Regarding unexpected gifts

Every so often here I’ve revealed fabulous ideas for solving local problems. In some, I asked readers to send money for projects such as digging tunnels from West Glacier to St. Mary for people who complain about slow traffic on the Going-to-the-Sun Highway. None of those plans ever produced actual cash, except for a character who sent one lousy dollar to help neuter grizzlies at those corn spill sites along the BN railroad tracks above Essex.

I’ve lost track of unrequested gifts but was reminded of a couple when I got a letter by Nick Darling from San Diego last week. It contained a black button with white print saying “Over the Hill.” This was a pleasant surprise because he wrote, “I’m that ‘Darling’ guy again. Long time subscriber to the Hungry Horse News and enjoy your column.” Some of the other gifts haven’t been so thoughtful.

Once did a story about my bronc busting days on a Camas Prairie cattle ranch during World War II. Told how the wrangler, Omar Gardner, had got badly lacerated while putting on an unexpected bucking horse demonstration aboard a “partially tamed” bronco. He was showing off for a young lady at the neighboring ranch.

It had been years since I’d had contact with Omar, so was surprised to receive a nicely wrapped present from him. Opening it up with great expectations produced a hearty laugh. It was a box of “partially tamed” horse apples. “Corral Number five.”

Another gift came after I wrote about a big game hunt with two General Motors executives doing a promotional magazine story about their brand new Chevrolet Blazer. By the second to the last day of the hunt, they had each bagged a nice buck deer and antelope, then agreed to let me have a go at an “awesome” pronghorn buck we’d seen the day before.

Everything went well, with owner of the 10,000-acre ranch as my guide. Following a long stalk and a bit of luck, we peeked over a ridge top and there was the “world record buck” 150 yards upwind gazing away from us. Thrust my arm through the sling of trusty 30.06, put the butt to my shoulder, and sat down for the shot of a lifetime.

If you’ve never plunked down hard in a large bed of Eastern Montana cactus, you have no idea of the instant unpleasant sensation. Shot in the air and the antelope headed for Wyoming. Special seating arrangements let me ride painfully-rough miles to ranch headquarters, kneeling pantless in the front seat, staring glassy-eyed into the back seat. The needle removal operation that night in the bathroom is an ordeal I do not enjoy recalling.

Back home, while still removing occasional sharp things from personal body parts, I wrote up the incident for the column. A package arrived from Arizona a few days later. The sender had given me a box of his “local cactus” with spines twice as long as our Montana kind. A note explained I should count my blessings the accident hadn’t occurred in “the Southwest.” I did not find imagining that scenario to be any consolation.

Oh yes, for those who don’t remember the grain spills, I found a disc with my radio news story for Wednesday, Jan. 4, 1988:

“AP —The cleanup of four million pounds of corn on the southern boundary of Glacier National Park slowly continues. A Burlington Northern train derailed at the site in the Snowslip area, dumping twenty grain cars full of feed corn. A similar spill three years ago was partially cleaned up and then large quantities were buried, fermenting over the years, which attracted black and grizzly bears and other animals. A Plum Creek wildlife biologist says, ‘BN will not make that mistake again.’

“Deer and elk have been observed at the new spill area and pose a hazard to themselves. Repairs of the track continue while work proceeds, vacuuming the piles of spilled grain into trucks and then loading it onto rail cars at the Essex yard.”

If you’re wondering how trucks got to the spill, BN bulldozed a road up there from Highway 2.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.