July and August brought lots of events, great sights and a little heat
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Time flies when you’re having fun.
I’ve been editor of this newspaper for a little more than a month, and I have acquired a lot of information about the area and its people. I’m still learning the terrain but I’ve met dozens of interesting people and listened to several lectures.
I’ve attended a plethora of events throughout Lake County. I’ve sat at my laptop at various locations, soaking it all in while dealing with the everyday challenges a move to a new state and job require.
By most accounts, it’s been a smooth transition. But this is more about what I’ve come to see in this area we call northwestern Montana, a huge slice of territory as large geographically as any major city I’ve called home.
That’s why I’m continually baffled by the term, “small town.”
OK, it’s not New York City (although I learned at the National Folk Festival in July that Butte, the site of the festival, had electricity before the Big Apple.)
It took me longer to get from Polson to Arlee than it ever did from East Chicago to Crown Point, Indiana, a swath of land known as northwest Indiana.
I’ve scooted across the entire city of New Orleans in 25 minutes while driving under the speed limit, compared to here, where speed limits from town to town change like the weather.
In the month and a half I’ve lived here, I’ve managed to see the Bison Range, a Fourth of July parade, a bunch of antique automobiles, a museum, a few deer in people’s backyards and more basketball in six weeks than I ever saw in the other places I’ve lived, including the Hoosier State itself.
To be sure, I can never recall seeing basketball played in basketball-crazed Indiana that much in the summer, where the heat from the Chicago area can be sweltering. Of course, only someone with a death wish would play basketball in New Orleans in 97-degree heat, with an oppressive heat index of 110. There aren’t even birds to be found in that kind of weather let alone basketballs.
Here, even in the low 90s, there are breezes. Where teenagers in other climates seek shade and shelter from the blistering heat, here they’re making passes, going back door and slam-dunking their way through 3-on-3 hoops.
And so I will continue to laugh when someone complains to me about the heat. I’m not being disrespectful. I just think it’s funny.
Fortunately, it’s not all about sports.
The Art Festival in Polson and the Pioneer Days in Ronan were both family-like events that I dare say rival any similar event of the other places I’ve lived.
But of all the things I’ve done that resonated a sense of home, it was Saturday evening on the Flathead River following the art festival and car show.
There was a band playing, and people sat on the hill in lawn chairs.
A few huddled outside nearby homes overlooking the bay, and children ran around, several of them rolling down the hill with big smiles on their faces.
Then I thought. In New Orleans, that hill is called a levee, part of the network of flood protection systems that protect the city from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. I doubt people here ever think about the Flathead Lake or River topping their banks.
Five years ago this month, we will once again be reminded of how those “failed levees” caused the near ruination of my hometown and home to so many others spread across the United State, including a number I’ve met right here in Montana.
While it was the city’s floodwalls that collapsed - the earthen levees pretty much remained intact - the levee image remains a powerful one for me.
As I stood atop the hill in Polson looking at the boats sailing in the background, I realized this was one of the few times in my life I got to watch the boats on the water looking down at them, not up.
On the Mississippi River in New Orleans, even from on top the levee, the people on the boat are looking down on you on the shore. In most instances, they’re 25 feet or higher above you, well aware of every move you make. If they’re using their binoculars, they can probably tell the hair coloring you use.
It can be somewhat disquieting but it’s a fact of life people down there have learned to live with.
It’s sort of like people here, who have warned me of the treacherous winters, even though my prepared response is, “I lived in Iowa for five years.”
Nevertheless, some people are hard to convince that they don’t live in a small town, or that it’s perfectly fine to be driving 70 mph one minute, 45 to 35 to 25 the next, or that playing basketball in July or August is normal.
That’s fine. Just don’t say it’s hot.
