You can probably rate a town’s crime by what people steal. I got by in Trinidad, Colorado without encountering thieves for my first two years – and then came the third. I was teaching a Saturday class called computerized farm and ranch management, off campus, at Branson, Colorado. Branson is the southernmost town in Colorado, on the Goodnight Loving Trail, and is basically cattle country – the descriptive phrase was “good country for men and cattle, hell on women and horses.”

In the middle of the afternoon, the school’s office phone rang – it was Renata calling to tell me that our lawnmower had been stolen. I was an hour away from from Trinidad, so the only choice was to finish teaching the class, pack my 5 apple //e computers up in the school’s Chevette, take them to campus, unload everything, and get home for a late dinner.

So I’ve just got home, and have sat down, cracked a can of Colorado kool-aid, pulled my boots off, when Renata yelled “They’re back and they’re taking the rototiller. Since she had added chains and padlocks to the gates, the thieves were slowed, and had to carry the rear-tined tiller along the side of the house. Barefoot, I headed out the front, and yelled “Stop thieves.” That order may work for someone like Batman, but both of my thieves dropped the tiller and fled. A jump from the front porch put gravity on my side, and I grabbed the slower thief by his T-shirt, rabbit punched him as he tried to put on more speed, and broke my right wrist. Fortunately, the thief was out cold, so I put a couple twists on the T-shirt, got a left-handed death grip on his T-shirt and belt, and instructed Renata to call the police. Then I told her to take my Python back inside, explaining that Colorado law didn’t allow you to shoot in defense of property. (I really didn’t want my Colt impounded.) As she left, a car stopped for the thief and me (we took up his lane) – the driver asked “What’s going on?” and received two replies – mine was “I’ve caught a thief.” The thief’s was, “This gringo is beating me up.” The driver asked a second question, “Which one of you is telling the truth?” I replied “We both are.” and he asked if I needed any help. About that time, Renata returned, she had made the call and brought along a shovel.

Hearing that the police were coming, my helper asked if, since I had my wife there to help, would I mind if he left before the police arrived. It seemed impolite to force a man who was willing to help beat on a thief to wait for a meeting with the police – it was obviously something he didn’t want – so I agreed we could handle it without him, while Renata kept the shovel jiggling in front of the thief’s face, and asking, “Where is my lawnmower?” It was a cultural moment – the mower thief, quiet to my questions, was now facing a shovel in the hands of an enraged woman. He sang like a canary. Culture, I tell you. I remember a woman charged with knifing an abusive boyfriend: “No sir, I did not stab him. I held the knife to protect myself and he walked into it.” “He walked into it three times?” “Si. Three times he walked into it.” My thief wasn’t nearly as afraid of me as he was Renata.

When the police car showed up, the thief was joyful – he knew that Trinidad’s jail was safer than staying near the gringa loca with the shovel. The police officer had been part of a class I taught on computers for cops, so we knew each other. He identified Cortez, cuffed him, and put him in the back of the cruiser, and I promised to show up downtown to give a statement. He wasn’t so pleased with me when we spoke later at the police station – our boy had a .25 automatic in his pocket – “What would you have done if he shot you with it?” I answered “Probably killed him.” Just because a guy is enough ahead of the curve to teach computer applications to police doesn’t mean he knows enough to pat down a prisoner.

So we kept our rototiller, but never did get the lawnmower back – it was recovered in a town a couple hundred miles away – had been sold in a bar for $20. By the time it was recovered, we were back in Montana – and a 2000 mile round trip was more expensive than a replacement lawnmower.

It’s time to update the annual county taxation article.  From a secessionist point of view, with three high school districts, it’s easy to figure out which communities provide the funds that keep our county going.

Market Value Taxable Value Percentage

Libby $2,126,453,001 $18,524,862 36.3%

Troy $1,099,398,488   $  9,565,190 18.8%

LCHS $2,630,229,684 $25,045,480 44.9%

Total $5,856,081,173  $53,135,632 100%

Data taken from Montana Certified Values 

Market value has increased dramatically, taxable value has gone down.  Troy’s taxable value percentage has increased by 0.4%, while both Libby and North County have slightly decreased. While the reduction in taxable value looks nice, it is an easy number for them to change.

The Census offered these population estimates from the American Community Survey in 2024 (the ACS is not an enumerated census and its accuracy suffers in small communities)

Zip Code	Population	City
59923	9,545	Libby
59917	5,001	Eureka
59935	3,505	Troy
59934	763	Trego
59930	697	Rexford
59918	625	Fortine
59933	21	Stryker

Since Eureka, Trego, Rexford, Fortine, and Stryker are all in High School District 13, the relative populations calculate:

Population Percent Population Tax Base

Libby 9,545 (47%) 36.3%

Troy 3,505 (17%) 18.8%

LCHS 7,107  (35%) 44.9%

The tax numbers are both precise and accurate – the source is listed should you want to check.  I am not satisfied with the quality of the American Community Survey data, but it is the Best Available Data.  It is probably coincidental that the abbreviation for best available data is BAD.

