Strange Duck Passing Through

[Owly055]

I live 20 miles from the nearest real town ( population about 2K), 80 miles from the nearest city (about 40K), 100 miles from the nearest "real city".... Billings...... pop 100K, and 500 miles from the nearest place most of you would consider a real city..... (Denver). The middle or nowhere by most people's definition, God's country by mine. With the great plains rolling out in front of me and the last outpost of the Rockies behind me, it's the best of everything America has to offer........ in my view. I absolutely dread my forays into the heavily populated areas west and south of me, and far worse those east of me. I don't pull the keys on my vehicles, and it would take me an hour or more to find my front door key. If my neighbor needs my car or pickup, they are welcome to it. If they need my phone, they have only to open the door to find it. If they are hungry, my fridge is full of food............. Have a home brew while you are at it!! It's the way we live out here. Nobody steals anything..... If you need my can of gas to get to town....... It's yours. I know you will make it good. I don't even have a gun safe. You need my rifle to put down an injured animal....... take your pick. The ammo is there, and they are ALL loaded.
It's the way of the west, the ONLY way I really understand. Theft does not happen here...... ever. I've borrowed vehicles to get home a number of times, used the phone, had a cup of coffee, left a note........ So has everybody else. It's a way of life that goes back to the homesteaders.

This morning I encountered a strange duck....... a lady bicycler from somewhere back east. Well off the beaten path, she rolled up and asked for coffee with sugar, and bread with peanut butter.... exhausted and dehydrated, I gave her a homebrew instead, as I had none of what she wanted. There is a cafe 3/4 miles away.......... all downhill, and I suggested that she have breakfast there. She was very afraid..... " I don't know what goes on in the kitchen....... I can't leave my bike out front...... somebody might steal it or take my things......". I explained that this sort of thing NEVER happens here. I can't even remember the last time something was stolen, and I know the folks who own the cafe.... I've watched them in the kitchen....... even helped them. She ranted and raved about mafia and drugs, about crime in Billings, Bozeman, and Missoula, about how she traveled from one bicycle club to the next...... Obviously in fear. Helena being the next one. She talked about Giaanforte and violence, and I explained to her that he was NOT from Montana, but New Jersey.......... She talked about the news, and I explained to her that Montana was safe, especially rural Montana. People here don't rob, murder or rape people......... We help each other, and regard a stranger as a friend we haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting............
How pathetic!!!........ I've never feared anybody in the rural west.... in 62 years. How could someone from the urban east be afraid here??? What's to fear? Most folks would offer to load her bicycle in the pickup, and haul her the 20 or 24 miles to the next town.......... the gun rack might carry a couple of loaded rifles, but we carry them for varmints.......NOT PEOPLE. How have we become so alienated from each other?? Or have we? Personally I find friendship everywhere I go........ If I'm open to it. I've walked the streets of New York City, Miami, Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Spokane, and other cities. I find the intensity a bit overwhelming, but the people mostly decent. If I wander into Bruno Idaho, Winnifred or Square Butte or Lincoln , Montana, Lovell, Wyoming, Paulina, Burns, McDermott, Tekoa, Colfax, Odessa, Goldendale..........Jarbidge, Beowawe, Austin, Adel, and countless other places, I feel right at home........... Is there something wrong with me?

H.W.

 

[Fedora]

Yes. There is something wrong with you.

 

[triethylborane]

Woah

 

[lschiavo]

Why in the world would you be riding your bike across country if you're that afraid of everything? What a miserable way to have fun.

 

[Nokie]

I ran into a lady just like that about 4 months ago. I called an order in from a little mom and pop restaurant to go and when I went to pick it up there was a lady sitting at the counter. When I walked up to the front door I seen a bicycle and when I went in and walked up to the counter there was a homeless looking lady sitting there. (Which is common around here. We seem to have a big homeless population around here)
She acted all sketched out when I walked up to the counter beside here. She called the girl working over and whispered something in her ear. The girl went back and talked to the cook. I watched him take a loaf of Italian bread and cut it in half and smother it with peanut butter and then wrapped it up in a paper bag.
The girl made a cup of coffee and put a lid on it and handed them both to the lady. She grabbed them both without saying a word and turned around and left.
When I got to the counter I kinda looked to where the lady was sitting and looked at the girl working and gave her a puzzled look. She shrugged her shoulders and said the lady said she was leaving town and asked for bread and peanut butter.
That would be pretty weird if it was the same person. I would recognize that lady anywhere.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

