Foxtail and Kochia hit the road...

It started as a crazy herbicide commercial and a couple crop tours where we were the only two girls present.

Anne is married to the county extension agent, so she's pretty much required to go on local crop tours.  I'm married to a Pluhar, so I'm qualified to go on local crop tours. (Which means I know nothing, but I am married to cutting edge ranchers, for whatever that's worth.) We found ourselves bouncing along in the Big Dry transit bus, over bumpy gravel roads, listening to farmers debate the merits and drawbacks of growing triticale wheat and the chemical fallow vs. traditional fallow options. We'd stand in the field, slapping mosquitos, looking enthusiastically at the forages and wondering why it was that when men plan crop tours there's no food.  Two beer coolers, no food.  What gives? Don't they understand that without food, it's just a dusty ride around the fields? Add some crackers and cheese, coupla sticks of beef jerky...voila!....a tour!

Foxtail (Anne) and Kochia (me) needed a reason to go on a tour, crop or otherwise.  It's been almost two years!

Fortuitously, an author contacted me about a month ago and said she was coming to Montana to promote her new book.  Sue was going to be in Red Lodge on February 25th to premiere the book about the Bearcreek Mine disaster and a mutual friend (who loves pie and dinosaurs and rockets) told her I might be an interesting person to meet while she was in Montana. I'm not sure those were the exact words used, but that was the gist of it. 

The "interesting" part may have been exaggerated a bit, but I like authors and promptly invited myself to Red Lodge.

Sue politely said she hoped I could come. ( I wonder if she'd looked on the map and decided there was no possible way.) I had been wintering badly, with few outings and decided I'd make it if I had to hire a dogsled and walk the last 20 miles.

And I needed a sidekick.

Foxtail had had a rough winter, too. 

I called her and over screaming babies (hers) and fighting kids (mine) we arranged the tour.

Fast forward to February 25th....

Foxtail and Kochia in a muddy Trailblazer with "MaggIe maGGiE MagGiE" printed on the side in tiny fingermarks head to Red Lodge, with two full bags of nothing to wear and stars in their eyes! Headed to the big city and beyond....

I won't give you a moment-to-moment, blow-by-blow account.  Here are the highlights:

• We went to the mall....in Winnett.  Clean bathrooms, great Montana gifts!
• We went to the mall....in Billings. So-so bathrooms, decent coffee, more stores than we cared to visit.
• We ate at Dos Machos for lunch. Clean bathrooms, Pepsi products instead of Coke (drats)
• We stayed at the Alpine in Red Lodge. CLEAN rooms for $65 (that's with tax)!!!! Four thumbs up!!
• We migrated around the Carbon County Museum, warming chairs for old people. (Got there early and kept moving to give people our seats, which worked out brilliantly because we ended up sitting beside....
• ....the author's family, accidentally, and flirted with her dad who invited us to breakfast the next morning because her folks had to leave early for a flight. 
• We ALSO heard great stories about Sue from her father, including how she used to eat peas as a child. 
• We ended up leaving the reception early to get Subway sandwiches because we were invited to go....
• ....to the Lone Pine Bar for drinks with our new friends. The Lone Pine Bar, incidentally, does not exist. There IS a Snag Bar, but that wasn't the place either.  Finally, we found the Front Bar, after driving up and down Main Street giggling. 
• We had a drink with Sue, John (another writer who originated in Massachusetts, oddly enough), and a very nice lady who came to Montana  because she wanted to grow up to be a migrant fruit worker and couldn't find work in Colorado seeings as how she was a young white female and now (30 years later) co-owns a restaurant in Red Lodge with her boyfriend who is also a writer and her landlord AND invited to drinks but she came instead because he was busy or something. It's very complicated. 
• We slept 5 uninterrupted hours in the most comfortable beds we've ever encountered.
• After a highly amusing breakfast with the Kushners and Resnicks, in which we learned about New England town layouts and cheetah predation control in Africa, we joined Sue for....
• ....a trip to Bear Creek to see the actual mine from a distance and the remnants of the little towns. We were there almost exactly on the date the mine disaster occurred 60-some years earlier, and the weather was eerily similar.
• After dropping Sue off at the Pollard, we shopped Main Street, then...
• ...ate a phenomenal lunch at a restaurant I wish I could remember the name of, before....
• ....driving to Billings for a Tour de COSTCO.
• Coffee and fuel for the car, then on the road to home.

This is the book!!!

Before reading it, I was hoping it wasn't too horrible, being a book written about Montana by a Massachusetts author. I am thrilled to report it's a WONDERFUL book, thoroughly researched and written in a voice that makes one feel like they were there every minute.  I don't know if this is a tribute to her writing or a concession to my weirdness, but when I read about the mine, I got all dizzy from trying to hold my breath.  She writes that vividly!

If you can get your hands on a copy, I urge you to do so, then set aside a couple evenings to fall into the story. You won't be able to put it down.  Then you'll want to go to Carbon County to see everything.

Here's Sue.  She's MUCH prettier in person.

Check out http://www.goodbyewifesanddaughters.com/ for all her information, including her Montana stops this week.  (You won't, however, find any anecdotes about her fussy eating habits or how she met her husband. Those are only available from her dad who is more than happy to share, should you meet him at a book event or in the airport in L.A. Ask about little Susie Kushner and you'll have a good half hour of stories.)

Looking out toward Bearcreek, at where we suspect the old road ran. (All the photos from here on out are from Anne Miller, who remembered to charge her camera battery, bless her heart!

Looking at the "hysterical" markers, by the Smith Mine.

The machine shop (yes, Sue...we found a picture that actually identified it!) that is so significant in the book.  You'll have to read the story to find out why....

All that is left of the Smith Mine, now.  I always thought this was the mine entrance, but it was just where all the coal was processed; the actual entrance was around the hill a ways. The little building at the bottom of the picture was the mine office.

OH, how I wish the property wasn't posted quite so prominently and that there wasn't mention of prosecution of trespassers to the fullest extent of the law....

Anne and I both love to lurk around old buildings, but we respect private property. It pains us, but we respect it.....

Saying goodbye at the Pollard....*sigh*

Sue was so kind to spend the morning with us and share her family, too. 

The Eastern Montana branch of the Susan Kushner Resnick Fanclub hopes to make a visit to the East Coast with our foam fingers and cameras, soon!