It’s July tomorrow! Our tomatoes are turning red on the vine! I legally need to shower every night because I am covered in the slime of a sunscreen that is maybe better for you but certainly doesn’t rub in well! It’s summertime, baby!!!
Summer in my house has always meant an annual pilgrimage to Montana to visit my grandparents- the children of homesteaders who settled in the flat plains of Eastern Montana after emigrating from Norway and Denmark. My grandparents built a home (built!! my grandpa built it!!) in the mountainous, Western city of Missoula in the 50’s that they have been in ever since, along with every item they have possessed in that time. In their house you can find the skin of a bear that my grandpa shot in self defense, looming over my uncle’s bed. You can find a Nazi’s rifle that my grandpa brought home from Germany after serving in the Air Force as a teenager in World War II. You can find their original refrigerator from the ‘60’s (in the garage! still working!). You can find ration stamps for sugar from the 40’s, my dad’s Eagle Scout uniform from the early 70’s, and dozens of Beanie Babies that didn’t make the cut for the grandkids at Christmas in the 90’s. It’s an overwhelming and incredible experience to step into my grandparents’ house, like visiting the set of a movie about my dad’s childhood where Production Designer was like, let’s fucking GO! I am fascinated by their house, but do start to sneeze if I stay too long. Pros and cons.
For a less crowded and otherwise taxidermied experience, my dad and brother and I have typically opted to meet my grandparents at their weekend home on Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, with water so clear you can see straight through to the bottom. The closest town is 30 minutes in either direction, so days at the lake are typically either spent venturing out into the world (see: grocery store, coffee shop, etc.) and returning home just in time to make dinner, or reading on the porch, jumping into the crystal clear lake, picking apricots at my grandma’s-best-friend-who-happens-to-live-next-door’s house, or going on the one walk in the neighborhood. In the days before the dock disintegrated (RIP), we could take the boat out to Wild Horse Island, named for the herd of wild horses that you might be lucky enough to see on your afternoon hike. It’s a truly magical place. Growing up we would always gather for one, sometimes two, weeks at the lake, which was just enough time to relish the tranquility, lose your mind from the stagnancy, have an epiphany about the family dynamic, and start missing it immediately.
When people hear that I go to Montana every summer, they assume it’s a wild ride of outdoor activities: hiking in Glacier National Park, riding horses, shooting bears in self defense. But in my immediate family- my sweet, big-feeling, loves-to-process family- our Montana looks like deep conversations set against a beautiful backdrop. My dad permanently moved back to Missoula a few years ago, and now our summer pilgrimage is mostly marked by daily walks to our favorite coffee spots, an ever-expanding list of independent shops, killer thrift stores, and well-curated boutiques. We pile our grocery carts with fresh produce from The Good Food Store, an incredible independent grocery store, visit Meadowsweet Herbs to stock up on good-smelling tinctures, balms, and salves, order a gluten-free, dairy-free apple pie from Black Cat Bake Shop to enjoy throughout the week (we’re sensitive! but love pie!), and cap our nights with a screening at The Roxy, a cozy, independent movie theater with killer popcorn. The Clark Fork River is huge and rushes right through the center of town, and most days include a 15 minute walk from my dad’s apartment, sometimes ambling down the sidewalk in just our bathing suits and towels, to jump into its crisp waters. Another magical place.
I could say “independent” one million times when describing Missoula, because so many of its hallmarks are one-of-a-kind. Montana is a huge part of my heart and my identity, and it’s always been a dream of mine to bring all of the people that I love out there to enjoy its splendor and to meet that part of me. This week, Jesse is joining me and my brother on our trip for the first time and I can’t wait for him to experience all of these hallowed spots, to breathe the crisp mountain air, and to likely be roasted by my 96 and 98 year old grandparents, each in their own special way. Hosting a new person might be the perfect motivation to get us out on new hikes, to rent bicycles and go exploring, to finally figure out how people sign up for tubing down the river. But we’ll still get a pie on night one, just in case anyone would prefer a slice and a lounge in the crisp mountain air, talking until bedtime so we can wake up and have it all again.
Katy Yeiser is a comedy director and writer who I’ve known since she was working at The Onion when we were all young pups in Chicago. If you are ever with her in a corner at a party, ask her about pickling, canning, or making a delicious sauce and I swear you will come out of the conversation a more competent person.
People from my hometown of Paris, Kentucky (population – 10,171) will tell you that our town can claim many places of historical significance. We’re home to the burial site of Secretariat, the greatest racehorse to ever live. We’ve got the restaurant Paradise Café, a.k.a. the world’s tallest three-story building. (This is true – it was in “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!”) We also have the last remaining Jerry’s Restaurant in the world, nestled right next to a business that was once a gun shop that turned into an old-timey car shop before finally pivoting to a shop for old-timey cars AND guns.
Parisians (what else are we supposed to call ourselves?) will be quick to inform you that Paris is also home to the Cane Ridge Meeting House, which was ground zero to a “famous” Daniel Boone-led revival that kickstarted the Second Great Awakening. Parisians will tell you this fact with pride, even though evangelical revivals are actually very scary and ultimately, embarrassing.
Growing up in Paris, none of these places held any significance to me, of course. Paris sucked. Jerry’s food tasted like cigarette butts. Famous horses, both deceased and living, were everywhere - who cared - they don’t even know they’re horses! Daniel Boone was corny, and Cane Ridge didn’t have any air conditioning.
