Dinner at The Alleged Tony Corona's with Steve the Culinary Redneck.

I grabbed my tent off the picnic table after cleaning the vomit from my boots. I wiped my face with a leftover McDonald's napkin and silently hoped that Max and Willow hadn't heard me get sick. The last thing I needed was to offend my new friends. If they did notice, they didn't say anything.

I laid the tent on a small patch of grass and began putting together the stakes. Two older couples had gathered in patio chairs under the awning of another large fifth-wheel trailer about 50 yards away and were watching me. "Someday I'm going to get used to the stares," I thought. "But today is not the day." I still hate the feeling of being watched by the natives, as though they're thinking, "You don't belong." It's most likely my own paranoia, but I haven't been able to let go of it for some time now.
Max called out the door of the trailer. "You need some more help?"
"No, I'm good, thanks!"

When the tent was finally up, I began putting together a bag to take to the shower. It was the entire reason I had driven out to the tiny campground and paid for a night's stay, so I was excited to finally have a chance. It had been three days since my last shower. While I was digging through the pile of clothes that has exploded all over my backseat, a middle-aged guy with glasses and a beard drove right up to my car in a tiny golf-cart-esque vehicle with a small cargo hold in the back. The cargo hold was filled with pinecones. "Hi," he said.
"Hi."
He just stared at me and smiled.
"Um... are you here to clean the pinecones out of the fit pit?" I asked.
"No." He just kept staring and smiling.
"Okay."
"Whatcha doin?"
"Going to the showers. You?"
"Nothing."
"Well.... okay!"
"I'm Steve."
"Jessica." I shook his hand and continued packing up shampoo and clothes. "So.... do you live here?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I have a camper over there." He pointed to a row of trailers on the far side of the grounds. "Where are you from?" he asked.
"Baltimore."
"Man, you're a long ways from home."
"Yeah, you're right."

We chatted for awhile about absolutely nothing. I made sure to mention my boyfriend about six times, but I'm not sure he heard me. I wasn't even at the showers yet, but already I was undressed by this man's eyes. "You're cool," he told me.
"Uh, thanks!" I was getting uncomfortable. "So, what do you do?"
"I'm a mill-worker."
I noticed his union t-shirt. "That's nice. It must be a good job."
"Yeah, I hate it. I want to be a forest ranger but I have to finish up college."
"What's stopping you?"
"I don't know. My ex, my kids, I don't know."
"You have kids?"
He looked embarrassed, as though letting that slip was going to decrease his (already null) chances of getting laid. He spoke in a voice slowed by shame. "Yeah, I got kids."
I played it up. "Awwww, do you have pictures?"
He pulled out his wallet and I cooed over a photo of four adorable little ones.
"Aw, they must be the love of your life!"
"Uh... yeah. Yeah, they're, uh... you're right."
One surefire thing I've learned on the road: If you want a guy to stop hitting on you, ask him about his kids.

Max came outside again, yelling, "Steve, are you gonna bother that sweet lady all night?"
Steve walked over to Max's trailer, allowing me to finish getting ready. As I was walking away, I went over to where Max and Steve were standing, to be polite. I heard the four people under the awning say, "She's...."
"They're talking about me," I brooded aloud.
"Nonsense," Max said.
"I hate it!"
"Just ignore it," Steve told me.
"Yeah, I'm going to the showers."

The bathroom was huge, clean, well-lit, didn't look like a jail cell and was a sweet respite from bad smells, staring neighbors, unsolicited advances and the still-cloudy sky. It was heaven. I took a long shower, but not too long because I wanted to get into town, to see the acoustic act at Liquid Planet. I figured I could call Lala and Megan and we could all meet up. That's such an amazing feeling, to be out on the road and finally know people in a strange place. I wanted to take advantage of it while I could.

A cute, short lady with bright blonde hair came in as I was putting on make-up. We chatted about the grounds, Montana, bears, Baltimore, and finally, the weather. "Do you think it'll rain tonight," I asked her.
"Oh, I don't know. Well, I think you should be fine. I think it's all blowing east at this point."
"Awesome. I don't want a repeat of my night in Glacier!" I told her about the flood in my tent.
"Oh, god! Well, I think you'll be alright."
"Thanks!"

I finished drying my hair, curling the ends up like I used to do when I didn't live in a car, and when I turned off the blow-dryer I noticed an odd, loud sound. Is that the fan? I thought. Or is that.... RAIN? I opened the door to peek outside, almost afraid of what I'd see. And yes, it was a deluge, soaking everything in Western Montana with an angry vengeance. I was only six-thirty, but the sky was dark as night. "FUCK!" I shouted. No one heard me over the thunder.

I knew the only reason it rained was because I pitched my tent. AND left my driver-side window open. If I had closed the window and let the tent dry, then put it back in the car, there wouldn't have been a drop. But no, I had to go tempt Fate's fucking evil ass and pitch it, so it mocked me by opening the skies. "I fucking hate rain," I mumbled, slamming the bathroom door and twisting my cute, fluffy hair into two pigtail braids, which would stand up better to the downpour. I waited until it was just a shower, not a thunderstorm, threw a towel over my head, and headed back to my car.

Steve saw me come out and shouted from his trailer, "Jessica! Hey, Jess! C'mere!"
I was in no mood. "What?!"
"C'mere!"
"No! I left my window open, I gotta go," I snapped, turning on my heel. I felt somewhat bad, but knew deep down that I was way too pissed off to politely deflect anymore advances.
However, by the time I'd closed my windows, dried my seats, and all the other things I had to do to get ready to head back to town, I felt really bad. "That was so rude," I scolded myself. "You could at least go see what he wanted."

I parked in front of Steve's trailer and knocked on the door. He opened it with a phone in his hand. "Uh, Mom? Mom. I have to let you go. I'll call you back later, okay? I love you, Mom. Okay... bye." He shut the phone with a, "Hey, come on in!"
I stepped inside and said, "Hey, what was it you wanted earlier?"
"Um....." He used his best romantic voice and asked, "Would you like to go out to dinner with me?"
"Right now?"
"Yeah!"
"I can't, I have plans. How about breakfast or something tomorrow? We could ask Max and Will to come, too!" I did not want to be alone with this guy.... although the idea of free food sounded nice.
"Uh, see, that's the thing. I have to work tomorrow."
"What time?"
"Like, five."
"Crap. Well, what about lunch? Tomorrow's Saturday, what time do you leave work?"
"About five in the evening."
"Dammit. Well, sorry, I have plans tonight."
"Oh, please, Jess? I'd really like to just go eat, and this place has awesome Italian food, it's really good. Come on. Please?"
I was starving, and here was this guy bribing me with fettuccine alfredo. It wasn't fair.
"Well... okay, fine. But we have to take separate cars, because I'm going to stay in town, because I have plans and some work to get done." It was true, I was planning on writing while I listened to music. Also, I didn't want him in my car, the quarters were too close and he could get the wrong idea. In a tiny car, there's nothing like reaching for the parking brake and accidentally grabbing your passenger's thigh to give out the wrong impression. Not only that, I didn't want the other people at the campground to get the wrong idea if they saw us piling into my vehicle and taking off. They whisper and stare even when I'm not harboring middle-aged divorcees in my car, just think of how bad it would be if I did.

He snapped me back to reality. "Yeah, see, that's the thing. I'm not really.... allowed to drive," he giggled.
"DUI?"
"Yeah, two of 'em"
"How do you get to work?"
"Carpool."
"Shit. Fine. Fine." The visions of bruschetta dancing in my head were breaking down my guard. "But this is not a date!"
"No! No, not a date. But you're gonna love this place, it's called Tony Corona's. Best Italian food in the city!"
It better be, I thought.
"Do I have to dress up?" I asked. I was in a pink t-shirt, jeans and pigtail braids.
"Shit, no, I'm going like this!" He pointed to his dirty Dickies, dusty undershirt and flannel jacket.
"And this place has the best food in the city? And you can show up like that?"
"Yeah!"

I was tempted to ask him to change, but I held my tongue. "Wait here, I have to move some stuff around in the car." I was angry at myself, selling out for a ten-dollar plate of pasta. As I threw stuff in the back, I calmed myself down, thinking, "It's just a meal, and he could be good conversation. Don't write the whole night off just yet."
"We're all set," I said, walking back to the trailer, careful not to be too loud or draw attention.

We hopped in and headed back to Missoula. As soon as the doors was closed, I smelled something that turned my stomach. "What is that?" I cried, worried that being inside Max and Willow's had made me incredibly sensitive to odors. Then I remembered. "My jeans!" I said out loud. From the corner of my eye, I could see Steve looking at me like I was nuts.
"What are you talking about?' he asked.
"My jeans! These are the same jeans I was wearing inside Max and Will's place. The smell is still on them! We have to go to a drug store right away!"
"What do you nee---"
"Febreze!"

I raced into town while Steve dialed 411 to get the number for the restaurant. "It's Friday night," he said. "We may need a reservation."
When the operator picked up, Steve said, "Missoula, Montana..... Tony Corona's. Yeah, Tony Corona's, it' on Reserve Street. To-ny Cor-on-as. Reserve Str--- no, no, T-O-N.... Yeah, Reserve. Okay." He turned to me, saying, "This guy's an idiot. It's just Tony Corona's! I mean, jeez, right? How hard could it--- yes, sir! Okay, you got it? Great. Thanks." He closed the phone, saying, "Jackoff."
I ignored him, pulling into a Target parking lot. "We can get Febreze here."

I giggled to myself while we were walking in, remembering the last time I was at Target, when Greg and I ran into an old friend and his kids. "What're you laughin' at?" Steve asked.
"Ah, nothing. Just something my boyfriend said once."
"You have a boyfriend?" he asked dejectedly. He obviously hadn't been listening during the 4,000 times I'd mentioned it prior to that.
"Yeah. Yeah, I do," I said, my attitude slipping out.
"Oh."

I scurried into the store with Steve on my heels, eventually finding a perfume aisle. "I need this!" I said, my eyes wild. "Let's test them out!" I sprayed a bottle of Raspberry Dream in front of my nose, pointing the nozzle to the side -- and right into Steve's face.
"OOOOFH!"
"Oh, did I get you?"
He tried to talk through the sneeze. "Yeah, yaaACHOO!"
I laughed for the first time that night. "Sorry!"
"Man, it's a good thing I wear glasses, or you woulda gotten me right in the eye, ya butthead!"
By this time I was losing it. I couldn't stop laughing. Maybe because I did it half-way on purpose.

