August 17, 2012

"Two young girls were driven home after being reported for stacking 50 rocks on railroad tracks."

"A railroad representative wanted the girls charged with trespassing."

It's the law enforcement roundup from the interlake region of Montana.
A woman called, requesting to speak with a particular deputy to ask him why he had left her son, “as sick as he was,” lying in the ditch earlier that day....

Several residents near the fairgrounds called to complain that the music was too loud, drowning out their televisions and keeping their children awake.

A man was removed from a supermarket on Third Avenue East North after he picked up several food items and went to the bathroom to eat them.

A man so drunk he did not know if he was a guest was reported vomiting in the parking lot in front of a hotel on U.S. 2 West....

A Memory Lane resident received a call from an unidentified person who called the resident a “Hitler” and told the resident to “meet me at Whitefish bank tomorrow, and if you don’t, I will come to your house and kill you.”...

An Eighth Street West resident cornered a badger in their backyard. The resident was advised to leave it alone.

A man was given a ride home after being found sitting in a ditch near the intersection of Northwest Lane and Three Mile Drive.
So the big question is: When does sitting in a ditch turn the police into your taxi service? No questions on the topic of badgers: Leave them alone!

42 comments:

traditionalguy said...

Sounds like a Rodeo week to me.

They are dedicated to family entertainment, ranch style, and always include drunken cowboy wannabes looking to impress the young single daughters.

Beta Rube said...

"Cornered a Badger" has me worrying about you and Meade.

Meade said...

A man at a Bob Dylan show complained that concert goers in front of him refused to sit down even though he said "please". His view of the stage was blocked, the sheriff's deputy reported, so the man could only check baseball scores on his iPhone while Mr.Dylan and his band noodled around with a prolonged Ballad of a Thin Man.

But that was in Missoula.

edutcher said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
wyo sis said...

Each item is a tiny novella. It leaves an impression of small town life as written by O'Henry.

Sorun said...

"I've cornered a badger in my backyard. I'm spraying it with the hose while my son throws rocks at it. What do I do next?"

edutcher said...

Notice in all that activity, nobody got shot.

Beta Rube said...

"Cornered a Badger" has me worrying about you and Meade.

She is a Blue Hen and I think he is a Hoosier, so they're safe.

Wally Kalbacken said...

I would never eat food items in a grocery store bathroom. In Montana.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Stacking anything on railroad tracks is a very serious and potentially deadly crime. Those girls should be punished in some way. Not joking. A derailed train carrying toxic chemicals is not a funny prank.

Several residents near the fairgrounds called to complain that the music was too loud, drowning out their televisions and keeping their children awake."

We used to live near the fairgrounds. Around Labor Day weekend the fair lasted for 5 days. Every evening there was a loud event with the crescendo of events being on the Saturday and Sunday. Music, Rodeo, Destruction Derby, Tractor Pulls. Loud speakers announcing events and results of auctions etc. The carnival music went on all day and into the late evening stopping at midnight. People at the local bar a few blocks away who were still whooping it up and partying after the fair closed, were loud the music was loud, and you could count on a fight or two tumbling out of the place and into the street. The sheriffs would come and haul the worst offenders away.

It was the highlight of the year and a great transition from Summer to Winter. I would never DREAM of complaining.

Fairs are loud. It only lasts a few days. Get over it. Go out of town. Wear earplugs at night. People are having fun. Stop being a spoil sport.

dbp said...

"The Kalispell Police Department received a report of a man making sexual advances toward a 16-year-old boy. The man reportedly has been luring multiple boys into his room using cigarettes and flattery."

I blame the high cost of cigarettes.

Anonymous said...

The two girls only resorted to stacking rocks on the railroad tracks after sitting in a ditch failed to get them the expected ride home.

The Drill SGT said...

"When does sitting in a ditch turn the police into your taxi service?"

When the police have nothing better to do....

same with kittens up trees and lost dogs

prairie wind said...

Fifty rocks. Who counted?

Anonymous said...

After all those years of living in Madison she's an honorary Badger, that's the least we can do, we are a hospitable state.

virgil xenophon said...

wyo sis hits the nail on the head. Those events could have been taken straight from the local newspaper in the small rural town in Illinois that I grew up in in the 50s.

Dr Weevil said...

So you can walk the walk, and you can talk the talk, but you can't badger the badger, at least in Montana?

virgil xenophon said...

