Notes From the North

This morning we had breakfast at the Uptown Diner and were served by the same waitress who waited on us last year. I love continuity! Today she told us about her daughter who lives in Troy in a house with single-paned windows, wood-burning heat, and gravity-driven spring water. Apparently in the winter when the ground is frozen, there is plenty of water. But in the summer when a lot of the water seeps into the ground the daughter has to suck on the shower head (the highest water point in the house) to get water down the lines. As she just had a baby, her mother thinks she should have a more reliable source of water, but you know us Montanans--we're stubborn.

The daughter was the 911 dispatcher for Troy before she had the baby, and her last day of work was a doozy. According to her mother, most of the 911 calls in Troy (population 957) are to get licenses and a host of other administrative type things interspersed with the occasional my-neighbor's-mad-at-me-and-filled-my-mailbox-with-horse-manure calls. But on her last day, she heard the burglar alarm go off at the Booze N' Bait (I can't make this stuff up). The Booze N' Bait is listed in the Troy yellow pages under the categories: clothing, hunting and fishing supplies, liquor stores, pawn brokers, and non-resident snowmobile use permits and is the only listing in each of those categories.

When the sheriff arrived, he found two guys waiting in a brand-new (as in one-day-old) pick-up truck and another guy hauling loot out of the store. Now these three were out-of-staters--they'd crossed over from Idaho to to wreak mayhem and maybe their sense of direction wasn't so good. When the guys in the truck saw the sheriff, they peeled off and headed down the road... but not back towards Idaho, instead they headed off towards Libby Montana the next town over and home of the county jail. Rumor has it that when they discovered their mistake--and that the only way back to Idaho was back through Troy where they would be spotted--they decided to create a diversion by setting their friend's new truck on fire and heading off into the woods where one got lost and the other fell off a cliff into the river. They were eventually both apprehended. The official news story reads a bit more dryly, but is entertaining nonetheless.

Today it is overcast and 69 degrees with a light breeze and abundant free wi-fi--which brings me back to our waitress for a second. When we left after breakfast I told her we were going to find some wi-fi and enjoy the passing of the day and she said "I like to call it wiffee. If you look on the internet, it says we have it here, but it doesn't work 'cause the owner can't remember the password." I am so home!

Yesterday we had a lovely stroll through the Missoula farmer's market which was full of farmers of varied ethnicities from hippies of all ages, to our Hmong community, to a larger-than-expected eastern European/former Soviet Union population (Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Serbian, Uzbekistani--who knows). We bought huckleberries, basil, little cucumbers, green beans and beautiful fingerling potatoes for Dave to turn into a feast when we're back at my parents' house.

Now I think it's time for a nap... Happy Sunday all!