Letter From America: The Gold Mine
Ronnie Bray stops off at a rural Montana grocery store - and to his astonishment discovers a gold mine.
I found a gold mine! Montana is known as "The Treasure State" because of its mineral riches. It has plenty of gold, silver, copper, and other important ores, but the ‘gold’ I found was of a different order.
Having taken my son Matt to visit Ross Creek Cedars, I promised to take him to see nearby Bull Lake, the feature from which our main road is named. I missed the little sign and sailed right past the turn in, still looking for it. I knew when we reached Highway 200 that I had been less than customarily observant and that we would have to go back and look again for Bull Lake turn off with greater care.
Yet, being the intrepid traveller I am, I decided to go west on the 200 for a little way to discover if it held anything remotely of interest apart from breathtaking scenery peculiar to that part of Paradise. Almost immediately, we sailed past "Big Sky Grocery." I enquired of Matt if he would like to see the inside of a rural Montana grocery shop. To my surprise, he said he would, so I swung the car around and parked against the shop.
It was a pleasant, but not a large place. Outside, tables and chairs invited travellers to sit a while and refresh themselves before tackling the long miles between places.
Inside was a Gold Mine!
The décor was not Early Colonial, not Art Nouveau, not even log cabin. It was practical, stark, and pragmatic. The place was filled with masses of shelves holding stockpiles of goods. Most of their stock was directed towards home baking, but the spices alone would have done credit to an Eastern Condiment Emporium.
Some packages of flour were so big they would have overloaded a commercial bakery. Size isn’t everything, but price is in a poor rural community, and their prices were so reasonable that I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t in an elaborate dream.
I wasn’t!
Just my luck, I moaned inwardly. Three weeks before I leave Montana and I find such a place. The infinite variety of herbs and spices rocked me to the core.
Star anise, cumin, curry powder, carom, asafoetida, chives, mint, black and green cardamoms, chilis, cinnamon, bay leaves, coriander, fennel seeds, fenugreek, garam masala, basil, marjoram, dalchini, cloves, amchoor, basmati rice, round grain, short grain, patna, rice flakes, ground rice, chana dal flour, chapatti flour, maize meal, coconut flour, and even wheat flour for pedestrian bakers.
Floor to ceiling, tier on tier of shelves weighed down and creaking sweetly under their exotic burdens, the list could go on and on. There was a section of bent cans whose contents were offered at a fraction of normal. Cleaning powders, liquids, and potions, all at a dollar a throw blinded the senses and brought on a bout of impulse buying.
Meanwhile, Matt was buying sandwiches and drinks from the ladies who attended the bread and sandwich counter. They baked their own delicious bread. Upon inquiring which of them was the baker, I was told that they all baked the delicious loaves displayed for sale.
The small caps each lady wore, the calf length skirts and crisp white aprons, together with the well scrubbed and make-up free but inordinately pleasant faces betrayed their Amish provenance.
That my purchases were few is due entirely to that fact that Gay and I are running down our stocks of food, ready for the journey south. We are having buffet dinners, inviting as many as possible to use up our frozen foods. Gone already is the deer meat, the buffalo meat, the wild meat smokies, which are a kind of big fat spicy sausage peculiar to the Northern Rockies, and sadly depleted are our stocks of chicken and turkey breasts.
Had it been otherwise, I would have shopped ‘til I dropped. I left the shop disappointed that I could not head my barque back home laden with the treasures of the orient with which to delight my bride.
Instead, Matt and I sat in the rig and ate the meat and cheese laden sandwiches that are the staple of the American sandwich eating public, and which contribute in no small measure to their almost obligatory obesity, before heading for home.
We stopped off at Dorr Skeels campground on Bull Lake, which was named for the first forest ranger to serve in that area. After the Amish shop, Bull Lake, home to the giant Bull Trout and other panworthy piscatorial provender, was a bit of an anticlimax.
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the beauty that builds up the inner person is in the gustatory processes of the trencherman!
Copyright © 2004
Ronnie Bray
All Rights Reserved
