And just like that, the school year was over. I caught beautiful rainbow and brown trout on Spring. Creek,  had become not just good, but to my utter surprise an excellent 'wing shooter' (before Montana I could only hit the side of a barn if I was shooting from inside the barn), and had fallen in love with the people and mountains of Montana. A local rancher, John Hertel, hired me for the summer, ...  Read More

I soon made another good friend. Dan Marshall had graduated from Moore High School and was finishing his last year of college in Bozeman. He regularly drove up on his weekends to hunt. There were so many upland game birds that I literally learned how to wing shoot without ever having a lesson or shooting trap at a range. In fact, I went hunting every day after school during the season and shot thr...  Read More

Another teacher quickly took me under his wing. Doug Bingeman loved to hunt and fish and was the Moore Bulldogs' biggest fan. I was a first year teacher and Doug gave me a lot of sound advice. He also LOVED a practical joke, and was somewhat famous with both students and staff for his classroom antics. Doug reminded us all that working hard and having fun were not mutually exclusive. He did both, ...  Read More

In those days Moore, Montana was an athletic powerhouse. They were state champs in '6 man' football, but basketball was king for both boys and girls. My first year of teaching they actually closed the school several days because so many people were gone for away basketball games that it didn't make sense to stay open. During the off-season, high school boys and girls worked out 'jumping boxes' wit...  Read More

Whitetail deer, mule deer, antelope, sharptail grouse, Hungarian partridge, pheasant- as I drove a few miles from the town of Moore, Montana into the foothills of the Little Snowy Mountains, I had never seen such game-rich country. The wheat harvest was in full swing, and this new place seemed to overflow with abundance. I had come from a place where the average farm was 160 acres, but here the av...  Read More

The town of Moore, Montana, is situated at over 4,000 feet on a high plain that was once covered with massive herds of buffalo. The gravel road next to the school leads through giant wheat and barley fields and straight into the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. I decided to do a little exploring, but hadn't gone a quarter mile in my car when a large grain truck was coming straight at me down the ...  Read More

I rented a basement apartment in Lewistown, Montana, and headed out to set up my classroom 17 miles west in Moore. I would be teaching the largest class in the school- a combination class of grades 5 and 6 with 22 students. The start of school was several weeks away, but when I arrived I found half a dozen high school boys playing basketball in the gym. I wandered all over the school and couldn't ...  Read More

My 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (the engine was called the "350 Rocket") got 14 miles per gallon. I let someone talk me into selling it and buying a 4 cylinder Plymouth Horizon, one of the greatest automotive embarrassments in history. BIG mistake! The engine didn't 'purr,' it sounded more like you were shaking marbles in a coffee can. I couldn't even drive the speed limit up a steep hill, and ...  Read More

Just like that, everything changed. The phone rang and I was offered a teaching job in Moore, Montana, for under $12,000 a year. Even then, that was poverty wages. In fact, the music teacher's kids were the only ones in the school who qualified for the federal free lunch program. My brothers brought home more on unemployment when they got laid off from Land O' Lakes. Fortunately, as a young single...  Read More

After five days, four of them on a Greyhound bus, I was back in Minnesota without a teaching job. Montana was beautiful. I loved the mountains, the dry heat ( Minnesota is extremely humid in the summer) and the lack of mosquitoes. There was a teacher hiring freeze across the entire state of Minnesota, and the only job posting (other than Montana) at my college placement office was in Kuwait. I wok...  Read More

I thought that my interview with superintendent Rich Hughes went well, but I didn't have any indication about whether or not I'd be offered a job. The bus only came through once a day, so I borrowed a ride to Lewistown, Montana, to find a place to spend the night. The next day I was back on the bus for a 2 day trip home to Minnesota. To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. I had...  Read More

I stood for a moment on the gravel street, suitcase in hand, wondering which way to go. The 'bus stop' was the Farmers' Co-op gas station. I asked the employee- Ralph- the only person I had seen, how to find the school. He pointed to a green, metal 'pole barn' looking building at the end of the street. It turns out that the gravel road I was standing on was Main Street in Moore, Montana. There wer...  Read More