Finally, we were on our way to Tony Corona's. Or were we?
"There it is right there," Steve pointed, to a sign that read, "Johnny Carino's"
"No, that's not it, is it? You said Tony Corona's."
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you did!"
"Really?"
"Yes! Yes, and you made a big stink that the operator didn't know what you were talking about and you called him an idiot and a jackoff because he couldn't find the number! For Tony Corona's, you lameass!"
"I really told the operator the wrong name?"
"Forget it."

We ordered an appetizer of fresh mozzerella, tomatoes and basil with a balsamic vinegarette and
I told him about my previous night of partying with Lala and Megan. "I can't handle my whiskey anymore, which is sad, because I'm Irish!"
"Man, that must be why I was taken by you. My ex-wife is Irish."
I pulled the BF Card again. "Yeah, my boyfriend's family is Irish, too."
"Does he have an Irish temper? My ex did."
"Sometimes."
"So tell me about yourself," I said.
"Me? Man. Well, I'm a mountain man, born and raised. I couldn't ever leave these mountains. I love hunting, fishing and hiking too much. People say there's mountains in other states, but I'm sorry. There ain't nothin' like the mountains in Montana and Idaho. Well, Washington and Wyoming, too. Still, you got mountains in Maryland?"
"Um, kind of."
"No, you got hills."

The waitress told us the soups for the day. "We have eye-talian minestrone and eye-talian wedding soup." We both ordered a salad. She brought a dish of amazing garlic aioli for the bread, and it was then that Steve began to relay his hidden talent.
"This is so good," he mused. "The parmesan completes it."
I looked up at my new friend, in his frayed flannel, with a little smile. "What?"
"The parmesan and asiago, those little flecks in there, you see? They totally compliment the garlic oil."
"You're right!" I was having trouble eating, between the nausea from Max and Willow's place, my lingering hangover and the altitude sickness that had been toying with my stomach since entering Glacier National Park. Still, the soft eye-talian bread was making me feel better, not to mention the parmesan and asiago.

When the salads came, Steve lamented choosing Ranch dressing. "Ranch is so overpowering, I don't know why I ordered it. Haven't you ever had a Ranch dip or something and that's all you can taste? It's like the vegetables are just a vehicle for the dressing."
"I know what you mean," I said.
The mozzerella and tomatoes arrived, with fresh basil and a balsamic ganache. We both bit into the cheese and melted. "This is amazing!" I said, my nausea completely gone.
"Yeah, yeah, it's the balsamic!" he said. "That's so odd, I wonder how old this vinegar is? Because I have a bottle of eight-year-old balsamic at home and it's not even this mellow, it still has that balsamic bite to it, y'know?"
Agreed.

Later on, over seafood alfredo, he said, "There's sun-dried tomato in this sauce, although it doesn't say it on the menu. There may also be a touch of vodka." I stared at him, in his ratty baseball cap -- which he wore at the table -- his calloused hands and t-shirt laced with sawdust. A typical write-'em-off redneck in anyone's eyes, but really so much more.
"Steve, why are you a mill-worker? Why are you not a chef?"
"What?"
"You have such a discerning palate!" I laughed. "Why not use it?" I was awestruck by his knowledge of culinary finery.
"Oh... I don't want the stress. I couldn't work in a kitchen. I love food and cooking, but I don't want to grow to not love it. All the management, the customers, the stress, basically. I don't want to fall out of love with food."
I thought of the bags under the eyes of chefs I've known throughout the years, the late nights and early mornings, the rampant alcoholism, the four-letter words that flew from their mouths like bullets from a gun.
"You're right, it is hard."
I was beginning to soften, to actually like him.

We boxed up our leftovers and headed for Turah. I was too tired and it was too late to head back into town after taking him home, and my nausea had come back. I dropped him in front of his trailer. "Thanks so much for dinner and the company!" I said. "I'm probably leaving tomorrow, so I won't see you."
"Aw, that's too bad. Come in and watch a movie with me?"
In a flash, I was back in high school, memories of sweaty hands crawling up A-cup bras pecking at my brain. I almost laughed. "No, thanks." At 25, I know what "watch a movie" means.
"Okay, well, I'll see ya!"
"'Bye!"

I pulled around the bend to my campsite, watched the still-falling rain molest my sopping tent, changed into sweatpants while sitting down, laid the seat back, and fell asleep.

Max and Willow.

This is how the sky apologized to me for raining so much.

Me, some girl whose name I forget, Miss Lala, and Megan. Holy Crown Royal, Batman!

Max and Willow.

The next morning I woke up in my parking space at about seven and moved my car down to the Wal-Mart. I pulled a blanket over my pounding head and slept until noon, when Greg called me.
"Hi, sweetie!" he chirped.
All I could do was moan.
"Are you okay?"
"MMMMMNNNNNNNHHHHH..."
"What's wrong?"
"I can't party like I uuuuussed tooooooo.... ooooowwwww...."
He burst out laughing. "Awww! My poor little baby's hung over!"
"GGGGGUUUUUUHHHH..."
'Go back to bed, honey. Call me later."

I woke up again at 1:30, to some strange looks from the people parked next to me. All of my RV compatriots were gone, and I was the sole ambassador of Wal-Mart Parking Lot Campers left. Shaking, I devoured aspirin, changed clothes, and drove around town trying to find the one sure-fire cure for hangovers: McDonald's.

I walked in carrying my now-battered copy of "Fear and Loathing" and a kind-faced man in front of me said, "That is the funniest book I have ever read!"
"Yeah! I like it!"
"I've probably read it three times," he continued. "I want to read it again, but I'm waiting awhile, until it becomes new again. Have a nice day!" He grabbed his bag and walked out the door, waving as he left.
People in Montana are super-nice! I thought.

I watched the kids playing in the play area and tried to keep my burger down. Then I meandered back over to Liquid Planet for a myspace fix and a little bit of work. The little barista guy parked his bike outside as I was walking in. "Thanks for the map yesterday, it worked great!"
"Oh! You're welcome! How are you liking Missoula?"
"I love it! Are you working right now?"
"No, I'm just here to pick up my check. I come back at 3. Hey, we're having music here tonight, like singer-songwriter stuff. You should come!"
"Awesome! I'll be here!"
But first, I had to shower.

I worked for awhile, until I could start to smell myself. That is unacceptable, so I drove around. And around. And around, trying to brainstorm a way to take a shower. Could I sneak into a hotel room before the maids came in? Was there a truck stop around? The gym at the University? I got on the highway to look for options and ended up missing an exit to get back into town. I was headed east, towards Bozeman and Clinton, but hopped off at the exit past Bonner, for a tiny town called Turah. It advertised a campsite about a mile down the road. I was leery of paying even fifteen dollars for a campground (this is on the uber-cheap, people), but how weird is it to show up somewhere and say, "I just want to use your shower"? I've been burned by that before, in Chicago, when I got charged fifteen dollars just to take a shower instead of pay for a room. Fifteen bucks is pretty expensive and I was worried this lady would pull the same thing on me. I bit the bullet and just decided to get a site for the night.
The owner of the campground, Kathy, was sitting outside the C-store with a little terrier when I pulled up. She led me inside and I filled out the paperwork. She gave me a map of the place and sent me on my merry way. Outside, I asked, "What's your dog's name?"
"C'mon."
"Huh?"
She laughed. "His name's C'mon. Like, come on, C'mon!"

I picked a site next to a large oak tree and took my tent, which was still soaking wet from the Mighty Flood of Glacier, out to dry in the sun. I was debating hanging it on a tall sprinkler stuck in the ground when a large, white-haired man in a stained white tee-shirt yelled to me from a tiny camper nearby. "You know how'ta work that thing? You wanna turn it on?"
"No, no. I was just thinking of drying my tent on it."
He came walking over, asking questions through toothless gums. "You what? I'm hard of hearing."
"I'm trying to dry my tent."
"Oh! Well, shit, you can lay it up on the picnic table over here! C'mon, I'll help ya."

He walked with a limp as we picked the thing up and carried it over to a table in the sun. "Now we need some rocks," he said. We weighed it down as he asked where I was from and just what in the hell was I doing in Montana. I was explaining as another white-haired man walked out of one of the huge fifth-wheel trailers parked in the campground. My portly, toothless friend interrupted me, asking the man, "What're you doing?"
"What're you doing?" he answered.
"Standing here listening to you ask me what the hell I'm doing!" They both laughed.
"Jessica," my friend said to me, "this is Mr. Walker. He's a good-for-nothing. We don't need your help, we're already done!"
"Fair enough," Mr. Walker laughed. "I was gonna see if you wanted help pitching that tent.""It's too wet!" the stained-shirt man said. "Go home!" It was clear that my new friend was the resident grumpy old man, but meant no harm.

Still enthralled with my bear encounter, I started telling him about it. He interrupted again, saying, "Wait, wait. Come over here. I want you to tell this story to my Will, too. She'd like to hear it." He led me over to the door of his tiny camper, where a gray-haired woman with gnarled hands and feet sat inside, reading a large-print Reader's Digest book. She was wearing a long blue tee-shirt with the sleeves cut off and nothing else. Some of her toes were missing and her feet were an odd shade of purple, and her teeth bit over her bottom lip. Still, as she slowly raised her head, her eyes were gentle and kind. "Jessica," he said, "this here's Will. She don't talk none, but she can understand you just fine. She had an accident. Now, go on, keep tellin' your story."

I started telling the tale again, how close the bear was, how scared I felt. I went slowly, making sure Will was following, because I have a habit of speaking too quickly. When I was finished, my friend, whose name was Max, said, "That's quite a story! Won't you come on inside and talk with Will some? She has a talk-box and she likes talking to people. She don't get to do it that often. Come on inside."
"Um, sure!" I balked at first because of the condition of the trailer. A strong smell of garbage and body odor was emanating from inside and I was afraid of picking up a bug or two. A palpable layer of grease and dirt covered nearly every surface, including the items on the small table and the pictures on the walls. Still, I couldn't deny hospitality such as this, especially with Will opening a dusty briefcase to reveal a computer-keyboard-esque contraption that barked forth a robotic, "Hello? Hello?" when she turned it on. Think Stephen Hawking, but a woman's voice.

