Helping Alice Ritzman

G. GEORGE OSTROM / For the Hungry Horse News

Hurt my wrist this week opening a bottle of medicine for wrist pain, so am taking it easy. Alice Ritzman writes a knowledgeable sports column for the Daily Inter Lake. She doesn't ask me for column advice and has good reason. Let's look back to 1984:

This column was renamed "The Trailwatcher" after deep consideration. There is an outdoorsy ring to it and hints its writer is more than an observer. He wants to be in on the action.

Take last Sunday night when that black bear was way up a tree on Third Avenue West. A policeman came, followed by a game warden with a dart gun. It was determined the bear offered a poor target for the dart, and if it was tranquilized, there were so many limbs it might not fall out. On the other hand, if the bear did fall, it would probably land on the cement curb and be injured or killed. The officers were stymied.

Then I remembered reading about people who fell from buildings and were saved by landing on car roofs, so suggested "we" try a dart and if successful, a fireman could "ladder up" and cut away limbs, dropping the bear safely on the roof of a patrol placed under the tree.

I couldn't fully understand the police officer's attitude. Even if he didn't think my idea was top drawer, he didn't have to give me "that kind" of a look.

Then there was the incident on the fourth green at Buffalo Hills last Thursday. Alice Ritzman, Montana's only representative on the big time pro golf circuit, was back home putting on a clinic and playing an exhibition round with local course champions. Naturally, I was in the gallery.

Alice hit a soaring drive off the tee, but flag placement left her a tough second shot. She used a precise third stroke to chip on, leaving a five foot putt for par.

She saw me intensely studying her lie on the green and being nice, she asked, "How do you read it George?"

"Straight in," I replied.

The putt broke two inches to the left and she wound up with a bogey five. Montana's only professional tour golfer in the whole world then turned and gave me almost the same look … as that policeman.

Probably gonna back off a week or two on giving advice to law officers and professional golfers, but if any of you other people have tough questions, please remember one thing, "George Ostrom is not just some disinterested newspaper columnist. He is a person who cares, and is willing to become involved." (The end)

Curiosity is a mighty force upon all living things, and especially on us mere mortals. Sometimes it costs us dearly … like the time I wound up in the hospital trying to see if it really was impossible to ride a coaster wagon down Murphy's Hill; but curiosity is also the instinctive influence which leads us to all knowledge.

I once read if a man loses curiosity his education ends. Elsewhere it was written, "Show me a disinterested person and I will show you an uninteresting person."

I never ever want to stop learning and who among us would deliberately become a bore? These are the absolute and only reasons why I put on dark glasses and a low brimmed hat — then went downtown and bought the Penthouse Magazine about Vanessa Williams without her clothes on.

When "they" start firing Miss America, I want to know why.

The way I figure it, First Wife Iris wouldn't have found the dumb magazine under a pile of newspaper clippings if she wasn't curious herself; and in the second place, she should have enough faith in her husband to believe what I told her about my not actually lookin' at the naughty pictures.

To remain well informed, it seems we conscientious professional journalists must forever tread the razor's edge.

*(The above 1984 column was reprinted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.)

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