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It has been my privilege—in many cases, an honor—to have known movie stars, television personalities, politicians from both sides of the aisle, activists, decorated soldiers, criminals, business czars, and just about every jazz musician who has lived during my lifetime.

There are ten people I would have liked to know. Sadly, those ten lives were the latest victims of an eighteen-year-old, antisemitic, white supremacist armed with a modified AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. His name is Payton Gendron. It is my fervent wish that his name will soon be forgotten. Folk tales about racist murderers are nothing we need in our national conversation.

We need to not forget about the victims of this most heinous of acts.

Roberta A. Drury, 32, Buffalo, N.Y.; Margus D. Morrison, 52, Buffalo, N.Y.; Andre Mackneil, 53, Auburn, N.Y.; Aaron Salter, 55, Lockport, N.Y.; Geraldine Talley, 62, Buffalo, N.Y.; Celestine Chaney 65, Buffalo, N.Y.; Heyward Patterson, 67, Buffalo, N.Y.; Katherine Massey, 72, Buffalo, N.Y.; Pearl Young, 77, Buffalo, N.Y.; Ruth Whitfield, 86, Buffalo, N.Y.

Like most of us, they led remarkably unremarkable lives, except to those who called them friend and neighbor, dad, or brother, or sister, mom, grandma, grandpa, cousin, aunt or uncle. To their survivors, the victims were the stalwarts of their families and in their communities. They showed their humanity by their various acts of kindness, the survivors recalled.

Their work was not yet finished.

Robert Donald, 75, the owner of Vintage Firearms in Endicott, N.Y., told National Public Radio that the firearm was purchased earlier this year. He said that he had run a background check on the18-year-old suspect, but that the report showed nothing.

The purchase took place mere months after New York state police briefly took Gendron into custody after he made a threat about a shooting, as authorities have described.

Last June, state police investigated the alleged shooter and ordered a psychiatric evaluation. After a day and a half in a hospital, he was released, authorities confirmed. Afterward, he did not remain on law enforcement’s radar.

The timing of the gun purchase, along with Donald’s report of a clean background check, raises questions about why a police-ordered mental health evaluation would not have appeared on the report. It seems to me that a red flag should have been raised.

The alleged perpetrator of Saturday’s mass shooting planned to continue his attack beyond the Tops supermarket had he not been stopped by police, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told ABC News on Monday.

“We have uncovered information that if he escaped the [Tops] supermarket, he had plans to continue his attack,” Gramaglia said. “He had plans to continue driving down Jefferson Avenue to shoot more black people…possibly go to another store [or] location.”

Eleven of the 13 people who were shot — including all 10 who died — are Black.

The alleged shooter was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge hours after he was taken into custody, according to law enforcement officials.

The FBI is investigating the shooting as a hate crime and “an instance of racially motivated violent extremism.” Federal authorities are also looking at potential terrorism charges, according to reports.

In this instance, and in seemingly countless others, the background checks are clearly lacking in providing much useful information. It is obvious that a more proactive approach to background checks is warranted. We should be clamoring to establish more meaningful waiting periods. And the conversation about ownership of weaponry whose sole purpose is to take human lives needs vigilant action.

We owe it to ourselves and others to establish effective gun laws that will keep any armaments out of the hands of criminals and the mentally disturbed.

Let’s not forget those whose lives were taken.

Their sacrifice need not be forgotten. May their memories be for blessings.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Count Basie Beef Pie Cobbler Recipe

Bessie M. Gant was a prominent African American Pittsburgh caterer in her day who cooked for celebrities like Count Basie. In her newspaper column “Bout Good Things to Eat,” she celebrated Basie’s tour and her love for his music with several recipes. She wrote, “when Count Basie stops in your town on his tour, prepare this dish for him. But follow the directions carefully or the Count will count me out of his long list of friends.”
 
2 pounds steak
1 1/2 cups sliced onions
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
1 Tbs. chopped parsley
1 Tbs. flour
2 1/2 cups water
2 cups diced raw potatoes
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
a good pie crust pastry recipe

Cut meat into 1-inch cubes and sauté in olive oil until browned. Add onions and cook until softened. Stir in seasoning, parsley, flour and mix well. Add water slowly stirring constantly. Add potatoes; cover and simmer for about 30 min. Pour into greased 8-inch casserole. Cover with pie crust pastry rolled 1/4 inch thick. Prick with work to allow steam to escape. Bake at 450 for 20 minutes until golden brown.

Something that I’ve always wondered about is, if the traditional Thanksgiving dinner of “turkey and all the fixins” is so great, why do most of us only have it once a year?

Actually, I only started wondering about it when I began casting about for this morning’s essay a couple of days ago. I do, however, wonder about the “all the fixins” phrase that makes anybody saying it aloud would suggest that Mayberry might be a significant part of their backgrounds.

I’ve always been fond of Thanksgiving—not for its rather inauspicious beginnings and the signaling of the genocide of Native Americans—but for its celebration of food and family.

Sadly, the traditional Thanksgiving food that is generally celebrated tends to be mostly bland. There also tends to be an enormous amount of it, rendering that first celebration of bounty to one of abundance.

The sameness of it all is echoed on end aisles of grocery stores. The shelves are piled high with canisters of Durkee fried onions, cans of green beans and cream of mushroom soup, the three of which are blended together to create a casserole nobody will eat on any other occasion.

There are cans of pumpkin, yams and both cranberry sauce and jelly. Bread stuffing, in a seemingly countless variety of configurations, also get end-aisle display, replacing that space usually reserved for tortillas. Along side are the boxes of chicken stock needed to help moisten the dressing, dressed up with onions and celery.

Not everybody likes the same dressing (stuffing if it’s in the bird) and so having three or four dressings—traditional, cornbread, oyster, sausage—is not uncommon. And since not everybody likes turkey, there is frequently a ham or a brisket. There are also the obligatory mashed potatoes, potatoes au gratin, candied yams (with or without marshmallows), roasted carrots, brussels sprouts, creamed spinach, creamed onions, sauerkraut, biscuits, dinner rolls, tanker-trucks of gravy, and, of course, macaroni-and-cheese.

Don’t even get me started on desserts.

Everything is served at least an hour late. The food grows cold as the never-ending passing of each dish takes place. And then we’re expected to eat all of this at the same time.

What, I ask, would be wrong with chicken ala king, spaghetti and meatballs, or the classic Greek moussaka?

There are no courses in the traditional Thanksgiving feast which, along with some serious alterations to the menu, is something I’d like to suggest.

First of all, let’s replace the pathetic relish tray and ranch-dressing dip with a charcuterie board worthy of oohs and aahs. A variety of sausages, salamis, olives, mustard, and pickled vegetables, served with crusty bread, is sure to please. Add some chutney, nuts, fresh grapes, and strawberries to take it to an epic level.

