Phillips County News - One Nation, Under God

Like me, my house has fallen into disrepair. My eyesight is failing. My teeth are falling out of my head. I can’t hear a thing. I have to plead with my knees every morning simply to get them...

I awoke Sept. 1 way too early. It was the first day of hunting season and I didn’t want to be late. After a quick breakfast I loaded the dogs into the truck, double-checked my gear, and grabbed a...

When filling up your car at the pump costs more than it used to, and the price of a gallon of milk soars, it’s nice to have someone to blame. Whoever is in office at the time typically catches the...

Shortly after arriving in Montana as a homeless 18-year-old I remedied that situation by getting a job that provided room and board. After all, I had a skill. I could cook. I spent much of that first...

Nearly seven months after the end of last year’s hunting season -- cut short by an old-man ailment -- I’m ready to go again. At least I think I am. Almost every morning for the last couple of mont...

I saw the two sides of Montana last week, one still green and lush, bustling with commerce and traffic, the other already dry, the landscape turning to khaki, with sparse traffic and few people. The i...

While running the boat down the lake last week I spotted what looked like a bird of some sort on the water. Expecting it to fly as we passed, I was surprised when it didn’t. I slowed the boat, and...

I always seem to be a step behind. Call me Johnny-come-lately. When everyone else was wearing Gore-Tex, I was still in leather and wool. When all my friends were listening to cassettes, I was...

I saw a picture online last week of a friend posing with a handsome brown trout he’d caught. “It’s hopper season!” read the caption. I hadn’t thought about “that” hopper season in...

I recently read a story about two young men who paddled their canoe from Butte to the Pacific Ocean, completing the 1,300-mile journey in 52 days. I read the initial story when they began the trip on...

The railroad bridge collapse last month that spilled tanker cars full of liquid asphalt and molten sulfur into the Yellowstone River was hardly the first indignity the river has suffered. A broken oil...

I quit gardening this year. For the second time. No more tilling, planting, weeding, watering, or harvesting for me. My family always grew a large vegetable garden, and I was required to work in it....

On Father’s Day, I went fishing and thought about Dad. I don’t think about him every day. I’m not one to celebrate heavenly birthdays or lament his passing at the age of 90 nearly two decades...

Barb and I spent the morning at the lake catching up on chores. It was too windy to fish. By early afternoon, however, the wind began to lay. “Let’s go fishing,” Barb said. I was in the boat at...

They say money doesn’t buy happiness. Apparently it doesn’t buy fish either. I own a fishing boat with all the bells and whistles. It has three motors, sonar, and GPS. There are a dozen rods in th...

It’s nearly June and I haven’t been in the water yet. There was a time I never would have let that happen. On the news yesterday I saw it was supposed to be 95 degrees in Paducah, Ky. I used to...

In a state known for weather extremes, it’s the most dreary that I most dislike. While a week of sub-zero temperatures quickly grows old, and summer heat waves are hotter and last longer than ever...

I’ve always been reluctant to jump on bandwagons. The latest this or that rarely appealed to me. Then I heard about No Mow May, a movement that encourages folks to let their lawns grow unfettered...

The water is back. Following years of drought that dried up much of the state, an exceptional winter snowpack appears to have turned the tide. Every stock tank and ox bow up here is brim full. I may e...

I got out with the dogs last week for our first long walk of the year. A couple of us are showing our age. I limp a bit more than I used to, and although I didn’t think it possible, Ace has gotten e...

The drawing for special elk permits has come and gone, and for the first time in memory I didn’t care. Filling out an application for a special tag was something I used to do every spring without fa...

Technology baffles me. Most of my skills are archaic, involving hand tools and shovels. Like that old Hank Williams Jr. song, I can run a trot line and skin a buck deer, but my i-watch remains a...

Be careful what you wish for. Following years of drought and rapidly declining water levels we finally got a real winter. Now it’s spring and the melt has begun. It looks like we’ll have plenty of...

I must be out of touch. I had no idea that transsexuals, and concealed firearms were the most important issues facing me and my neighbors in rural Phillips County. I would have thought the closing of...

From the first day that hunters were allowed to harvest bison that wandered out of Yellowstone National Park there have been protests. A bison advocate jabbed a hunter with a ski pole that first...