Ride With Me, Mariah Montana

The End Toward Idaho Well, old buddies out there the other side of the ink, I am not a happy camper this Fourth of July morn. What we've got here is the hundredth time the grandandglorious has turned up on the calendar since the U. States of A. decided to let Montana in, so wouldn't you think we could do the holiday with some hiss and vinegar by now? But no, it's going to be more of the lame old usual. From Yaak to Ekalaka today, we Montanans will bake our brains in the sun at rodeos, meanwhile consuming enough beer and fried chicken to cholesterate a vegetarian convention, waiting for dark so we can try to burn down our towns with fireworks. A centennial Fourth of the same old guff: hip-hip-hoorah, flap-the-flag-and-pass-the-swag. Maybe it is an American condition, in this strange nation we have become, all helmet and wallet and no brain or heart. But does Montana have to be in a patriotic coma too? Take it from Riley, friends: the calendar this morning says "Independence Day," but you can look high and low in the doings of this centennial year and nowhere find a really independent idea -- like changing the name of this state of ours to something more appropriate, such as Destitution.-- "Wright Angles" Column,Missoula Montanian, July 4, 1989 Click. From where I was sitting on the bumper of the Winnebago I was doing my utmost to outstare that camera of hers, but as usual, no such luck. You would think, wouldn't you, that a person with a whole rodeo going on around her could come up with something more highly interesting to spend film on than me. Huh uh, not this cameraperson. No more than an arm's reach away she was down on one knee with the gizmo clapped to her eye like she couldn't see without it, and as soon as she'd shot she said as if it was something the nation was waiting to hear, "You're not such a bad-looking old coot, you know that?""The old part I do, yeah."CLICK.Her next snap of the shutter caught me by surprise as it always did. After all this while, why didn't I know that the real picture Mariah wanted was ever the unexpected one, the one after you'd let your guard down.She unfolded up out of her picture-taking crouch and stood there giving me a gotcha grin, her proud long mane of hair deeper than red -- the double-rich color that on a fine horse is called blood bay -- atop the narrow but good enough face and the figure, lanky but not awkwardly so, that somehow managed to be both long-legged and thoroughly mounded where the female variety is supposed to be mounded; one whole hell of a kit of prime woman suddenly assembled. I just sat there like a bumper ornament of the motorhome. What's a guy supposed to say, thanks ever so much for doing exactly what I wish to hell you would cut out doing?Just then a sleepybleahissued out of a Hereford calf unconcernedly trotting past us into the catch pen at the end of the arena. "AND KEVIN FREW HAS MISSED WITH HIS SECOND LOOP!" the announcer recited the obvious in that tin voice we'd had to hear all afternoon. By habit Mariah twirled a long lens onto her camera and in a couple of quick pulls climbed atop the arena fence to aim out at the horseback subject who was disgustedly coiling his pair of dud lariats, but then didn't bother to snap the scene. "FOLKS, WHAT DO YOU SAY WE GIVE THIS HARDLUCK COWBOY A BIG HAND OF APPLAUSE! IT'S THE ONLY PAY HE'S GOING TO TAKE HOME FROM HERE TODAY!" My thumb found the Frew boy on the program. Christamighty, he was only the first contestant in the third section of calf roping. Down through all the Fourths of July, if I had a dollar for every guy who entered the Gros Ventre rodeo under the impression he was a calf roper I could buy up Japan.Mariah was staying perched on the top fence pole while she scanned through that telescope of a lens at the jampacked grandstand crowd across the arena. Involuntarily I found myself seeing tDoig, Ivan is the author of 'Ride With Me, Mariah Montana', published 2005 under ISBN 9780743271264 and ISBN 0743271262.