd published a book I might have managed to keep the house, but fame isn't here and neither is it's dollar.
more later,
munk
