Gates of the Mountains

50/50 Chance

Tony and I decided not to find out the sex of our baby. We have NO idea what it is. I feel like I should have some sort of a hunch since it's hanging out in my body, but I don't. During the first trimester, I imagined it as a boy when I was awake, but dreamt of it as a girl when I slept. Recently, I've been thinking of it as gender neutral when I'm awake and I haven't had any baby dreams that I can remember.

More and more people are approaching me with their predictions for what it is. Some say, "You haven't been sick at all? Definitely a boy!" Others study the way that my body has changed and note, "You're carrying low on the hips and through the back... it's a girl!" I find it all interesting, but don't give either theory much credit. I don't get the connection between Baby's sex and how I'm feeling or carrying.

What I find curious is the authority with which people make these predictions. There is a 50/50 chance they'll be right, not bad odds, but how do they have the confidence to say so matter-of-factly what it is? They say it like it's scientifically proven that X symptom = boy/girl. Do these theories hold true for other animals? If a horse is carrying low on the hips, should the owner go and buy a pink saddle?

It's also been interesting to watch people's reactions to us not finding out the sex. Many supportive types have said, "There are so few surprises in life nowadays." I don't really agree with this. I expect lots of surprises from our child. What color hair and eyes will it have? What will its smile look like? What type of humor will it enjoy? Will it be a bookworm? An athlete? What will it daydream about? Will it be an extrovert or an introvert? There are so many unknowns, so many things we'll be surprised and delighted by.

I understand why people focus on the sex for now. There are important decisions to be made based on whether it's a boy or a girl. The name, for example. However, with so much emphasis on the sex, it seems that people have lost sight of the fact that this little individual will have a personality all its own. So far, the prediction I'm giving most credit to, though it is as scientifically flawed as the others, came from a teacher at work who studied me and said, "I think this is going to be a very calm, good-natured baby." Honestly, that matters so much more to me than whether it's a boy or a girl.

Local Sausage: Beer Baron

As the summer grilling season approaches, the New York Times recently surveyed the best hot dogs in New York.  The surprising secret of hot dogs in Gotham is that all the classic franks, from the grills of Katz's Deli on the Lower East Side all the way up to Papaya King on the Upper East Side, and every food cart pot of "dirty water dogs" in between, is that they all come from the same place: Sabrett's of New Jersey.  Even better you can order them shipped five pounds at a time--a critical service when your pregnant wife's most discernable craving is macaroni & cheese with hot dogs.  (Once, when I asked her if I should make three hot dogs for dinner, she asked, "three each?")

Montana's counterpart to the svelte Sabrett Frank is the fat and smoky Beer Baron, made in Oregon for the Bielen family of Great Falls.  Where the New York sausage is thin, salty, beefy, and snaps back when you bite it, Montana's monster sausage is an inch-thick, coarse ground, smoked, and squirting with savory juices.  Each link weighs in at one-third pound and, thanks to unabashed mention of beef hearts as the fourth ingredient on the label, carries a 30g dose of saturated fat that should meet your weekend quota.  Last time I checked, you could find Beer Barons at a White Sox game and some supermarkets, though the purest way to enjoy this monster sausage is at the humble Beer Baron Market at 2nd and 2nd north of downtown Great Falls, where you can sit at an outside table next door and wash it down with a 32-ounce pop.

Beer Baron
203 2nd Ave N
Great Falls, MT  59401
(406) 453-7123

A Flutter

Yesterday marked 22 weeks of pregnancy. It was also the day that I finally felt the baby move! For the past few weeks, people have been telling me not to worry, that I had most likely felt it but hadn't recognized it for what it was. They assured me that I'd probably written it off as a gas bubble. I couldn't remember feeling a gas bubble. I was trying not to be concerned, but everything I'd read said I should be feeling pretty constant movement by now.