@DBQ/

The Fairgrounds was at the oppo end of town in my hometown, but for me as a child in the 50s the end of summer was marked by the Holy Roller regional tent revival services held in late Aug not far from our university faculty housing in our small rural Ill. "teachers college" town. I could hear the "goings on" late into the night from my open bedroom window. (NO ac in those days! hot, hot, hot!)

Walter said...

My wife & I love reading the Cannon Courier:
http://www.cannoncourier.com/

I guess many other small town newspapers are similiar also....

MadisonMan said...

This is a true story.

My Dad grew up in a town with a rail line running through it, up a slow incline as it lead out of town. One day he got a big can of waste oil from a filling station, poked a hole in the bottom, and walked the can along the tracks for some distance. Then he did the same thing on the second track, so there was oil all over both tracks.

The next train leaving town could not make it up the incline.

The rail inspectors visited the filling station from which my Dad had gotten the oil. The grease monkey there -- a friend -- did not give Dad away however.

Growing up in a small town can be boring, and bored teens do interesting things.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Again with the street names. Memory Lane? Seriously? (Though back in my music-retail days, we did have a regular customer who lived on Easy Street in Carefree, AZ. No joke.)

Agree absolutely with DBQ about piling rocks on railroad tracks. That's a terrific way to get people killed.

virgil xenophon said...

@DBQ II/

I really should put in a Chamber of Commerce plug for the Coles County Fair in Charleston, Ill. It's claim to fame is two-fold: 1)that it is the oldest continuously-held County Fair in the State--no small feat as many were cancelled in the Jimmy Carter years in the 70s due to financial difficulties, and, 2) it was the site of the 4th Lincoln-Douglas Debate.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Fair always marked the end of summer and the beginning of the school year. We could see the tops of the carnival rides from a window in our house. The neon lights, the colors and sounds would draw my daughter [aged 6 to 9 when we lived there] to the window and she would be glued to the sight like a Garfield doll suction cupped to a car window. FAIR FAIR!!! Rides, animals, games, corn dogs, cotton candy, taffy, waffle fries, banana splits, wine and beer garden (for the adults of course)...JUNK FOOD. Last chance to run wild before school and winter. We could only afford to go a couple of days during the fair. But what fun!

Every kid should be able to enjoy a small town fair.

Alex said...

What is with these increased reports of feral children? Should we fear them?

Bruce Hayden said...

What is with these increased reports of feral children? Should we fear them?

One of the things that I notice living in rural MT, as opposed to the big cities where I have spent most of my life, is that the kids tend to run free much of the time. Reminds me a lot of when I was growing up outside of Golden, CO. We would run free from the time we got home from school until dinner time, and all day during the summers. It was worse for us when we had horses, because we could roam so much farther - we could easily get 5 miles away and still make dinner.

This doesn't exist any more for many of our children. Sure didn't for mine. I think that it is a combination of over-scheduling our kids, as well as being paranoid about all the weirdos and pervs out there - who were always out there, but we just know it now because of ubiquitous communications.

Carnifex said...

Badgers are reknowned for being ferocious, tenacious and mean...hence badger. Groundhogs are just as mean and ferocious. Giant rats, really. I had one bite an aluminum arrow in half once. They taste bad too.(Never tried badger)

Calypso Facto said...

$250,000 for failure to notify, removal costs, and $25,000 a day for that little prank now, Madman.

§4301(a) and (c) The fine for failing to notify the appropriate Federal agency of a discharge is increased from a maximum of $10,000 to a maximum of $250,000 for an individual or $500,000 for an organization. The maximum prison term is also increased from one year to five years. The penalties for violations have a maximum of $250,000 and 15 years in prison.

§4301(b) Civil penalties are authorized at $25,000 for each day of violation or $1,000 per barrel of oil discharged. Failure to comply with a Federal removal order can result in civil penalties of up to $25,000 for each day of violation.

Chip Ahoy said...

You did not mention before that you have a TARDIS and do this crazy time traveling all around like going back and seeing Bob Dylan and now cowboy newspapers.

Do you want to hear something hairy Larry ass, okay goes like this: the grinding noise the TARDIS makes when it materializes, and has made since 1963 and through 11 incarnations of the character Dr Who, is because they're leaving the brakes on while landing. (Dr Who isn't the only one with a TARDIS, the Master's TARDIS grinds too.) So if your TARDIS is grinding, you should know you don't have to keep the brake on.

River Song broke it to them. She slid the thing in like a stunt driver and Dr Who, after all those lifetimes of grinding it it, looks at her and says, "I meant to do that." This new knowledge has caused a disturbance in the Force within the Dr Who universe.