The only place that mattered to me and my friends – the only place where anything actually happened – was the Paris Cemetery. It was the ultimate gathering zone for bored, middle-school aged kids. It was massive, winding, and all the adults there were dead in the ground. It was the most electric place in town.
Want to blare the new Ricky Martin CD, “Ricky Martin,” and drink a million Ale-8 sodas? Meet in the cemetery and bring back-up boombox batteries. Want to spend all day looking for headstones of people with the last name “Cox” and men with the first name “Ashley”? Meet at the top of the hill by the mausoleum with your bike. You want to have your first séance? Bring a Ouija board and meet under the willow trees, where your friend Caitlin will ask her dead grandmother to show herself, which will be immediately followed by a loud noise out of nowhere directly behind you that will make everyone scream, but it won’t be the ghost of Caitlin’s grandmother - just Taco Neck (a man who went by “Taco Neck”) walking down the street minding his own business on a Friday evening.
For slightly older kids, the cemetery was the hottest club in town, too. While we were making fun of dead boys named Ashley and wrestling on top of freshly-dug burial plots, the older kids were covertly smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and rounding the bases of sex behind the biggest headstones they could find. We knew it was happening, but that world – skin-to-skin contact??? touching of private parts??? – felt like several lifetimes away. I was safely tucked away in my precious cemetery in my stress-free, sexually-inactive bubble that would never pop.
And then one day at school, my best friend Amber informed me that she had made plans to go to the cemetery later that day to get fingered.
When Amber looped me into this development, she did so with confidence – near cockiness. She might as well have told me of her plans in-between long drags of a cigarette. However, when I heard “I’m going to get fingered today by Brent” come tumbling out of Amber’s mouth, I felt all the blood swiftly drain from my body. We were barely a year into our periods, if that. Amber (whose name I have perfectly changed for privacy, because there was no one in my town named Amber) and Brent (whose name I have perfectly changed for privacy, because no one in Kentucky is named Brent) had at most tongued. But fingering? What were we – characters in the movie Wild Things? I began to panic, and then I came up with a solution: I would spend the day in class writing Amber a letter outlining why I didn’t think she should get fingered.
I don’t remember the exact contents of the letter, but I do remember the main themes:
What if you get caught, word spreads, and for the rest of your whole life, people think you’re a slut? Our town is small. Word travels fast.
What if The Rapture came during the fingering and you went to Hell. (Please remember I grew up just a few miles from Cane Ridge.)
Brent sucks.
WE ARE NOT READY.
If Amber got fingered, what would happen next? Dates? Anxieties over fashion? Switching out bike rides for cigarette circles with the older kids in the parking lot of Ken’s Grocery Store, the second hottest spot in town? I didn’t agree to any of this. I felt similarly to how I felt about The Rapture - I feared being left behind.
What happened on this day would determine the rest of my life. Brent’s little boy fingers simply could not proceed with their disruptive plans.
So I wrote the letter and invited Amber over to my house after school. She met me on my front porch, and I got straight to business. “Please read this letter I wrote today.” I gave her the note, and then I quickly exited the front porch to my backyard, where I hid behind a tree about 20 yards away to watch her read my letter through the branches like a coward.
I studied Amber’s face as she silently read the letter, but she gave me nothing. No raised eyebrow, no nod of the head, no mouthing of “Katy’s right” or “Wow, how could I forget about The Rapture.” It was the most grueling three minutes of my life.
She got to the end of the letter, folded it up, put it in her backpack, and looked out contemplatively for a few seconds. “I’ve convinced her,” I thought.
Then, she stepped off my porch and walked to the cemetery to get fingered.
Some 25 years later, I can report that no one’s childhood was ruined by Amber getting fingered. I was not left behind by my more sexually-advanced friends or The Rapture. No one thought Amber was a slut. Amber is thriving, I am godless and free, and Taco Neck, unfortunately and in unrelated news, is now in jail.
Me and my friends did stop hanging out at the cemetery shortly after “the fingering.” Our hangouts went from same-sex hangs behind the The Mexican War monument to mixed-sex hangs over Italian subs at the one Subway in town after school. Bikes were replaced with our parents’ cars, and Ricky Martin CDs gave way to Dave Matthews Band CDs, tragically. Amber and I never spoke of the letter (can you blame her?), but we remained best friends until college.
I do not have a will, but we can consider this entry into the Honeypot as my first attempt: Although I do not want to be buried in a casket (I prefer a good long compost), I would still like to be laid to rest at Paris Cemetery. Let it be known that fingering will be allowed behind my tombstone.
Happy Sunday my friends! I’ll be taking next week off to soak up the Montana of it all (see above), but I hope you have a very fun 4th of July and that you have some plans to go for a swim in your near future. Jesse and I just went to the Highland Park pool with some friends and had such a blast! Glassell Park pool is next on the docket for sure, and the beach is absolutely crying out for a visit. Have a dunk! Have a blast! I’ll see you in two weeks!
One time my Montana grandma iconically ended a text by saying “kissy kissy and all that,” so today I’m extending the phrase to you:
Kissy kissy and all that!
xx Olivia
P.S. Friend of The Honeypot Alison Banowsky is making a beautiful and hilarious short film that she is currently fundraising for! Check out her GoFundMe for more information :)
David Lynch is from Missoula as well!