Thursday 28th May 2009 – Grown Ladies, Shuffleboard, and Control of Alcohol

Glasgow, Montana owes much of its success to being a long way from anywhere.  One side effect of this is the brilliance of the stars.  I used to think I knew my stars.  Living in a big city, all you can see are the constellations.  Here, away from the street lights, it was hard to see the constellations for the stars.  I was lost, reminded of my childhood wonder at what could possibly be going on up there.  I could hardly identify anything.  I thought I saw Mars, but I shall have to try and look again later to see if it has moved: and then I will have to find it again.

The dam, which is pretty well camouflaged in the daytime, is much more of a presence at night, when the roads along the ramparts are well-lit.  I shall have to try and do some night-time photography, about the one thing I was told my fancy video camera would not do well.

 

My night excursion was as a result of a pub-crawl challenge from the Grown Ladies Shuffleboard Team.  Pub crawls hereabouts can involve quite long distances.  We started at the Fort Peck Hotel, built in the 1930s for the nobs visiting the dam construction  (and, I'm told, for the senior officers of the ArmyCorps of Engineers, who built the dam).  I was shown round, even to the less salubrious (and presently unused) top floor.  I say top floor to avoid getting into the confusion of me thinking it's the second floor, when they think it's the third.  There is alleged to be a haunted room up there.  The young actors from the summer theatre stay here.  They should put on historic murder weekends: just the right sort of setting.  The hotel fabric is still quite faithful to the original.  There are no telephones or televisions: "it would be too noisy", I was told.  So not a place for a honeymoon, then; or possibly for young actors.  Perhaps my guide hasn't told the young actors.

We then moved on to Rock Creek, where the shuffleboard was to be consummated.  Of course, I thrashed them mercilessly.  They said I was too fast for them.  Well, actually they said the table was to fast for them, but I knew what they meant.  I told them of the occasion when I played golf with a lefthander and a righthander, playing half the holes left-handed, and half the holes right-handed, and, of course, winning.  They were full of awe, and believed me.  I was full of (wait for it!) beer, and believed it myself. 

We visited some other establishments after that, but I was able to take very few notes, and those I did take I can't read.

 

Earlier in the day, I had been out to the liquor store to buy the ladies a commemorative bottle of Scotch.  The liquor laws in Montana are, I think, still rather quaint, and involve the concept of state control of distribution.  They wouldn't take credit cards, but had an ATM machine on the premises. It must have been a government machine, because it failed part way through, reluctantly gave me just enough, but still insisted on its fat fee. 

I asked the store clerk where the scotch was.  He said he thought scotch was like rubbing alcohol.  I told him he had the advantage of me there.  When I finally got to the counter to make my purchase, he said he was surprised I was still buying it after he had said how awful it was.  I told him I was proposing to rub it on someone.  He clearly hadn't thought of that, but I could see he was starting to.