Will has one working finger, her index finger on the left hand. While she set up the voice-box, she breathed heavily through a Perma-Traech, a permanent hole in her neck that allowed her to breathe. It was held open by a plastic collar around her wraith-like neck, and the piece on the opening itself looked like a lugnut. Max watched us, sitting across from each other, and smiled contently. "I'm gonna do dishes," he said, but when he saw me looking at the faded snapshots stapled to the wall, he started pointing them out. "Oh, you like pictures? Well, here we go -- this one here is Will when she was a young thing, before the accident." He pointed to a black and white photo of a beautiful teenage girl in a halter top sitting under a tree. "This here's Will's sister, that's Will's son, Chris, who was one-year-old when she had the accident, and that's Will's mother. She's quite a lady! This one's my sister and her husband. This here," -- he pointed to a yellowed piece of paper with words typed on it -- "that's a poem that Will wrote, she's a poet, and this one is a motorsickle that we used to take out sometimes. Will loved to ride that motorsickle!"

Will wanted to speak now. "Flor-ee-da." The box crackled to life. "Flor-ee-da. I used to live in Flor-ee-da."
"Really?" I asked. "How did you end up here?"
It took her a long time to answer, having to type the entire sentence with her one working finger. Finally, she hit the red button and the box said, "I pre-fer cold to heat and Mon-ta-na has nice-er weather. Flor-ee-da is so humid. And there are lots of bugs."
"Will left home when she was 13, she hitch-hiked!" Max offered from the sink, as he poured a frightening concoction of grease into a Mason jar.
Will smiled, and made her sign for "hitch-hike", licking her finger and then sticking her arm out.
I was astounded. "Thirteen?! You went out hitch-hiking at thirteen?" She nodded. "Oh, my GOD!" I cried.
She began typing on the box again, saying "I mare-eed at fif-teen. I was not preg-nant, just stu-pid. It was not Max."
"Yeah," Max said. "Will lived quite a life before her accident!"
"How old were you when you had the accident?"
"Twen-ty-one. Now I am for-tee eight. Seven-tee five miles an hour and palm trees do not mix."
I looked at Max, not sure if I should laugh at her joke. He laughed, so I did too. So did she. Still, he could sense my nervousness.
"Don't you worry about the joking. It's how we deal with the disability. What else is there to do, cry all day? I give her a rough time all the time, it keeps us young. Don't I, Willow?"
The box squawked, "Yes. You are a pain in my ass."
"You shut up, you ol' gimp!" he giggled.
"Am I lye-ing?" Will looked at me and smiled. Max burst out laughing at the sink. I was in awe.

Max asked me, "So are you in college?"
"No, I graduated awhile back. Did you go?"
"Yeah, I was a psychology major. Then I went to grad school. You ever taken a GRE exam?"
"No."
"Well, lemme tell ya, that is the hardest test you could ever take! I got a nose bleed right in the middle of taking it, that's how high my blood pressure was! I decided that it wasn't for me!"
"So what did you do after that?"
"Nothing. Fucked around. I raced boats and rode motorsickles. But you tell us more about you. What's your story?"
"Eh, nothing much. I just wanted to write about people who don't suck."
"Does your family worry about you?"
"Is the pope Catholic?"
"I like you, girl."
"I like you guys too."

I told Will, "I love the name Willow. It's so beautiful."
Before she could type up a response, Max said, "That's not her real name. I named her that, about ten years ago. Her real name is Belinda. But I call her Willow, because Willow goes to the willows. She loves nature, loves being in the woods. So that's her name now. Y'know, Willow's got all her mental capacities workin' in there. All the doctors said she was a vegetable, but man, she proved them wrong!"
The box spit forth, "I am not a weak-ling." Willow held up her arms like a body-builder and grinned widely.
"That's right, Will. Strong as an ox!"

Willow began typing again and the box said, "Amerigo Vespucci"
I looked at her quizzically. "The guy who discovered America before Columbus?" She tried to nod, closing her eyes and trying to lift her head. "What about him?"
"Fourt-teen fif-ty one. Amerigo Vespucci. I re-mem-ber. Nuns ham-mered shit into my brain."
"She's tellin' you the accident didn't take away her memory. She remembers everything, even up until a few seconds before the accident. She was the one drivin', y'know, but it waddn't her fault. She gone to pick up another guy from work and he was on acid. Thought something was comin' at the car, so he jerked the wheel and they smacked into a palm tree."
Willow typed away and we waited patiently to hear what she had to say. Finally, the box croaked, "My ribs were bro-ken, lots of bro-ken bones, my eyes were black and blue, and I was so swo-len. My son screamed when he saw me. No won-der."
"Will made her mother bring Chris into the hospital, because for some reason she believed he was in the car too and had died. That's when Chris lost it, when he seen her. Quite a sight."
"I'll bet." I whispered.

Willow began coughing through her traech-tube, a bizarre rattling sound. She held a paper towel up to her throat to catch the phelgm that dribbled out. "You best watch out from where you're sittin'!" Max warned me, sitting across from her. "She's li'ble ta shoot that stuff right out at you. Sometimes you catch her off guard, make her laugh and it'll come shooting right out at ya like a bullet! She done got me a couple times!"
I bent over, as much from laughing as self-preservation, until Willow had extracted everything she could.

When she was finished, she typed something into the box. "Kris-pee Kreme." She looked at Max with a mischevious grin. He asked her to repeat it. "Kris-pee Kreme," her box said, as she made the sign for "hitch-hike" again.
He threw his head back and laughed. "Krispy Kreme, that's one of her sexual adventures. Willow, I swear, for someone who stopped livin' at 21, you lived a lotta life. She wants me to tell you about the time she went hitch-hiking and got picked up by a whacko in a Krispy Kreme truck. This guy, he was a foot guy. Loved feet. A fetishist, you know. So little Will here, all'a fifteen years old, she gets in this truck and he starts goin' after her toes!"
Willow put her index finger in between her teeth -- her sign for "scared".
"Yeah, that's right, Will. Scared. So she ran away from this nut and then went and bought herself a gun!"
Will typed into her box. "I got it from my girl-friend. Ill-ee-gal as hell."
I laughed. "Man, you are brave! I'm way too blonde to own a firearm, I'd kill myself."
"Yeah, Will's a crazy thing," Max said.
She typed into her box. "I would ra-ther have an ill-ee-gal gun than a slashed throat."
I agreed.

"I like your giggle," Max told me. "You've got a great giggle."
"Thank you," I blushed.
"Yeah, Will used to have a great giggle, too."
"She still does." I said emphatically.
He paused. "You can hear Will's giggle?"
"Can't you?"
He looked mildly shocked. "You can hear Will's giggle?" he repeated.
"Well, yeah. It doesn't sound the same as yours or mine. But that doesn't mean she doesn't laugh. Does it?"
"Who is this miracle who wandered into our house?" Max asked Willow.

Later on, I asked Max, "So how did you two meet?"
"I was her caretaker when I dropped out of grad school. In between the bikes and boats."
"Wait. So you met her.... after the accident?"
"Yeah. She intrigued me. One time I was tryin' ta get her bra off to put her to bed and I couldn't do it and she smacked me. She said, 'Get away from I'll just sleep in it!' So that made me wonder. Little things like that. And we just fell in love. Been together almost fifteen years now. We have a good time. Don't we, Will?"
"Speak for yourself," said the robotic voice and Will laughed through her traech tube.
"Oh, you shut up, you ol' gimp!" he laughed.

Their shaggy sheep dog, Chickie, barked at a bird outside. "You oughta get yourself a travelin' dog," Max said.
I told them about the dog in Browing, the new mother that I almost took with me.
"Yeah, you need yourself a dog. There's all kin'na strays that wander 'round here. Maybe you should take one'a them. Will and I had a dog for a long time, a Rottie. She drove all over with us. An' sometimes, when we was travelin', we'd have to sleep in the El Camino and she'd have to take the floor. She hated that! Still, she was the sweetest dog. Name was Head. So last Christmas Eve, she died. We was all broke up about it but couldn't do nothin'."
They both began giggling an infectious giggle while he explained the rest of the story. "So's I stuck her in the back'a the Camino and let'er freeze up."
"What did you do then?"
"I waited til she froze and then I drove'er over to the cliff by the canyon an' rolled'er down the hill! God don't mind!"
By this time they were both laughing so hard I thought one or both of them would stop breathing. I dodged Willow's phelgm cannon again, barely breathing myself.

At one point Max began explaining how they lived in the tiny camper. "We're both frugal. Don't need much. She's absolutely great, because with her disability she could be a real prima-donna. But she's independent. When things got expensive, and we wanted to live on our own, we thought we'd try this out. We like it fine. It's good for Will, 'cause it's so dang small. If she falls, she falls into something. Plus, she likes to drink beer and get blasted and she stumbles all over the damn place but can't hurt herself too bad."
Willow banged on the table and shot him a silly grin -- her sign for "shut the hell up".

I wondered how they survived with the smell -- by this time I had been visiting for at least an hour and was beginning to grow nauseous. I also marveled at how they didn't get sick in that environment. The bodies of broken toys but immune systems of steel.
"Yeah, we ain't got no water, so it gets hard to heat the water for dishes and stuff. But we found if ya' just rinse off the dishes with cold water and don't use no soap, and ya let the food dry on the plates, as long as ya let it dry real good you can use the plates again and ya won't get sick. The soap won't come off wit' cold water, so we just rinse 'em."

My stomach churned at the thought. Here was a paradox. People who fed my soul, who made me feel alive, but whose way of daily life was literally making me sick. "How do I write about this?" I wondered.

"Also," Max said, interrupting my train of thought, "we ain't got a bathroom, but this here five-gallon bucket works just fine." He kicked whatever bucket he was referring to, and it must not have been emptied in awhile. A putrid stench of stale urine and feces swept through the stuffy camper and almost knocked me over.
I didn't understand. There was a fully-functioning bathroom just 20 yards away. "Why don't you use that?" I coughed, trying not to breathe.
"Well, sometimes in the middle'a the night, you gotta shit and you don't wanna go all the way there. 'Specially with her disability, we can't get around as fast. So we use this and we like it just fine."
It did make sense, but I was about to lose it. Max started looking around for something and I excused myself. "Be right back," I croaked.

