Intro to Montana: People Are Nice, um, REALLY Nice.

I’ve spent a sizeable chunk of my life in the Midwest, and a much smaller chunk in NYC, so I have a pretty good idea what “nice people” are (and aren’t). I remember how hard it was for me initially in NYC, getting used to the fact that anyone felt the right to say whatever the FUCK *fist pumping the air* they wanted to to anyone at anytime. It just made my heart sad. Yet after 2½ years I did come to appreciate that in NYC, a lot of the bullshit and crap people constantly try to get away with and pull on each other is simply not tolerated and instantly halted. In the Midwest, there’s a good deal of grinning and bearing it, even when someone’s grinding his boot in your face.

Nonetheless, if given the choice, I’d take Midwestern smiles over NYC fuck-you’s. And in Montana, it seems that it’s the Midwesterners who are going to come off as rude. In just a few short days in Montana, Beau and I have experienced a degree of niceness that I’ve never experienced, to the point where it’s almost a mind fuck. A couple of examples:

- We had stopped in one of those massive “travel stops” (truck stops) right on the edge of Missoula. I had purposely gone in to buy a map of Missoula so we could apartment hunt and such. We went straight to the map rack and grabbed one. I walked around the store for awhile looking at stuff, but I really didn’t have any intention of buying anything else. Then the woman behind the counter came up to me in the aisle and said, “I saw you carrying that map of Missoula. Here, take this one instead…for free.” I thanked her profusely, put the retail map back, and then hissed to Beau, “Quick, go buy a cup of coffee or something!”

- Beau and I were sitting in the car in the parking lot of Kinko’s, a map stretched out between us. We were in the middle of running some errands in our job/apartment search. Suddenly, there was a knock on his window. We both looked up surprised; there was a woman standing there. As he rolled down the window, the woman smiled and said, “I see you were looking at a map. Can I help you find something?” We both just sat there for a moment with our mouths open, stunned. What then made the situation comedic is that the woman proceeded to fail in her attempts to tell us how to get to where we were going (we had actually just figured it out by ourselves), and kept making apologetic comments like, “I’m sorry, I’m not actually good with directions.” Hahaha.

- The next day we entered a bed-furniture showroom and were approached by a sales clerk who in and of herself was very sweet. After talking to us for a bit (people seem to frequently ask you your life story here), she asked us for our names and addresses. When I paused, wary of receiving a wave of junk mail, she smiled and reassured me, “No, we won’t send you ANY mail or put you on ANY list. I simply want to send you a thank you note for taking the time to come in today.” All I could say was, “Oh. Okay.” It was so….nice. But, necessary? It didn’t stop there though. When Beau mentioned I was looking for a job, the woman quickly trotted over to her desk and came back with an application in her hand. “You can apply to work here!” she said smiling. Wow. (Note: we did receive just that, a thank you card in the mail a few days later. No further junk mail has arrived).

When experiencing such hospitality, my natural instinct is to be suspicious – I’m a great hater of insincerity. But so far, it seems that everyone we’ve talked to have been just that, sincere. It kind of makes you feel good and allows you to relax a little. I hope it lasts.

Another interesting thing that has come up is the make-up of people we’ve met here in Missoula. We’ve been running ‘round and ‘round town on apartment searches, job searches, furniture searches, etc. so we’ve run into a good number of people, and like I said before, they tend to be chatty. What I’ve found, and pretty darn close to 100%, is that every woman I’ve met is from some other state and has moved here to join a Montana man she fell in love with. I don’t know what it is about these boys from Big Sky country, but they seem to have some sort of magical charm on their side, not only enticing women, but getting them to relocate all the way up here into the beautiful, but chilly mountains. Or else, Montana women must just hate them.

And of course, now I am another one to add to the statistic, seeing as how I am from another place and Beau is a Montana boy.

Finally, the last thing we’ve noted, quite happily I will say, is that people really, really seem to like it here in Missoula. With just a single exception (a very surly woman who ended up being our only negative experience so far in regards to when we were apartment hunting), every single person I have talked to has told me, with unguarded enthusiasm, just how great it is here. Okay, they’ll admit that winter isn’t exactly paradise, but that once Spring, and particularly Summer hits, that we’re in for long, beautiful days of sunshine (light ‘til 10pm), and if you’re the “outdoorsy type,” you’ll find gorgeous days of hiking, biking, canoeing, and kayaking. I am a very big fan of canoeing, myself. One woman told me that during the summer, her and her husband went canoeing every single day after work, so that each day felt like the weekend. Residents champion the city’s diversity (“Well, at least compared to the rest of Montana!”), the art scene, the vibrant university, and the city’s wild and unrelenting growth. Driving around, the urban sprawl is pretty obvious. On more than one occasion, people would say, “Did you see such and such area? That wasn’t even there ten years ago!”

I like the idea of being in a place of rapid growth and hope we’ve gotten here early enough to still be able to afford a house in a few years. One thing you will hear Montanians complain bitterly about is those darn Californians (including various celebrities) who come in, buy up large tracts of land and build lavish houses upon them, and then suddenly everyone is experiencing a painful hike in property taxes. Seeing as how there is NO sales tax in the state, the government typically recovers their money through … you guessed it… property tax (as well as vehicle license and registration). It really seems to piss people here off.

Well, looks like we have a few years to build up our own resentment, and a nice down payment. In the meantime, I’ll try to be less suspicious and more accepting.