What Makes Me Laugh

Here’s the thing. I could be wrong about this. Way wrong. So wrong that I can imagine a laughing advice columnist sputtering coffee all over my letter before she advises medication. And yet, I wonder if I’m right? I wonder if our neighbors really don’t like us. I mean, really? Who wouldn’t like us?

We live in a relatively quiet small town in Montana in a relatively quiet neighborhood. Our house is on the corner of two streets, which means that our backyard intersects with the backyards of our two closest neighbors — Steph and Adam, Barb and Nate. This is our micro-neighborhood, if you will. Since we share a wooden fence with both parties, we know them fairly well. Plus, Doug and Barb work together, so that makes it even cozier. 

Our macro-neighborhood is a little less intimate with us, but no less interesting.

For instance Tom, our neighbor across the street, is a man I knew little about up until a couple of years ago. He wears his long, white hair back in a ponytail and seems to have a semi-annual run-in with the law. The rumor is that his next-door neighbors called the police because he was keeping a horse in his backyard, and the police had to persuade him to find a bigger pasture for his animal. Which is funny, since we lived with a rooster next door for two years, and fantasized calling the cops every time the rooster woke us up at ungodly hours of the morning.

Anyway, Doug was working in our front yard when Tom first  introduced himself. He said he had  heard us jamming one evening. Turns out he plays guitar too, and I’ve heard him sing Neil Young covers on his porch in a wan, sad way a few times. Doug trotted over to his house to see his fossil collection and hear stories of Tom backing up the band, “Ten Years After” and other tall tales.

But then Tom decided to show up on our doorstep one morning dead drunk, with a guitar strapped around his back and a harmonica to his lips.

“Is your old man in?” he asked, and I let him inside to share the song he wrote with us. Tom walked into the middle of our living room, took a wide cowboy stance while we watched from the kitchen (we were canning tomatoes) and belted out a nifty original tune sung  in the style of Neil Young. It expressed his sincere love for his ex-wife, and his sincere regret that she gave all of their money away to the local cult. It’s hard to rhyme with the words “Church Universal Triumphant” but I gave him points for trying. After the song, he explained that he hoped to reconcile with his wife and ran after her truck the last time he saw her to see if he could jump in the back and break out her back window with his fist as a gesture of his love (and I’m assuming anguish). “I think she might have come back to me,” he said. Too bad he can’t run faster than 5 miles an hour.

It’s been two years since Tom’s serenade and I still hide in the backyard when I see him venture onto the sidewalk. Not that he’s dangerous, but the whiskey and women and junk cars kind of preclude the kind of neighborly relationship where you barbecue together.  Sometimes you can know too much about your neighbor to be friends, without even trying.

Just not at the same time. This is what traveling in Montana is like. One night you’re picking up a thin, white terry-cloth towel from a hotel when you notice a warning sign posted in the bathroom that says, “Please do not use the ‘white linens’ for removing makeup or cleaning your shoes. That’s what the tissues are for,” and the next night you’re sleeping at a bed and breakfast where Michael Keaton rests his head before his hunting trips. 

I’ve been doing some “business” travel the past week, and since I work for The Wilderness Society, this includes getting to know some spectacularly wild landscapes and staying in some really out-of-the-way places.

Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument

Montana is the 4th largest state in the union, and its reputation for beautiful, mountain scenery is justified. It’s just that about two-thirds of the state is more prairie than mountains and rarely visited by tourists. This isn’t all that bad, but when you show up in small prairie towns like Glasgow, or Malta, or Fort Peck, you just never know what kind of accommodations you’ll find. 

I called Doug from the Fort Peck Hotel and said, “So you know how some places you wish they would restore the historic features, like the woodwork? Well, this place doesn’t need to do that, since from what I can tell, they haven’t done anything at all to it since the 1930’s.” I didn’t want to use the shower, it looked so old, and the ceiling sagged in a few places over my bed. Blinds covered the window, with a pink sheet draped across the top for decoration. But what really puzzled me is why they offered six bars of soap and no other toiletries. Six bars of soap? I hardly use up one in a month at home.

But you know what, it’s better than staying at a chain hotel with no character at all, a place so homogenized that you’re not sure whether you’ve landed in Montana, California, New York, or New Jersey. I’ve been at conferences at Best Westerns where I’ve really had no clue about what was outside the conference center. The beauty of small towns and small town hotels is that they have character. They’re different. They even spawn different kinds of crimes.

Recently, two men got into a fight about the population of Hilger (which might have 50 year-round residents), and one man ended up dead at the end of the argument. I often pass through Hilger on my way to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, and I’ve never seen a population sign, but it’s tempting to go into the Rainbow Bar and ask, “So how many people live in Hilger?” and then slip out when the debate begins.

