Zee has done it again...

No story here, just testing the power of Ray Zee's name. The SPM can get maybe 30-35 hits when he just writes a story. When Zee's name is mentioned the number is staggering.


SPM,...play long and prosper...

zee is legendary. his montana mystique captivates all 2+2 readers. i was hoping for a post on ray zee, i guess i'll have to be happy with seeing his name. sigh....


that is all,


dannyboy :o)

zee has defeated himself...your new posts are so short he has to keep clicking back on them to get the length he finally discovered he truly vales...and he will not fess up...oh well..so all these increased looks are really zee and his bear buddy...gl

I won't question Ray's talent, but don't let the Montana mystique fool you too much.


Where he is and where I grew up, the average Montana living residence is a trailer with a big-ass living room built onto the front of it. - there's an upper class, but it ain't like "Legends of the Fall" or nothing


especially since the crank epidemic hit...it's just been rough, I've heard.


RB

Crank is a problem up there too? I know its all over the place in rural areas, but somehow I thought you guys might be immune. My hopeless naivete I guess. It's a major problem here in Idaho too. Nothing like a 19 year old girl on crank with four kids to abuse to help the old community. I really like people who look 25 years older than they are whose teeth are falling out and fingernails are coming out. Good stuff that crank.

we have lots of meth labs getting busted by the police. its their #1 thing now. mostly in houses or out in the woods somewhere.

you must remember olney or the old columbia falls as most homes in the area cost 200,000 and up and most new homes are in the 500,000 to 3 million class. the old trailers from the past are mostly gone except in the canyon area or trailer parks.

Actually, yeah...I grew up out in the woods west of Kalispell and Whitefish. (probalby where the meth labs are nowadays, for all I know) - Our only source of heat is still the trees we cut down and burn. We've had 200 acres and the house out there since about 1907 in my family.


And it's growing so fast now the local schools can't build additions fast enough to house all the new kids coming in.


And God help anyone who didn't get into the valley before 1990, because that's when the property values really started to get obscene - esp. in relation to wages and the cost of living, and I suspect most of the locals aren't the ones building and buying. Mostly Californians and rich people building up there these days. Football players, Actors, etc, etc...where Ray is at near Whitefish, it's virtually Aspen, Colorado.


But then you've got the other spectrum...logging towns like Columbia Falls...and the logging is taking a beating and the Aluminum plant closed down, and that's probably where you see more of the crank going. (Man, I'm even referring to it as crank instead of meth...yikes)


Funny...you can move out of the state, but it never quite leaves you...even after living here for 10 years, I'd still consider myself a transplanted Montanan. But then...that's where the rest of the family is anyway.

I was raised in Billings, left at about age 15 and I still find myself considered a "Montanan" by most people who know me. I guess there's something about the climate that does it.


Montana is a very weird place when you compare it to some others. A very simple place. A century and a half ago, or so, a group of cattlemen set up a trading post near a natural hotspring that was rimmed with whitish colored sulfur. Now we have the town of White Sulfur Springs. A misguided survey between the railroad and the USGS put two separate marks on the map showing where a telegraph station was located, that gave us Two Dot. Billings is named for the former president of the railroad.


Most place names don't have any deep native american symbolism or profound cultural reference. There aren't any New New Yorks or Westernmost Chicago in Montana. There is a place named for a campsite that was located a year after it was first used. It was located by finding the dried remnants of a trout's tailbones that had been part of a meal eaten when they camped at the site the spring before. That gives us the town of Fishtail. I have to admit, I'm still trying to figure out what the hell a "Rapelje" actually is though... I'm hoping it was someone's name. Given the Montanan proclivity for simple names, it may well have been the best spelling someone could give for the sound their partner made when he sneezed... who knows...


Wish I could afford to make a living there though, a lot of problems just don't occur in that part of the world, even with all of the meth labs.


Some of it probably comes from the whole state and all five surrounding it having a lower population than Los Angeles county.


Jeff