Important Flathead History

We all tend to forget really important stuff from twenty-three years ago, so this week we're going to refresh our recollection.

Impatiently waiting for damaged ribs to heal, have been reviewing more old columns and clippings. Revived dim recollections such as the poem about Glacier Park Rangers removing a horse carcass off the Highline Trail in the summer of eighty-five.

That weird operation was necessary after two young men took an illegal trip through the Park, and wound up shooting a pack horse just as it managed to struggle back up on the trail, after sliding off the Ahern Drift. The dingbats were eventually arrested and hauled to Federal Court; however, the carcass was a lure to wild animals on a popular hiking trail:

ODE TO THE BLASTED BEAR BATE

TWO DUDES WITH LESS BRAINS THAT MERE GALL,

Had a horse which took a great fall.

They shot the poor beast, from the north, south, and east.

Then left it for bears large and small.

RANGERS CAME BY WHERE A DEAD CRITTER DID LIE,

And wondered "Oh Dear! What to do?"

In all of their courses, they'd learned grizzlies eat horses,

So this was bear pie in the sky.

THE HORSE HAD TO GO BUT FOR A COPTER NO DOUGH,

So they sat and thought for a spell.

Then by fading light, they took dynamite,

And blasted that carcass to hell.

THERE WERE HORSESHOES IN SPERRY, AND AN EAR HIT ST. MARY.

The shock shook the beer at Babb Bar.

And one part that flew, wound up in some stew,

On the Northbound Waterton ferry. (The end)

Also found were selected quotes from columns reprinted in the big Seattle P. I. by noted writer, Jean Gooden. She was a flattering fan.

*SEX IN SPACE — "I have always taken it for granted that when time came for non-gravitational sex, it would be between married people. Alas! NASA psychologists have publicly stated that weightless hanky-panky may possibly take place 'among significantly related couples,' or even less committed people than that. Leave it to the government … I have always said, "If you plan for intimate behavior, you're just opening the door to messin' around."

*CRIME — "It's been a tough season for crooks here in Montana. A car stolen in Ravalli County was involved in a head-on crash and the authorities have no idea who the dead thief is. It is one thing to get killed pulling off a job, but it seems almost unfair not to get credit for the caper. If I was in the crook business, I'd sign up for one of the governments 'new career' training programs."

*FOREST SERVICE — "I get terribly irked these days with the new Forest Service Policies, it's obsessive subservience to bureaucratic wastefulness and too much self-serving empire building. Maybe I'm an old timer, didn't cut throats for ratings, and didn't spend half our time calculating graduated increments of increased budgetary allotments … And we did not publish a soft-cover environmental statement before we went out back and dug a new toilet hole."

*NUDE BEACHES — "All I know is we wear clothes when it is hot in order to cover our sins and we wear clothes when it is cold to keep from freezing our sins. Civilization has developed variations. For example: Marines wear camouflage clothes to hide their sins better than just about anybody, and here in Montana during hunting season, hunters wear bright orange to keep from getting their sins shot off. A friend in Alaska reports that very few folks are showing their sins up there, mostly due to the cold weather. Mosquitoes are an added incentive in the off season."

IN OTHER NEWS — "Ostrom reports last week's big fire. The North Fork Bar burned early Saturday morning … While the bar was still smoldering, the loyal customers constructed a bonfire out back and held a wake lasting until 4 a.m.. (Seattle P. I. Dec. 1985)

Young or old … it is good to stay knowledgeable on local history.

G. George Ostrom is a Kalispell resident and a national-award winning Hungry Horse News columnist.