Glacier National Park

I thought that Flight of the Conchords  had the funniest tourism posters, but my own state has outdone the brilliant comedians. 

Travel Montana, which is in charge of promoting Montana to tourists, is running a series of magazine advertisements featuring scenic Glacier and Yellowstone National Park photographs and the slogan “Montana: There’s Nothing Here” with the accompanying ad copy:

“There is nothing here. Nothing but grizzlies and wolves and bison and trout. 

Nothing but fresh huckleberry pie for breakfast—with a friendly conversation on the side. 

And nothing but the growing embers of the evening’s campfire to remind you that we get to do it all over again tomorrow. Montana. You just never know.”

Um. Montana. You just never know? 

As the Great Falls Tribune pointed out today, this is a little underwhelming (and puzzling, I might add). They paid someone to come up with that?

What’s wrong with our official monikers? Montana is the Treasure State, some also call it Big Sky Country, and William Kittredge dubbed it, The Last Best Place. Now, Tourism Montana has provided us with, “Montana: You Never Know.”

 The Tribune commented, “That’s like saying “Montana: What the heck?” or “Montana: north of Wyoming.”  

Without any expectation of payment, I would like to nominate a few slogans for Montana Tourism to consider as well, such as:

 “Montana: Thank god it’s not Wyoming,” or “Montana: The Last Best Place to buy your second home.” 

Or how about:

“Montana: Only 9 months of winter.”

My Floridian father-in-law is terrified of grizzly bears, so for him I’d like to suggest,

“Montana: Grizzly bears aren’t as scary as alligators,” or “Montana: Where you don’t have to buy an air conditioner to survive.”

But seriously, Montana is paradise in the summer, and as wild and beautiful a place as you’ll ever see, and I do recommend a trip.

So, how about: “Montana: Let’s keep it that way.”

Robin trying to stay warm

It’s been a long winter in Montana. It started snowing in October and it’s still snowing at the end of April. This morning I heard the dreaded “winter storm warning” on the radio again and cringed. Fortunately, I am now the proud owner of a full-spectrum lamp that helps mimic the sun, but it hasn’t banished cabin fever completely. The cats are antsy. I’m antsy. And all I can say is that if it doesn’t end soon I’m moving south. For good. 

My parents live on a ranch in northern Montana and today they bore the full brunt of the latest winter storm. My mom said they are supposed to get another 12 inches by tomorrow. Good Lord! In the midst of it all, she took some amazing photographs that I’d like to share with you. Please enjoy a little winter beauty in spring.

Asia, on the left, and Julie, the snow-covered blob on the right, in the snow

A group of robins tried to find shelter on the ranch

My dad took pity on the birds and threw the sparrows some crumbs

My favorite photo, a pair of pheasants

My mom just called to share the latest family news and some funny tidbits emerged when she asked me to, “Guess what?”

- My nephew is dating a goat tyer on his college’s rodeo team and wants to go to Las Vegas with her for spring break. The family has already checked out her profile on the school’s rodeo page. Her favorite food is sushi.

- My other nephew’s Kia was stolen this week (possibly because he left spare keys and his ipod in the car) and at age 24 his new choice of car is …. drumroll please … a station wagon. Why does he want this car? “To haul his stuff around.”

The new scratching post

- Despite his constant complaining over the cost of having pets, my father made the cats a new scratching post, which my mother described as, “a beauty” and “it’s like the twin towers.” Construction materials included: an old fence post, a garbage can lid, carpet remnants, a rope, and the metal lid off of a candy jar.

- My mother made the mistake of pointing out miniature chickens for sale to my father when they visited the hardware store in town. Now he wants to buy them to add to his current flock. My mother is opposed to the acquisition.

To quote Dave Barry, “I can’t make this stuff up. I just can’t.”

Each year about October, the light starts to fade in Montana and darkness drifts into our mornings and evenings like an unwelcome snake. Frankly, it makes me a little crazy to go to work and come home in the dark. By the time Christmas rolls around I’m eating enough sugar to make me susceptible to adult-onset diabetes and am crying at Hallmark commercials.  This syndrome unfortunately has a name and it’s called SAD — which stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder. It makes you depressed for about six months out of the year.

Now,I’m not sure whether the acronym SAD happened by accident, or was a deliberate play on words by some witty psychiatrist, but it’s not helpful. If you had a learning disability, would you want to have to tell your teacher, “I’m sorry Mrs. Smith, but I have STUPID”? Or if you were impotent would you want your doctor to prescribe Viagra for FLACCID? No, I don’t think so. It’s bad enough to be depressed, but to have to tell everyone, “I’ve got SAD,” is both humiliating and bad grammar.