Maybe I was just having a hard time with the terminology. I was expecting a kick to feel like, well, a KICK to the stomach. (I pictured myself in 4th grade when I kicked a boy in the stomach and he fell over, crying in pain. I felt awful. I hadn't expected it to hurt so much.) When told that it felt more like a gas bubble, I started to watch for feelings of nausea swelling up for no reason, which never happened.

On Monday, someone finally put it in terms I could understand. I was at a workshop with some teachers from school and one said, "It feels like a butterfly fluttering around in there." Yesterday, I felt exactly that, a flutter. I almost passed out with excitement. I HAD felt it before, but it felt neither like a gas bubble nor a kick, so I didn't associate it with baby movement. I stood there for awhile (and have many times since) with my hands on my stomach, appreciating the fluttering for what it was. It was the most delicate, sweet, wonderful feeling in the world.

Circus Dog

This post is not about Lena, but about another dog she and I met on the trail yesterday. This was a little Jack Russell terrier. Lena tried with play with her, but she stayed close to her owner until Lena became disinterested. This might have had more to do with the fact that J.R. is eleven years old, and less to do with the fact that she's so small and could be crushed under one of Lena's spastic feet.

When she realized she was safe from Lena, J.R. went over to a bush to pee. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught her setting her back legs next to her front and lifting lifting them both off the ground, then peeing up into the air. Amazed, I asked her owner if I had just seen what I thought I'd seen. "She does handstands to pee," her owner told me matter-of-factly, "She tries to be a big girl and pee higher up on bushes and trees."

I am still amazed by this old, little dog. Animal instincts are incredible. How did she know that if she did a handstand she could pee higher up, and seem like a bigger dog to those who sniffed around after she was gone?

School's Out

Yesterday was the last day of school.  I have never been so sad to wake up to the first day of summer.  I had the best year of my teaching career and it was really hard to say goodbye to such a great group of kids.   

We had a fantastic last day.  Definitely a proper close to a fantastic  year. 

The morning started with a poetry reading.  We studied poetry for the entire quarter, so the kids had written a lot and were excited to share their favorites.  Parents sat in chairs around us, and the class gathered on the rug, all facing the Author's chair at the front of the room.  Going into it, I wondered where I got the crazy idea that kids would be able to sit still the morning of the last day of schoool, but the class did beautifully.  They sat and listened respectfully, and applauded each poem. 

After that, we gathered up bats, rackets, and balls and walked over to a neighborhood park.   A third of the class played baseball, some played tennis (actually, I don't know if you can call it "tennis", but they played with the rackets and balls on the tennis court), some climbed trees, and others played on the jungle gym.  It was wonderful.  I sat in the grass, watching them wistfully.  Occasionally, I'd walk around to push a student on a swing or ask someone to climb down from a really high branch, but mostly I just sat and appreciated what a wonderful class I had. 

When we got back to school, we had our last afternoon Circle Time.  The comments from the kids were very touching.  I fought back tears when it was my turn.  "This is the best class I've ever taught," I said.  What surprised me was that there was a collective, "REALLY?" that followed.  I guess I was always too busy pushing them, correcting them, and encouraging them to be better that I never took the time to tell them how great they already are. 

StrawHouse Market

Helenans are celebrating the opening of their second health foods market, the StrawHouse Market.  Its building is both a technological marvel and a work of art.  We first noticed it going up last year, when stacks of Gallatin Valley straw started to form walls in a field among new housing developments off of North Montana.  In its finished state, solar panels and less conspicuous efficiency features complement its colorful adobe/prairie-style exterior.  Here's how its website, which contains an impressive collection of architectural and engineering detail, puts it:

The synergistic integration of interdependent energy saving systems incorporated as well, set the building apart from the norm.