My dad grew up in Rock River Wyoming. He is very bitter about the isolation and at the same time seeks solitude every chance he gets. Bad stuff happens in your neck of the woods too. For some reason you are ignoring it. My cousin 40 miles out of Conova S.D. had a grain elevator fan stolen from his silo. No matter where you are stuff happens. That bicycle lady may have been too up tight, but also you have a misperception of where you live. I'm glad you feel secure were you are. I would love to have that, but not at the cost of this woman laying beside me and at the cost of the ability to provide for my children? Please don't get me wrong. There are plenty of people who are able to able to raise a beautiful family in the back forty, but make no mistake that it is a hard chore to do so. Anyone who romanticizes that fact is a fool or a liar. Enjoy your rural experience and the sacrifices you have made to be there, but do not judge us who have seen the beauty and choose to live with others, faulted though they may be.

 

[kh54s10]

She is overboard in her fears. It is surprising that she is cycling alone.

I live in the east. I have to lock the bike, I lock my car and house. That is to keep mostly honest people honest. Locks will not stop criminals. I don't own guns, except replica civil war rifles for re-enacting. There are no varmints here that you can legally kill. Some of the 2 legged kind should be glad of that. But I don't have the fears that she does.

 

[Zuljin]

So, you hook up or What?

 

[agrazela]

The rural-ish West is different, alright. Two stories:

1) When I first moved West from the East Coast, I had a buddy with me and we stopped everywhere along the way where some good fishing could be found. Up in Northern Minnesota we came across a run-down bunch of cabins on the lakes...just as we were running out of gas. We asked the guy chopping wood out front for a few gallons to get us to the next town, where some good fishing was, where we could camp out, etc.

Turns out he had just inherited this place, and was fixing it up over the summer to re-open. He not only gave us fuel, he let us stay there and use the cabins, the walleye boats on the lakes, fed us, beered us, etc. for a whole week, so long as we chopped more wood than we burned. I think the guy just wanted some company, in any event it was great!


2) Back when my kids were small (3, 6 and 8yo IIRC), my wife and I took them on a camping trip to Arches, etc. in Utah. We stopped in St. George (well OK, a near metropolis by the OP's standards!) to get a bite and to hit the laundromat, and there was a little park / playground across the road. I played with the kids there while my wife did the laundry.

A lady pulls up--a local I assumed by the UT plates and the apparent lack of highway-worthiness of the car--and brings her two little kids (maybe 4-6yo) over to the park. She asked me to watch them while she ran across the street to do her laundry. Not something one typically would ask of a complete stranger, but what the heck.

(I'm just glad she came back to get them!)

 

[rhoadsrage]

I have a neighbor that says "Locks are just to keep an honest man honest."

Your visitor, from your description, shows signs of having schizophrenia. If that is the case, she could hear voices and some people with schizophrenia can hear voices that tell them to do very bad things.

I do agree with you that 90% of the people on this earth are good people regardless of where they live, and I treat everyone as if they are. Until they prove me wrong.

 

[Homercidal]

I prefer the small town. We aren't isolated at all. We just don't have miles of huge buildings and constant roar of traffic and people and trains, and there are fewer people in any given given space at any given time. There isn't just the Big City, or Wilderness.

Although I'd prefer to live in the wilderness, if I had a choice. It may be a hard life, but I'd much rather have to work to live there, then be surrounded by the clamour of a large city. (Though they are fun to visit, just like when people from the city go camping or whatever.)

I don't generally lock my car, house garage, etc. I OFTEN leave my keys in my ignition when I go into the store or gas station. And it's not like I feel there is no crime here. There are definitely ignorant rednecks who would swipe something for kicks in this area. I just don't feel it's likely to happen.

Heck, one time some asshat stole my tackle box from under the awning of our camper at a nearby campground. During a thunderstorm. County cops showed up at the camp later that morning. Something unrelated. I have to assume some localish persons were camping or visiting from nearby just to find stuff to take.

That might be the only theft I've personally encountered that I can remember. And I mostly remember it because there was a couple of pieces of gear in that box that were my dad's, or given to me by my dad.

I'd prefer to be even further away from society, like "out in the country" a few miles. Even less people noise and more nature. I'd probably have a few chickens and maybe some other critters for the fun of it. I wonder what the village would say if I put up a chicken coop and raised a few here in town...