Folks up Montana way do things a little different. Like not getting all het up when Frank put a big 45 hole through Bill's shirt front (with Bill in it) because Bill had been asking for it all along. Or running to the doctor with a little old broken bone from the rodeo; or the Gardiner deputy informing transient hippies they got just twenty minutes to get out of town; or the cowboys over at Bozeman hog-tying a bunch of protesters and giving them a free haircut (to the bone) with sheep shears. Up in the Big Sky Country a man is still a man, and he either proves it or goes under.
That's why Model T racing is so popular. You can go out and spend eighty or a hundred thousand dollars and buy yourself an Indianapolis race car, or half that much to go quick in a quarter-mile drag race. But you better have your beans In the right place if you plan on competing in the annual Montana 500 mile cross-country road race. No big bucks will help here - just the ability to wire a Tin L izzy together and hang on for three days.
I had been cutting some teepee poles back in the Crazies and stopped by Tom's Store in Wilsall for sody pop.
"Been fishing?"
"Nope. Getting out some poles for a \par teepee. Making my own kind of tent for a big pow-wow back in Peoria, Illinois come this August. Lots of hot rods getting together back there."
"Yeah. They're doing that sort of thing now. That bunch of Model T racers are gonna come through here this Thursday."
"But that's only July 2nd. Thought they ran that 50 mile race in conjunction with the Livingston Roundup rodeo on the 4th."
"They do, but this here is the 500 mile race. Moved it up a month this year so the fellers could get a shot at both races the same week. They start over at the state capitol in Helena on Tuesday and swing down through Bozeman, then east to Laurel for the first night. That's about 250 miles. Then they go up north to Roundup and Grass Range, then back west to White Sulphur Springs for the second night... 'Bout another 230 miles. Come on down to Livingston next day to finish, and they'll be coming right through here."
I had made plans to leave for Los Angeles and its wonderful smog that day, but obviously the big cross-country T race couldn't be ignored. Specially if it was coming right through town - all one block of it, if you count the Co-Op out past Johnny's hardware.
Model T racing got started in Montana as a kind of off-shoot for rodeos. Up in White Sulphur Springs, which is a little town in about the center of the state noted for its "friendly" discussions come Saturday night, someone thought it would be fun to stage a T race with the rodeo. The idea was an immediate success and spread until there are a dozen or so races during the summer. They're all about 50-80 miles long, with prize money in the two figure bracket, plus trophies. The 500 mile race was an outgrowth of this enthusiasm, and is kind of a Henry Ford era Bonnneville, National Drags, and Street Rod Nationals thrown into one three-day spree.