I recently flew to Bozeman, Montana to visit my grandson. It was 80 degrees when we left Solvang and 20 degrees up there. For a couple days winds reached over 90 mph. However, weather is not the only difference.
My first exposure to Montana was 55 years ago. I was eighteen. A friend and I bought a used VW bug for $400. It had no heater. We drove across the country to Washington, DC, in January! We didn’t pay attention to things like weather. We were kids. We encountered one of the worst ice storms in years.
We had to keep two tires off the edge of the highway so we could maintain some traction and wouldn’t slide off the road. Semi-trucks would fly by and splash slush on our tiny windshield. The miniature wiper blades barely kept it clean enough to see where we were going. We were wrapped in blankets nearly freezing to death. Our AM radio picked up nothing. We had no such thing as a cell phone or GPS.
We had a map.
We also had little money and no credit cards. We saw signs along the road where farmers and homeowners rented garages and sheds for $2.00 a night. That was luxury, sleeping with the mice. Even worse, we wanted to enjoy a beer (yes, we were only 18) after our harrowing day on the open road and discovered there were places that were called dry counties.
It was devastating.
To this day I’m still amazed we managed to pull it off and survive.
We spent six months in the District of Columbia where we studied to become dental technicians. We finally had enough of the foreign land of the east.
Right Back Where We Started From
So once again these two stupid surfer kids headed back to California taking the northern route this time. This put us square in the middle of a late massive blizzard in Montana. The landscape looked like huge piles of marshmallows. And of course, Murphy’s law arrived. The Bug hit a rut and the front axle broke. I can’t recall how we managed to get to a small town with one sketchy hotel, a church, a coffee shop and a bar. We had to wait four days for the roads to open back up and get the part to fix the VW. During our stay we went back and forth from the hotel room to the bar. We discovered Lone Star beer. I know, it’s a Texas beer, but at least it wasn’t a dry county.
Once back on the road we made a beeline for Washington state to visit my buddy’s old girlfriend who ended up shunning him. We said screw it and drove eighteen hours straight back to Santa Barbara.
One thing for certain, Montana is not California. Even though Bozeman is now being nicknamed Bozeafornia.
It was quite a treat in a Walmart to see a man open-carrying a handgun on his hip while checking out with his young daughter in the cart. No one gives it a second thought or bothers paying any attention to such a thing. And you won’t be pulling any crap on the guy either. And that’s as it should be. It isn’t the dads, the farmers, the honest folks who do the killing. And it isn’t a gun that comes to life to do the shooting. It’s crazy people who over the years liberals have felt sorry for and either don’t send to jail or let them out of prison to rape and kill again.
In Montana you can get a permanent plate for vehicles over 11 years old. No more registering again, ever. California not only charges a fortune for registration, but we keep paying more every year. Compounded further because we pay even more for our cars to get smog checked on top of it all.
Another money-making joke.
When we went shopping or out to dinner, I kept noting things were cheaper. No sales tax. There isn’t a tax a California Democrat hasn’t created to squeeze the people for more money. They keep coming up with taxes on top of taxes and yet they still don’t have enough and can’t balance a budget. Fraud numbers are running over $48 billion. and I bet its tons more. Expose these thieves, Nick Shirley.
Our state won’t do it.
Opening Up the Pipeline
You can bet the Democrats are loving the Iranian conflict because it gives Newsom and company cover to raise gas prices even higher. They’ll never take responsibility for their idiocy and ineptness. It will also increase the state’s tax coffers giving the Democrats even more money to piss away. Making life that much more difficult in a state with good weather but corrupt, incompetent politicians.
However, there is a glimmer of hope for the state. Trump flexed his presidential muscles and ordered offshore drilling and oil delivery to resume off the Santa Barbara coast. Of course, the enviros are having a conniption fit; the sky is falling. The downside is that it bails out Newsom where he can have it both ways. Get the much-needed oil production he knows the state requires while at the same time fight it and look like an oily hero to the hippies.
I almost feel sorry for Montana and other states getting overrun. I spoke with an older woman waitressing. She said she had to work again, earning entry level wages, because things had gotten so expensive. Others said the same thing.
Maybe it’s time for states like Montana to put up a border wall and keep out the riff raff. Neighboring Idaho has been a lost cause for years.
The Moral of the Story
California is a beautiful place. It’s the people who have been running it who screwed it up.
Something must change.
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