Next, there should be a fish course. It would seem likely that shellfish would have been served at the original Thanksgiving, as it allegedly took place on the New England coast.

A fish course can be something as simple as Provençal style steamed mussels simmered in white wine, butter and garlic cream broth, or something more elaborate such as sole meunière, a delicate dish of sauteed fish with a sauce of butter, lemon, and parsley. My preference would be oysters Rockefeller—oysters on the half-shell topped with garlic, green herbs, breadcrumbs, and Pernod and then baked. Then again, there’s always Coquilles St-Jacques, a French dish of scallops poached in white wine, placed atop a purée of mushrooms in a scallop shell, covered with a sauce made of the poaching liquid, and gratinéed under a broiler.

The salad course should be something light and refreshing—lettuces with herbs, marinated shallots and a fragrant vinaigrette of oil, lemon juice and mustard. Or, thinly sliced cucumbers with a sprinkling of sugar, salt, pepper and fresh dill, dressed with some white wine vinegar.

While French onion soup is wonderful, it is also quite filling. For the soup course, I’d go with a light and brothy miso.

If you insist on turkey as the main course, I suggest a turkey roulade—a roasted breast stuffed with bread, sausage, and herbs. It’s easy to make and is wonderful with some simple sides such as mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus.

Sticking with fowl, my next preference is roasted duck. My Bohemian grandmother, who was an incredible cook, made a roast duck seasoned with salt, pepper and caraway seed. Beneath its crispy skin was moist meat that she served with boiled potatoes with parsley, bread dumplings, red cabbage, and sauerkraut. Of course, there was a rich gravy made from the drippings. We weren’t big on green sides.

Osso buco, the famed veal dish from Lombardy, Italy, is rich and delicious. It is a slice of the veal shank, braised in vegetables and stock until falling-off-the-bone tender. It is traditionally served over risotto Milanese, a rice dish flavored with saffron. I like to garnish it with horseradish gremolata.

For dessert, I would forgo the fruit and nut pies for a selection of cheese, served with fresh pears and apples.

So there’s my Thanksgiving food fantasy. It is a counter to the open-faced turkey sandwiches I’ve had alone on this holiday, as well as lasagna I’ve enjoyed with a large, loud Italian family whom I loved.

Even those unfortunate enough to not be able to enjoy a cornucopia of blessings on their own tables, there is no shortage of organizations whose members and volunteers donate time and money to ensure everybody can get a meal.

That is perhaps worthy of being thankful for—our neighbors, friends and families willing to sacrifice for the good of others.

In the meantime, I’d better start thawing the turkey.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Oysters Rockefeller

Created at Antoine’s in New Orleans in the late 1800s, this is a decidedly decadent dish that was my father’s culinary contribution for every celebratory dinner.

1/3 cup unsalted butter, divided
1 small shallot, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 cups fresh spinach, chopped
1 Tbs. chopped parsley
2 Tbs. Pernod
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
24 raw oysters, shucked
4 lemon wedges

Melt half of the butter and add the shallot, garlic, parsley, and spinach. Cook briefly over medium heat. Deglaze with the Pernod. Melt the remaining butter and add to the breadcrumbs. Off heat, add the cheese and breadcrumbs to combine. Arrange the oyster shells on a baking dish covered with rock salt.

Divide the breadcrumb mixture over the oysters. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 400 degrees.

To put into perspective the 22-1/2 year sentence of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is to understand that our nation’s prisons are filled with Black men serving longer sentences for drug possession or for stealing loaves of bread to feed hungry families. This is the essay I published in the aftermath of Floyd’s death.

In its request that Donald J. Trump resign his office, the editorial board of the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest daily newspaper, found him to be lacking “the character, maturity and judgment to lead the country in a perilous time.”

While I find myself agreeing that the Trump presidency has been disastrous by almost any standard on virtually every level, it is indeed his reckless conduct that has ushered in this “perilous time.” His seeming disregard for even a modicum of decency, let alone the truth, has inflamed and sustained it.

Not counting the threat of nuclear war, various natural disasters and my near-miss with the Draft Board in 1970, in the almost sixty-nine years I’ve been around, any real peril I might have faced was probably of my own doing.

I’ve had an interesting career that has allowed me to see behind the curtains and up into the fly system of the mise en scène that is this country’s theater. I’ve witnessed my fair share of both human tragedy and unfettered joy, having been given wide berth as a reporter, writer, and critic spanning five decades. Curiosity has failed to kill this cat.

I’ve attended the aftermath of violent crime and watched too many people draw their last breath. I suppose I became inured to such things, but I was careful to try to not lose my sense of empathy, my humanity. Last week, along with millions of people all around the world, I witnessed the murder of George Floyd on a street corner in Minneapolis.

I cannot think of another time in my life that I felt such horror and outrage. Like most of us, I hope, I was numbed by the gross disregard for a human life, disgusted by this heinous police action, sickened by the smug look on the face of his accused murderer, Derek Chauvin, as he knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9-1/2 minutes, crushing the life out of a prone man in handcuffs. I screamed at the television screen, pleading for somebody to do something.

I wept.

And in my mind, I heard the imagined voices of those who would celebrate that moment as a victory, and take some unwarranted pleasure in the errant thinking that because George Floyd was Black, he was probably doing something wrong in a place he didn’t belong.

Such is the nature of the systemic racism that grips much of this country, ravaging its very soul and using as its tools fear, ignorance and injustice.

Ours is a nation struggling under a pandemic made worse by the willful ineptitude of a president who values property over people, who lies about a pandemic being a political hoax, and who worries more about his retention of power than the welfare of the people he vowed to protect with his hand placed on a book he’s not read. More than 110,000 Americans have lost their lives to the novel coronavirus. Forty million have lost their livelihoods and are facing financial ruin. Others have lost their businesses; still others, their homes. Our recovery may not be complete should another wave of COVID-19 occur. And yet, Trump’s rampant vanity allows for him to self-evaluate his own performance as a “10.”

This disease has placed in the spotlight the Black and brown communities that are suffering the highest per capita rates of infection and mortality. Scientists asked, “Why?”

The answer won’t be found in a test tube or on the workbench of a laboratory. Rather, it will be detailed in the analyses of data that address the economic, educational and employment issues facing people of color—people who have suffered under the tyrannical rule of racism for generations. The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation might have granted freedom to the enslaved, but it did not assure equal opportunity to the freed.

We have an administration that scorns scientific discovery and has empowered racists, encouraged their disobedience (if not their outright lawlessness), and led by example to making meaner the spirit of some part of the American people.

