The real deal

I keep trying to write really cool stuff and not doing too well so my friend Milt advised me instead to tell real stories from my life. Ordinarily I’d think that would be extremely boring, as nothing very interesting ever happens to me but I guess I couldn’t do any worse, so here goes. When I was little, about five years old or so, we lived for a time with my grandparents. The house only had two bedrooms so my sister (who is two years older) and I shared a bed that was in my grandparent’s bedroom. I don’t remember much about that room except that it was small and our bed was against the wall on one side of the room and my grandparent’s bed was up against the opposite wall. In the corner at the foot of their bed was a closet that kind of went kitty corner against the two walls so that it was at a forty five degree angle to either. It was kind of a strange set up but the house was small enough that there wasn’t enough space to spare for a normal closet in the wall so they just walled in a corner. This room was at the south end of the house so on one side was a garage, on two sides were the exterior walls and on the last side was a bathroom. It seems like the room had a wooden floor and the walls were bare in a yellowy kind of off white. Somewhere I have a picture of me standing on the front porch of that house in my genuine Hopalong Cassidy cowboy suit. What a proud lad I was in that outfit! But that’s another story. This one is about snoring. My grandpa used to snore when he slept, sometimes very loudly. At that age I didn’t know anything about snoring but I had learned about bears and so I thought that terrible growling sound was coming from a bear in the closet. I remember laying there in the dark too petrified to move for fear of revealing my location to the bear in the closet. I surely did not want to become his next meal. It was some time before I understood that it was my grandfather snoring that caused my fear but the funny thing is, to this day I have an almost morbid fear of bears, particularly grizzly bears. It didn’t help matters that when I first moved to Montana back in the 60's, up near Glacier Park, that six girls were killed by a grizzly bear while they slept. They were all in one tent when the bear attacked. They never did really understand what had provoked the bear. I love going back to Montana whenever I get the chance but I surely do get nervous about the bears. Not too many years ago I was in Glacier Park with two of my sons camping. We were in the campground at Many Glacier on the north shore of Swiftcurrent Lake. Each campground had a big steel box with a warning painted on: “Caution, bears come through the campground at night looking for food. Make sure to lock up your food so they can’t get it” or something like that. What I do remember for sure is how I felt and what I thought. “So, you want me to lock up my food so a hungry bear can’t get at it while I lay there in a nylon tent like a pig in a blanket!” Yeah, right. I slept that night in the back of my Rodeo while reassuring my family that I would be there to help if they needed me. All they had to do was scream! By the way, if you're wondering about the photo, it was taken in October just outside of West Yellowstone, Montana. One of my favorite places.