D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 1
10
L
AST YEAR, WE MONTANANS got a reminder of just how lucky we are to live way
out here in the gloriously unpopulated flyover country of the Great American
West. When the pandemic got started in earnest, people from the coastal cities
flooded into our vacation rentals, often booking them for months at a time in what
was likely a futile effort to escape the dreaded Covid-19. As all this unfolded, the
chorus from an old song got stuck on repeat in my mind.
Then we come to the farmlands and the undeveloped areas
And I have learned how these things work together
I see the parkway that passes through them all
And I have learned how to look at these things, and I say
I wouldn't live there if you paid me
I wouldn't live like that, no sirree
I wouldn't do the things the way those people do
I wouldn't live there if you paid me to
-- From "The Big Country" by Talking Heads (1978)
I imagine David Byrne scribbling these lyrics on the back
of a first-class TWA cocktail napkin in the late 1970s. With
the carnage of 2020 safely in the rearview mirror and a new
spring upon us, I find myself changing the words of his song
to, "I wouldn't leave here if you paid me!"
A N O T E F R O M T H E
P U B L I S H E R
CHRIS MUHLENFELD, PUBLISHER
chris@distinctlymontana.com
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