(at the moment not anywhere near) WHITEFISH, MONTANA
Montana - this end of it, anwyay - is pretty damn cool. Surprised? I certainly was. In the popular American imagination, Montana is a vast, unpopulated, flat pancake of a state only occasionally enlivened by mountains and scattered groups of livestock. Poor Montana, if it's mentioned at all, is usually the tag end of a joke. Frank Zappa had a memorable song about moving there to become a dental floss tycoon. Like going to Montana was the worst fate imaginable.
It isn't. Whitefish, anchoring the northwestern border with Idaho and neighboring Canada to the north, is a mid-sized western town with that same frontier feel as Williston (see below)...but fresher, richer, happier, less morose and more fun. Those boxy two-story buildings that used to house general stores and saloons now hold skate shops, Starbucksy cafes, sushi restaurants and, er, saloons.
But maybe Whitefish always had an unfair advantage. It was one of the centers of the old Northern Railroad, whose officials probably lived pretty well and lavishly. No wonder the town prospered.
I spent two days in Whitefish, and was glad that I did. It was good to experience that oh-so-mystical thing in the American imagination - the hallowed Small Town. Unlike the cities that I'm used to (save for, on this trip, hometown Huntington and dad's nest of Agawam) I ran no risk of getting lost wandering around Whitefish. I even took a recommended walking tour around the top of the town to the nearby eponymous lake - which had a beach. (Beaches in Montana?). Then back again, hugging the - again eponymous - river curling down from the lake and forming the western edge of the town. I didn't really do much in Whitefish, but that was the good part of it. I was happy to walk around, do little of anything, and breathe in clean, high-altitude air (particularly at Big Mountain - see my captivating nature video below).
But Whitefish can really hop. That was probably the biggest surprise. I was there over Halloween, and apparently the town is the hottest destination in the area for celebrants of the great holiday (underrated, in my opinion, but that's an argument for another time). I was hanging out with a few new local friends at one of those downtown saloons - which also, by the way, housed a few game tables...so I guess you could slap a "casino" tag on the place too.
The costumes were excellent. Possibly one of the best collections I've ever seen at any Halloween gathering, and I've been to more than a few good ones. Let's see, there was a Frida Kahlo (with uni-brow and mustache, of course), a nun, a couple of priests, four young British guys dressed as several varieties of women, fewer cowboys than I would have expected, sexy girls costumed as...ah, who the hell knows, I was too busy checking them out. And a nun, who spent most of her (his?) time calmly winning at one of the poker tables. But the prize, in my eyes anyway, goes to the Rice Krispy Treat Man for audacity, imagination, dedication, and just plain frickin' weirdness.
"What's a Rice Krispy Treat?", might you ask, a lost and distressed look in your face, if you haven't had the benefit of our wonderful American junk culture. Rice Krispies are a cereal made of - yes - baked rice. Melt some marshmallow and dump a lot of Rice Krispies into the mess, let it cool, cut into squares and you have the Treats. What this guy did was strip down to his underpants, cover his body with some kind of sticky crap (probably - hopefully - not marshmallow) and in the grand finale, dump a box or several of the yummy cereal over himself. How impressive is that? The best I ever did was an ant costume. And that didn't involve any breakfast cereal.
1 comment:
Keep up the good work.
Post a Comment