MONTANA
Karen
Craver might have one of the toughest jobs in the West.
For three years, she’s been a rural mail carrier in sparsely
populated northern Montana, close to Canada. “Some places up here,”
she says, “it’s 10 miles between mailboxes.” Every Tuesday and
Thursday, Craver hits the rocky road that takes her north of
Columbia Falls and along Glacier National Park’s western
wilderness. It takes her 12 hours to fill the mailboxes of some 100
people along the 156-mile round-trip route. During the winter, her
biggest worry is encountering frustrated moose trapped on the road
by the snow piled up alongside it. “You don’t want to push the
moose,” she says. “I followed a cow and calf seven miles one day
before she could get off the road.” Craver told Michael Jamison of
the Missoulian that she also has to mind a
mailbox that’s been colonized by a squirrel: “You always have to
knock first so the squirrel has time to go out the back.” Then
there’s a mailbox that sometimes contains deer and elk brains,
dropped off by friends of the mailbox’s owner, who does brain
tanning. Craver travels in good company; her black Newfoundland
hangs out in the back “drooling on the parcels and the postcards,”
and in the front seat, his head poked out the window, sits a huge
gray wolf she calls “homeland security.” “I don’t think there’s any
other postal delivery people with wolves in their rigs,” she notes.
Craver admires the diverse and self-reliant people she serves:
“These are people with open minds, people with closed minds, people
with really strong opinions. But when it comes down to it, we all
still go to the community hall for Thanksgiving dinner. We take
care of each other.” That way of life could change, though, with a
flock of new people buying land for summer homes along her route
and importing big generators, solar panels and radio-phones. The
newcomers also attract a ton of junk mail: “All this effort to haul
junk mail this far into the middle of nowhere, all those
catalogues, and it doesn’t even make good fire starter.”
IDAHO
You can be richy
rich, but you can’t escape ridicule. That’s what Duane
Hagadone, owner of hotels, newspapers, luxury cars, boats, artwork
and who knows what else, discovered when he tried to get Idaho to
approve a helicopter landing pad on Lake Coeur d’Alene. “In a
disgraceful display of independent thought,” wrote Doug Clark of
the Spokane Spokesman-Review, “the Idaho
Department of Lands said no to the North Idaho tycoon’s
nature-improving Coeur d’Alene plan.” Clark, who once worked as an
editor at Hagadone’s Coeur d’Alene paper, said there’s only one
thing for a man to do when faced with the heartbreaking
disappointment of not getting a helipad: Sing the blues. Figuring
Hagadone was too busy to do the job, Clark volunteered in his
stead, writing and recording “The Duane B. Hagadone Blues.” “I
attempted to channel the vocal stylings of Randy Newman meets Dr.
John meets Harlan Pepper, the bloodhound owner from the movie Best
in Show,” Clark says. It begins: “Got a private jet to fly me. Got
a castle on a hill. I just sold my ocean-going yacht, for $90 mil.
You’d think I’d be slap-happy. But I’m Idaho-so sad. Cuz the state
won’t let me build my helipad.” Read more of the helipad blues at
spokesmanreview.com.
ARIZONA
From Bisbee to Kingman, a “pop-up”
battle has been pitting neighbor against neighbor. The homeowners
who build a second story think the gain in space is great. But the
pop-up blocks the view of the next-door neighbors and resembles a
storage shed or even a cargo container, reports the
Arizona Republic. One dispute in a high-end
development in Scottsdale has gone on for five years, with Joan
Zittle calling a metal-sided pop-up next to her “just plain ugly.”
Yet the second-story addition is legal, says Garth Saager, director
of the McCormick Ranch Property Owners Association. He adds,
“You’re not entitled to your view.” Lake Woebegon author and
public-radio host Garrison Keillor disagrees: In St. Paul, Minn.,
he’s suing his next-door neighbors over their new second story.
WYOMING
Cheryl
and Vince Pierce were remarkably upbeat after a heavy
snowfall collapsed the roof of a famous diner that they’d moved
2,400 miles from New York City to LaBarge, Wyo. “This is just one
of those things that happens,” Cheryl Pierce told the Associated
Press. The Moondance was almost 100 years old and one of the last
remaining freestanding diners in the city when the couple bought it
for $7,500 last year. It had stood near the Holland Tunnel in
Manhattan and was slated for demolition to make way for
condominiums. The new owners say the diner will reopen by spring or
early summer.
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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