I ran to my car, went around to the side opposite the camper, opened both the front and back doors, squatted inbetween and vomited on my shoes, as quietly as possible. Lucky for me, the both of them are hard of hearing. While I was wiping off my shoes, again I dismayed over how to handle this one. Two of the most beautiful people I'd ever met, who just happened to live lives difficult for others to understand, or stomach. How to write about them without sounding derogatory? Or if they read it, without offending?

I'm still wondering how to manage it.

Wow, Guess What!

I'm being given my own column in an online women's magazine!

It's called www.whoisisabella.com and it can serve as your second source for all things Jessica's Writing-related. The articles will most likely be modifications of things that have already been posted here and some separate stories altogether, so be sure to check the homepage of the zine if you're looking for a fix!

The column will be updated every other week to start, and will most likely increase in frequency in the next few months!

YAY!!!!!

Glacier National Park Pics!

The view that made me pray.

I'm so glad that boy in Kentucky taught me how to whittle last summer! I lost one of my tent stakes and had to whittle a stick to fit the grommet on my tent cover. I felt awesome!

"Calling all cars. Be on the lookout for a huge nerd. Last seen entering Glacier National Park, dressed like a ragamuffin. Light brown hair, Asian features. Feared armed and dorky."

Even in the cloud cover, still astounding.

Running Eagle Falls, named for a female Blackfoot warrior.

The Warmest Whiskey Welcome in Montana.

I didn't go directly to Missoula from East Glacier, rather I meandered through the National Forest that sits to the south of Glacier. There is one road through the forest, that dumps out past the town of Seeley Lake and into Bonner, which is the closest town east of Missoula. It rained during my entire trip through the woods, but it was still beautiful. Deer crossed in front of my car and horses grazed on sweetgrass despite the wet afternoon. I listened to classical music as the vistas swept in front of the windshield.

Finally, after a couple hours of moseying, I reached Bonner and the sun poked through the clouds. I was five miles from Missoula, five miles from the place where all the granola people live. For some odd reason, I felt like I was going home. Something about even the word 'Missoula' felt like home.

I wanted wi-fi more than anything, so I turned at a sign for the University of Montana. I caked myself in deodorant and followed directions from a college kid to a place called Liquid Planet right in downtown. I loved that I was in a city but the buildings weren't skyscrapers. I parked and, laptop in hand, went to the coffee shop.

The little guy at the counter spoke to me like he'd known me forever. In fact, everybody in Missoula speaks that way. We chatted about fun things to do in town and a sweet red-headed girl chimed in. "There's a great band playing tomorrow night at Sean Kelly's, you should go to that!" I ordered the drink of the day, a vanilla chai, and camped out, writing until my fingers were sore. Finally, at about 10, when the sun had finally gone down, I went over to Wal-Mart, thanks to the counter guy's cute map on my receipt, and washed up in the bathroom. The parking lot was like something out of 'Grapes of Wrath', except with RVs instead of tents. I counted 15 in the spaces around me, all camped out for the night.

I headed back to downtown, dressed up for once, and ran into the sweet red-head on the street. "Hey!" I called. "Whatcha doing right now? I was going to see if you wanted to hit up some of the bars with me."
"Oh, I'd love to!" she said. "But I'm pretty beat. Plus my fake ID got taken away last week, so I can't get in."
"You're not 21?" She looked so much older.
"No, I'm 20. But have fun and I hope I see you soon! What's your name?"
"I'm Jessica."
"I'm Jamie. Nice to meet you!"
"You too! Have a good night!"

She sent me over to a place called Hammerjack's, which I balked at at first because the only Hammerjack's I know from Baltimore is an 18-and-over club and it sucks. "No," she assured me, "it's not little kids." I stopped in over there and was relieved when the bouncer asked for ID. I took a seat next to a girl with gorgeous brown hair and looked around. MXC was showing on the big screen TV and I watched Japanese people fall in the mud, always a good time. A young guy came over to me and said, "I know you're not here by yourself."
"No, I am."
"Well, that's no good." He launched into a speech that ended with a litany of reasons why I should accompany him home that night. Then he asked, "What's that ring on your finger? Are you, like, married or something?"
"No, but I have a boyfriend. And as tempting as your offer sounds, an orgasm lasts a minute but guilt lasts forever."
"That's fair. Uh, I... gotta go find my friend..." And with that, he was gone.

The pretty-hair girl turned to me and asked, "Are you from out of town? I heard you talking to that guy."
"Yeah! Yeah, I'm from Baltimore," I managed to say, without dying of shock. A woman was talking to me in a bar. In a friendly manner! Any woman from the East Coast knows how unimaginable that is -- all the women at the bars are so competitive, and just glare at any other women with a look that says, "I'm the hottest chick in the place so don't you dare try and take anyone home!" But not this girl! She was being nice, sweet even!
"That's really cool! I'm Megan," she said, extending her hand.
"Jessica." Now I was really in awe. I tried to keep my jaw from dropping.
We talked about life in Missoula and her job as a vet tech. "Do you do horses and cows, too?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah. It's kind of a pain, because you have to be out there in the hot sun all day long, but I still like the job."
"What's the craziest thing you've ever seen as a vet tech?"
"Um... probably a dog that ate panty hose. We had to do emergency surgery because he wouldn't have been able to pass them, he would have died."
"That is pretty nuts."
"Yeah. Hey, this is my friend Lala. Lala, this is Jessica, she's from Baltimore." She introduced me to a pixie of a Hispanic girl with blonde highlights.
"Lala?" I asked. "As in 'Teletubbies'?"
"Yeah, just like that," she said, shaking my hand. "We were gonna go to another bar, do you want to come too?"
"Sure!" Finally, after how many years, I was being befriended in a bar by not one, but two females, not some guy trying to get in my pants.

We walked over to a bar called The Rhino, which was filled with college kids. Dave Matthews poured out of the speakers and Lala said, "Let's go somewhere else."
Oh, this place seems cool, I thought.
"I like more hip-hop than that kind of stuff. I want to dance!" she said. "My friend is deejaying over at The Board Room, let's go there."

We walked another block and Lala told me about her father. "My parents are in Hawaii right now, on their honeymoon. They renewed their vows last week, it was a huge ceremony! We had to hire security guards to turn people away at the door, because people just showed up. Everybody knows my dad. He owns a Mexican restaurant called El Cazador about a block from here. He came here as a young man and started in restaurants as a dishwasher. Then he became a bus-boy. Then, in Seattle, someone gave him a chance to become a waiter. He did that for a long time. Then, when I was about 13, he had an opportunity to own this restaurant. He'd never even heard of Missoula, Montana. But he took it and he said, Lala, you're coming with me!' So we came out here and started it up, and then he sent for my mother and little brother. We've been here fifteen years now."
"When my parents got married," she continued, "they couldn't afford a real wedding. So when they renewed their vows last week, it was crazy! Everybody loves my dad. He's the nicest guy. And we partied so hard! I was chugging champagne and made my grandma cry! Wasn't I, Megan?"
"Yeah, it was pretty crazy."
"Yeah!"
"Man, I wish your dad was in town. I'd love to talk with him."
"Well, you'll just have to come back!"

We went down some stairs into a very dark bar tended by a cute guy with a goatee. "Hey, Skunky!" Lala called, and promptly ordered three beers and a round of Washington Apples.
"Sweet Jesus, are you trying to kill me?" I asked. Two days in Montana and already hitting the whiskey.
"Shut up and take it!" I did as I was told.

Lala showed me pictures of her three sons. "That's Juan, he's 2. This one's Ethan, he's 4. And this is Damonte, he's the oldest." Lala is only 24 and it amazed me that she could have three kids already. It was encouraging to see, actually, because I meet so many young moms who resent their kids and the fact that they have no free time. But Lala and her fiance, Adam, seem to have a good system worked out. She has her nights off to go out with the girls, and he has his nights out with the boys. It's really heartwarming to see couples that young already learning the secrets to a happy family.

I leaned over to Megan and said, "I could never do your job!"
"Yeah, it's tough."
Lala cut in, saying, "Last month we went out drinking and then Megan had to go to work early the next morning -- tell her about it, Megan!"
"Oh, God. Okay. So, I was still drunk from the night before and I get to work and my boss says, 'Come on, we need to work on some cows, it'll only take a couple hours.' So I'm, like, dying, right? And we get out there and I was so thirsty! We were in the sun all day long -- 'til, like, 7 o'clock at night -- and I seriously felt like I was going to die. I felt like I was in a desert, like I was going to start hallucinating."
"Tell her what you had to do, Megan!"
Megan winced. "Um. I had to collect semen from bulls."
"WHAT?!"
"Yeah."
"Um.... how... did you.... do that?" I asked. "Were you, like...." I motioned crudely with two hands.
"Oh! No! God, no! Not like that! But I had to stick this thing in their asses, it seriously looked like a rocket! And I stuck it in there and it made them..... you know. And we collected it in a bucket."
"Sweet Mother of God! That is.... wow. Wow! Yeah, I could never, ever do your job. Ever."
"Yeah, I was so hung over that day."
Lala said, "I came home from work that day and she was at my house, lying on the couch, she couldn't even move!"
Megan shook her head. "Yeah, it was, like, the worst day of my life. I literally thought I was going to die."

Lala's deejay friend spun some pretty cool stuff and we danced a little bit. But we were well on our way to Wasted Town by that point and the thought of balancing or doing any cool moves didn't last long. We ended up back at the bar, with an inordinate amount of alcohol in front of us.
"Well, I'm not driving tonight!" I said as they pushed another shot in my direction.
"Welcome to Montana!" they toasted.

Welcome to Montana, indeed.

These are Montana horses.

Getting close to Glacier.

Flooding and Rain and Bears, Oh My!

The next morning I packed up and headed straight for Matt's Service Station. A huge storm was coming and the radio promised hail the size of golf balls. The maid, a sweet older lady with dark glasses who was sweeping the walkway, said, "I hope the hail doesn't damage your car!"
"Thanks, I hope so too! By the way, that room is the cleanest room I've ever stayed in for the price!"
"Why, thank you!" she called as the rain began to pour.