1.  Passive solar gain through fenestration at the south elevation to admit and retain solar heat to the interior.
2.  Grid-tied photovoltaic power generation to offset utility supplied electricity and help to manage peak electrical load requirements and used as shading for the passive solar fenestrations during the summer months.
3.  Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) technology for heating, cooling, and ergonomics.
4.  On site rain/snow capture, harvest and storage for landscape irrigation requirements.
5.  Permeable customer parking area in place of paving and Ashlar (recycled) concrete paving substituted for monolithic concrete patio areas allowing vegetation growth significantly reducing the Heat Island affect on site and at building perimeter resulting in increased comfort and decreased energy requirements for cooling during summer months.

You can tell that its proprietor, Dirk Ellis, has a background in mechanical engineering.  Oh, and that last "permeable customer parking area" item means that you park your car on a grass boulevard that drains into a recycled water irrigation system.  (I can't help but wonder how that will fare in the next spring storm, or under the snowplow next winter.)

Inside, the StrawHouse is much smaller that it appears (blame it on the bale-thick walls), and features less than half the selection of its uptown competitor the Real Food Store.  And while customers might not miss Real Food's score of bulk granola varieties, other omissions such as tiny sprouts, chile pepper, and cheese assortments put the StrawHouse somewhere between an elegant organic convenience store and a full-fledged health food supermarket.  Valley residents would find that even the inorganic gas station Bob's Valley Market, down Montana on Lincoln Rd., boasts more shelf space (no solar panels, but great hams).

The smaller selection still has potential.  While I have not yet tested their butcher, the StrawHouse expands our local selection of grass-fed Montana beef by offering cuts from Beaverhead Meats in Dillon, adding to Real Food's McAlpine Ranch meats from Valier.  And many Real Food fans frustrated by its teetotaling management hope that Ellis will seriously consider selling Montana and organic beer and wine.

The StrawHouse shines in pure design and comfort.  Its welcoming two-story cafe, with deep-hued walls and warm wood flooring, is the kind of place you could spend a morning with the paper or meet for lunch, and a major improvement on Real Food's utilitarian food court.  And its deli wrap menu, ranging from portabello to roast pork, is more inspired than its rival's wheat-bread and luncheon meat sandwiches.

My only serious complaint about the StrawHouse is its location amid the sprawling cul-de-sacs of North Montana Avenue.  I have no problem with that in itself--suburbanites deserve natural foods too--but the big box store neighborhood is incongruous with all of its other conservation efforts.  Real Foods is a little less central in its current location, but still walkable; the StrawHouse is within walking distance of the aforementioned cul-de-sacs, Shopko, and little else.  Your average in-town Helenan will burn an extra pint of gas to drive past Real Foods (Van's, Safeway, and County Market too) to get to the StrawHouse's environmentally correct grass parking spaces and back; I'm no engineer, but my back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that it would take only a dozen-or-so customers driving those extra few miles to burn the same amount of energy all those photo-voltaic cells generate in a day (53 kWh, 180,000 BTUs, or 1.5 gallons of gas).

Given Ellis's attention to detail, I suspect he considered the importance of location, and land costs and zoning restrictions drove him to North Montana.  (Maybe the next new grocer will be more geographically efficient.)  That aside, Ellis deserves credit for building Helena's most architecturally and technologically intriguing new business.

StrawHouse Market
1050 Road Runner St
Helena, MT 59601
(406) 457-1050

Rhetorics, Old and New

Prairie Mary, whose captivating blog is about history and culture in and around the Blackfeet Nation, recently posted about "Blackfeet Rhetoric."  Her blog does not take comments from non-Blogger bloggers, but this post is worth some discussion.  She describes a lawyer who taught "logical, fact-based rhetoric" to pioneering "women, people of color, and other non-Euro people" at her alma mater (and mine) the University of Chicago.  (I should say that graduate school may have changed somewhat since Mary attended--one of the most academically and professionally successful members of my law school class is a good friend who is a non-Euro woman of color.)

