Cutting Corners in Montana

The last time I was in Montana, I was too young to have any serious memories. We would have passed through the corners of the state on our way to visits to grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles in Canada from my father’s side of the family. This time, thirty plus years later, I got a rock in my rental tire that started scraping and grinding against the wheel for miles and miles, enough that I worried the wheel might actually come off. The town I started driving in was pretty vacant and the nearest mechanic of any repute was, no joke, about eighty miles away. So I gripped the wheel for all of those straight-laced miles until I landed at a shop, met an extremely gracious man, and watched as he pulled my tire, removed the rock, and sent me on my way. Even still, I only ever cut the corner of the state, just as I did when I was a child.