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I love Johnny Cash. I think my all time favorite Cash song is “A Boy Named Sue.” The song was a huge hit for Cash, but was actually written by Shel Silverstein, who is famous for writing books of children’s poetry. In the song, a young man is named “Sue” by his drunken no-account father before he is abandoned. The name results in extended misery for the boy, who is hounded and teased by everyone he encounters. Through the torments, he learns to be tough, mainly because he fights everyone who ever gives him a hard time. Eventually, Sue resolves...
The first week of school is in the books, and Principal Heather Wolery is pleased with how smoothly things have gone so far. Though many things are different about the school day due to the new regulations and guidelines, students and teachers have adapted well. This was not an inevitable outcome, but came as a result of hard work on the part of the school administration and the cooperation of the staff, students, and their families. Returning to school with worries about the Covid 19 pandemic...
As the pandemic continues to change our day to day lives, the Big Sandy Medical Center has been hit extra hard by the quarantine. Because the residents are so vulnerable to the virus, the home has taken extraordinary steps to ensure their safety. This has resulted in an extended time of isolation from the community, family, friends, and visitors. This has made Entertainment Director Lisa Sipler's job especially important. Entertainment in nursing facilities is extra important right now because...
The Big Sandy Homecoming 2020 was postponed until next year due to Covid, but this year we will be celebrating a different sort of homecoming. This September the world's largest tractor will be returning to the Williams' Farm after spending 10 years on the road. The Big Bud 747 first left Big Sandy to attend a farm show in Illinois. The Williams Brothers, who own the Big Bud 747, had initially intended to bring the tractor to a few more farm shows around the country, but the demands of running...
My brother lives in Northern California. For the last 6 months, he and his family have been living with some of the strictest lockdown regulations in the country. My little brother is very active and a bit of a gym nut. The lockdown has eliminated his ability to go to the gym at all, though he maintained his membership for some time. For several months, he was able to proudly say “I am a member of a gym,” but was not able to go to it. Over the years, I’ve known a few people who had gym memberships, but never went. There’s a strange truth a...
This September, I will be riding to raise money to fight Children's Cancer in the Great Cycle Challenge. The Great Cycle Challenge was founded in 2015 and is one of the biggest cycling events in the United States. Working with the Children's Cancer Research Fund, the challenge has raised nearly $25,000,000 in support of research, the development of better treatments, and the search for a cure for childhood cancers. Participants have ridden a total of 18,831,310 miles in their fundraising...
The Big Sandy Barracudas’ 2020 swim season came to an end in late July with a final meet in Shelby on the 25th. This season was unlike every other year for Big Sandy because of the challenges posed by the Covid shutdowns. Fewer meets, many towns simply not participating, and smaller teams from the towns that did compete changed the year dramatically. Coach Travis Baumann describes the challenge as it related to the meet in Conrad: “There were other teams there, but not very many. So, in Conrad there was us, Conrad, Chester, a couple kids fro...
In his fictional book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis wrote a collection of letters from a senior demon to a novice tempter. The book explores the various ways people are led astray, tempted, tricked, and manipulated from their faith in God. The opening chapter describes the most powerful tool the devil uses to keep people from ever asking themselves important questions in life: the ordinary. Everyday life and the boring details that occupy our attention keep us from looking at our lives and dealing with issues that matter in the long term....
The Montana online library service, Library 2 Go, is a useful service that many Big Sandy locals have grown to love. This was especially the case during quarantine when trips to the library were shut down and trips to book stores were fewer and farther between. Library 2 Go (or Libby, which is the name of one of the apps) is an online library service providing nearly 16,000 titles in audio and e-books available to anyone with a library card, an internet connection, and a means of listening or reading. For readers in a small town, this is an...
I approached the parking lot of Big Sandy Church of God, watching as cars quickly filled the parking lot and the roadside. Half a dozen volunteers run to cars carrying boxes of food and checking names off the official count list. The food distribution is part of a program that is providing relief to communities across the country during the COVID lockdown. For the past nine weeks, the Farmers To Families Food Box Program has been distributing food boxes to Big Sandy families, providing needed...
I learned basic car repair in college after buying a beat up old car for $250. Armed with a repair manual and a basic tool set from Sears, I took on all manner of simple repairs. Along the way, I learned quite a few lessons. One of the most important happened when I was replacing a corroded set of battery cables that weren’t able to maintain a good connection any longer. When the time came to reconnect the battery, I put the cables on and was greeted with huge sparks as my cables melted off. After disconnecting the cables, I ran to the store a...
Big Bud has gotten a shiny new pair of shoes, or more accurately: four new pairs of tires. The World's Largest Tractor, which calls Big Sandy home, was outfitted with brand new tires for the first time since it rolled off the assembly line in 1977. The update comes as the Big Bud 747 is undergoing preparations for its trip home later this year. One of the tractor's 8 tires had gone flat while it was on display. Attempts to repair it revealed that the 40-year old set of custom made construction...
On a snowy Monday morning in March, Covid-19 disrupted an aspect of my life, and the lives of many other locals, in a way that has forced me to innovate and adapt daily: the High School gym shut down. For years, I have rolled out of bed before the sunrise and trudged the 3 blocks to the school to workout. One of the hidden treasures of our community is a well-equipped workout facility that rivals many paid gyms I’ve visited. Even better is the astonishing fact that the gym was available to locals for the cost of an electronic entry fob. For m...