Trump finds fascism to exist as an attitude and practice held by some “very good people,” and through gesture and speech has made light of any sense that love and compassion for our fellow man might lead to a celebration of a higher order, to a greater understanding of our neighbors, to a better appreciation of our own lives and the myriad contributions of others toward making our society better for all of us.

We are bearing witness to what the NAACP has found to be “civil unrest that is a direct consequence of the racism, bigotry, violence, and subjugation against Black people that has festered in this country for too long.”

For nearly forty years I had the great pleasure of writing about jazz music—America’s only original art form—for two Los Angeles newspapers, Playboy, and the industry’s bible, Downbeat.

Historically, jazz is a Black art form evolved in part from the call-and-response field hollers of slaves. Its evolution from rural to urban embodied the blues—that woeful expression of hard times that nonetheless evoked an enduring sense of optimism—and the rhythms of Africa and the island nations of the Caribbean. People once feared jazz, thinking it a licentious music that encouraged discontent, crime, promiscuity, and drug abuse.

I practiced what is called “advocacy” journalism, proudly and passionately embracing and advocating the music and its players, and urging my readers to do the same. “Great music isn’t as bad as it sounds,” I would joke in my efforts to draw people to the sounds of jazz.

But I was serious from the soap box on which I stood. I abhorred those who cheapened its artistry and its legacy with attempts to make the music “popular” without regard to its integrity and its history, and I let them know it in print. My labors were gratifying, and I have yet to pass up an opportunity to preach the gospel of jazz to anyone who might listen.

During those years, I got to know countless numbers of jazz musicians—Black, brown and white, a proud and vibrant rainbow of talented men and women working together to create music. Most were more than willing to share their stories—stories told with humility and humor. Many of those stories were centered around the issue of race, with most shrugging off some experiences because “that was then.”

But up until the end of the last century and twenty years into this one, “that was then” is, in reality, “this is still.” In the days following the death of Mr. Floyd, it is quite obvious that we’ve not as a nation done much to stem the tide of racism.

Benny Carter was one of the most innovative men in all of jazz. Few know his name. He was an alto saxophonist and composer who wrote big band arrangements beginning in the ‘30s, and led his own bands and combos in concerts around the world. He wrote movie and television scores for which he received no screen credit because of the color of his skin.

I first met Benny in 1969 and we maintained our friendship until his death in 2003, at the age of ninety-five. He was a proud, dignified man who exuded eloquence in both his demeanor and his music. He did not suffer fools gladly. He, like so many of his generation, endured the indignities of being made to enter through the back doors of establishments to perform for all-white audiences. And at the end of the night make their ways to hotels where Blacks were allowed.

Once, while playing a solo with his big band at a Hollywood nightclub, a woman in the front row beckoned to him and asked if the piano player was Black. Benny said that he didn’t know because it had never occurred to him to be so rude as to ask.

As a nation we have an opportunity to change the course of history. No, we have an obligation to change the course of history. As Americans we have to ask ourselves what kind of people we want to be, what kind of society we want to be part of. And we have to ask what kind of future we want to create for our children and our grandchildren and their children. It’s not enough to hope for a better future. Aspirations carry no quarter without the hard work, heart and determination needed to see them come to fruition.

We can no longer afford for our dreams to be deferred.

In 1984, New York Governor Mario Cuomo addressed the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. It was a stirring speech that I found to capture the spirit and hopes that all Americans might one day share.

“We believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights,” the Governor said.

“We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes…what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another’s pain, sharing one another’s blessings—reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.

“We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.”

If one of us can’t breathe, then none of us can.

Signage by Courtney A. Liska

There was a time in America when soccer was considered to be a Commie sport and that’s why the kids on the west side of Chicago in the mid-to-late fifties and early sixties did not play soccer.

Maybe that’s why. I’m not sure. The fact that none of us had ever seen a soccer ball, let alone have access to one, might have had something to do with it. A contributing factor could have been that nobody knew anything about soccer back then. We also didn’t have a lot of large green spaces on which to play the world’s most popular sport.

Communism or the mere threat of it was at the root of most of American fears back then and our parents wanted no part of us playing any of the Commie games, with the possible exception of Cossacks and Thieves, which was sort of a Stalinist version of Monopoly except that it was played outdoors without dice and no possibility of property ownership. Commies, we had learned, were those terrible people who won that part of WWII that we didn’t. They threatened us with nuclear bombs, although our safety from such attacks was assured by the wood-and-steel desks we were instructed to hide under.

While this was what many of us had heard, nobody knew from whom we heard it. I actually don’t remember ever having a discussion about soccer with my parents. I don’t know that they had an opinion about soccer or its politics. I don’t know that they knew what soccer was. Nor do I remember having any discussion about any sport that might have involved politics of any stripe. We played ping-pong knowing only that China seemed to be a faraway country seemingly in desperate need of all the broccoli American children wouldn’t eat. Nobody ever mentioned Mao.

We had a guy in our neighborhood who sold snacks and candy to local stores. He wasn’t French, but he had a French-sounding last name, sported a modest handlebar mustache, wore a beret and lived with his wife in a small house on a corner lot. A lot of us hung out at his house for the free snacks and to watch soccer matches on the 9-inch black-and-white television that sat on a small table in a corner of his finished basement. The matches were broadcast on a UHF channel in Spanish, and featured a one-camera view of the action that seemed a mile or so away from where the actual camera might have been. Bob, the French guy, got excited when somebody maybe scored. It was hard to tell.

None of us were inspired to play soccer after watching these games.

In school, our mandatory recesses and physical education classes involved our playing dodge ball, kickball, climbing ropes, shooting hoops, tumbling and, after a requisite number of calisthenics, wind sprints. If any of us failed to pay proper respect to the prescribed regimen of activities, we ran laps until the hour was up.

Exercise was–in my era–punishment. In many ways, it still is.

The extra-curricular activities in the alleys of my neighborhoods included shooting craps and pitching pennies, both of which were potentially profitable. Stoop ball and stick ball were popular as well. We also played sandlot baseball on vacant lots, which was every boy’s favorite game in those days.

None of this prepared me for the late 1980s when, as a father in suburban Los Angeles, I was forced to become a soccer dad. Geri went along with this and we bought a van which allowed us to participate only as chauffeurs for Courtney’s team. A couple of years later, everybody in our neighborhood had bought a van and the competition to do as little as possible in pee-wee soccer became more intense.

I was late by mere minutes to the organizational meeting of Daniel’s first introduction to soccer. I was hoping to provide snacks, first-aid, shuttle service or condom distribution, but my tardiness was rewarded with the job of assistant coach. Jay, the head coach, was a great guy who golfed more than Trump and loved sports with a passion typically reserved for more intimate activities.