Mary describes Blackfeet Rhetoric as a vast rhetoric of relationships:  relationships to ancestors, enemies, debts, history, wealth, or gods.  Legal rhetoric is relationship-based too, but more cramped.  Rules developed through evolving institutions (constitutions, legislatures, judges, juries) limit which relationships matter:  relationships written and signed as contracts, relationships to the acts of others recognized as personal injuries, relationships to the social order called crimes, relationships to the material world described as property.  The lawyer Mary describes probably helped students understand these rules about which relationships matter in law school, and which don't.  (Though, as Mary observes, more common relationships like political connections often matter in law school too.)

But cultural rhetorics have ways of insinuating themselves into legal rhetoric through the institutions of private parties, juries, the legislature, and (to the extent they are constrained by these other institutions) judges.  Mary notes one vehicle for such influence: political rhetoric that relies on the emotional appeal of certain laws; I can think of a good example of such rhetoric, involving recent bans on smoking in bars and drinking in cars.  And recently Sam noted another, for better or worse: jurors' demand for forensic evidence just like they see on TV.

Now there is a fascinating inversion of this relationship between legal and cultural rhetorics.  When I attended Chicago, considered a capital of empirical and economic legal rhetoric, the school witnessed the development of a legal rhetoric based on pervasive traditional cultural relationships called social norms.  Thus, legal studies self-consciously incorporated cultural institutions like Blackfeet Rhetoric as critical to the understanding of law itself:

Conquest and confinement to reservations ended most aboriginal political institutions, but customs and traditions survived. Imbedded in customs and traditions are concepts of justice and fairness relevant to legal disputes.

That's from Cooter and Fikentscher's Indian Common Law:  The Role of Custom in American Indian Tribal Courts, and it all goes to show that Mary is on to something.

Meal: The Jersey Lilly (Ingomar, MT)

Ingomar was the biggest town on the Milwaukee Road between Roundup and Forsyth, with a population exceeding three hundred in the 1930s and the self proclaimed title of "sheep shearing capital of North America" according to Don Spritzer's Roadside History of Montana.

Nowadays its claim to fame is the most famous bar in Montana most people have never visited, the Jersey Lilly, established in the former home of the failed First National Bank of Ingomar in 1933.  Doug Ardary's canonical (and apparently out of print) reference work, The Pub Crawler's Guide to Montana's Small Town Taverns calls the Jersey Lilly "one of Montana's most famous and most loved taverns . . . worth going 100 miles out of your way to spend some time there."  For those of us taking U.S. 12 due East from Helena to Miles City, however, the Ingomar turnoff came up just in time for dinner.

We arrived at dusk during a break in a daylong rain storm, and as we pulled up we feared the darkened bar had already closed.  But as our headlights shot past the hitching posts and over the boardwalk into the dining room, we spotted a dozen faces seated around several tables.  So we walked in and heard from the hostess that the storm knocked out the power, but if we didn't mind eating in the dark she would be happy to serve us dinner.  (It turned out the faces belonged to some local ranchers who were on their way to ride in the Bucking Horse Sale parade.)

This would be an especially rustic Jersey Lilly experience, with an absence of electricity supplementing the usual shortage of indoor plumbing (outhouses stood off the boardwalk around the corner).  The emergency exit floodlights shone on a table in the corner, so we pulled up some chairs and used the light to read the menus.  One item we could order without a menu:  Bill Seward's renowned beans.  An order of those and chicken fried steak would make the meal for most of us.

Our server brought out a knit potholder with our silverware and bowls, then set down a well-worn saucepan filled with a deep brown bean stew.  After a day of roadtrip jerky and trail mix, we greedily ladled the stew into our bowls and supped.  These were pot beans, a staple of chuckwagon cooking, in their own thick gravy flavored with chunks of smoky ham, a little salt, and a balance of secret spices for body.  It was as simple and perfectly satisfying a dish as exists in high plains cooking, and for that reason a rare find in fancier kitchens.

