I woke up to the pitter patter of rain this morning. So it’s January in the Northern Rockies and this is apparently how we get the day started?
I know I’m nosing up on “You kids, get off my lawn” territory with the following comment, but I don’t remember winter being this nice back in the old days.
My first winter in the Rockies was spent in the Bitterroot. If my fading memory serves me correct, that country froze up about the time the prep basketball season began, and I didn’t feel liquid precipitation again until I stepped out of the Great Northern Bar one night while I was in Whitefish to cover a divisional basketball tournament.
I spent that winter high in the mountains on the Bitterroot’s west side, thinking it would be romantic to live in the woods after a lifetime growing up in Southern California. It wasn’t that much fun.
The drive to that old cabin wasn’t too bad, so long as things stayed frozen solid. Once the snow turned to slush however, things got dicey. I had a Suzuki Samurai back in those days. If you don’t remember, the Samurai was a smallish Japanese replica of the old Jeep CJs. It wasn’t such a bad rig for these parts as it rambled up and down the icy hills leading to my home just fine, so long as I had the front hubs locked up.
You remember the days of locking hubs, don’t you? It’s one of those quaint old-fashioned things that marks earlier eras, such as when it never rained in Montana during the basketball regular season. Those hubs worked just fine, as long as you didn’t mind stopping your car and taking a moment to lock them. It turns out that’s an inconvenience most of us aren’t willing to put up with anymore. That Samurai was the last vehicle I owned that required getting out in the cold in order to get power to all four corners.
Actually, as I remember it, it was cold inside that old rice burner as well. It had a cloth top that leaked cold air at speeds exceeding 30 mph. On Highway 93 at 65 mph I had to bundle up with a heavy coat and knit cap for the drive to Whitefish to cover that divisional tournament. And that was with the heater going full blast.
The manual locking hubs had issues besides the having-to-lock-them problem. Once I thought I’d locked them and hadn’t. One night I spent 15 futile minutes trying to make it up the final hill to my mountain retreat before I finally got out and looked. I had shifted the transfer case to four-wheel drive low, but had left the hubs unlocked.
Since I was a sportswriter, getting home after work meant getting home after most of my neighbors had gone to bed. I was spared the embarrassment of discovering my blunder in front of an audience, but I’m sure I woke everyone in the vicinity revving the tiny four cylinder that — and I intend following verb to be ironic — powered the Samurai.
Once I locked the hubs we scooted right home.
I once imagined I’d never need a vehicle more sophisticated than a well-maintained International Harvester Scout, but we’re all young and foolish at some point.
The Scout I drove for the better part of a Bitterroot hunting season was a fine vehicle, especially since the previous owner had replaced the wheezer four cylinder with a small block Chevy. That rig also had four on the floor and I remember being able to drive that Scout basically in two gears, second around town and fourth when I got out on the highway. Third was so closely spaced after second that it seemed a wasted intermediate step on my way to highway speeds, and that granny gear first had the engine a redline at about 10 mph. So I lugged that Scout around in second and fourth and the small block seemed no worse the wear.
The hard top on that rig leaked like a sieve too, especially when it rained. But that never happened during hoops season.