UTAH AND IDAHO
Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Forest
Service employees from Utah, that’s who. Two staffers from
the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Ogden were working in
Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness Sept. 23, when they spotted
wolves chasing a bull elk across a meadow. They weren’t
frightened by the sight of the running pack, reports the
Idaho Mountain Express, but the sound of the
animals howling afterward scared the researchers so much that they
radioed for help — pronto. Their supervisor obliged, sending
a helicopter into the wilderness to remove the pair, even though
designated wilderness is protected by law from all motorized
equipment. The evacuation has not gone over well in Idaho. “Holy
moly — sounds to me like someone’s read too many of
Grimm’s fairy tales,” commented Steve Nadeau, who runs
Idaho’s wolf program. Lynne Stone, who lives in Stanley and
often sees wolves, said it was sad that the agency staffers
“didn’t take time to enjoy one of the greatest experiences
you could ever have in terms of observing wildlife.” The pack, she
added, was hot after an elk and probably oblivious to the men:
“I’d be more afraid of running into a moose cow with calves,
or a black bear with cubs, than encountering howling wolves.”
IDAHO AND NEVADA
You’d never call Joan Opyr’s column on the
late Helen Chenoweth-Hage an obituary. The column,
recently posted on NewWest.Net, was more a denunciation of the
Idaho congresswoman, who delighted in making outrageous statements
during her three terms in the House of Representatives. (Example:
Salmon can’t be endangered, she insisted, because canned
salmon is available at any supermarket.) “How did she represent
us?” Opyr asked rhetorically. “As militia-loving loonies who
believed that the U.S. government was at least partially to blame
for the Oklahoma City bombing.” Opyr accused Chenoweth, who later
married rancher Wayne Hage, the leader of the anti-government
Sagebrush Rebellion, of exercising her libertarian bent in the
worst possible way — by refusing to wear a seatbelt while
riding with a 5-month-old baby in her lap. In the one-car accident,
near Tonapah, Nev., both Chenoweth-Hage and the infant were thrown
from the vehicle; only the baby survived. Opyr subtitled her essay
“Buckle Up!” and didn’t mince words: “She was a nut — a
dangerous, reckless, senseless nut whose death in a single-car
accident in Nevada on Oct. 2 was tragic but not really much of a
surprise. Why wasn’t (she) wearing a seatbelt? Because she
didn’t need no stinking seatbelt, never mind the dictates of
common sense and Nevada law.” Twenty-three comments followed
Opyr’s column, with most blasting the writer for being
mean-spirited. As “Elizabeth” put it: “A nice old grandmother died
trying to make a baby stop crying after a long trip. Don’t
you have better things to do than laugh about it?”
COLORADO
Ken Gordon, the energetic
Democrat who is running for secretary of state in
Colorado, feels so strongly about people exercising their
right to vote that he advises voters to “guilt trip” their friends:
“Say, ‘Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people
who don’t vote.’ ” Doing this might make some people
uncomfortable, he acknowledges, but adds, “I’ve had to spend
all summer calling people I don’t know and asking for money,
so it has been a long time since I visited my comfort zone.” Gordon
travels across the state to talk to voters, and in conservative
Colorado Springs he spotted a bumper sticker that made him wonder.
It said, “Give war a chance.” His campaign manager’s take was
sarcastic: “Yes, let’s give war a chance … we’ve
never tried that before.”
CALIFORNIA
At the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona, fried-food
impresario Charlie Boghosian gathers a crowd by offering
deep-fried avocados, deep-fried Twinkies and other “artery-clogging
culinary oddities,” reports the Los Angeles
Times. The 37-year-old chef tried deep-frying edible
flowers, he says, but they kept falling apart. He also experimented
with Ding Dongs and Sno Balls this year, but the coating of wet
pancake batter slipped off when the treats hit the 370-degree
soybean oil. “You can’t just fry anything,” he’s
learned. “It has to look good, it has to taste good, and it has to
be so different that people will be in awe.” The gut-bomb at this
year’s fair featured an unlikely combo of glazed Krispy Kreme
doughnuts, fried chicken and runny Swiss cheese, deep-fried, of
course. “I can feel my arteries tightening,” was the reaction of
one satisfied customer. While Boghosian is recognized as the master
of deep-fry cuisine, he has rivals. Los Angeles Fair-goers were
treated by other cooks to deep-fried spaghetti on a stick.
What’s now known as “extreme fair food” goes back decades: In
1942, at the State Fair of Texas, the first corn dog emerged from a
deep fryer. The tradition continues. Last year, the Texas fair
played host to the first deep-fried peanut butter, jelly and banana
sandwich.
Betsy Marston is editor of Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News in
Paonia, Colorado. Tips of Western oddities are always appreciated
and often shared in the column, Heard around the
West.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Heard around the West.
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