“Uh, Jay,” I said, sheepishly, “I don’t know anything about soccer. Nothing. Nada. Besides, I think it’s a Commie sport.”

“Oh, Jim,” he said, as he slapped a clipboard against my chest and hung a shiny whistle around my neck, “this will be fun.”

And then he gave me that reassuring one-arm shoulder hug and requisite pat on the butt as he renewed his promise that “We’ll have fun.”

Although not quite as amusing as girls T-ball, six-year-old boys soccer provides an entertainment value equaled only by watching small outbreaks of crowd bedlam. Practices were interesting, with each of the team’s members exhibiting unique abilities to focus on certain tasks for upwards of 6-7 seconds. Of course, every kid wanted possession of the ball. To that end, they played something we called “Swarm Ball,” in the which the entire practice squad gathered around the ball and moved it inches at a time in various directions.

In time, the boys started to look like actual soccer players, despite the occasional lapses into daisy picking or somersaulting.

Put 22 six-year-old boys in shiny jerseys on a very large grass field, toss a soccer ball somewhere in the middle and you’ve got the equivalent of a FIFA match: four or five players actively involved in kicking, dribbling, advancing the ball; the rest waiting for something to come their way.

At some point I became something of an avid soccer fan, even to the point of getting daily updates on Facebook about the various goings-on of AC Milan.

In 2006 we traveled to Italy, where every kid we saw had a soccer ball. We noticed that there were stores selling soccer stuff on almost every block in both Rome and Florence. Kids practiced their ball-handling skills up and down the Spanish Steps.

At dinner one evening in a delightful trattoria north of Florence, the telephone rang and great excitement ensued after learning that members of the national team that would represent Italy in the World Cup were on their way in for dinner. A small group soon arrived with what appeared to be girlfriends and hangers-on. We got to meet a couple of them, including Marco Materazzi, the only player to score for Italy and the man who received the headbutt from France’s Zidane. We also met Fabio Grosso, who scored the winning penalty kick.

Perhaps that is when my interest in the Beautiful Game peaked.

I like the balletic qualities of the sport, the athleticism and the robust attacks on the ball. I like that the sport requires patience on the parts of both player and viewer. I also like the bad acting required to draw a foul and how quickly that player recovers when the foul isn’t called.

I picked France to win this year’s World Cup, which is scheduled to start in mere minutes. Vive la France!

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Beef Stew with Dijon & Cognac

¼ pound salt pork, diced
1 large onion, finely diced
3 shallots, chopped
2 to 4 Tbs. butter, as needed
2 pounds beef chuck, in 1-inch cubes
2 Tbs. flour
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup Cognac
2 cups beef stock
½ cup Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons Pommery mustard
4 large carrots, peeled and cut into half-moon slices
½ pound mushrooms, stemmed, cleaned and quartered
¼ cup red wine

Place salt pork in a Dutch oven or a large heavy kettle over low heat, and cook until fat is rendered. Remove solid pieces with a slotted spoon, and discard. Add onion and shallots and cook over medium heat until softened but not browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer to a large bowl.
If necessary, add 2 tablespoons butter to the pan to augment fat. Dust beef cubes with flour, and season with salt and pepper. Shake off excess flour, and place half of the meat in the pan. Cook over medium-high heat until well browned, almost crusty, on all sides, then transfer to a bowl with onions. Repeat with remaining beef.
Add Cognac to the empty pan, and cook, stirring, until the bottom is deglazed and the crust comes loose. Add stock, Dijon mustard and 1 tablespoon Pommery mustard. Whisk to blend, then return meat and onion mixture to pan. Lower heat, partially cover pan, and simmer gently until meat is very tender, about 1 1/2 hours.
Add carrots, and continue simmering for 30 minutes, or until slices are tender. As they cook, heat 2 tablespoons butter in medium skillet over medium-high heat, and sauté mushrooms until browned and tender.
Stir mushrooms into stew along with remaining mustard and red wine. Simmer 5 minutes, then taste, and adjust seasoning. Serve with egg noodles or mashed potatoes.

It has occurred to me that the secret to having a successful garage sale is to not have one.

Thirty years ago, we hosted one at our home in Los Angeles in preparation for our move to Montana. Last weekend, I attended one my daughter and her husband were hosting.

That’s a vast span in which to have a complete understanding of the culture and practice of garage sales.

I was also able to access information offered by the National Association of Garage Sale Enthusiasts, a little-known division of the federal government’s Department of Economics, Business and Other Things. It’s overseen by the EPA and administered by the IRS, the latter of which has more than 26,000 agents trying to collect taxes from people wanting a little cash in exchange for their junk.

Garage sales have an interesting history dating back to ancient Egypt, where they were known as لِتَصْليح السَّيارات. Most of the people who died in those times had their most precious belongings buried with them…things like a favorite hashish pipe or a medal of valor. The rest of the stuff—like cookware and shards of broken pottery—was hawked by greedy relatives on the major boulevards of cities and towns that most of us can’t pronounce.

The typical Egyptian had a great sense of humor, which is not widely known. Typically, the dead relative was mummified and placed in one of the not-so-great pyramids in suburban neighborhoods, while the garage sale leftovers were scattered hither and yon for 20th-Century archeologists to discover and make up stories about how others once might have lived.

In reverential respect for our Arab forebearers—although, being Jewish, this is a stretch—our garage sale in 1991 provided tables full of crap we no longer wanted, needed, or didn’t want to transport 1,200 miles. And to be completely accurate, it was a driveway sale, considering that our garage was packed with precious belongings we were bringing to our new home.

In that driveway, we had on display hundreds of things for which we had no use—and certainly didn’t want to move.

The preparation for a yard/driveway/garage sale involves weeks of separating useful stuff, wanted stuff, unwanted stuff, and garbage. Then you spend an entire day moving the assorted stuffs to tables and arranging it in little displays that would rival a Walmart display of its crap.

When then opening hour of 9 a.m. arrives, you’ve already hosted 19 people who are confused about clocks. Seven a.m. is not the same as 9 a.m., and yes, I understand the urgency behind hoping that the 1973 June edition of Playboy missing from your collection might be hidden amongst the porcelain creamers in the shapes of cows.

In Los Angeles, garage sale attendees came in parties of fourteen people packed into a single car. They unloaded like a circus act of clowns. Most seemed interested in buying back-to-school clothing for children who weren’t in the car. Then there were the two ladies who pulled up in a Rolls Royce, poked around things for a few minutes and proceeded to steal a toy telescope my daughter was hoping to sell for a dollar.

Maybe that’s how one must live to afford driving a Rolls.