Just as I was finishing my first bowl of beans and reaching for seconds, the chicken fried steak arrived.  I didn't bring a ruler to the table, but I'd guess the flour-and-pepper dredged chopped steak measured almost half a square foot.  Four inches in, just as I was starting to fill up, I discovered the bean gravy made a good steak sauce.  One bowl later I had cleaned my plate.

As we were paying up, the lights came on and we could see the beautiful and enormous back bar.  We also got a closer look at the mounted moose head on the opposite wall--at first we thought it was just the bad lighting, but it actually had a cigarette in its mouth.  It was time to hit the road before we could ask about the smoking moose, but we'll be back to the Jersey Lilly.  Even if it takes us 100 miles out of our way.

Jersey Lilly Saloon & Eatery
NW Corner of 1st Ave & Main St
Ingomar, MT
(406) 358-2278

Hairdressers with minds of their own

My hair has been growing like a weed. It got really really long, so long that I couldn't even put it up in a ponytail or flip it into the casual bun I wear most often. I HAD to get a haircut. For over a year, I've been going to a friend of mine who recently graduated from beauty school. She's done a great job and costs very little, but she was out of town when I had my "I have to have my hair cut RIGHT NOW" meltdown. I couldn't wait for her return, even though pangs of guilt told me that I should.

At Tony's encouragement, I made an appointment with the most expensive salon in town ("Treat yourself," he said). They use Aveda products, which feel and smell so great. Everyone in there is stylish and edgy. I knew I was going to have a great cut.

When I sat down in the chair, I told the hairdresser what I wanted: about 4 inches chopped off so my hair hung to my shoulders. I pointed exactly where I wanted it, not the upper shoulder, but the lower shoulder. Then I said I'd like a little shaping around my face. No problem. I got my hair shampooed and rinsed with herbal Aveda products and was feeling wonderfully refreshed when I sat back down, ready for the perfect cut.

I ended up with a basic bob. It's up near my chin and straight across. No shaping at all and it doesn't even approach my shoulders. "What a cute summer cut!" the hairdresser chirped as she finished blowdrying and tossling my newly short hair. I was speechless. There was nothing I could say at that point that would give me the cut I'd wanted. I just paid (way too much for a cut I didn't want) and left, avoiding the receptionist's attempt to book me again in 8 weeks.

From now on, I'm sticking with my friend. She might not use fancy products or look particularly stylish, and she doesn't have extra plush towels or even natural lighting, but she listens and gives me exactly what I ask for.

5 months

We had our 5 month ultrasound yesterday. I was kind of nervous going into it. What if Baby had 2 heads or 3 eyes or something? I mean, I can't see it or feel or tell it what to do, so who's to say what's going on in there?

It went fine. Great, actually. The one complaint is that the image on the screen was so grainy and blobby that I couldn't figure out what I was looking at. The technician had to point everything out. At one point, I thought I was getting the hang of it and asked, "Is that an eye?" and she responded, "No, that's not even the head, that's the heart." I guess I should have noticed the fact that it was pulsing.

The exciting part was that, once she pointed out what we were looking at, we could see 2 arms, 2 hands, 2 legs, 2 feet, one head (a big head!), two eyes, a nose (a cute little baby button nose!), a mouth, kidneys, a heart, and a spine. It had its little feet crossed and it kept moving its hands around in a kind of pounding type motion as if it were trying to bang on a door (either to tell us to let it out, or maybe to leave it alone). Once it rubbed its eye. That was pretty cute.

What was weird was that I was watching all this movement on the screen, but not feeling it in my belly. Baby twisted, banged, scratched, and stretched and I didn't feel a thing. It was pretty surreal.

When the technician moved down to the leg area, she told us to turn away. We'd told her we decided not to find out the sex and she didn't want us to see anything that would spoil our surprise. We didn't turn away. It didn't matter. We still don't know the sex even though we were probably looking right at it (or lack of it).

