Jul 14, 2008 - 09:44:26 CDT
So how was your Fourth of July?Because my daughter was otherwise occupied this year, I allowed myself, in a moment of weakness, to be talked into a very long auto journey into the heart of Idaho. My friend David convinced me that we could attend four meetings he had set up along the Lewis and Clark trail, one on the Fourth of July in Missoula, but also attend the 50th birthday party of one of my best friends, and get into proximity with a Weber grill somewhere in the American West. All on modestly priced $4.18 per gallon gasoline.
So we packed up the truck and we drove to Lewiston.
Although I love North Dakota unreservedly, I nevertheless believe that, if there were only one state, it would have to be Montana. Generally speaking, the closer you can get to Yellowstone National Park on the Fourth of July, the better. Something about the big sky, the purple mountain majesty, the many free-flowing rivers and that never-far-from-the-surface anti-government edge makes Montana the heart of the heart of the country.
When you get deep into Montana, all the usual irritants -- Osama bin Laden, the presidential race, Washington, D.C., the IRS, Wall Street -- seem far, far away. Montana is America's savannah, its Serengeti, its wide and empty outback, so far from the centers of power and commerce that it has a kind of primordial purity. The mountains and the plains intermingle in Montana better than in any other place in the American West. And two of the world's great rivers flow through it: the Yellowstone, which flows out of Yellowstone National Park, and the Missouri, which has feeder creeks there, too. The rivers arc in such different ways through Montana, and then meet rather solemnly just inside North Dakota west of Williston.
The unbelievably beautiful Yellowstone River was running bank full as we made the long drive from Bismarck to Bozeman. I have never seen the Yellowstone run so full into July. No wonder Lake Sakakawea is up 12 feet. Somehow, it filled me with pride to see the river run so abundantly.
We thought of William Clark, Sakakawea, York and Charbonneau (plus others) floating down the Yellowstone in the summer of 1805, essentially on a lark, killing a buffalo per day for supper, the canoes lashed together like America's first pontoon boat. It was probably the most relaxed period of the entire 7,689-mile expedition — for Clark. Longsuffering Meriwether Lewis, meanwhile, was up on the Marias northwest of Great Falls doing work of almost unbearable stressfulness.
Clark lived forever. Lewis committed suicide in 1809.
It takes a long time to drive across Montana, even with an essentially unenforced speed limit. In any Montana transit, it is quite possible to talk about the meaning of life until you are sick of the meaning of life and begin to recall and analyze episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show."
By the time the sun set, after an insanely long day in the car, all we wanted in this world was a beer and a cheeseburger. That and nothing more. We had not eaten all day. We took the exit into a place called Big Timber, Mont. As an admirer of the 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, one of the "Rushmore four," I regarded this as a very good sign. Big timber, big stick, big cheeseburger. We were in Big Timber to meet the daughter of a famous American historian for a beer and talk about a project, in a famous old hotel widely beloved for its fine food.
It was one of those places with a real or an imitation tin ceiling high above, a long beautiful wooden bar backed with a gigantic mirror, hunting trophies above each booth and wisenheimer sayings on placards scattered across the walls. Everyone in the bar looked like they had just run a marathon or canoed to the source of the Missouri River. They all wore high-end recreational sports wear of the kind you see in Telluride or Aspen. The place was hopping. We were two hungry guys from North Dakota. It was still light outside.
We chose a booth. There was a moose hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. On the basis of this, we decided it would only be appropriate to sample Moose Drool beer. Our spirits were high. Perhaps we were road-giddy.
The waitress came. She was smiling. Our wallets were filled with rapidly devaluating American dollars. We were thirsty. And, my goodness, how hungry we suddenly were. "What can I get you?" she asked. "Burgers and beer!" said I. "It's America's birthday!"
She frowned in a nervous way. "Oh," she said, "you see, the kitchen closes at 9 p.m. and you can plainly see it's 9:10 p.m."
We pleaded. We begged. We nearly wept. She made a show, like a used car salesman, of going back to the kitchen to see if there were any possibility of a pair of all-American cheeseburgers on the eve of the Fourth of July. She returned with a set jaw. She could, if we ordered it immediately, stir up a couple of dinner salads and perhaps a bread stick.
"What sort of nation have we become?" asked Dave in a bewildered and crestfallen way. "If Jefferson had known this," said I, "he might have toned down the preamble of the Declaration of Independence to lower American expectations. For when you cannot get a burger on the third of July, at 9:10 p.m., in Montana, then in what sense can we still speak of the pursuit of happiness?" Somewhat bitterly, Dave said, "So the terrorists have won, after all."
In time, a couple of limp-looking salads came. We ate them slowly and without pleasure like a couple of valetudinarians on their last earthly journey. The carnivores all around us looked down on us with pity and contempt. I wanted to write out a cardboard sign: "I'll gladly pay you $2,000 Tuesday for a hamburger today."
As we sat there glumly, mumbling that perhaps George III was not such a bad despot after all, because at least under tyranny you can get a sandwich, the four waitresses of the joint kept emerging from the kitchen ostentatiously hefting large platters heaping with hamburgers. Almost every other table in the restaurant took delivery of pyramids of tall and steaming Fourth of July cheeseburgers (and Liberty Fries!), like a scene out of a Popeye cartoon, while we nibbled our carrots and tried to convince ourselves that a crouton, rightly understood, is really just a very small stale hamburger bun. We asked our waitress why we were the only people in the establishment who were not permitted to get burgers. The other patrons had placed their orders, we were told, well before 9 p.m. We asked if it were necessary for the staff to carry those platters within 5 or 6 inches of our famished and flaring nostrils as they delivered them to other hungry guests. We received a lecture about "standard food traffic lanes."
At 10 o'clock, as we stared down at the table and drooled into our Moose Drool and talked about the sorts of frustrations the Unabomber must have endured before he cracked, Big Timber, Mont., administered the unkindest cut of all. Almost everyone had gone home. Things were winding down. Then one of the waitresses came out of the kitchen with a plate, on which was poised the most beautiful cheeseburger in human history. She carried it to the bar, sat down, gave us a kind of "Montana attitude" look, and ate it in front of us.
After that, the Yellowstone was just a ditch, the Rocky Mountains mere protuberances and the Fourth of July just another Friday in mid-summer. We left our sparklers, unopened, in the parking lot.
Next year, we'll have a strategy.
(Clay Jenkinson is the Theodore Roosevelt scholar-in-residence at Dickinson State University. He lives in Bismarck. Contact Jenkionson at jeffysage@aol.com.)
Nikki wrote on Jul 27, 2008 9:16 AM:
Harold Reimann wrote on Jul 18, 2008 3:13 PM:
expositor wrote on Jul 17, 2008 1:07 AM:
Tom wrote on Jul 15, 2008 8:14 AM:
Great column! I love the Dave comment "... so the terrorists have won after all."
There must be a top secret finishing school only for waitstaff and politicians whereupon they are taught the art of biting the hand that feeds them... but not so hard that the hand will stop. "
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