Last weekend, which apparently was a bad weekend to have a garage sale because it was a holiday, I happened to make some rather astute observations. One woman asked me if I was in charge of the sale, to which I answered that I was mere “eye candy.” She moved away from me quickly.

Men who came by themselves seemed mostly interested in tools or decorative stuff for what would only have been appropriate for the proverbial “man cave.” Men who were accompanied by a significant other seemed to be there against their will. Women who arrived solo were efficient and fast, rifling through things with knowing eyes for bargains.

Obesity seemed a common thread, as did the propensity of really nice cars. Perhaps buying other people’s soon-to-be-refuse is the secret to affording a late-model Subaru.

All garage sales end the same. Whatever doesn’t sell gets loaded into a truck and driven to a thrift store or a green box for disposal. Not all of one man’s trash is found to be another’s treasure. In the end, it’s junk.

But the host of these sales has toiled long and diligently to disperse once-cherished items for redistribution to a community desperately in need of more stuff.

By the way, the average American garage sale nets the host(s) about $83 or, to put it more succinctly, about $1.37 an hour.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Shrimp Creole

3 Tbs. butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. cayenne
1 1/2 c. chicken stock
2 bay leaves
1 (15-oz.) can whole tomatoes, crushed
2 green onions, thinly sliced, plus more for garnish
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 1/2 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined
Cooked white rice, for serving

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Add onion, pepper, and celery and cook until soft, 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add garlic, paprika, thyme, oregano, and cayenne and cook until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes more. Add chicken broth and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Lower to a simmer and cook until reduced by about 1/4, 6 to 8 minutes.
Add tomatoes and cook until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Add green onions and Worcestershire sauce and cook until thickened, about 10 minutes more. Season again with salt and pepper if needed, then turn off heat and stir in lemon juice.
In a separate large skillet, heat oil. Add shrimp and cook until pink and opaque, about 2 minutes per side. Season with salt and pepper, then add prepared sauce to shrimp. Garnish with green onions and serve with rice.

There is probably nothing more defining of a culture than its food.

I’ve always thought of myself as an adventurous eater, but some recent conversations have centered around foods that I wouldn’t even want to be in the same room as, let alone find on my plate.

There are a lot of foods that sound disgusting, but are actually quite tasty—like Rocky Mountain oysters, lamb’s tongue, and tripe. My grandmother used to make a delicious soup using the shredded lung of a cow.

I’ve eaten any number of livers, prepared in numerous ways, and broiled kidneys. In Milan, Italy, I had osso buco made from a horse’s shank. In Iceland, I was goaded into eating fish eyes (the trick is to not bite down; just swallow). At a friend’s house in Los Angeles, I was served “century” quail eggs (once you get past the odor of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, they’re not bad at all). They look odd, however, with the yolk a dark green and the white a dark brown, translucent jelly.

The most popular cuisine in America is Italian, most of which is southern with its deep tradition of garlic, oregano, and tomatoes. In Sardinia, known as the island of 100-year-old men (blame the wine), there are two kinds of cheese made that are the stuff of nightmares: Casu marzu and Su Callu Sardu. Translated as “rotten cheese,” Casu marzu is a sheep’s milk cheese that contains live maggots that promote an advanced level of fermentation to break down the fats. When the cheese reaches a point of decomposition, it’s ready to eat.

Su Callu Sardu, is made by taking the stomach of a baby goat, which is then tied at one end with a rope and left to mature with all its contents of mother’s milk. The cheese is then aged for at least two to four months and is served—along with its casing—on bread.

A popular street food in Sicily is pani ca ‘meusa, which is a soft bread roll filled with chopped spleen and lung that is then fried in lard.

And to think that in only the most touristy of places in Italy, will you see pineapple and Canadian bacon on a pizza.

In many places around the world, penis is featured on menus. Many cultures believe that by eating penis, of any kind, it imbues the diner with virility, health, and power, as well as a source of lean protein. Bull, ox, yak, and buffalo are among the most common to be eaten, particularly in eastern cultures. Oddly enough, the dik-dik is not on the list, although snake penises are. Who, but herpetologists, even knew snakes had penises?

According to those who would know about such things, penis tends to taste tough and sinewy, and benefits from being braised or slow cooked before being used as a prop in an elaborate practical joke.

Throughout the Pacific Rim and Asia, including Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, fried fruit bats are a common food source, due to their low fat and high protein content. They are prepared in a number of ways, cooked with green chiles, or deep fried whole. In Guam, Mariana fruit bats are considered a delicacy, while the flying fox bat species was listed as endangered due to being hunted there.

It’s been noted that they taste like chicken, but smell like urine. And how does one hunt bats?

Reptiles taste a lot like chicken as well.

In much of the southern United States, alligators go on and off the protected list based solely on the number of children, pets, or golfers they’ve consumed in recent months. One year at the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, they were off the list and being served in a spicy tomato sauce from a food stand in the infield of a racetrack—one of the sites of the festival. I stood in line for what seemed to be an eternity. Forty-five minutes after my first serving of gator, I had my second.

It tasted like chicken that had been brined in an algae-rich swamp. Turtle tastes nothing like chicken, but is delicious in the Bookbinder’s soup that was once served at Chicago’s Cape Cod Room.

Rattlesnake, which I’ve only had as the main component of chili, tastes like chili.

All sorts of creatures have become part of our diets, from Surströmming (fermented herring from Sweden), Cuy (roasted guinea pigs from Peru), and Hákarl (aged Icelandic shark).

Durian is the infamously stinky fruit from Thailand, described as being similar to rotten onions, turpentine, and raw sewage. Due to its persistent odor, the fruit has been banned from many hotels throughout Asia.

And how could we omit Kopi luwak, or civet coffee, from the list? Made from partly digested coffee beans eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet. Fermentation occurs as the berries pass through a civet’s intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected and brewed into one of the world’s most expensive coffees.

There are lines drawn in the sand for most of us when it comes to experiencing culinary traditions from around the world. I could no more eat a dog than fly. But I also recognize that dog has been a common animal protein for ages and ages. At least once each week, I am solicited to sign a petition to end the consumption of what we think are pets and they think of as food.

I wonder if the people of India circulate petitions for Americans to quit butchering cattle.

For being part of the Western world and probably the most respected of cuisines, the French came up with a dish so horrifying that when eating it, the diner covers one’s head with a towel or napkin so that God won’t have to witness this afront to one of His creatures.

The food is a delicacy known as ortolan bunting, a tiny songbird that is netted as it attempts to migrate south for the winter. It is then kept in darkened crates and force fed to increase its bulk. Finally, the bird is drowned it in a vat of Armagnac brandy.