Now we have pictures of this little person. I stare at them and wonder how it knows what to do. How did it know how to grow a brain and bones and limbs without any guidance from me? This is all pretty amazing.

A Pioneer Retires

Craig at mtpolitics.net has signed off, in typical fashion with as honest a description of blogging, and its perils, as we've seen.  Like many other bloggers, the first Montana blog we knew was Craig's.  Day after day, mtpolitics.net argued that there was plenty to blog about in Montana, this "small town with long streets" as the mtpolitics.net t-shirt says.  Scores of Craig's Big Sky blogdaughters and sons--four score at last count--have proved him right.

We had a chance to meet Craig face-to-face, and he's just as amiable and opinionated as his blog.  We met his family too, and can understand why he'd want to spend more time with them and less with the rest of us.  But we also hope that maybe Craig's just facing blogger's block, and will jump back into the fray refreshed after a few months away from the keyboard.  Either way, like a lot of Montana bloggers, we owe him one for blazing a trail.  (And Craig, that's good for a least a beer next time we're in the same town.)

Gearing Up for the Bucking Horse Sale

Last Friday we loaded up our Explorer with snacks, water, cowboy hats and boots, sleeping bags, pillows, and a futon mattress.  We were heading to Miles City for the annual Bucking Horse Sale. 

Miles City was our first stop in Montana when we drove West from New York a year and a half ago. At that time, our Explorer was packed with pots and pans, blankets, clothes, a portable stereo, cleaning supplies, and our cat... basically everything we thought we'd need in the two weeks before the moving truck came with the rest of our belongings.  We reached Miles City in the evening on our fourth day of driving, checked into The Olive, and went out to get a feel for our new state.  We were two of about 20 people out that night.  The town's Main Street was lined with beautiful old bars and restaurants, but no one was in them.   

That was the night Tony told first told me about the Bucking Horse Sale.  We stood on the deserted sidewalk, under the neon sign for the Montana Bar, and he told me to imagine the very same street packed with people, the bar so full that patrons have to spill out onto the sidewalk.  I had a very hard time picturing it. 

Over the next year and a half, Tony told me more and more about the Bucking Horse Sale. We made a promise to ourselves that we would make the trip this year, and were able to convince three friends to join us.

Heading to the Bucking Horse Sale

We left Helena last Friday afternoon, heading west on Highway 12.   Our friends were ahead of us in their VW Westfalia.  Each vehicle had a walkie talkie so we could alert the other of  the need for a rest stop, or an upcoming turn, or  just to  convey silly messages  that always began with "Do you copy?" and ended with "Roger that. Over and out." 

The drive was spectacular.  We followed the Musselshell River, winding through canyons and cruising across pastures.  We were all somewhat moved by the fact that Lewis and Clark made it to the mouth of the Musselshell exactly 200 years before we zipped along its banks. 

Around Martinsdale, we met up with the storm that had dumped on Helena (and a lovely class of 4th and 5th graders who were walking back from the Historical Society to their school)  a few hours before.  We were caught in this storm the rest of the drive.  This slowed our trip down and sometimes made for sketchy driving, but provided us with some incredible sights.  When the storm broke, even for a minute, we were delighted to see brilliant rainbows in front of us. These were the type where you could clearly see every band of color from indigo to red.  Several were entire half-circles, extending from the fields to the south of the road in a perfect arc to those in the north.

Here's a picture of our friends and part of one such rainbow. 

In Defense of Lawyers Paid Taxpayer Dollars

It looks like there's another lawyer blogging in Montana, and I've been catching up on his posts.  Most recently, GGuy (any relation to Gman?) analyzed this recent story about Great Falls prosecutors getting a raise.  He begins:

Cascade County deputy county attorneys unionized recently, and now they received a pay raise. In what one might characterize as the antithesis of grace, lead deputy Joel Thompson carped about the raise in the Tribune. "This is a Band-Aid," he noted, terming his salary "embarrassing."