“So, how many times a week does someone ask you about the gym reopening?” I asked Kelly Haaland, the superintendent of Big Sandy Schools. I’d talked to enough school employees to know that it was a hot topic that had prompted a lot of discussion. Mr. Haaland laughed as he replied: “I’m asked about it daily,” before going on to explain to me the challenges associated with reopening the gym for the community during the time of Covid-19 easing restrictions. The problem the school faces is that in order to comply with the regulations for cleanin...
One of my favorite books by C.S. Lewis is The Screwtape Letters, which is written from the perspective of a demon named Screwtape instructing another demon on how to tempt a young man into hell. It’s one of my favorites, because Lewis has a keen understanding of human people and does a terrific job of observing the habits we fall into that weaken us spiritually. In one particular letter, Screwtape talks about using pleasures to tempt the young man. He explains that all people experience a restlessness that comes from their spiritual state. B...
This weekend, I will have been married to my wife for 22 years. I am happy and cannot imagine sharing my life with any other person. However, I can honestly say that our lives together have not gone anything like what I thought it would when I said “I do” so many years ago. We’ve had more than a couple of years that were not happy and extended times when we barely spoke except to fight. We’ve also had times that were filled with mourning and uncertainty as to how we’d get through the next day. Don’t get me wrong, our marriage has been the be...
Nearly 15 years ago, I read a book on management by Peter Drucker. I remember that it was excellent, but I only recall one clear lesson from it: The more decisions you make, the more likely you are to make a mistake, so make a decision once and apply that decision over and over and over again. Ideally, you should make your one decision when there is no pressure or emotional stress to taint your reasoning. The idea here is that we tend to make poor decisions when we’re excited or emotional, so we should make our decisions when we are calm. When...
A few years ago, before my daughter learned to read, I read her the book “Alice in Wonderland”. In the book, Alice sort of wanders from encounter to encounter without a strong purpose. The plot is summed up well when she asks the Cheshire Cat which way she should go. The cat responds by asking where she is trying to go. Alice explains that she doesn’t care where she is going. This prompts the cat to explain that it doesn’t matter which way she goes, because it doesn’t matter where she ends up. He goes on to tell her that she’s bound to en...
Daryl Davis is a blues musician who, for the last 30 years, has been collecting KKK robes. He has over 200 in his home, which he saves as a reminder of the work he has been doing. Mr. Davis is an African American man whose uses his spare time to befriend members of the KKK. He visits them in prison, drives their families to visits and appointments, and does what ever else he can to show love to folks who have built their lives around hating him and people like him. His 200 robes have been given to him by 200 men he befriended and converted...
I’ve spent the last few months studying the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. Most people are familiar with the story of Daniel being tossed into the lion’s den as a death sentence, only to be saved by God. That’s really just a minor episode in the story of Daniel, who was a Jewish man living in Babylon during the exile. The exile was a period of 70 years where the nation of Israel was decimated by the Babylonian empire. The majority of the population was carted off as captives to serve in Babylon when Daniel was a young man. He was press...
A couple of decades ago I graduated from high school and went off to college. I had a straight path in mind regarding what I was going to do with my life. I had intended on finishing a pre-seminary degree from a little private college I was attending. I would then attend seminary, which I had already picked out before arriving at college. At the end of my first semester, I found that the ancient language requirements to complete my degree were not going to be something I was going to manage (I squeaked through Biblical Greek with a very low...
During the lockdown, one of the weirdest challenges I have taken on has been keeping my kids from eating nothing but junk food. If they had their way breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, supper, dinner, and every snack in-between would consist purely of processed sugar, corn syrup, chocolate covered, and deep fried stuff. I use the word “stuff” because most of what they would prefer to eat never qualified as actual food at any point so it requires a label that reflects the artificial nature of their foods of choice. There is a reason that the...
While teaching one day, Jesus was asked by an expert in the Jewish law codes ‘what is the most important commandment.’ His answer was to repeat the Old Testament summary of the 10 Commandments: Love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. This prompted another question: Who is your neighbor? Neither of these questions was unique among the ancient Jews. Rabbis had been arguing over these sorts of matters for centuries. In particular, the neighbor question was one of the 7 most hotly debated religious topics of the era. There...
In 165 AD, an epidemic swept through the Roman Empire, ravaging the western world for 15 years. The disease may have been smallpox, though it’s difficult to say with any certainty. Regardless of the nature of the illness, the result was devastating. Around a third of the population of Rome died. The population was justifiably terrified of the horrible illness. The wealthier amongst the Roman citizenry simply sequestered themselves in their country homes for years, while the poorer members of the population fled cities or did their best to r...
On Easter morning, I got out of bed early and spent some time reviewing my sermon notes for the morning. Taking a break from the effort, I posted something about my previous day’s activities on Facebook. Pastor Sean from the Lutheran Church messaged me that he was also up early and inviting me to watch the sunrise from the cemetery with him (from an appropriate social distance, of course). I agreed before hurriedly getting dressed and out the door to get to the edge of town before the sun rose. During the walk over, I spent time praying for f...