Once the ortolan is dead and marinated, it is grilled, plucked and served. It is eaten in a single bite. The practice was ended in 1999.

Our food traditions are vast and varied, our tastes as well. Personally, my lines in the sand end at broccoli and peanut butter. Yuck.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Chocolate Mousse

1 pkg. gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water
3 oz. dark chocolate
1 cup whole milk
½ cup powdered sugar
Pinch of salt
1 Tbs. triple sec
2 cups heavy cream

Melt chocolate in a double boiler and add milk, beating until smooth. Remove from heat, add gelatin. Add sugar & salt, stir until blended. Cool slightly and add triple sec. Cool until beginning to set. Whip the cream until fairly stiff. Blend with chocolate mix. Pour into ramekins and chill.

Like the song says, “I love a parade.”

Actually, with the exception of the little parade we have each July 2nd in my adopted Montana hometown, I don’t much care for them at all. And even our little parade is growing less enjoyable as there seem to be fewer kids on bicycles decorated with red-white-and-blue crepe paper and more commercial displays from businesses, some of which don’t seem to have any local connection to the community.

There was a time when everybody with a horse or a farm implement proudly paraded down Livingston’s Main Street without much fanfare, merely smiling and waving imperiously from their chosen seats—saddle or tractor. Bagpipers from around the state led and followed, their kilts lending authenticity to the drone of their pipes. The Shriners rode their tiny cycles in little circles while the members of other fraternal organizations tossed candies to the children at the curbsides. The American Legion and the V.F.W. were represented with uniformed color guards, their numbers noticeably fading with each passing year, their members growing longer in the tooth.

It all made for a pleasant afternoon—one that was respectful of our nation’s history and traditions.

Today there are precision riding teams with uniformed riders, and the only tractors or combines on the route seem to be brand new and advertised as available for purchase at the implements store on Park Street. Things change.

But the Shriners and the bagpipers and the Rotarians and Lions, the Scouts and the 4-H still come out each July 2nd to remind us that what we have as a community is worth hanging onto, that our small-town identity is far more than something seen as precious by the visiting out-of-towners who flood the area at that time of year, and to remind us that, for the most part, our shared values are worth honoring. The politicians appear as well, their minions delivering paper handouts along the sidelines intending to remind us how worthy they are of our votes. For the most part, I’ve observed, we’re polite and accepting.

Since 1924, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City has been a spectacle designed to usher in the Christmas buying season, all to the benefit of Macy’s, which only makes sense since Macy’s foots most of the bill. The parade was designed as a commercial endeavor with no sense of charity or community.

The Rose Parade, which made its debut on Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard in 1890, was a commercial endeavor without a single sponsor since its inception. Everybody pays. It was created to help celebrate the Rose Bowl, a collegiate football championship game once held between the top finishers of the Big-Ten and Pac-10 conferences. I’m not sure who plays in the Rose Bowl game anymore. But the New Year’s Day parade, unless January 1 happens to fall on a Sunday, is the nation’s most prominent parade spectacle.

Clearly, the standing of the Tournament of Roses parade was placed briefly in jeopardy by the promise of President Trump’s salute to himself with a proposed $12 million Veterans Day spectacle along Pennsylvania Avenue, the cost of which would be offset by the president’s canceling peacetime war drills with South Korea.

In the grand tradition of such dictator states as North Korea, China and Russia, Trump would take his place on the dishonor roll with a rollicking show of our military strength, with which most of the world is already quite familiar. His five service deferments notwithstanding, he would stand proudly on the review stand as Commander-in-Chief, no doubt costumed for the day in a uniform lavishly decorated with campaign ribbons and medals.

That is unless he opts to name himself Grand Marshal and ride on the back of a convertible Chevy with Sarah Huckleberry Sanders.

But then things along the parade route went south when an unnamed Pentagon official leaked some fake news to the fake media that the parade’s estimated costs had ballooned to $92 million. It turns out that the news wasn’t fake and that it was the mayor of Washington, D.C., who would be blamed for raining on Trump’s parade. The estimated bill for the city’s services—including what seemed to be an extraordinary amount for bottled water—would be about $22 million, which would have increased the cost of the parade to around $34 million.

That left $58 million in parade costs unaccounted for. The parade plans were scrapped, with Trump and unnamed Pentagon officials saying that a target date was being set for next year.

Nobody is more disappointed than Moses Lester, an underling in Trump’s “kitchen cabinet” whose job title is “guy in charge of parades and warrantless spectacles.”

“I’m also the guy in the bunny costume at the Easter egg hunt,” Moe said from a windowless basement office in the West Wing of the White House.

“You must be disappointed,” I suggested.

“In a way,” he said, adding that he sensed the parade’s costs would become prohibitive. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to fly a tank to Washington, let alone dozens of them?”

I had to admit that I didn’t.

“I got shot down pretty early,” Moe said, “but I suggested corporate sponsorships from the Day One.”

Moe continued to say that the less the Tasteless Trump Tribute (his words) would cost the American taxpayer, the more palatable it would be to the public. But, he added, Trump argued that the tax cuts afforded the richest of the rich should not be taken back to pay for the parade.

“It’s the public’s duty to foot the bill to honor me,” he allegedly said.

Moe said that he was proud of his plan and disappointed that little of it was even seen by the powers-that-be.

Hobby Lobby was going to be the official sponsor and would have naming rights. Macy’s was on board for the donation of giant, helium-filled balloons of Trump, his children, wives and cabinet members. Papa John’s would cater the whole shebang.

“I had Kanye West hosting and headlining the show at the end of the parade route,” Moe said. “Kid Rock and Ted Nugent were on board as well.”

Fox News was reportedly in negotiations to be the sole broadcasting outlet and retain film rights for the movie Dinesh D’Souza would be making.

“It sounds like you had a pretty good handle on things,” I suggested.

“I think so,” he said. “I even had a commitment from the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus. Have you heard their version of ‘I Love a Parade’? Killer, absolute killer.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well,” he began, “the midterm elections are just five days before Veterans Day. If the Republicans lose the House, the Senate or both, the President probably wouldn’t be a very happy camper at his own party.”

“But what if the Republicans retain control?”

I heard the click of Moe hanging up on me.

Just-In-Case Crow Pie

2-3 crows
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 cup peas
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/2 cup boiled potato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
2/3 cup milk
1 tbs corn starch
2 frozen pie crusts

Prepare crows as you would any other game bird.
Boil prepared crows for 4-5 hours. Let cool.
Remove meat from bones and chop.

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix cornstarch with milk, and stir until smooth.
Add carrots, peas, celery, and onion.
Add chopped crow meat and mix well.
Pour crow mixture into pie shell.
Cover with second pie shell.
Seal edges and pierce to allow steam to escape.
Bake for one hour, or until crust is golden brown.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

It was a cloudy mid-winter morning–June in Montana, in other words. Snow threatened against a skyline without buildings.

