Monday 1st June – The Mayor, the Police, and a Ghost Town

At the big party, the Chief of Police invited me round to visit.  He has a very small complement of eight officers, and with some on leave, he was clearly having a very busy time.  We talked very briefly about co-ordinating with all the other agencies which have jurisdiction around here.  The way he explained it, it seemed quite straightforward, but I bet it isn't.

 

I saw him again later at the city council meeting.  There are six councilmen, and the mayor.  The council chamber is a room directly off the floor of the sports hall which is the Civic Centre.  I was thrilled to see the mayor had put the Glasgow, Scotland banner on the wall.  He made a little presentation of a set of pictures of old Glasgow, and a Scotties cap for me and The Lord Provost. 

He had promised a brief meeting, and so it was.  It was relatively informal, as you would expect with a council that size.

 There were two items which are clearly difficult, one to do with the rebuilding of the Milk River dyke, which has the council stuck between a rock and a hard place, with the Corps of Engineers demanding a particular actions, and the frontagers wanting to maintain their apparent rights (I say 'apparent' to gloss over where the core of the difficulty lies).  And, hovering in the background, the Federal Emergency Management Agency threatening not to help in a flood (which, in turn, means insurance companies won't offer cover). 

Although the Corps of Engineers is obviously a accountable agency, just like the others, it seems to have acquired a god-like status, a bit like our own dear BBC.   Of course the Corps are not going to sort out the frontagers: the poor old council is going to have to take the stick for that.

The second item seemed to be about covering 'lagoons', so I guess it was about sewage.  The Mayor was for going, mob-handed, to Helena (the State Capital) to confront the contractors.  There was some talk of saving costs by using video-conferencing, but I think the Mayor wanted to see the whites of their eyes.  One of the advantages of a council this size is that they can all fit into one small aeroplane.

 

In between these two meetings, I went to see the old air base.  The US Air Force used to have a huge base here.  Strangely, it seems to be about 15 miles north, in a place called St Marie.  There were road signs to point the way, but my satnav denied the existence of 'St Marie'.

It is a full-sized town, with almost nobody there.  The actual base is now maintained for test purposes by a subsidiary of Boeing, so the hangers are in good condition, dark and ominous, with "Keep Out" signs all around, but the town is simply going back to nature.  I bumped my way through empty broken streets, seeing only the occasional occupied house.  I saw a man forlornly mowing the street.  I couldn't bring myself to ask him why he was doing it.  It might have been part of some surreal theatre.

I couldn't bring myself to take any pictures either, and I'm not sure why that was.  Maybe it was because it all seemed just so sad.

I found out afterwards that, when the base closed, someone bought it, and renamed it "St Marie".  But they never managed to create a reason for people to buy the houses.  So it gradually just faded away.  Two weeks out west, and already I've seen my first ghost town.