Been thinking about Montana a lot lately. My father's side of the family is from the big sky country. My great grandfather was a homesteader in Paradise Valley. Despite the promising name, there is a good reason why they were giving away that land: you couldn't grow enough food to make it through the winter. But thanks to a little side work on the newfangled railroad, my ancestors survived, although the land was lost - in good cowboy fashion - on a hand of poker. Tough life, or so the legend goes. I "lived" there briefly during my college years, but only through the good will of some real westerners. It's beautiful country, but it's cold. The people have to be tough. I, on the other hand, am clearly from the east ("the concrete jungle" as my grandfather would say) where you just have to be loud, and maybe a little pushy. That's a survival skill too, I guess, but it's different. Anyway, it seems like a few lucky (where 'lucky' means 'crazy') modern people are going to experience the real thing: frontier.
- jim 12-12-2000 2:42 pm


return to: jimslog


"...chwarz/comment/c6687/?/ Content-Length: 0 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 ..."

from page: http://www.digitalmediatree.com/schwarz/comment/c6687
first followed here: 9-18-2022 11:15 pm
number of times: 1