Volume 11: Montana Revisited, Kentucky's Disaster and Another Positive Post-Flood Effect
Plus, desolate landscapes, town-dwelling goats and a new local comedy club.
Greetings from Montana … again.
In April, my brother-in-law, Joe, moved out to The Treasure State (Great Falls), and I did the drive with him. This time around, I returned using pre-COVID flight vouchers with my family (wife and two kids), my Boston Terrier (Judith Weiland) and my mother-in-law to visit Joe.
Montana is a vast beautiful expanse of open land and breathtaking mountain ranges, occasionally interrupted by tiny, tiny one-street towns like Craig. You can fly down the highway (speed limit is 80 mph on many roads) without passing another car for hours. People move here for the solitude (Montana just crossed the 1 million resident mark a few years ago) and the natural beauty. But the same isolated landscape some find calm and peaceful can be harsh and depressing to others — especially if you’re used to living in civilization. I’m somewhere in between. There were moments when I could see myself living out here in a cabin in the mountains, happily banging out stories and essays on my laptop between hiking, skiing, rafting and fly fishing expeditions. Then there are those moments where I’m like, “I would give anything for a Walgreen’s that isn’t three hours away.”
Even the regular “towns” aren’t quite what you’d expect. Case in point: Great Falls. On the outside, the quaint little town Lewis and Clark couldn’t get enough of looks like it’s right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with it’s business-lined main street (Central Ave.) bolstered by the music that pumps right out of the speakers in its streetlights. This morning I walked out of our Airbnb to take out the trash, and I saw a baby goat wandering aimlessly around. When it caught sight of me, the wayward goat bolted. Then a truckload of people came roaring around the corner screaming, “Excuse me? Did you see a goat around here? Every time we think we have it trapped it skitters away!”
Kentucky Under Water
Ever since our house was flooded, I’ve been much more tuned into news of flooding in other areas of the country — even in other countries. The recent flooding in Kentucky is a perfect example. In the past, I would’ve read about that disaster and thought, “That’s awful. I can’t even imagine what that would be like.” Now that I have some context, the details make sense and the personal stories hit a lot harder. I can feel the sudden, unexpected panic in vignettes like this one from The Kansas City Star:
Bobbie Noble didn’t know if she could do it.
Noble gripped the steering wheel. She was stuck on a high stretch of road between a home she had just left and a road swelling with rushing, muddy water – her car was stuffed with her four children, husband and three pets.
Recalling the morning from a provisional shelter set up at Gospel Light, a church outside of Hazard, Noble said that she had almost resigned herself to death when she looked at the road gushing with water before her. “I couldn’t go back. I just kept looking at them. My daughter was scared and she said ‘Mommy what are we gonna do.’ I was figuring we were gonna die.” She floored it. Their car scooted through the water for several yards, right through the flooding Caney Creek.
The family made it out of the muck, only to later get surrounded, though safe, at Noble’s grandmother’s house. With hungry children in the house, Noble and her husband took four-wheelers to get food and supplies. On their way back, they wrecked and had to walk home – their only way out was a helicopter rescue.
The Star story above is packed with personal stories about exactly how people were impacted by a historical natural disaster. Without these personal stories, the flood gets reduced to statistics: At least 28 dead. Hundreds of homes destroyed. Four-hundred million dollars in damages.
As extreme weather like this and this and this continues to ravage this tired, struggling planet, personal stories will play a vital role in forcing people to enact real change.
SoulJoel’s Ida Connection
I wrote an article on Joel Richardson and his new home, SoulComedy’s Comedy Club and Lounge at Sunnybrook, for The Times Herald, (and a couple of other local papers) that, on the surface, seems completely unrelated to this little email newsletter. But the only reason I have any connection to these local papers in the first place is because of this little piece I felt compelled to write after my house got flooded. That led a bunch of other articles, which led to talking with Joel about doing a piece on his club’s reopening, all positives that came out of a terrible event.
There’s an Ida connection on the SoulJoel’s side of things, too. Last fall, when Joel was located in Royersford, he held a fundraiser to help Lock 29, a Mont Clare restaurant that was flooded by Ida.
If you get a chance, check out the article and/or attend a show over at SoulJoel’s.
Want me to write about something specific? Let me know
Leave your in the comments section (or in any post) or email me directly at jrdbilski@gmail. Finally, if you’re enjoying what you read, consider sharing with others using either of buttons below my signature.
Til Next Time,
Jared
❤️