Category Archives: The West

TO THE DOOR by Peter Nolan Smith

November 12, 2024 – 9:37 am

Published on: Jan 6, 2012 I-5 ran south out of Sacramento. The day was getting hot in the Central Valley and AK cranked up the Torino’s AC. I turned around several times to be disappointed that Carol wasn’t in the backseat. A whisper of her rose attar fragrance clung to the car. She and her […]

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Wind River Mountains 1998

June 16, 2024 – 10:27 am

Wind River Mountains 1998 In the Spring of 1998 my 78 year-old father and I embarked on a road trip through Wyoming and Montana. We picked up a rented car in Bozeman, Montana and stopped the first night in Chico Hot Springs. The next morning the two of us continued down Paradise Valley to Yellowstone […]

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LAST CALL IN BUTTE MONTANA by Peter Nolan Smith

August 17, 2022 – 8:47 am

Tonight I rolled into Butte, Montana. Beating the M and M Bar’s last call. Gram Parsons sang on the jukebox. ‘Streets of Baltimore.’ Mona loved that song And I never done her wrong. Last week in Bozeman, Montana I woke to an empty bed No sign of Mona. Only a burning egg And a note […]

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Death Valley Hot

July 17, 2022 – 2:17 am

A heat wave smothers the continental USA and the national weathermen are predicting that the temperature in Death Valley might hit 120 today. The manager of the Wrangler Restaurant in Furnace Creek on Tuesday closed the establishment after the ACs went on the blink, saying, “We can’t put customers through this — it’s just too […]

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HITCHHIKING PROHIBITED by Peter Nolan Smith

July 8, 2022 – 12:12 pm

In late-August of 1972 my college friend Ptrov and I were bound for Boston to start our second year of university and we crashed a night with a trio of carpenter gypsies constructing a rest stop on the new interstate through Montana. Bulldozers had churned the dirt highway into a muddy bog for the passing […]

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