We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
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Tis the time for New Year’s Resolutions. Tis also the time for very up close and personal dreams as well. Are they related, that is my question? For the past few years I have been having very up close and personal dreams. Let me tell you about one I just finished a few minutes ago. I was staying with a friend at the School House Log cabin on Clear Creek where Henderson Creek meets Clear Creek. In the cold reach of reality, that cabin is not even there anymore. Across the road from that cabin was another large structure that is gone now too. I...
This is the time of year that we look back in time at what good and bad has happened during the past year and we look forward to see what good and bad we can look forward to in the coming year. This has been a strange year. The politics of it , that seemed to be the worst for me at any rate. To be able to say that I did not want to vote for either political ticket, that has never happened before. Not for me anyway. Usually one of the candidates has some redeeming features that I can hang my coat on. Not these two. Nothing. But one had to win...
Once again it is that magical time of year called Christmas. To paraphrase Robert Frost, we stop often to watch the falling of downy flake along the streets and boulevards of our home towns or even better, we stop out on Beaver Creek to watch those woods fill up with snow. Christmas is for giving and those who have been giving all year long certainly know how to do it now. It is a time to share, reflect and wait for the Christ Child to be born and once again come into our homes and families. In the meantime we light candles, get Yule logs roari...
It is that time of month, once again, for a December recipe of some sort. I confess that I love this time of year because I love casseroles, Crock pot meals and meals that are made in just one dish. This is one of those meals. It takes a couple of dishes but it is a wonderful supper for a cold winter night. First, a tip about your left over turkey from Christmas. Be sure to always freeze some dressing so when you are going to be making stuffed pork chops, for instance, which this meal is, you will have some of your own delicious dressing. You...
This time of year is always wonderful with all the good food and good cheer floating from town to town all across Montana. And, for me, the best of all of this time is the Christmas music which is like no other music I have ever heard. I remember one Christmas when I had a cabin up Alkali Springs in Beaver Creek Park, I was spending Christmas at that cabin. I had Christmas music playing and it was an English choir singing in very high pitched voices. That night it started to snow and my little evergreens in front of the house were covered with...
Lately there have been several sports people in Great Falls who are calling for the Grizzlies to get Dave Dickenson back. At present Dickenson is trying to win another gray cup for Calgary but no one denies that he would make a very good head coach. Dickenson was a great player in Great Falls, for the Grizzlies and in Calgary where he is a strong part of the Calgary organization. Some have even said that former Grizzly Coach Bob Stitt was not even a part of the Grizzly Nation, whatever that means. As for me, I say bring back Bobby Hauck and...
Pie is the traditional dessert for a good old fashioned Thanksgiving dinner. Only certain pies will do mind you if your theme is Thanksgiving from yesteryear. Of course pumpkin is an old time favorite and has been on the Thanksgiving dessert table for generations. So has mincemeat and mincemeat is much more interesting. Years ago the Presbyterian ladies used to can mincemeat for pies and they were very good pies. The secret ingredient of a good mincemeat pie is to have some deer meat or beef in it. With that is a combination of candied fruit,...
What Happened? The Brawl of the Wild was won by MSU last Saturday afternoon. The score was 31 to 23. I had predicted that the Griz would win the Brawl as they have the better team or so I thought. Anyway, had the Griz won, they would be off to the playoffs. Not so with Bozeman who played their last game of the season Saturday. I think that the Griz had a better team and I don’t think there was any home field advantage as both teams have played on both fields several times. No, the fact that the Bobcats won the game was simply because they h...
This month, Bear Paw Meanderings will be all about Thanksgiving. This week how about a recipe for that perfect dressing? There are several things to know about dressing. It can be dressing which is not ever put in the turkey to cook or it can be stuffing which is stuffed into the turkey and cooked with the turkey juices. Some people call them dry and wet dressing, dry is not in the bird and wet if it was stuffed into the bird More and more people seem to favor cooking dressing out of the turkey. The joy of this recipe is that it can be cooked...
Lots of strange things happened in the wonderful world of football this last weekend. I had gotten interested in six man football when Big Sandy started doing so well this year and I thought that if there was a team to beat it would be Valier who is continually a power house for six man. Not so this year. In the end of the season it was Westby-Grenora beating Valier 59 to 19. I still can’t believe that one. Then the Griz took on Northern Colorado in Missoula and beat them 44 to 14. I knew that the Griz would win that game but not by that m...
For many people, Thanksgiving is their favorite holiday because it stresses getting together and having a great meal. There is no gift buying and none of the religious overtones that come with Christmas, just a month away. No, Thanksgiving is simply a time to get together and watch some football and have that great meal. That is all different for people selling things. They have worked to the bones to make their stores and shops beautiful for buying those Christmas gifts for everyone and traditionally it all starts the day after Thanksgiving...
It was an up and down weekend for Montana football. Big Sandy lost to Bridger on Friday night leaving them out in the cold until next year. I think that next year will see great things from the Pioneers. Montana Grizzlies played Northern Arizona and won which was a shock to the experts most who thought that Northern Arizona was a walk in to win that game. The score was 17 to 15 and one thing that made it easier for the Griz to win that game is that in about the first or second play of the game, the Arizona quarterback just blew up and was...
I have some elk steaks in the freezer that a friend gave me. Now, let me tell you that in the circles I run in, elk steak is akin to lobster for tasting wonderful. I know of more than one family who gets an elk every year just so they can have elk steaks for Christmas Eve. Those same people go into great detail to say that elk is better than venison, better than moose, better than bear and more like bison when comparing it to beef. In other words, it is just very good meat to do something with. Elk steak is best cooked over the grill in the...