MadisonMan said...

Not sure what the fine would've been back in the late '30s, when it took place. Somewhat less, I'm thinking.

jungatheart said...

Once Leno was reading news items from around the country and this one sticks with me(approx):

Woman called police after asking husband if he wanted anything, and he said 'for you to die already.'

Crunchy Frog said...

I couldn't take it any longer
Lord I was crazed
And then the feeling came upon me
Like a tidal wave
Started swearing to my god
And on my mother's grave
That I would love you til the end of time
I swore I'd love you til the end of time

So now I'm praying for the end of time
To hurry up and arrive
Cause if I have to spend another minute with you
I don't think that I can really survive
I'll never break my promise
Or forget my vow
But God only knows
What I could do right now
I'm praying for the end of time
It's all that I can do
Praying for the end of time
So I can end my time with you

Aridog said...

Crunchy Frog ... once needs to be careful what they do in front of the dashboard light.

[ps: my favorite is the Karla DeVito version circa late 70's]

JAL said...

Whitefish?

You should visit in the winter.

Synova said...

These police blotters from the back-side of nowhere are interesting to me. Wow, crime wave, right? Rude teenagers all over the place!

I heard that with the oil boom in North Dakota they've arrested the first *pimp* ever in the History of the State.

In any case, I'm from a small town of a couple hundred people. No stop lights, just a four-way stop in the middle of town. They once *tried* to hire a municipal cop. Didn't work. The couple farmers who considered the stop signs optional refused to change their ways and that was that.

So I see this in the county paper naming my home town, the actual, tiny, hasn't has a school of it's own since 1970...

"The Dalton man who pled guilty in June to murdering his mother with a machete received an 11th-hour postponement of his fate Thursday."

It was sort of shocking. And not someone I knew, either. I've been gone too long.

Calypso Facto said...

Somewhat less, I'm thinking.

Since the railroads (and others) used to purposefully spray oil to keep dust down, I'm inclined to agree with you there.

virgil xenophon said...

@DBQ III/

My favorite ride at the Fair was always the "Bullet." In those days (50s) the older version would rotate freely so that one was often upside-down, unlike later versions that just kept one rolling side to side even as the arm completed a 360 rotation. Supposedly it is a quite rare ride these days--probably due to low capacity of only eight--two in each end of the rotating split "bullet on each arm w. 4 in the split bullet on the other end of the arm. Not a big money-maker, I guess, but a GREAT ride. Sad to se it in decline..

Dante said...

Stacking 50 bricks on the railroad tracks sounds pretty bad, to me. Like, domestic terrorism or something.

I hope Napolitano was notified, and these girls are locked away forever, with Napolitano there too.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Rides, animals, games, corn dogs, cotton candy...

Maple sugar cotton candy from the Hopkinton ( NH ) State fair.

Yum.

Peter said...

Small town fairs may be nice, but do avoid the Durham Fair in Connecticut, even though it's held in a small town. It has a well-deserved reputation for being unable to handle crowds. A recent account:

So the CTMQ family drove down to Durham, sat in traffic for 45 minutes in order to pay five bucks and park 5 miles away, walked 20 minutes to the hour-long line for busses to the fair only to hear tell that once AT the fairgrounds that the wait to get inside the expensive grounds was another hour-plus.

David R. Graham said...

US 2 across Idaho is a lovely drive. Hope you can make it. In Bonner's Ferry try the Kootenai River Brewing Co., 6424 Riverside Street. Not cheap but very fine beer/ale/food, but dined there. I have no interest there, live in another state, not a businessman. The Kootenai is a lovely river, US 2 follows it for miles. Two years ago I inched through a cattle drive in US 2, legal there, dangerous and smelly but legal, two miles long at least, August time-frame.

David R. Graham said...

In Whitefish, MT, MacKenzie River Pizza Company. I have no interest there, but great pizza and beer/ale, some from the brewery across the street. Downtown Whitefish is a tourist trap, to be sure, but a rather delightful one, I think. Far less drug-based than Crested Butte or Ouray. Whitefish is also a BNSF crew-change and marshaling yard. Fun to watch. Glacier NP is close. Huge areas of forest burn there, on both the western and easter sides of the Park. Locals say snow finally extinguished the fires.

Astro said...

I'm guessing the railroad officials requested that the girls come back and get their rocks off.

SCOTTtheBADGER said...

Once again, the cuddly, loveable Badger gets a bad name from the press, just because of the Badger's rightist political laenings. Sigh. Will the Badger antipathy ever end?