Weird, I thought, wondering how Hemingway would have handled the moment, this situation with the train being late to the platform. He stood with a wife whose name he couldn’t remember. She held the cardboard valise full of memories from his afternoons of drinking crème de cassis in cafes on the Left Bank of a city without distant mountains on its skyline. He wrote about the War–all of them, actually–in longhand. Cursive, no doubt. Today’s schoolchildren will never know.

Paris in February is no fun. Cardboard valises melt in the winter rain, their words falling between the platform’s cracks into oblivion. It’s cold and it’s damp, that’s why the lady…oh, wait…that’s California.

“April in Paris” is nice. “Da-da-da-daa-daaa,” I sang to myself as the aromas of veau cordon bleu danced in and around my nose.

I shook the cobwebs from my head, slapped my left cheek awkwardly with my right hand (will I ever learn?), and reminded myself that I was in Montana. No song came to mind, though in the distance I thought I could hear some nasal twangs and a banjo against the insistent crackle of a campfire.

The telephone rang and it scared me half to death because that telephone–a pink rotary Princess model an uncle I barely knew had bequeathed me, along with a concertina and his remains in a brass Turkish urn–had been disconnected from service nine years ago and I just hadn’t bothered to remove it from my desk and throw it away because it had become somewhat useful as a paperweight for the papers I’d written but never read but were stacked nonetheless on the desk’s northeast corner which is the very direction from which our worst winds and weather come.

I answered it anyway only to discover in four more very similar paragraphs that I’d since torn from the tablet, crumpled and thrown into the recycling bin that I wasn’t in fact channeling Faulkner despite the lack of punctuation. I was just writing sentences that couldn’t be parsed, let alone diagrammed.

Take that, Flo Swanson, you grammar slut!

“Hello,” I said. I paused to wonder if that answer might deserve a question mark, as in “Hello?”

I determined it did, so I started from scratch.

“Hello?” I asked in a deeper voice, the last syllable rising a bluesy minor third, or maybe a flatted fifth or an augmented seventh. I wasn’t sure. I’m still not. These are confusing times. Ask anyone.

“You don’t respect farmers.”

I found the moment odd, briefly recalling Steinbeck and wondering at the same time about what in my life warranted such unsolicited scrutiny over a telephone that presumably didn’t work.

“Excuse me?” I asked, confident that I at least was asking a question.

“You don’t respect farmers.”

I wanted to protest, to vehemently deny any sense of agricultural bias, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.

I thought for a moment. Maybe two. Moments of shame passed briefly through my head. I thought of people I had forgotten. Did they remember me?

I had heard her correctly, however. It was an accusatory statement in a woman’s voice—a voice that sounded like snow sliding off a metal barn roof with a steep pitch. I don’t know what that means, but it seemed at the time more poetic than saying that she sounded like Neil Young without vibrato.

My mind wandered (again) as I wondered (again) if Neil Young and Ethel Merman might have been related. And if they had been, wouldn’t they still be even though Miss Merman is dead? We all have relatives in the past tense, after all. I briefly entertained my fantasy of hearing Neil sing “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” And how would Ethel have handled “Down By the River” or “Old Man”?

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” I asked. The question mark seemed secure in its current use.

“In person,” the snowy, vibrato-less voice said, icily. “I’ll send a plane.”

Emerging from the Uber Subaru with great trepidation, an overhead stowable carry-on bag and wearing shoes I had smuggled into Canada and back again, I approached the tarmac at the local hilltop airport with even greater trepidation but still with the same bag and contraband shoes. I wondered how it, the tarmac, differed from asphalt or surfaces other than linoleum. The snow prevented further inspection and so I turned my attention to the Gulf Stream D-382587867-LXIV standing before me. It was a sleek beauty of a plane that I’d read about in Aviation Tomorrow just yesterday. It was parked near a row of fourteen, aqua-tinted stand-alone Dr. Johnny port-a-potties (urbandictionary.com offers a significantly different take on these, by the way) with crescent moons cut in the doors. I looked around for Fellini. No sign. I marveled at the plane’s sleek design, its silver shell, its dual exhausts and overhead cams, the Hurst tranny and the snow chains on its tires, and wondered why the windows were shaped in that almost-ovoid shape that all airplanes seem to feature. I also wondered how many evangelical pastors it might hold.

Little did I know that I would soon find out. Three is the short answer, by the way, but just as interesting is the fact that “pastor” is a word derived from the Spanish that means “herdsman.” Suddenly, everything made perfect sense in an imperfect way that in some way would always involve sheep.

Then I wondered why the Uber cost the same as a Yellow Cab, although we have no Yellow Cabs in Montana. I thought this was supposed to be a deal, I said to myself. Next time, I noted, Lyft.

A four-wheel-drive, off-roading stretch Jeep limousine appeared out of nowhere, emerging from a shimmering curtain of heat like one sees in desert war movies. Except there was snow. And it was cold. Go figure. Puerto Rican flags blew stiffly from the front bumpers, falling limp when the limo stopped and released its passengers: two disreputable Congressmen, a cabinet Secretary/Realtor who speaks frequently of his days balancing a beach ball on his nose as some sort of seal, and the Secretary of Education.

As we shook hands I remembered that I had forgotten to bring a package of hand sanitizer wipes. I was suddenly reminded of the Golden Globes and Harvey Weinstein. I felt dirty in a not-so-good way.

“Madam Secretary,” I said, as we settled into the over-stuffed seats of the aircraft.

She cut me off with a wave of her hand.

“I don’t know why they call me ‘Madam Secretary’,” she said. “I don’t take shorthand, I can’t type, and I’ve only met Heidi Fleiss a few times at Republican fundraisers.”

She saw me roll my eyes.

“Well, we’re meeting today because I need you on my side top help reform education in the public schools.”

“You must have me confused with somebody else,” I offered. “I’m not an educator.”

“But I’ve seen your Facebook posts opposing teaching elementary schoolchildren to be little farmers.”

I shrugged.

“I think you’re wrong,” she asserted. “And I think you’re wrong about not wanting to teach them how to iron clothes, change a tire, balance a checkbook, perform first-aid, change the oil, make beds and load a dishwasher.”

“But if we taught them to read wouldn’t that give them the basic tools necessary to accomplish those everyday tasks?” I asked.

“There’s nothing in the Good Book about those things and that’s the only book our nation’s children need,” she said.

I thought briefly and had to admit that “vacuum” does not appear in the Bible as a verb. Nor does vacuous, which somehow reminded me of the Secretary.

