Mooreover / Blog

People are fun to watch. It doesn’t matter if they’re Montana people or Seattle people - although I think that it does matter where the people that are being watched are at. Kami and I just returned from a trip to Montana, and while I watched a lot of Montanans, they weren’t nearly as fun to watch as those visiting Montana.

I was trying to read my book at Logan International Airport in Montana, and would have made good progress if not for the steel magnolias sitting down from me at our gate. There were four of them, none of them under 65, all of them in sweaters and gold. They were several bloody mary’s into a good day when a self-described “hobby rancher” sat down across from them.

(Let me break here - my dad is a rancher, and for those that make ranching their vocation, nothing is as patronizing as rich people that play pretend with your career. That’s my perception anyway - I won’t speak for my dad. Thinking about it now, I’d love to hear his thoughts on “hobby ranchers”…)

Anyway, this “hobby rancher” had fully immersed himself into the attire of his hobby. He was wearing a flannel shirt, bib overalls, old cowboy boots and a John Deere trucker cap. Oh - and he had a salt-and-pepper beard - which leads me to believe that “Uncle Jesse” was also a hobby rancher. He barely had a chance to sit down before the Golden Girls turned their heads to look him over. They looked at him without imposing judgment - rather, they seemed to regard him as a piece of art from another culture - something to peruse, to appreciate, to buy the postcard of later and send to their families back home. He seemed to revel in the attention, and before long he was waxing poetic about the Montanan way of life - his adopted way of life.

Soon the pictures came out. I’m not exactly sure where they came from (although I would guess that those bib pockets were troves of untold wealth), but they were as good as a National Geographic photo shoot to the ladies of privilege. There was a lot of gasping and clutching of the chest, as though the beauty of this man’s ranch, his house, and his dog were almost too much to bear. Mr. Hobby Rancher kept passing out pictures, telling stories and anecdotes, and I watched over the pages of my book to see bejeweled hands grasping glossy photos and watching their heads bob like Elmo in agreement to the man’s every word.

I don’t remember seeing the old ladies or the hobby rancher on the plane, which makes me think that perhaps they skipped their flight entirely, and went back to his place for some California wine and a quick tour of his petting zoo. All of his animals probably ate well that night, lured in for a closer look by the promise of a handful of grain.

Or not. That’s the thing about watching people. If you only watch them, and not engage them, you don’t really know what they’re like. Which makes me a little sad. Maybe the hobby rancher is on to something…