Only in Montana would you find such campy favorites as the faux-buffalo hide Koozie, bottle openers cast to look like a bear will bite open your beer for you, and shirts bearing the black silhouette of a moose-head cleverly disguised as the Batman logo. My favorite, however, which I discovered today at work, are the wine glasses that look like mason jars-- complete with metal screw on lids.
I could go on about how you could just drink out of a mason jar and not spend the extra money to have one with a stem, but I won't. Nor will I mention how buying one of these relics is a helluva lot trashier than actually re-using a mason jar (not knocking the habit, a lot of the glasses in my home are either old mason jars or washed out glass jelly jars. ......and I mean a lot). I will, however, note that I find it moronic that this is what appeals to tourists. This is what appeals to people who come to Montana to ride horses for a couple of days and look at cows as they drive along the (le gasp) paved streets that connect the farm land to the "city".
It makes me sad that I've grown up in a town where you're more likely to get kicked in the face by a cow than see a person of color. (Once you're past a certain level of "watered down" in terms of your heritage, you have regained "white person" status). It makes me sad that in order to appeal to tourists, we have hotels with decorum such as someone would expect in a log cabin-- logs, and mounted animal heads. It makes me sad that Canadians think that Montanans ride horses to school (true story).
I guess that we must maintain this "hick", "rides horses to school" image in order to stand out amongst the states. How can we do this? By taking the beautiful land around us and the hunter/farmer way of life that breeds in "the last best place" and exploiting it. Because hell, who wants dignity when you can make a fortune selling wine glasses that look like mason jars.
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