Looking at the end of the year, the biggest loss was John Mee. If you didn’t know Big John, you have my sympathy.  He was one of those rare people whom it was always a pleasure to know.  In the past several years, less than stellar health has confined me more to home, so I hadn’t seen him recently – and I will not see him again.  And that is not just a loss to me, but to all of our community.

So be it.  Big John was always bigger than life, not just in size, but in personality and character.  Let me write some of my memories – if you knew John, you may enjoy the snapshots of his character.  If you didn’t know him, you may get a glimpse of the man and of a boy that it was a privilege to know.

One memory is of a time when 4-H was helping set things up for a LEC annual meeting.  I was still in high school, so John was ten or less.  I’d been given the task of organizing kids to handle the lunch tables – so I dropped the task of setting up the dessert table (all the pies and cakes) onto Big John.   If I was 15, John may have been 9 or 10.  He had the size to handle the task, and, more important, took his work seriously.  An adult 4-H parent (from a community other than Trego) appointed herself to correct Big John, yelling and confronting him about being too young for an important job like handling cakes.

He took it well – far better than I.  My response was to explain that she needed a better view of reality, and might get it if she would only remove her head from her fundamental orifice.  She left John alone, and went off to complain to my parents.  So be it – both John and I liked cakes and pies, and he handled his task competently.  On the other hand, I left with the suggestion that I might learn to be a bit more tactful.

Big John had challenges reading – he was a victim of our education system.  Figure it was 1966 – Trego had a challenge hiring teachers, and Wilda B. Totten, the County Superintendent, passed on the names of a young married couple.  Oklahomans, I believe.  Long story short, they were hired before their transcripts arrived, and I remember Dad’s comment: “They didn’t even attend college long enough to flunk out.”  Somehow, in the rushed schedule to get school going for a massive increase in students, they had hired a pair of non-readers to teach.  To be fair, it was an easy mistake to make, and they left shortly thereafter. I think this story comes from the last conversation John and I had, with him reminding me of the importance of good teachers.

Big John liked lever action rifles – one of my treasured memories is watching the lengthy transactions – it wasn’t really haggling – between Big John and Dad about one Winchester lever gun or another.  Or a Marlin.  It wasn’t a commercial transaction – it was a friendly visit, over a topic that the two enjoyed.  I recall catching guff from Dad for no greater misconduct than selling a rifle ‘before Big John had a chance to even see it.”  Selling it at a good profit wasn’t the point of business – the sale, the negotiations that could go on for most of a week was.  Lever action – his father’s bolt action Swedish rifle was just a bit too modern.  The gas-operated semi-automatics I used after a shoulder injury just never held the appeal of the old lever guns – and that was in the 20th century.

I don’t know if Big John ever had a drivers license – he told me he didn’t.  I always suspected it came from the poor instruction at school during those early tunnel years.  He explained that he had to be more law-abiding on the road than I did because of the lack – and I’m sure he was.

I remember John’s comment a few years back – that the best paid years of his life were in the seventies.  I suspect the seventies ran from 75 to 85 for Big John – but it was a time when a strong man with a chainsaw could make a good living in the woods.  I guess, in a way, Big John was born 30 years too late – but if he hadn’t been, a lot of us would have never known him.

So my farewell to a man whose life often brushed against mine.  My condolences to Sylvia, and to all he left behind.  There are more stories I could tell, memories I will revisit – but we shall not know his like again – a friend, a good man, larger than life in stature, personality and character, born into a time where he almost, but never quite, fit.  A heart attack somehow seems appropriate – no heart could ever be strong enough to last the man I knew.  I think that losing John was the biggest loss to my community in 2025.

For years, archaeologists had a simple saying in North America – “Don’t dig below Clovis.” The Clovis points were assumed to be the oldest technology that showed up in New World archaeology. More recently sites have been cropping up that are older than Clovis.

I was lucky when I taught at TSJC – the school once had a museum program, and the museum and as I looked it over, I realized how close the Folsom site was to Trinidad, Colorado. We had loads of artifacts that I could use to teach “Indians of the Southwest.” Even a bit of Clovis stuff – though Clovis was more distant. It was a great place to see the real stuff that, as a student at MSU, I had seen only in books. The Folsom site – where prehistoric hunters harvested mastodons – is essentially part of the Goodnight-Loving Trail. An area where cattle drives could occur in the old west (In Lonesome Dove, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call were modeled after Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving). A good trail is a good trail – whether you use it for cattle or mastodons.

I just can’t picture folks cautioning aspiring archaeologists with “Don’t dig below Riley’s Switch.” And Clovis was the town’s second name – it really did start as a railroad stop named Riley’s Switch. Since those early classes, archaeologists have found more and more evidence that people were on the American Continent before the Clovis culture. Monte Verde, in Chile, was being excavated as I finished college – and, since the artifacts found at Monte Verde were in peat, wooden items survived for radiocarbon dating. And, if there were people in Chile that early, the land bridge at Beringia may not have been the only path into the Americas.