Aw.

I might not use the term embarrassing, because as GGuy points out there are significant non-economic benefits to public service, not least of which is the absence of billable hours.  But I disagree with his criticisms of these deputy county attorneys' experience, hours, market comparisons, salary, and pro-bono experience.  He doesn't have track-backs activated, so I'm cross-posting my comments there.

On experience, a lead deputy is not "wet behind the ears"--he likely has tried more cases (many against more senior and better-paid criminal defense lawyers) than most of his private-sector peers.

On hours, while someone might not find all the deputies at work at 5:01 p.m. on weekdays or Saturday afternoons, you will find them working on searches and indictments later that day at 1:00 a.m. or even 5:00 a.m.  Throw trials in, and 60-hour weeks are not unusual.  That's more than what three-quarters of Montana lawyers work on average.

On market comparisons, since few if any deputies are hired from the private sector (perhaps because most private lawyers don't consider the job very cushy), Cascade County is competing for UM law school grads against Gallatin and Yellowstone; additionally, Cascade is ground zero of Montana's meth epidemic and the resulting crimes demand some of the state's most intelligent and hardworking prosecutors.  In this respect, we should expect--and want--law enforcement salaries to be countercyclical with the county's economic indicators.  Hardly a sham.

On salary, it is probably accurate that most prosecutors earn in the bottom third of salaries.  But given all of the above, the lawyers helping to protect my life, liberty, and property should earn at least that.  And remember that when private-sector lawyers work overtime, they get paid for it (either through direct billing or higher salary and partnership shares); public-sector lawyers get comp-time they may not have time to use.  I don't know the details of their contract, but I bet those prosecutors would give up most of their raise simply to get paid overtime.  You might ask yourself why the county wouldn't give them that deal--it may have something to do with the hours the county knows they work.

On pro bono, everyone could probably do a little more, but most public-sector lawyers I know do plenty of it.  Of course, you won't find them doing criminal defense or other high-visibility work against their employer, but as you might expect these lawyers are uncommonly devoted to the public good.

I've gone between the public sector and private sector a couple of times in my career, and never expected to make as much working for the government as I did for paying clients.  No government lawyer has.  But it's always easy to bash public employees as underworked and overpaid; as Deputy Thompson has found out, it's harder to defend them when they aren't.

UPDATE:  GGuy, Dave, and I continue the discussion over at Electric City.

Reluctant Gourmet

We try to steer clear of Wal-Mart for shopping we could otherwise do at local grocery, but sometimes a long-anticipated roadtrip demands a store for both extra truck cupholders and industrial quantities of snackfoods.  As we walked down skylit grocery aisles wide enough to drive through, we discovered that Wal-Mart not only had pretzel kegs and every variety of Easy Cheese, but also had localized its inventory to a surprising extent.

First we found Tim's Cascade potato chips, acclaimed as the finest chip in the land, including a limited edition wasabi flavor.  As it turns out, Tim's is now owned by Birdseye, so maybe this wasn't a surprise.  Just across the aisle there stood two self-serve flour mills filled with Wheat Montana grain, something I noted last year but had not yet seen.  They even sold flats of Montana's Treasure bottled water, tucked away between Dasani and Arrowhead.  But all of these things are available elsewhere--you could find them at most gas stations without a long walk from the parking lot.

The real value of Wal-Mart's food store was finding foods you just can't get anywhere else in Helena, unfortunately.  They had the sweet-garlic Vietnamese hot sauce Sriracha, for example, something we usually had to get at an Asian seafood market in Bozeman.  And tucked near a 35-cent avocado display were industrial-sized bags of ancho chiles, dried yet still supple, a key ingredient for mole that I previously could get only by mail order.

Helena's due for another local grocery, and I'll keep my fingers crossed that they'll have the hot stuff I need.  But until then, I reluctantly must admit that the best specialty food store in town is the Wal-Mart.