Where they stood still

I dont know about you but, every long road trip starts with getting a tank full of gas and a car wash at, the drive through soap and rinse. I sit buckled in, watch the purple and pink foam melting down the front window, I second guess turning the wipers on, does the rainbow foam do a better job if I let it slide down, or does giving it a wipe push the bug guts off better.

I'm never sure if all the water, noise, and colored foam make my phone not get facebook, I fiddle with the mirrors so I can get past the 15 minutes of claustrophobia, isolated in the foam I remind myself that e-mail and tiktok will start again after the super sonic blowers swish (but dont dry) the wetness around the hood of my car.

I used to love going back home. Family was still there, dad was still there, fighting hoppers and drought, you could find him at the kitchen table where his dad had sat every morning sipping black coffee listening to the same AM radio station predicting future grain prices in China. Current prices in Scobey, Wolf Point, Canada???

I loved how diligent he was. He'd scratch in his note book, inches of rain, fuel, tractor parts, every morning, when each note book filled, he would neatly catalog each with the note books his father, my grandfather had filled, a decade of yesterdays happenings, family junk, party line phone call notes about neighbors in need, prose, poems, promises broken, promises kept, along with confirmation papers of new nez perce ponies. Sadly these too lost. In my mind like mirror images, in the same house in the same chair, in the same spot on this spinning globe, each would sip the tar and quietly beg, urge, pray that a half inch of rain would come to make the red spring wheat pop up, stand straight golden, so he with family, uncles, cousins, and tea totaling aunties round about helping, could combine a few truck loads of the yellow seed to take thirty miles to town.

The four hundred mile drive home used to wash the world's dirt away, would bring clarity. Getting to slow walk through hip high wheat making gum from the golden beads always grounded me to a single spot on the globe. Spring time visits meant coddling, hugging, smelling, playing with spotted baby foals, but with the farm and white rumped ponies all gone each long drive got harder.

This trip was to save, and rejuvenate the ailing heating system of my youngest daughter's Indian reservation project. The bank breaking preservation of her inherited NdN bar and casino, a grand remodel. It's less a tavern now, and more the spot where a mix of a dozen and a half native and white reservation kids escape a harsh life. A warm winter spot away from abusive lives. No longer a liquor in the front, poker in the rear, whiskey shots and quarter slots place. Between jobs she now sweeps and keeps a free to sleep and eat, twelve spot haven from meth and desolation, for grandkids and friends.

If my short weekend trip, and this little bit of prose might seem tainted by sadness and remorse, let me say to you my home state isn't what you might have had in mind.

I know you've seen movies, or stories about Montana, the great powder skiing, elk, deer, and bird hunting, amazing fishing, white water rafting, and pottery crafting, the two national parks, many visit, imagine a once in a life time history trip, to find clark and lewis's camps, or gunfights with a vigilante, relive a copper kings wealth, sleep in a hotspring motel dream of underground mining, fighting for workers rights the very first union member in the world, enamored with custers last stand, or you may be a true and empathetic soul, feel some ethereal dancing with wolves connection to the twelve native tribes crowded into tiny towns on the seven barren reservations out this way. Can you name them? Where my clan came from are the displaced Assinaboine and Souix, you can add struggling people from these tribes too

Blackfeet, Chippewa, Cree, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kootenai, Little Shell Chippewa, Northern Cheyenne, Pend d'Oreille, and Salish.

Sure Montana isnt the only U.S. state that has reservations. Dear friend only believe less than half the propaganda.

In the Montana away from television and movies you find a diverse landscape. East and north of Billings is rugged, vast, a beautifully huge place. Where old time families whipped and drove teams of mules, horses, and long horned bulls, pulling wagons full of precious items to barren middle of nowhere spots. Herding a hundred or so horses through Dakota badlands crossing the missouri river to find the spot a one day saddle back ride from canada. What made them stop where they stopped? Water. A thousand mile no road, back breaking, pick your way ride, they struggled walked pulled goaded their team and when they found that crystal clear spring of water bubbling out of the prairie.

Those families stood still.

My family stood still.

The stopped,

Where each midnight then, and every midnight now, will pull you full body into a dome of brilliant stars, with the Milkyway bathing, covering, blanketing you from earths edge to earths edge. Dear reader sadly today where my family stood still, you won't see pine trees standing on snow capped mountains, you won't see or even hear about the lives of the young men and women white and native living on reservations.

My government allocated Montana spot holds and hides suicide, teen and old, still young pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse. I must add here, my hometown is still filled with families old, generous kind, town folk and farm kids, their strength, kindness hope keep these endemic horrors held tenuously at bay. Strong, solid, warm hearted, generous people, native and white, does bring some soothing balm for my angst at going home.

It's a little more than eight hours from the edge of Yellowstone park to my home town. The trip always includes a midway gasoline stop. My trip this time included a stop for five dollar a gallon gas in the center of Montana, the yogo saphire capital of the world. From there to the event horizon of my black hole is over two hundred miles. I kick myself not having started earlier in the day, but a hilight of every trip along the long isolated stretch of hiway is the honing of my singing ability, half remembered beatles tunes, sitting on the dock of the bay, time in a bottle carry me between radio stations. Push the tune button over and over trying to grab some late-night AM, UFO, kennedy conspiracy radio show, unbelievably clear midnight voices. As I get closer Fort Belknap radio, local and national native news, rez rap, country yodeling and pow wow drums make me imagine a hundred young painted native riders clinging unsaddleed on horses, chasing me in the moonlight, galloping along side my modern fifty horse power jeep cherokee. After me or with me? Reminding me? Helping me home?

I know when I turn right on Hiway 200 Sirius radio, with its cornucopia of two hundred plus stations will return.

Winnet, Jordan, Circle, then north to Vida, soulful sad miles to pass over the muddy Missouri River onto fort peck reservation. Home.

My motel covered my late arrival, the desk clerk passed me through the computer. Room two hundred seven, the skinny red head desk clerk reminded I shouldn't forget the six am breakfast, non glazed cake donuts, pale sausage, boiled eggs, white toast,and "fresh" brewed coffee was offered.

I didn't sleep. Every visit I have a hundred unimportant things to do. And a million memories to keep bottled up so I can do them.