Talk about six man football. When Big Sandy beat Richie/Lambert last week it put them in line for quarter finals next week when they will be playing at Bridger. By the way that Big Sandy vs. Richie score was 55 to 32. Meanwhile Bridger beat Missoula Valley Christian 66 to 0. The Big Sky League did not go the way I wanted it to go at all this weekend. It was fine that the Bobcats beat Idaho State Colorado 28 to 14 on Saturday afternoon and it was a good game to watch. But then the Grizzlies went bad and Weber State beat them 41 to 27. There...
My name is Lucille. I am a ghost and I don’t like it one little bit. I have just gone around for a lifetime haunting the house I lived in as a child and where I died. It must have been twenty or thirty years after I died that I learned that I could be heard by residents of the house. I have scared a lot of them a lot through the years. I learned that if I scream as loud as I can, I can break through some barrier between the truly dead and people like me who are stuck in sort of a limbo land. It is not pleasant. Once in a while a person can get...
In my jaded youth, my family and I had lots of fishing and hunting cabins. You know because you read about one or another several times a year. One of the biggest drawbacks to our hunting camps was that usually they were one room log structures and had no insulation. I remember one cabin on Clear Creek that you could lay in bed and look up at the stars through the shingles on the roof. And yet, that roof never leaked. Amazing. In our cabins we usually had a large black cook stove and included a hot water reservoir by the side. Heat the stove an...
Let’s start this week’s ramblings just north of the Little Rockies where the Thunderbirds play sports once a week or more some of the year. Something huge happened with the Thunderbirds this last week in that Isiah Runsabove won the first ever individual Cross Country Title. He is the first player at the Hays/ Lodgepole School to have ever been the State Champion for Class C Cross Country. And he got the headline above the fold in Sunday’s Great Falls Tribune for his achievement! Well done Isiah Runsabove and you will end up in the Olymp...
I owe you one last column about fall foliage, that is finding fall foliage where there is usually not much to find or finding it where most people do not think to look. This fall foliage season has been a very strange season as the leaves just simply refused to fall off the trees for the longest time. Fall foliage until the big storm in early October was really spectacular for weeks on end. Then finally there was a very big snow storm and foliage started falling and turning colors quickly. I don’t know just how much foliage is left since I h...
Lots of good football to watch these days. I have to mention Big Sandy who stunned everyone last weekend when they beat Geraldine 30 to 22. Maybe Big Sandy is upward bound once again. It has been a long dry spell for the Pioneers. I got to watch the Grizzlies beat North Dakota and while I knew it was going to be easy for the Griz to beat North Dakota, I did not realize that it was going to be that easy. The score was 41 to 17 in that Big Sky Conference Game. It was a wonderful game to watch because I knew my team was going to win. Only down...
It is that time of the month that I include a recipe for you. It is also Columbus Day so I guess something is in order for an Italian recipe. I have written again and again about spaghetti and meatballs. It is my original comfort food and for years I worked hard to improve my spaghetti sauce and to make my meatballs just simply melt in the mouth of the eater. Imagine my surprise when I was reading a copy of the elite “Bon Appétit” Magazine and on the front page, they have a picture of spaghetti and meatballs and recipes to go with, not only...
Good for the Bobcats and the Grizzlies this week. Both won their Saturday games. The Bobcats finished off Portland State 30 t0 22. The mighty Griz beat Idaho State 39 to 31. Good playing on the part of both teams. In the Frontier League about all I could come up with at press time is Western beating Montana Tech 42 to 35. That was a game that was supposed to go the other way. Carroll lost to the College of Idaho 21 to 6. That wasn’t supposed to end that way either. Closer to home Chouteau beat the Thunderbirds 74 to 6 and Havre lost to B...
God is good! The Grizzlies won and the Bobcats lost! No, I don’t mean that. Those words were written by my evil twin brother, Mean Robby. I am sorry that MSU lost, but I am very happy that the Griz finally won a road game and now that curse is behind them. For those who just want to know the facts, Weber State beat the Bobcats 25 to 17. Meanwhile the Griz played Portland State with a score of 45 to 33. Closer to home, Chinook did a number on Simms, beating them 34 to 14. Kudos to Chinook! Far away in Big Sandy Land, for Homecoming and Chili F...
I love to view fall foliage! Each year about this time I review with you some of the best places in Montana to view the bold reds, oranges, yellows and golds not to mention purples and dark greens that make up some of the most vibrant fall foliage to be seen. This week we go through the Bear Paw Mountains. Next week it is off to Glacier to see foliage and the week after that it is foliage where you would not think to see any. The Bear Paw Mountains have had a terrible summer with the fire that burned much of the land between Clear Creek and...
Lots happening in the wonderful world of football these days. Take last weekend for instance. The Bobcats beat North Dakota 49 to 21, a blowout if there was ever a blowout to be had. Meanwhile back home in the Grizzly Nation the Griz lost to Eastern Washington 48 to 41. I got both those games wrong as did lots others. The Griz are 2 and 2 for the season. Same with the Bobcats. Meanwhile closer to home Havre lost to Glendive 36 to 26. Chinook beat Rocky Boy 50 to 0 and Harlem lost to Shelby 61 to 12. The Thunderbirds lost to CJI 56 to 12. Big...
I was never much of a hunter. I guess I loved watching wildlife too much and marveling over its beauty. However, if there was a hunting camp to go to, I was usually there. I loved hunting camps almost as much as fishing camps. Of course our hunting camps were usually centered on Clear Creek, and most of the ones I went to were in the Bear Paw School cabin, an old one room log building built on a little rise just above where Henderson Creek dumps into Clear Creek. However, my uncle Al went elaborate for several years and had his hunting camp in...
