Blackfoot Valley Dispatch - The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980

As post-war baby boomers, most of us had parents who had suffered through the Great Depression, and then WWII. They faced the poverty of the 1930s and...

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August. Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I...

I spent a large part of my youth fishing: the Blackfoot River, Nevada Creek, Brown's Lake, the small creeks near Helmville, plus the pond behind our...

I have an old Peace Corps friend visiting for a few days. In 1972 we met in New Orleans, along with a group of 160 other new volunteers. The orientati...

I knew my father was dead when the helicopter flew low over my house. The ambulance had gone past with lights and siren a few minutes before. I...

It was in Summer School where we Catholic kids learned catechism in preparation for our first communions and confirmations. Two nuns would come to...

Until the late 1950s and early 60s, milk cows were an essential part of the operation of most ranches. The large numbers of children in the families...

Some friends stopped by the house last Sunday. They had been in Hawaii for a couple weeks and shared their impressions with me. I was in Hawaii once,...

He would never exchange his solitude for anything. Never again be forced to move to the rhythms of others. Tillie Olsen Tell Me a Riddle (1960) Search...

During the post-WWII years and into the late 1950s almost every town in Montana had a sandlot baseball team. Baseball was in its heyday with Mantle,...

I've been back in the US for over a year, now, and it's time to correct a wrong I left unattended for most of that time. It's embarrassing. I've had...

Emotional weariness and physical weakness are the only things that keep me from foolishness any more. Like I've written, I have the propensity to inve...

The summer before my eighth grade (1960), my mother, who still had hopes for me, got the idea that I would do well to attend my last year of grade sch...

As kids, we were always anxious to help our fathers (it was always the fathers those days) in their work. We were participating in the adult life,...

In the early 1980's I attended a lecture by Dr. Timothy Leary, the professor and LSD advocate. He said that the world has gone through a number of...

Throughout my life, the only recurring nightmare I ever had was that of me, huddled in a corner, surrounded by an angry crowd screaming accusations....

When I entered the Peace Corps they gave me five months of Portuguese lessons in the state of São Paulo before they sent me to Mato Grosso, a state...

When I was in Barra do Bugres this last time, I put a lot of effort into finding old friends from my Peace Corps years. Many had passed on, of...

As kids, it was rare for us to travel farther away from home than Deer Lodge. The roads and vehicles of the day weren't much, and we never saw any...

It was rare to travel much distance from Helmville in the 1950's and 60's. The vehicles weren't that dependable, and the interstate system wasn't...

Our paternal grandfather's brother, our great uncle, died in 1959, so there aren't many of us left who knew him. We of the 4th generation only knew...

I've mentioned a number of times the constancy a person experiences when raised on a rural property. The phenomenon crosses generations and allows...

The other day I was in a town about 100 miles from here. Townsend used to be a dynamic place, but there are a lot of empty storefronts there now. The...

Rural children grow up with fewer organized activities than do their urban counterparts, but they enjoy a variety of country opportunities not...

This winter I spent some time in both retro and introspection. The results aren't very good, I'm afraid. I showed some promise as a child, but when pu...