The Golden Triangle newspapers are a regional group of papers all owned by the Kavanagh family. The news in them often overlaps and the classified ads are the same. Valier is thirty miles from Browning and only a few miles from the boundary of the reservation, but the ordinary word-of-mouth generally stops at that line. People in Valier rarely know what’s going on in Browning and vice versa. However, the news for Cut Bank, which is in the same county as Browning, tends to be more the same, except that there is always more news in Browning and more advertising. It is an awkward truth that the small white towns around the rez are collapsing while Browning and environs expands both in population and prosperity.
When I came in 1961, Browning had its own separately owned newspaper and Milo Fields was quite an active reporter/photography/editorialist. At that time the white population of Browning was strong and owned most of the businesses and professions. Also, the Bureau of Indian Affairs bureaucrats were mostly white. All that has changed and now the town, to an outsider, looks solidly Indian. Mostly that’s true.
Even when Milo was the editor, one of the most interesting and controversial features of the paper was the report of arrests and trial results. It would run for a couple of months, and then someone’s relative would awkwardly end up on the list (white as well as red) and the list would disappear. Then after a year or so, someone would manage to beg for it to be reinstated on grounds that it was a deterrent to crime. These days the Sheriff’s Log runs consistently, partly because the editors are in Cut Bank where they are somewhat shielded from rez politics and partly because the sheriff’s report conflates the reports for the whole county so that Cut Bank’s escapades are hidden in among the reports for the rez. (The Pondera County sheriff converts everything to numbers: so many arrests, so many horses struck by cars, so many dogs at loose, etc.)
Just as in Portland, some people can’t wait for the printed news, so they follow dispatch along on a radio monitor of their own. The dispatchers, who have long boring stretches to deal with, are aware they are broadcasting and sometimes the sheriff’s log reflects the same consciousness. All that said, sometimes the reports are pretty vivid and the reader is easily drawn into the situation by curiosity.
For instance, a Friday night report: A man calling from a bar says his son is beating up his wife. He’s drunk so the dispatcher is a little skeptical. Three hours later a call comes in that a woman in the East Glacier cemetary is getting beat up. (Cell phones mean calls can come from anywhere. The only cemetary I know of up there is way back in the trees.) At 8AM a man in Heart Butte says his sister is trying to attack him. He is handicapped, at the other end of the rez, and holding his oxycodone pills which his sister wants, but he’s escaped the house and is up on the hill. The cops come. They arrest him.
The next afternoon the airport (in Cut Bank) calls to say they canceled the drag races so the ambulance doesn’t have to be on standby.
Someone called to say girls in Cut Bank were kicking the planters in front of a business out into the sidewalk. The investigating officer says the girls were chasing a mouse so it was not vandalism.
A caller reported a “bright flash and three pieces of metal hanging from the substation across from the wrecking yard on US Highway 2 eastbound. [next to Cut Bank]. Advised GEC [Glacier Electric Company] and are experiencing a power outage. May be vandalism. Officer checked it out. There is a crispy pigeon on the ground. It is smoking but there is no fire. Officer advised he’s hungry and to pick up the crispy bird for lunch. On another day a Hutterite colony called to advise they have no electricity and are running a generator. A bird on fire was seen flying away from the “transistor pole” and the wheat crop is just ripe, so everyone be on the lookout for smoke.
Many complaints are about drunks fighting, but there are also many problems with non-human animals. Dogs bark and one “boxer” which “looks like it has a family” [they don’t mean human] has been chasing joggers. The officer has returned it home, talked to the family, and issued warnings. This time he takes it to the animal shelter. It was a black and white pit bull. On another day there is a complaint about two dogs traveling together: one is small and fuzzy and the other is “big and dumb-looking.” On still another day a cougar invites itself to the Chewing Black Bone campground alongside St. Mary’s lake. The complainant is camping in a yellow tipi. Many bears are clipped by cars, mostly driven by tourists, but they have sense enough to not check for damage to their vehicles until they are a few miles away. Carcasses rarely found.
A complaint comes in that a tourist family with little kids is chasing a grizzly bear up by Many Glacier. Call referred to the Glacier Park rangers. In the summer there are regularly tragedies but they are usually people falling over cliffs. This August it was a motorcycle that went over a cliff, killing the operator. On a lighter note, a “tall blonde male from Washington and Alaska left his backpack with his undies alongside on the steps of the Job Service office in Cut Bank.” They consider this objectionable. Another backpacker has been sleeping at night in the Babb Post Office.
There are always complaints about noise from parties at the Pine Tree Apartments and fighting at the Bear’s Den. These businesses have no listed telephones, so I can’t confirm their location and my knowledge of them is hazy since I don’t patronize them, but I believe they’re in Cut Bank. If not, I may find out who reads this blog. These days they are more likely to egg my car than break in all the windows with a baseball bat.
The Cut Bank kids are always at war with the cops. Someone calls in to complain that the kids have stretched Saran Wrap across the street. Dispatch records that the officer already knows: he just hit it and it is wrapped around his squad car. (Cut Bank is where a MacDonald’s employee put ag chemicals in a border patrolman’s food, which nearly killed him. Last I heard neurological damage had put him in a wheelchair, maybe permanently. Years ago they used to just put Ex-lax in their food.)
There is a strongly defensible theory that addressing these sorts of calls promptly and efficiently will prevent more serious crime and this is probably true, but it takes time and money. The claim that serious crimes are insufficiently investigated and prosecuted is a different problem but it has my sympathy.
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