My car gave a ghastly squeal as it lurched out of the parking lot. At the repair shop, I parked and ran inside one of the open bays to escape the deluge. A handsome man with bright blue eyes said hello as he mounted a tire on a Border Patrol SUV. "Be right with ya!"

He wiped his hands as he came over, and I asked, "Would you be able to look at my car today?"
He pointed around at the all the vehicles already in the bays. "Well, maybe this afternoon or tomorrow. We're pretty full right now. Are you going to be around later on today?"
"Um, I guess so. I wasn't trying to be.""Are you just passing through?"
"Yeah."
"Well, what seems to be the matter with it?"
"It's got this ugly squeak and it's been shaking real bad."
"Prob'ly got rocks in your tire rims. You get stuck in the mud recently?"
"Yeah, yesterday."
"That's prob'ly it. I'll have my guy take it around and see what he hears. Hey, Caleb!" He called to a cute blonde boy with blue eyes, who came over and took the keys and then shot me a look as he tried to slide the seat back. With a case of bottled water, a bag of towels, a guitar, a pillow and a backpack behind it, it didn't want to move.

The car lunged back with a horrendous moan and I pointed after Caleb as he drove down the rainy street. "That's it! Did you hear it?"
"Yeah. Ya got rocks in your rims."

When Caleb pulled the Civic back in, he and the handsome man started taking the tires off right away. Confused, I said, "If you don't have time right now, I can wait."
Caleb answered, "No, it's okay. This'll be quick. We'll getcha back on the road. Trust me, you don't wanna be stuck in Malta, Montana."
"Oh. Well, thank you!"

While the handsome guy balanced one of my tires on a machine, I asked, "Are you Matt?"
"No, I'm Jeff. Matt passed away a year ago. I took the shop over. I got a farm up the road too. Cattle. What're you doin' way out here?"
We were interrupted by a boy of about 8 who came running over to Jeff, wrapping his arms around the man's torso. "Daddy, gimme a hug!" he cried.
Jeff laughed. "Okay, okay, I love you too. Now you go back over with Mom 'cause it's dangerous back here." The boy scampered off through a doorway.

I explained about the book as they hosed my tires off. "So this is your first time in Montana?" Caleb asked.
"Yes! I love it! Are you from here?"
"Naw, I'm from Washington. But I like it better out here."
"Why?"
"People are nicer. In Washington they kind of act snobby. Besides, I met my wife in college and she's from here so we live here now. Where else're you goin' in Montana?"
"Um, probably Missoula and Bozeman."
"Missoula's okay. But that's where the.... how do I say this without sounding mean..... granola people live."
I laughed. "That's fine with me, I like granola!"
He shook his head and smiled.
When they were all finished, I followed Jeff into the office to pay. "Tire balancing's usually $25.00. Cleaning's extra. Eh, I'll charge ya twenty."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure!"
I blushed. He didn't have to do that.

I made my way out of the rain by heading west while the wind blew east. In Cut Bank I knew I was getting close to Glacier National Park. I could see the slightest hint of snow-capped mountains in the distance and felt my eyes well. I was almost there.

Near Cut Bank was a historical site. There are historical sites all over the upper-Midwest, but this one caught my eye because it wasn't just a sign, it was a three-walled structure built over two large rocks that sat behind wooden rails. A sign read, "Buffalo Head Rocks", and explained the story of Blackfoot Indians who worshipped the rocks for their resemblance to bison heads. I wasn't the only one there. A mini-van full of small, dark-haired children waited as their grandmother and another young man prayed over the rocks, smoking cigarettes. They were each full-blooded Native American, and spoke softly in a language I didn't understand. When they were done praying, each took a drag of their cigarette and put them out on the rocks. The young man rubbed the butt of his so the tobacco fell on the cool stone, then he placed the filter on top. "What in the hell?" I thought, watching them get back in the van.

I walked up to the rocks and saw dozens of cigarette butts all over them. There was also sagebrush and other bundles of herbs lying on top, tied with red and pink ribbons. Cigarette butts lie in between the two stones, and I tried to imagine a reason why. Did the Blackfoot farm tobacco? Were cigarette butts considered holy? Did some careless person just put their butt out next to the rocks and start a sad trend? I couldn't ask those people, they were already gone. Besides, judging from the graffiti on the walls of the structure, I don't think they would have answered.

Someone drew a heart with teardrops in it and wrote, "9-11-01 Jesus is The Answer -- Please Pray for USA!"
Someone else wrote, "White Pride Did It!"
I got back in my car and drove off.

In Browing, which is on the Blackfoot Indian Reservation, I stopped for gas, ice and beer. It's voting season in Montana and the campaign signs were out in full force. "Elect Henry Butterfly, Ward 8!" "Vote Roger 'Sassy' Running Crane!" A gorgeous long-haired brindle mutt came straight up to me at the pump, begging for food. She cuddled my knees and I scratched her ears, feeling the thick knots of matted fur. I didn't give her any food but she still followed me up to the door. She was waiting patiently for me when I came back out, and followed me back to the car. I kneeled down to kiss her nose, debating on taking her with me. "I'd have to shave her just to get these knots out, and I'd have to buy more towels because she needs a bath, and the food... and hmmmmm....what to do, what to do?" As I nuzzled her face, she rolled over, exposing large teets that had been newly nursed. "You're a new mama! Well, in that case, I can't take you with me. Sorry, honey."

A voice crackled over the loudspeaker. "Ma'am with the Honda, please move your vehicle if you are finished pumping!
I got back in my car and drove off.

The closer I got to Glacier, the more excited I became. I left for this trip to meet new people, the National Parks are just a perk I get to do for myself. It's a little harder to meet people in the parks, but I still enjoy the hiking and scenery. I came through the town of East Glacier and passed a bunch of little shops and large hotels. The Thimbleberry Restaurant promised Real Montana-Style Cookin' and another cafe hawked their huckleberry french toast. A huge purple spoon stood by the roadside, next to a sign that read, "World's Largest Purple Spoon!" I was going to take a picture, but why conform?

Coming around a bend and passing the sign that read, "Glacier National Park," I saw the mountain lake clearly through the trees and let out a cry of some sort. My eyes misted and it hit me -- I'm really doing it. I'm really here in Montana, seeing all this for the first time because I worked my ass off and didn't stop when people told me I was crazy and didn't give in when people stole from me and didn't give up when everything seemed hopeless. I started praying, something I don't do often, thanking God for her guidance and blessings.

I drove to the path that leads to Running Eagle Falls and jumped out to walk the trail. I wore my flip-flops and dipped my toes in the frigid water as I came around the turn to the falls. It was gorgeous. White water roared over the top of the cliff, shooting spray for several yards. The water was so cold my toes hurt just from being immersed a few seconds, and so clear that I could see straight to the bottom even in the deepest parts. The mountains in the background made the view stunning, despite the clouds. I was in heaven, and almost hated to walk back to the car.

It was getting late, about 6:30 at night, and I was the only person around, that I could tell. I pulled out of the Running Eagle parking area and crossed the ____ river. I was barely paying attention, just looking at the sky and wondering if rain was imminent, and I almost missed the tiny black bear cub on the side of the road. I slowed down, and he stood up on his hind legs to look at me. I pulled the parking brake, and he began to climb a small tree. I grabbed my camera and opened my car door, and he peeked out from the leaves. I stepped out of the car and started looking for his mother behind him. I didn't see her. Leaning on the open door, I turned to close it and heard a snap behind me. And there, on the other side of the road from the cub, was a large mama black bear and she was staring at me. She stood up on her hind legs to show me her size and then dropped to all fours and began advancing towards me. "Well, this is it," I thought. "I've had a good run." I tried to scream but couldn't. All sounds were stuck in my throat and my shoes were stuck to the pavement. Finally I managed to open the car door and get back inside. The window was wide open and I watched her stop short of my front tire, realizing that since I was in the car, I was no longer a threat. Instead, she turned and bumped the hood as she passed in front of me. I exhaled. She ran over to the cub in the tree, to make sure he was alright, and took a seat on the lush ground beside the road. Fumbling with the gears, I started to move, just as another tiny cub darted in front of my car, his skinny hind legs barely keeping up with his fuzzy bottom. He cuddled next to his mother and I tried to snap a picture, my hands shaking so badly that I couldn't get it focused. I knew if I got out of the car to get a better shot, I was as good as dead, so I settled with a mottled picture and kept going, my throat finally releasing its grip as each sound and emotion tried to make its way through at once. I was speaking in tongues; laughing, crying, screaming and gasping simultaneously.

The cloud cover was intense and promised rain, but I held out a daft hope that the storm would wait til morning. Still shaking, I got to the nearest campsite and pitched my tent in a spot underneath some dense trees. I had been hungry, but the bears killed my appetite, so I went on a short hike to retrieve it, looking out for -- what else? -- bears. Bears are scary. I used to think bears were cute and funny but now I know the truth. Finally, I ate my Ramen noodles and my usual three crackers and read "Fear and Loathing" as the sun turned the thick clouds pink.

That night the wind shook my tent as I tried to sleep. In the morning I woke up, cold as a stone, to a flood. The rain had started during the night and everything was soaking, including my pillow. I packed everything up, mostly in plastic bags. It was miserable. And freezing. I changed clothes in the bathroom and scrubbed my face with cold water, then went anywhere I could that had hot coffee and solace from the rain.

I ended up at the huckleberry toast place. The adorable be-faux-hawked boy at the front asked, "How are you?"
"Cold. And wet."
"Well, come on back, we'll fix that!"
He brought me steaming coffee and a menu. I plugged in my laptop and began writing about Wisconsin, saying, "Just bring me your favorite thing and two eggs over medium."
He showed up a few minutes later with a fried object the size of a lunchbox and covered in whipped cream. "What is it?" I asked.
"Hazelnut vanilla stuffed French toast! We batter-fry it!"
"Great!" I said. It was warm, that's all I cared about.

