Distinctly Montana Magazine

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 • F A L L 2 0 2 2 54 WHEN I WAS A CHILD, people always told me to savor it be- cause these are the best years of your life. Again and again, hideous old relatives would stoop over, push their ponder- ously swollen grown-up heads into my childhood airspace, and assure me that this was the best it was ever going to get. I could have come home streaked with mud and tears, dragging my broken limbs behind me, maybe even a couple of visible tire prints running the length of my body, and someone many years my senior would get a dreamy look in their eye and say, "Savor it, boy. These are the best years of your life." Mine being a pessimistic temperament, I eventually came to believe it, by which I mean I steeled myself for worse to come. After getting creamed by some troglodyte bully, or screamed at by a neanderthalic football coach, I'd force myself to imagine with horror how awful adulthood would have to be, to be worse than this. For the most part, they were right. I don't know about you, but I think that adult- hood, to borrow a young person's phrase, kind of sucked. I was unfortunate in my selection of bosses, in that most of them weren't as privileged as me when it came to their natural supply of intelligence and common sense. Likewise, many of my coworkers were afflicted with what I can only describe as sickly, malformed work ethics, at least when compared to my ro- bust scrupulousness. It has been my curse to be so blessed. But even if the adults who lined up to gleefully tell me that my adult life would be one of toil and frustration were right, did they really have to tell me so often? Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same, because history repeats it- self within the narrow confines of my life. Only now, everyone can't stop pointing out that I'm in the autumn of my years. The thing which I have feared all my life has happened; I'm old now. The politest of you are proba- bly speaking directly into your mag- azines now, saying "No, no, Gary, you're as fresh as an English prim- rose! You, old? That's like saying the Pope has body odor, or that Red Lobster can't make a good cheese biscuit! It's just empirically untrue!" Well, I thank you very much, dear reader, but I'm afraid it's true—I really am old. Old enough to remember long-vanished worlds that might be more recent than, say, the Triassic, but no less extinct. T H E O L D B R O K E R A N C H E R T H E O L D B R O K E R A N C H E R O N T H E O N T H E ' B E S T Y E A R S ' B E S T Y E A R S O F H I S L I F E ' O F H I S L I F E ' OLD BROKE RANCHER BY GARY SHELTON

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