any members in Montana

@bjesien I always found Burlington, VT overrated. There are a lot of college towns that are though.

Also. I always wondered why rural America, while so scenic with breathtaking nature is so depressing, abandoned and hopeless, etc. Nothing like central and Western Europe where tourism thrives in these areas.

Thanks for the clarification.  We are planning a trip to Bozeman and was curious about the statement.  I don’t know Montana at all, but Bozeman  looks interesting.   

@immatthewj My neighbor is from Missoula, She’d be interested (more like I’d be interested) in all this Montana analysis. As a geographer, it’s fascinating to me. It’s the only part of the country I have not been to, but I sure would love to visit.

@grislybutter , well, I escaped Montana shortly before my 19th birthday in 1978 and I haven’t really been back for any extended periods of time, so my own analysis may not be completely on point. I do remember that a while after I got out of the Air Force I was back for maybe 6 months (December ’84 through June ’85) and once I was in a barber shop for a hair cut and there was a rancher/farmer bitching to another one about the laws protecting endangered species (I believe he was discussing grizzly bears at the time, and I am not typing that just because this is your thread). Anyway I remember him saying something about how he and his kids had never seen a dinosaur, but it didn’t bother him that they (dinosaurs) were extinct. But it is a beautiful and relatively sparsely populated state. If I remember from our Montana History class in HS, Montana is a Spanish word for mountainous, which seems to me to be a bit misleading as a large percentage of the state is what I consider to be plains/prairie.

While there in the 1990’s I was told that "the Californian’s were invading the place", driving up property prices, etc.

@bjesien , my Dad used to grouch and grump about that. My Mom was from Kalispell (my Dad was from Billings) and I have fond memories of our trips up across the Mountains in the summer (my Dad was a teacher, so he was off) to spend time with Grandma. Anyway, as time passed and both my Mom and my Grandmother had died and I’d take a vacation or two each year to visit my Dad, I’d always say to him that if he moved to Kalispell (which at one time when my Mom was alive they had thought about) I’d find a way to visit more often. I always said that in a half jokingly but half serious way. But he’s always reply that "The Californians had ruined Kalispell." He didn’t like making big life changing decisions (I am like him in that regrad, although I can list a couple I should not have made) so even if "the Californians had not ruined Kalispell", I doubt he would have ever packed up and moved anyway.

Thanks for the clarification. We are planning a trip to Bozeman and was curious about the statement. I don’t know Montana at all, but Bozeman looks interesting.

@grannyring , Bozeman is Southeast of Missoula on I-90 (which is a fun drive if you like driving, as I used to) and a bit Northwest of Billings. I am reciting that without the benefit of a map, so if the map in my head (I’ve made that drive a few times) is off, I apologize. I’ve only passed through, never spent any time there, but it looks to me like beautiful country. "The foothills" is how my Dad described it. He (my Dad) had a teacher buddy who retired a while after he did he did, and my Dad’s teacher buddy was a huge outdoors man (fishing and hunting) and Bozeman (actually a "cabin" in the vicinity) was where he retired to. That was back in ’15, about the time my Dad died. Anyway, Bozeman is another college town, MSU, and I kind of get the impression that it may be a bit more progressive/liberal than most of the rest of mainstream Montana, but I do not know that for sure. I do not remember it having the same reputation as Missoula. If you have ever watched that series Yellowstone (which I will not watch anymore and absolutely cannot stand), every once in a while, when they are tossing names about to try to add "realism" to that farce, they would refer to Bozeman.

thanks @immatthewj I thought you still lived there. My neighbor left about 30 years ago but still goes back once a year or so.

I heard that about Californians in southern Oregon. "those bastards drive up the housing prices". And in Utah. And Idaho. And probably everywhere in the West.  Except for Texas. Btw I can't watch Yellowstone either. 

thanks @immatthewj I thought you still lived there. My neighbor left about 30 years ago but still goes back once a year or so.

Yeah, you know, Griz, starting in ’89 we’d fly back once a year to visit Mom & Dad, and them Mom died in ’92 and I was still making the trip via NorthWest Airlines, and then in ’99 my Dad sold me a car he said he didn’t want anymore (by choice, and also by virtue of being a mechanic I used to drive HORRIBLE cars) and then i started driving (2000 miles one way) and I enjoyed the drive so much that, up until June of ’08, I’d make the drive two or three times a year.

And the air is crisper and cleaner and it smells better, and there is a lot less traffic and life just seems simpler all around, and those short visits I’d make brought back all of the memories that made me miss the state. But then when I would stop and give it some extended thought, I’d remember a whole lot of bad memories and reasons why I left and really didn’t want to go back to stay. Although I did think about it. Going back to stay, that is.

Here’s a sample memory that came back to me, kind of like a flash cube. It’s not the reason I don’t choose to go back and stay, but it kind of sort of represents my memory of the mainstream Montana attitude.

Back when I was in HS, so this would have been prior to ’77, there was a brutal murder (bludgeoning) of a young female school teacher in Conrad, Montana, a town about 50 miles away. Unlike what the series Yellowstone portrays, murder is not an everyday occurrence in Montana, and this made the front page of one of Montana’s big newspapers, The Great Falls Tribune, and was generally big news. As it turned out, the murderer, Duncan McKenzie was tried and convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.

Back in those days, one of my running buddies was the son of a prominent attorney and Montana being the sparsely populated state that it is, my buddy’s dad (from 50 miles away) became one of the state appointed lawyers for the defendant. And he was tasked with the appellate process which he used to keep the defendant off of the gallows for quite a while. So he did his job. (Eventually, I believe McKenzie was hanged.)

Sometime when I was still in HS, my buddy and I were out drinking at this bar in the tiny "town" of Santa Rita (more like a wide spot on a narrow stretch of highway a bit south of Canada) that would serve minors. A couple of farmer/ranchers were in there drinking as well, and they recognized my buddy as the son of this attorney who was representing McKenzie, and they started pushing my buddy around and bullying him and pretty much trying to start a fight as an excuse to beat him up. And this was due to the McKenzie case. I was doing my best, seeing as how this was my friend, but these guys weren’t having it, and they were big tough individuals and we would not have had a chance. One of them said to me that they didn’t have a problem with me, it was about my buddy, but I better stay clear.

Anyway, nothing serious happened. But this attitude was not exclusive to those two farmers. Being the attorney’s son was a friend of mine, and everyone knew about the McKenzie case, I heard a lot of negative things said about his dad. This was the attitude. Screw the constitutional process and lets get it over and hang McKenzie and anyone who believes in following the constitutional process through on this one is our enemy.

So that is kind of the attitude I think of when I think of mainstream Montana.