As I typed, the other waiter, a long-haired man with an Eastern European accent, asked me if the thing sticking out of my laptop was a wireless card.
"Yes, but it only works in wi-fi hot spots."
"Oh," he said, "because I went to the Radio Shack and I asked girl many questions but she was not knowing these things."
"Well, I'm not a real good source either."
We chatted for awhile and then I asked him about the weather. "Is it going to be like this all weekend?" I pointed to the downpour.
"Yes, it will be this way for long time."
"Well, in that case I think I'm getting the hell out of Dodge."
"Where will you go?"
"I think Missoula."

The faux-hawk waiter came back over. "So what's your story?"
"Traveling around writing a book. What about you?"
"Eh, I don't know. I move around a lot. I'm from New York City."
"No, shit! Where at?"
"Brooklyn."
"What part?"
"Williamsburg."
"I lived in Greenpoint!" I cried.
"Oh! That's cool! Yeah, I left just to see other parts of the country.""Me too. Where'd you go?"
"Southern California."
"Me too!"
"No shit!"
We talked and he extolled the virtues of Oregon. "You have to go, it's beautiful."
"Oh, definitely. I have a friend there, I'm going to visit her. Maybe I can drag her to Willamette Falls and Crater Lake."
"Yeah, that'd be really cool," he said. "I might go back to New York."
He should; with his frame and wide-set blue eyes he could be a model.

A table of five college kids came in and asked if I was getting wi-fi. "Sorry, no, but there's an Internet cafe place with laundry and showers about a mile down the road."
"Showers? Like, hot showers?"
"Yeah, I'm definitely hitting it up when I leave here," I said.
"That's cool. Are you from around here?"
"No, Baltimore. What about you?"
"Oh, we all work down in Grand Teton and we came here for the weekend. But we might go back if this keeps up."
"I hear ya. I think I'm going to Missoula later, and then Yellowstone."
"Well, if you're down in Teton, stop in at the Chuckwagon in Colter Bay! We'll hook you up!"
"Awesome! Will do!"

I payed my check and Faux-Hawk wished me luck on my trip. I thanked him and headed back into the rain. At the Hi-Mountain Laundry Showers ATM High-Speed Internet, I threw my wet clothes in the washer and myself in the shower. My toes were so cold that the hot water made them tingle. Finally, feeling human once again, I left East Glacier and headed down the road towards Missoula.

Seeing Mirages in Montana

After leaving Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I made my way into Mecca.

Mecca for me has, for some reason, always been Montana. I'm not sure if that's because it's the most exotic sounding place in the continental states or one of the most remote; I really don't know why at all. But for some reason, Montana has always been calling my name. And finally, after 26 years, I got to answer it.

Williston Basin, North Dakota, just two miles east of the Montana border, is cowboy country. I stopped at a tiny bar to use the bathroom and nodded hello to the one patron in the place -- a cowboy too old to still make the runs. He was the first real cowboy I'd seen since fumbling down the backroads of South Dakota last summer. It wasn't a moment too soon; I was inordinately excited just to see this white-haired man in a ten-gallon hat and boots. Again, American Exotic. Or at least more exotic than Laurel, Maryland.

When I crossed the border into Montana, the landscape barely changed. Still, I was in awe. Montana. Finally. I stopped to take a picture of horses. Between Maryland and North Dakota I probably saw four hundred horses. But these were different. They were Montana horses. Same with the clouds in that famously big sky. I pulled over to the side of the road just to crawl on top of my car and stare at the endless heavens. A healthy-looking man in a blue pick-up pulled over behind me. I waved and smiled a guilty smile.

"I didn't mean to make you pull over, I'm just enjoying the view!"
"Oh! Okay! So you're just taking a rest!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Oh! Okay! Well, if you need anything fixed, I got tools! We could fix it now!"
Ordinarily, the subtext would be, "And I could put my dick in you as payment!" But not this time. This was Montana.
"No, but thank you so much! Have a nice day!"
"You, too, ma'am!"
And that was that. Two strangers being cordial. Coming from Maryland, that is exotic.

On Rt. 2 I learned the four-finger steering wheel wave. People driving past me would hold up the fingers on their left hand while their thumb held the wheel. I loved it! Before, I thought the FFSWW was reserved only for people you knew that you saw driving by in a small town, but these people didn't know me! And they still waved! Well, I became a waving fool, holding up my fingers at a near right angle each time I passed a car.

I drove into tiny towns off the Interstate, unafraid thanks to advice handed down from Dean in Watford City: "You ain't gotta be scared of runnin' out of gas, 'cause the railroad runs right parallel to Rt. 2. Back then, the law was every seven miles the train had to stop, so now every seven miles there's a little town. It's sure to have a Conoco, or a Cenex, they're real big around here."
He was right, I didn't fret all the way from Watford to Browning.

Through Lohman, Glasgow, Prentice and Moscow, I counted the bars -- at least two per town -- and stayed fairly full on fuel. Just as in North Dakota, most bars and gas stations were also casinos, with electronic roulette and blackjack machines in a cordoned-off area. In Glasgow I also bought razors, my first since leaving home, a pack of three plastic Bicks for $4.50. For that price, remind me never to forget razors again. Still, as hairy as I had gotten since leaving Maryland, it was quite worth it.

There were keychains for sale at the counter. They were no bigger than my pinky and looked like tiny ice-scrapers. I asked the young girl at the register, "Is this for scraping your windshield?"
"Um, yeah, it could be," she said, unsure of what I was asking. "And people also use them to scratch their scratch-off tickets."
"OOOH! I get it!" But I didn't buy one.

Stopping on the side of Rt. 2, I rollerbladed a bike trail through the steep Montana afternoon, leaving my sneakers under the one trail bench and getting my car tires stuck in the mud on the way back out of the ravine that led to the trail itself. Past the trail, road work led me down a three-mile gravel stretch I wish I could forget. Later that night, I heard a horrendous squeaking coming from my front end. "Oh, shit," I thought. "That car trouble that skipped over me last year is visiting me now!"

I stopped that night in Malta, Montana, one of the bigger towns between North Dakota and Glacier National Park on the state's Rt. 2. It was getting close to dusk when I pulled into town, not sure if I should splurge on a cheap motel or rough it in the city park as I had in North Dakota. The park advertised camping, but "roughing it" was being kind. The sites were quite primitive, much moreso than in Watford. No showers, no electricity. I stopped in the bathroom of the city park, which bordered the baseball field. A Little League tournament was going on, tiny children in stocking socks and mesh caps running around, chasing after toddlers with authority. It was a Town Happening and, though I wanted to belong, I didn't have a five-year-old to dress in a jersey.

Instead, I checked out campsites. A young Hispanic couple wrestled in the grass by the bathrooms and, for a moment, I missed the warmth of human skin. I passed them by, pretending not to notice the first stages of foreplay, as much for my own celibate sanity as their conjoined naughty one. For five dollars, I shouldn't have complained about the sites themselves, but the morning hike had called up some less-than-friendly odors from the recesses of my underarms and I needed to bathe. A motel and RV park sat kitty-corner to the park and I sat, blinkers on, debating whether I should spend the money.

"It can't hurt to inquire about prices," I thought, turning off the car in the parking lot of the Riverside Motel And RV Park - Full Hookups! I left the keys on the front seat and the window open, fully expecting to hear a price too steep to warrant and then turning my lonesome self over to the rustic confines of the town park. Yet when I walked in I knew I couldn't just walk out.

A fragile old woman in a wheelchair sat at the ready to take down my information. Her desk was a small window between an obvious apartment and a makeshift common area. She gazed at me expectantly and somewhat overjoyed that someone was staying at the Riverside that night. I knew then that I was good for at least $35.00 that night, plus tax. Who knows how long the woman had been sitting there at the ready for some soul to wander through?

Checking in was a process. Having left my debit card in the car, I had to go out to get it. Then she had to pick it up with her slow, rheumatoid fingers. Then she had to swipe it through the machine with said slow fingers. Then she dropped it. Not wanting to invade the space of a disabled person, I waited patiently as she tried to bend at the waist and pick it up, which took another five agonizing minutes. I silently chided myself for impatience, during which she made several comments about not having her glasses. I finally caught on, saying, "I can get your glasses for you."
"Oh, yes, dear, they're just on that table there in the kitchen."
Just going into the small kitchen for eyeglasses, I walked halfway across the woman's humble apartment, sealing the deal that I would stay that night. Whatever Uncle Sam was paying her (or not paying her) for disability, I could at least supplement.

Still, she trusted me to walk my muddy feet into her quarters. That in itself was a welcome better than a parade, and a payback for whatever paltry amount she was asking in return. Minutes later, after she had given me full reign over the credit card machine despite finally picking up my card, I was signed in to Room #10 and on my way.

The squeak of the car was giving me a very hard time out in the driveway, to the point where I wasn't sure if the squeak that I heard was myself or a crazy person screaming. I parked the car and still heard the crazy person. "JJJEWWWABUUYY, KIIIIUMBBBBACK!" It repeated over and over, sounding thin and desperate. "JJJEWWWABUUYY, KIIIIUMBBBBACK!" Finally I wondered enough who was making the noise. It was my disabled friend, having miraculously wheeled her way to the customer door and was holding open a way to yell for me. "JJJEWWWABUUYY, KIIIIUMBBBBACK!" she called, scaring me.
"Are you okay?!" I screamed, almost not wanting to hear the news.
"Yes, dear," she said, wheeling back to her desk. "But I gave you the wrong key. Somebody is already in 10. I have to put you in 11."
Oh, sweet Jesus, I thought. She really scared me with all that yelling.

Room 11 was the cleanest room I've ever rented for $35.00. I get wary now, having paid more than that for a shitty room in Kentucky, complete with a decorative bed spread (cigarette holes) and its own custom paint job (boogers on the walls). But at the Riverside Motel, I actually didn't think I would get scabies from sleeping in the bed.

Thus began a strange night in Malta. I took a shower and set a chair in front of the door because the door itself didn't lock (truly odd). I brought my knife into the bathroom with me and listened for any sinister noises. "Psycho" has always stayed with me, and I have a fear of motel showers.
Then I burned my tongue on chicken soup I heated up. A car pulled up outside as I was getting something from mine and a weird woman emerged from the backseat, wearing a straw hat and blinking maniacally. She plodded with tiny steps up to Room 10 as the older couple in the front seat watched her. From their body language and expressions, I couldn't tell if they knew this woman or had just picked her up wandering down the street and took pity on her, driving her back to her room. The woman shook and her eyes darted around like someone on hallucinogens. I went back inside quickly, not wanting to get into a conversation.