“Besides, workplace skills are what we should be teaching from Day One. No productive member of society needs poetry or music or literature to distract them from the tasks at hand.”

“But shouldn’t there be opportunities to help them understand the world they live in, to process and interpret information, to think critically,” I asserted, adding quickly the idea that the arts tend to bring both joy and inspiration.

“Well, of course,” she said. “That’s why we need charter and private schools, so the rich children continue to have an advantage. Poor people can’t afford the opera.”

“And the less fortunate, the disenfranchised, the powerless?”

“They need task-oriented training and to learn obedience to God and country,” she said. “The last thing we need is for them to be thinking about anything.”

Portrait of Evelyn by Courtney A. Liska

The only thing predictable about the weather in Montana is that it has a tendency to change every ten minutes or so–for better or for worse.

When we moved here almost twenty-five years ago I was looking forward to four distinct seasons–something I missed during the seventeen years I spent in Los Angeles where the weather tended to vacillate wildly between hot and hotter. I had grown up in Chicago enjoying and/or enduring the seasons: the orderly progression from spring to summer to fall to winter and its attendant climactic changes expressed in light, color, humidity, wind speed and temperature. What took me by surprise in Montana was that those four seasons frequently occur over the course of just a few days.

I have seen it snow in every calendar month. I have also seen temperatures in the 60s in every calendar month as well. And the wind? Well, it is a constant that runs the gamut from “what a nice cooling breeze” to “did your house blow over last night?”

So without consulting either a calendar or a Smart phone, the only way we really know that it’s summer in Montana is by the proliferation of cowboy hats being worn by people in Bermuda shorts and sandals (with or without socks). We affectionately call these folks “tourists,” and they start appearing about now–Memorial Day weekend, which is the official start of the summer season and the very moment in time that gas prices reach a high that won’t abate until the official end of summer on Labor Day.

I’ve observed a lot of changes over the years here in the Last Best Place. We don’t seem to get those long stretches of sub-zero temperatures we used to endure–those couple of mid-winter weeks during which an old rancher told me the best thing to do was to sit close to the wood stove and read a good book. We also don’t see a lot of cowboy hats. Unless they’re going to church, out on the town, or to the bank, the modern rancher is more likely to be seen wearing a baseball cap than a Stetson.

And while I can’t recall ever seeing (or even imagining) any of the ranchers I know wearing Bermuda shorts or sandals, neither of which offer much protection from rattlesnakes, I’d be willing to bet that not one of them would choose to complete the outfit with a wide-brimmed felt hat.

The cowboy hat trade is suffering, its mainstay customers coming from the ranks of country music performers and tourists visiting places that promise glimpses of the Wild West.

I was barely past my teens when I lived in New York City and I must have had a look about me that said, “Ask. I can help.” Complete strangers would stop me on the sidewalks to ask for directions. You could tell they were tourists not just by their odd manner of dress (what is that about tourists, anyway?), the cameras slung from their necks or the mis-folded maps they clutched that were, apparently, useless. No, you could tell they were tourists because they stopped strangers on the streets of Manhattan. In those days, before Rudolph Giuliani turned Times Square into Disneyland, confined drug addicts to Rikers Island, and sent the criminal element packing off to the outer boroughs and New Jersey, New Yorkers did not do that sort of thing.

Not only did we not talk to strangers, we didn’t even risk making eye contact with them.

I am to this day perplexed by the process, or lack thereof, that people use to choose who to ask for recommendations and directions. For the life of me I don’t understand it. Perhaps it is just random.

Checking into a hotel after a long day of driving, Geri would frequently ask the desk clerk for restaurant recommendations. Why? These clerks tended to be very pleasant young people working at a minimum wage job and whose life experiences and bank account balances probably did not provide for dining in nice restaurants. Predictably, Geri’s question would evoke responses that typically included a short list of favorite drive-thru restaurants–frequently punctuated with menu highlights. (“The strawberry milkshake is to die for!”)

“Of course, if you’re looking for something fancy,” they’d say, my hopes rising in expectation, “there’s always Sizzler.” Oh.

And how does one know who to ask for directions? You can’t be sure that you’re not asking another tourist who may be as lost as you.

In New York I found great fun in mis-directing people. While you may think that was a mean thing to do, I believe that I was adding value to their visit by, for instance, sending them to Greenwich Village despite their having asked directions to Rockefeller Center. After all, the West Village, with its web-like maze of funny streets with curious shops, bars and restaurants, was far more entertaining than a big office building in Midtown–with or without the Rockettes.

My amusement, of course, was mostly imagined in that I never saw the results of my deeds. And it was a safe amusement because there would be zero chance of running into those people ever again.

In Montana, one can’t really get away with such shenanigans because it is very likely you will see your victims later.

Tourism is a large and vital part of Montana’s economy, accounting for $3.4 billion in annual revenues. According to the Institute for Tourism and Recreation, one-in-nine Montanans is employed in businesses supported to some extent by out-of-state dollars. More than half of the annual revenues are earned from the sale of fuel, food/beverages, and lodging. The residents of the Treasure State could benefit greatly from a sales tax, but that’s another story.

There is a long history of tourism in Montana. Just thirteen years after Custer took his last breath at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 the Montana Lodging and Hospitality Association was formed. While it’s not clear exactly what the association did back then (or does now, as far as that goes), somebody thought such a trade lobby was important.

What might be more important would be to form an association to help tourists navigate the vagaries and pitfalls awaiting people on vacation. While many of the missteps of some of these temporary vagabonds are indeed humorous to observe, they lead to my wondering if they have this much trouble on holiday what must their everyday lives be like.

The misconceptions about Montana are perhaps what attracts so many to our borders. For the record, few of us live in log cabins or tepees. We have countless miles of paved roads, but dirt roads are easy to find. Most of us walk around unarmed. Traffic signals here carry the same meaning as they do wherever you’re from, unless you’re from Italy. Few of us own cattle. Cowboys spend more time on ATVs than on horseback. Most restaurants offer gluten-free and vegan options. Few of our art galleries offer paintings of bugling elk. We have as many television channels as you do. We have cellphones, the Internet, ATMs and indoor plumbing.

Montana is Big Sky Country and it is a spectacularly beautiful place. We are blessed with a landscape of rugged mountains, mesmerizing high plains, pristine alpine lakes and innumerable rivers that run through it. Our bookends are Glacier National Park in the north and Yellowstone in the south. There is abundant wildlife that should be viewed with great awe and never bothered. Montanans tend to be a friendly lot and most of us won’t purposely give you bad directions.

If the idea of a “big sky” seems foreign or nonsensical, you should come up and see it for yourself.

Don’t forget your cowboy hat.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska