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

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...

I don't know how our paternal grandmother managed. She wasn't different than any of the women who raised families in the early and mid-20th century. T...

With most of the news being about politics these days, I think often about our maternal grandmother who was a dedicated Republican in the Eisenhower...

This last siege of storms has made for long winter. The snow is welcome, but it may delay spring grass and the return of migratory birds. As kids,...

This last blizzard got me thinking about how hard the old timers had to work just to keep the house warm from September to May, and to cook every day...

When I was at my sickest in Brazil, and my legs didn't work to the point I sometimes couldn't get off the toilet by myself, I remembered a rancher...

I've always kept myself on the outer edges of society, preferring to observe its actions and ideas with a soft contempt, always keeping my "ironic...

Years back almost every ranch kept a "farm flock" of 100 – 200 ewes. They provided extra income from their wool and lambs, but could be a nuisance...

Some time ago I saw a photograph taken at the Helmville cemetery on the day they buried my great grandfather in 1922. In the picture there's a...

It took me a long time to fully appreciate the differences between a rural upbringing and an urban upbringing. These differences are not especially...