Later on, I walked around the streets, checking out the stores in this tiny town. I had to cross three sets of railroad tracks that run right through the center. An underpass was built for cars to swing below the trains, and a mural painted on the concrete side showed an eagle flying in front of an American flag. "Oh, look," I thought. "A Maltese falcon." The stores were all dark at ten o'clock and the sun had just dropped beneath the horizon, darkening the windows. There was a scrapbooking store, a beauty parlor, a hardware store, and a western clothing shop. There were also three bars/casinos and I walked quickly past them, not wanting to draw attention. Turning down a sidestreet, there was a one-screen movie theatre and a tiny greenhouse, as well as a three-bayed auto repair shop with a sign that read, Matt's Service Station. "I'll have to come here tomorrow," I thought morosely. "How in debt am I going to go to Matt? Will I have to go home?" Homesick as I am, having to go home seems like the cruelest fate that fate can deal.

For an outsider, it's hard to trust a mechanic in a small town. I walked over to the tiny VFW with the neon Budweiser sign and popped my head in. The light was dimly orange, a stark contrast to the pale blue sky outside. Three elderly veterans in their issued hats sat at a tall table, their pins and medals glowing in the light of the popcorn machine. Six older people, men and women, sat talking at a shorter table that seemed weighted down by the large ashtray in the center. The women each had short hair that puffed on top, and the men wore flannel shirts.

"Hi," one woman said, smiling but wary. "Can we help you?"
"Yeah, hi," I said nervously, feeling quite out-of-place. "I'm from out of town."
Two of the men exchanged looks that said, "Well, duh!"
"And I need to get work done on my car and I was wondering what the best place in town is?"
The elderly veterans whispered among themselves as the six small-table people traded confused looks. "Well, Matt's is the only place in town," one woman said. "If you can make it to Harrington, (the next town over) they might be able to help you too."
Of course. The only place in town. So Matt's is was.

Walking back, I picked my way across the tracks and saw a cat sitting near the doorway of my motel room. I was still pretty far away, and I cooed, "Here kitty, kitty!" It ran, and disappeared. I mean, literally, I have no idea where it ran to. It darted behind my car, and then was gone. I looked everywhere, under my car, down the walkway, everywhere, and the cat was gone. "Was that a mirage?" I wondered. Alone in the dark, on the road where no one knows your name, your mind begins to play tricks on you. And for a second I truly believed that the cat was really the crazy lady in Room 10, who had morphed into a cat and also had powers of invisibility.

Buckhorn Duckies and Birmingham Wisdom.

I made my way to Theodore Roosevelt National Park immediately after breakfast. Coming around the curve, looking out over the Northern Badlands, I almost cried. I annoyed truckers by going five miles under the speed limit just to take it all in. At a scenic overlook I tried to take a picture, but what showed on the screen was a shoddy misrepresentation of the majesty just over the guardrail. Huge striped rock formations, called coulees, stretched all the way across the horizon, dotted with scrubby juniper trees and tall pines. The valley below was in bloom, goldenrod and prairie roses flooding the ground like bubbles in a tub. The muddy Little Missouri River snaked through the valley like a dirt road that moved. From the overlook, I could see longhorn cattle, one of the only wild herds in the country.

I took Dean's advice and passed the entrance at the North Unit, instead driving up to a scenic overlook on the other side of the valley, a taller one. He was right, I could see for miles, but again, my camera refused to do the landscape justice.

I used my beloved National Parks Pass to get in for free, and decided to hike the 4.5 mile Coulee Trail. I was going to hike the Buckhorn Trail, but 11 miles seemed a bit daunting. The Coulee began near a self-guided nature trail and then kept going through a series of steep climbs up the coulees. I set out armed with two cameras, a can of peaches, a bottle of water and an emergency flare in my backpack, ready to do battle with my lack of endurance and hike the entire trail.

Unfortunately, some of the trail markers were faded and I ended up on the Buckhorn Trail. I was about two miles into the middle of the Buckhorn, deep in the valley between the Cannonball Coulees, before I pulled the map out of my pocket and realized my mistake. Still, I didn't care. It was a great hike and I saw many bison droppings, enough to get me excited to see some actual bison, although I didn't this time. I also came near what I think was a big horn sheep cave, because the crevasse was quite deep into the side of the coulee and I could smell some animal markings.

Probably the best part of the hike was coming across a prairie dog community -- for those of you who have never come across prairie dogs, they like to pretend they are hardcore. They come out of their holes and bark at you when you come near, as if to say, "Watch it, man! I'm dangerous! What makes you think I won't cut you?" Unfortunately for them, their bark sounds like a rubber ducky, which just makes it cuter that they're trying to put on this big tough-guy act, which makes you want to get closer, which makes them squeak more, which makes them cuter, until you're just having a Wild West-type standoff with this small animal to see if it'll let you pet it or just give up and go back in it's hole.
I
turned back after two miles, knowing there was no way I'd make it the entire way. Disappointed, I cheered myself up by taking a drive to look for bison. At the River Point Overlook, one of the most spectacular venues in the park, I donned my Orioles baseball cap that Greg gave me as a going-away present and tried to pretend I wasn't lonely. Walking up to the overlook, an older gentleman was walking back to the parking area. We intersected halfway. "Is this not an amazing view?" he asked in a thick Southern drawl, motioning towards the open canyon.
"It sure is!" I said.
"Now where are you visiting from?"
I pointed to the big O on my cap. "Baltimore. How about you?"
"Birmingham."
"Wow! You're a long ways from home!"
"Well, so are you!"

His eyes grew curious as he began to notice that no one was coming out of the brush towards me or walking from the parking area to join me. He looked around, then back at me saying, "I know you're not here by yourself, are you?"
"Yessir! Just me."
"Well, my my. What are you doing here all by your lonesome?"
"Um, I'm kind of a writer. I'm writing a book on traveling the country and stopped here for the scenery."
"Okay, well now how would you describe this?" he asked, motioning again towards the immense view.

It was the hardest question I've ever been asked. How could I describe it? How can you hold a rainbow in the palm of your hand?
"That's something I'd have to sit with for awhile, to think about it."
"Oh, careful now," he warned, in his Alabama drawl. "You won't remember it the same as you're seeing it now. You'll remember it, but it'll be just the tiniest bit different."
He paused. "I know for me," he said slowly, "it moves my insides. It takes me back one-hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, when explorers were first seeing this land. When it was pristine. It just moves my insides."
Did I need a better description than that?

An elderly couple from Michigan were walking up the trail and heard our conversation as my friend and I were trying to figure out how the explorers made it through the brush and over the coulees before there were roads. The area is called The Badlands for a reason, originally named so by the French, who called it "Mauvais Terre Pour Travais", literally "Bad Land to Cross". The elderly gentleman offered these words of wisdom: "You think this is bad, you should go to Hawaii! There's brush there that's a foot around at the base and so thick you can barely see through it! Can you imagine having to run through that with a Jap shootin' at you?"
No, I couldn't.

I put on a Puccini CD as I made my way across the rest of the park. I passed a snake sunning itself on the asphalt and stomped near it to make slide back into the grass, to avoid getting run over. I made up a little song as I stomped, singing, "Come on, come on, get out of the road! Why aren't you moving? What's wrong with you? Go! Go! You're really stupid! Go! Go! Unless you want to get squashed!" The ways I amuse myself on the road are pretty sad.

Speaking of which, one of my few regrets on this trip is that, driving down the road, I say some of the funniest shit out loud, to no one, and it's lost forever. No one will ever hear it, although fellow drivers will see me laughing my head off alone in the car and speed up to pass the crazy woman.

Four Things I Forgot.

Cut me some slack, I don't use voice recorders, just the powers of my own fractured mind. Sometimes things slip through the cracks (crevasses? ravines? canyons?) and end up here in a silly catch-all random post like this one...
__________________________________________________

1. Buddy's owner, Norm, that I was talking to in Watford City, he said one other thing that was very interesting, We were talking about where I'd been so far in the Midwest and I told him how I accidentally went to Sturgis during the rally last summer. He said, "I went once, too. Stayed about two hours. It just wasn't for me. I like to ride motorcycles, but I also have a little thing called self-respect. I don't need to act a fool or do the things they do there. I fought in Viet Nam and made it out of there without doing drugs or prostitutes. Why start now?"

2. I found a wayward travel magazine in the cement bathroom of the Watford City fairgrounds and looked it over while the guys made breakfast. It showed a picture of a bison standing in front of Old Faithful as it erupted. The white plume of water was so wide it took up nearly the entire frame. "That's Old Faithful?" I exclaimed.
"Yeah, it shoots about 40 or 50 feet in the air," Dean said.
"Well, yeah, but it's that wide?"
"Yes ma'am!"
"Oh.... 'cause in the cartoons it always looked really skinny...."
Every single one of them paused. "Cartoons?"
"Yeah... that's the only place I've.... ever... seen it."
Everyone had a good laugh at the East Coaster.

3. While Arlen was cutting up his wife's banana bread I told him about the rhubarb bread that Darlene had given me (which, by the way, didn't make it to nightfall; I ate the whole thing between Turtle Lake and Fargo.)
"Yeah," he said. "Gotta watch out for that rhubarb! There's so damn much of it around here you leave your car door open and it'll jump right in with ya!"

4. To get to Watford City, one has to cross the Missouri River. Imbedded on the bridge are paintings of famous Indian braves that defended their land and way of life to the death, one of which is Four Bears. That circular painting is the only remaining tribute to Four Bears in North Dakota, aside from the 4Bears Casino and Harley-Davidson Shop. And so goes history...

Driving out of Watford City towards Theodore Roosevelt National Park, there is a billboard that features a fat woman in aviator sunglasses on the back of a Harley. The bright yellow font reads, "Meet me at 4Bears!"

I think not.

And MORE North Dakota Pics!

This is about how close he let me get, I barely used the zoom lens! Squeak squeak!

My snake in the middle of the road.

More North Dakota Pics!

These are all natural rock formations, but you can clearly see the difference here. It's so cool! A coulee from one of the overlooks.

Cannonball Coulee. These formations were made by water.

