Maybe It Was The Traffic

I like to drive.

It’s how I got here.

I left Indiana following high school graduation in 1970 behind the wheel of my 1958 Ford big window pickup. Planning to drive all the way to Alaska for a pipeline job, I ran short of money in Montana, got a job with an outfitter in Cooke City, and thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

I sold the pickup that fall to a guy who worked road construction. He wrecked the truck shortly thereafter and it became fill on the Beartooth Highway.

After a short stint in college in Indiana I purchased a 1965 Ford stepside pickup and drove back to Montana, a three-day drive west.

Traveling in those old trucks was a bit of a challenge. I always carried extra oil, a set of tools, and a couple of spare tires. Reliable they weren’t.

Fast-forward half a century and I’m still driving a pickup, albeit a bit newer one. It’s jacked up and loud drawing attention wherever I go. A redneck magnet, it looks like it should be bedecked with flags at a MAGA rally, but the license plate, depicting a grizzly bear riding a cutthroat trout, confuses folks.

The painting was done by Parks Reece and adorns the plate to raise funds for the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation.

Montanans are used to driving long distances for shopping or medical care. I’ll jump in the truck at a moment’s notice for trips to Billings or Great Falls, both 200 miles away. On the other hand, the town where I grew up was only 150 miles from Nashville, Tenn., and less than 200 from St. Louis, but I sure never drove to either city for a day trip.

Maybe it was the traffic. While drivers across the country deal with congestion, stoplights, and slowing down for one town after another, there’s but a single stoplight between Malta and Billings. The closest gas station on the drive south is more than 100 miles away.

It’s easy to understand why the speed limit in Montana used to simply be reasonable and prudent. That changed at the end of the last century when more restrictive speed limits were put in place.

Although I keep an eye on the speedometer, reasonable and prudent is still how I typically drive, at least in my own mind.

And really, what choice do I have? Everything’s so far away. Good thing I like to drive.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]