Big Sky Blog

Montana lost a little bit of 20th-century history a few weeks ago when the Western Aire drive-in movie theatre in Lewistown closed down:

After the Fourth of July weekend, the field will fall silent as the gates to the Western Aire Drive-In close for the final time. The Western Aire opened in 1944 in Lewistown, and not much has changed at what is believed to be Montana’s first drive-in movie theater in the 64 years since, said longtime resident Lily Zwolle.

According to Drive-In Theatre.com, that leaves Montana with only three drive-ins still in operation:

Silver Bow Twin Drive-In
Butte, MT 59701
(406) 782-8095

Midway Drive In Theatre
Junction of Highway 2 & 40, Columbia Falls MT 59912
(406) 892-4515

Midway Drive In Theatre
120 2nd Street East, Kalispell, MT 59901
(406) 752-7800

A little bit of history slipping away - sad. Just a few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I were talking about the Western Aire, and planned to visit and see a movie this summer. Wonder if drive-ins will ever make a comeback?

I noticed the beautiful full moon this morning and I grabbed my camera to take a picture of it to share. I was not overly happy with the way it turned out so I wasn’t planning on posting it until Kalamity challenged Monatana bloggers to share their pictures so I decided to share it. Be warned I am not particularly happy with the way it turned out.

Here comes the charge of outside money coming in to influence the state elections. The Republican Governors Association says, “we expect to be involved.” Why is it these groups feel they need to come in and try to influence our elections? Aren’t we smart enough to figure things out ourselves? Don’t get me wrong, Bob Brown needs all the help he can get and he doesn’t appear to be getting it from the people of Montana but that doesn’t mean they have to stick their nose in it.

As much as I personally don’t like Schweitzer I do have to agree, yea there is always a first time, with him when he states, “he’d rather see outside groups stay out of the Montana gubernatorial election when it comes to campaigning and campaign ads.” I will just add the money needs to stay out for all elections, including ballot issues where so much money tends to flow in, and let us decide.

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy. Theodore H White

Today, George Davis will be (I guess “has been” by this time) sentenced for the June 2003 shootings in Ennis that left a young man dead, and a family without a father.

God may have mercy on him; I’m rather hoping that the court doesn’t.

I don’t know what, if any, relevance it has, but Madison County Attorney Bob Zenker used to work for Judge Loren Tucker back when Judge Loren Tucker was plain old Madison County Attorney Loren Tucker and Bob Zenker was Assitant County Attorney Bob Zenker.

Interesting, no?

(Cross-posted to mtpolitics.net.)

The weather here in Kalispell - is pretty crappy - you can barely see the mountains that in case this town because they’re in the fog, the skies are grey and rain is constantly coming down in droves.

Today total, we must have had at least 20 minutes of sun and that was around 1:30.

And of course while I write this the rain has calmed down. Thank you rain. Gr. But yesterday, Eureka, where my dad is working on a house (he’s a Sub-Contractor) received a foot in rain for the total day.

Now the rain has almost stopped. That was a good five minutes of fun! I hope it’s sunny where the rest of you are.

-

Now the sun is shining. Montana weather works in many of strange ways.

Fellow Montana bloggers, please forgive me if you haven’t yet received an invitation to join this site, and please don’t fret if your site is not yet added to the sidebar! I just started this site the other day, and haven’t yet had the time to fully “create” everything — as you can tell from the bizarre design, missing links, and such. Hang in there — you ALL will get invitations within the next few days so that we can truly make this a BIG SKY BLOG - of, by, and for Montanans!