Bob, Will, Cole and Dean, politely posing after feeding the new girl and before getting back to work.

Another of Cannonball Coulee. (I can't control the order that blogger.com arranges these pics, unfortunately.)

"We'll Getcha Started the Midwestern Way!"

The next morning I heard the guys get up and leave for work at about six. They were supposed to come over and wake me up but I guessed they forgot. I went back to sleep, somewhat forlorn that I wouldn't see them again.
But luckily, I was wrong! They came back around 9, just as I was finishing my oatmeal. "You're back!" I called, as confused as I was pleasantly surprised.
"Yeah, we came back to make breakfast! We usually leave early to get started and beat the heat, then come back for a meal."

Beat the heat? It was 67 degrees and slightly windy. And here I was in my jeans and sweatshirt while they tooled around in shorts and tee-shirts, ever the natives.
"You're gonna have some breakfast with us, right?"
I hadn't planned on it.
"Oh, nonsense! Oatmeal won't cut it. You gotta get some eggs and sausage into you if gonna be out hiking later."

While Bob flipped hickory sausage in a pan on the single-burner stove, Arlen wrestled with Cole, a younger member of the team. The old man took the boy down easily, and it was funny to see such an old guy get so physical. Arlen saw me laughing and said, "I'm pretty good for an old leatherneck!"
"A what?"
"Leatherneck. From workin' outdoors. The back of our necks get tough like leather."
"Oh! Where I'm from, we call them 'rednecks'!"
Apparently, that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He threw his head back and laughed, then ran over to Dean's camper to tell him, "She said they call us 'rednecks'!"

Dean came out of the camper with a carton of eggs and a pot of coffee. "I know I am. That's fine with me."
"You don't think it's a derogatory term?" I asked him.
"No! It's what I am! I have my working TV on top of my non-working TV -- it makes a good shelf!"
I thought about Richard, who I'd met last summer. "When I was in Arkansas last year I met a guy who said, 'You can call me a hillbilly, you can call me a mountain man, you can call me whatever you want, just don't call me a redneck!' He thought it was a bad word now that Jeff Foxworthy made all rednecks sound stupid."
Dean laughed. "I really don't care what people call me because I don't care what people think!"
Redneck or no, that's a man speaking.

Breakfast was ready and we all took seats at the picnic table, before a spread of eggs, cheese, milk, sausage, coffee and homemade banana bread that Dean's wife had sent. "We'll getcha started the Midwestern way!" they bragged. Arlen said grace, taking off his hat and saying, "Good Lord, we thank you for this food, this beautiful day, the chance to spend another day in your grace and for the company. We pray that you will keep us safe in our work and our travels, in Jesus' name, Amen."
"Arlen's also a preacher," Bob told me.
"Yeah, it's my side job," he chimed in.

As we ate, they explained North Dakota weather. "The wind always blows 'round here. I think if the wind stopped blowing every person in North Dakota would fall over 'cause they're so used to walking into the wind."

Somehow we got on the subject of bears and Bob gave me this warning: "You know how you can tell the difference between black bears and grizzlies? It's by their droppings. You've heard how you're supposed to carry mace and little bells around your neck to scare off the grizzlies right? Well, when you're near the bears you'll know it by their droppings. The black bear's droppings are about yea big (he motioned with his hands) and the grizzlies' droppings are about yea big (he motioned larger) and have little pieces of brass bells in them and smell like pepper!"
I totally fell for it, hanging on his every word until the very end, when I realized I'd been completely had! The guys all cracked up at my face, nearly falling off the bench.

When the eggs had been polished off and the sausage was gone, it was time for them to get back to work. They politely posed for a picture and wished me well as they climbed into their trucks. They honked and waved as they drove away, calling out, "You be safe now!"

I didn't get their numbers, I barely got their names. But they made an impression I won't soon forget.

THIS IS THE BEAR THAT ALMOST ATE ME!

Here is the Mama Bear and one of her cubs! Man, I was shaking so hard, that's why the pic is blurry!

THIS IS THE BEAR THAT ALMOST ATE ME!

Here is the Mama Bear and one of her cubs! Man, I was shaking so hard, that's why the pic is blurry!

A Tale of Two Cities: Valley City to Watford City on a sunny Monday.

At Kenny's Cafe in Valley City, I asked the gray, portly man in the booth across from me the best place in town for an oil change. "Ooh, take it to Wade's Service Station. He's good, he'll treat you right." He gave me directions in the Midwestern way: "Go up to the light, through the detour, past the bank, and he's on the left. Tell him Tom from the VFW sent you." I followed the directions to a tee and told Wade, an older, handsome man who seemed made out of squares, that Tom sent me.
"Great!" he said. "I'll get it up right away and check everything out."
I set out with my laptop, book, purse and laundry shoved into my laundry bag, to the laundromat. "That's an awful long walk," Wade said. "I can drive you."
"No, no, I need the exercise after that breakfast at Kenny's Cafe."

Halfway there, a white and red truck pulled up behind me and honked. It was Tom From The VFW. "Jump in! I went to Wade's to make sure you found it, and he said you were walking to the laundry! I can take you!"
It was Midwest hospitality at its finest.

As soon as I shut the door he informed me, "You ain't gotta worry. I'm not gonna take you somewhere and abuse you or nothin'." And it wasn't until that moment that I realized hopping into a truck with a stranger in North Dakota gave me no pause at all, it seemed perfectly natural.
"That thought really hadn't crossed my mind," I assured him. It was the truth.
He dropped me at the Maytag Laundry and said, "Wade'll pick you up when he's done. You take care now and be safe!"
And with that, he was gone.

I plugged in my laptop and wrote while my clothes were in the spin cycle. I went the bathroom and when I came out, I was face to face with Wade. "I'm all done, I came to getcha!"
"Oh! Well, let me unplug real quick."
"Man, you got all the first-class stuff, don'tcha?"
"Yeah, and I live in a Civic!"

I climbed in his big red truck, almost identical to Tom's. "I was gonna bring your car to you and have you drive me back, but I don't think two people could fit in your car!" he said.
"You're absolutely right!"
We drove back to the service station as he explained a little about North Dakota transportation. "You drive that little car, that gets good mileage. But we drive these big land-pushers. They're not efficient, but we gotta get around in the snow."

He was a kind man with kind, piercing blue eyes and square shoulders. Square, white teeth and a square, gray haircut. While he was drawing up the reciept, I read an article on the wall from 1980, that featured a picture of Wade with shoulder-length hair. "I looked like that up until a week ago, except grayer! Just got it cut! Now, I put a new air filter in there..."

Minutes later, I was back on the road. "You be safe out there!" he waved to me as I pulled away.
I gunned it for Theodore Roosevelt National Park, hoping to make it there before nightfall and camp in the park. I didn't make it, because I read the map wrong and figured the only entrance to the park was 50 miles south of where it actually was. I stopped instead in Watford City, in western North Dakota, and was not sad that I did.

Many cities in west North Dakota offer camping at the city park, even the very small towns. Watford City was no exception. Knowing I was going to be hunkered down for the night, I bought three cans of Milwaukee's Beast and a bag of ice -- fun times! Since Watford City is the county seat of Lincoln County, the city park was adjacent to the county fairgrounds. People were jogging and biking through the large grounds. Three campers already sat on the gravel and two guys, one older and one younger, were cooking pasta on a single-burner stove just like mine. We nodded and smiled as I walked to the sign-in sheet.

As I was filling out the envelope, a friendly black dog with brown eyes came running up to me, tail wagging. "Well, hi there, sweetie!" I said as he nestled my knees.
His owner was a tall, gray-haired man with a mustache and a kind smile. "He's overly friendly!" he called.
"I love him! What's his name?"
"Buddy. Pretty common, I know, but that's his name."
"Well, my dog's name is Butch, so don't feel bad!"

As we were talking, Buddy squatted on the manicured grass. "Oh, no!" his owner said. "He usually goes over there in the tall grass where nobody goes!"
"Do you need a plastic bag? I have one, I'll be right back."
As I walked to the car, I marveled at how this gentleman and I were able to talk like old friends right off the bat. It just felt comfortable.
He had many interesting things to say and I tried to remember them all.

On North Dakota: "I wouldn't live anywhere else. I moved down to Colorado for a couple years and I hated it. Why? Integrity. People there don't have it. It's like this -- I ran a business for twenty years. Never had a contract. Didn't need one. 'Round here a man's word is that good. But not down there. People will screw you if they can. And also, here I never lock my doors, never lock my truck. Not there. Another thing -- 'round here neighbors care about each other. If someone is sick, or there's a death in the family, we pull together. But in Colorado? Forget about it. I lived there for two years. You know when the first time my neighbor came over to talk to me was? When I put a 'For Sale' sign in my yard! He wanted to know how much I wanted for it. I told him it was none of his damn business since he never bothered with me 'til then. That may sound mean on my part, but I'm used to friendlier types."
"You'd hate Maryland."
"Oh, I know that."

On out-of-towners: "There was a girl stayin' 'round here for the summer, volunteering in the park. And I volunteer there too, corralling the buffalo on horseback. So one day the buffalo were by the road and the ranger called me up, asked me to get them off the road. So I jump on my horse and head down to the west entrance -- I had a key -- and then this girl was taking a break and laying on the grass and here I come on my horse and damn near run her over! She thought I was a buffalo! Well, anyway, we got to talkin' and I said you should come over for supper. Well, she was from Boston, see? And she didn't answer. And later she asked her boss, 'What's with these people? Are they trying to kidnap me?' And he told her, 'No, that's just how people are around here.' So the next Sunday, she sure came over for supper!"

On the economy: "People think we're all poor up here in North Dakota. Not so. I make more money here than I ever did in Colorado, and I can afford more with it! I drive a truck for the pipeline project. You wouldn't believe the money I pull in!"

"Well," he said. "I better be gettin' ol' Buddy here home."
"It was a pleasure meeting you," I said.
He extended a hand, shaking mine with a firm, steady grip. "I'm Norm."
"Jessica."
"You take care and be safe, young lady. The pleasure's mine."

As I walked back to pitch my tent, the two pasta guys called to me. "Maryland? Wow, you're mighty lost!"
"No, you're not lost if you don't know where you're going!"
They laughed.