Cowboys, Indians, and Me

By Jim Hendrickson

Come along on an adventurous trip to North Central United States, and learn about the cowboy president Teddy Roosevelt, the cowboy artist Charles Russell, the Plains Indians, Lewis & Clark, the Hutterite colonies, and much, much more! In this book you will meet many interesting people, and visit fascinating places in five American states located in the North Central region of the country. The book reads much like a personal diary of the author's adventures experienced in his native land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Hendrickson
• Release date: Feb 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781393899013

Jim Hendrickson

Jim Hendrickson is a retired Professor of Spanish and English as a Second Language. He speaks English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. He has taught elementary school, high school, adult education, community college, college, and university in seven states. He worked as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University, a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Bolivia and Chile, and a Language Consultant for the United States Peace Corps in Belize.  Jim has received many teaching and publishing awards including the Distinguished Faculty Award at Lansing Community College in Michigan, the Stephen A. Freeman Award for authoring the best article on teaching techniques to have appeared in a professional journal in 1980, and an award for writing the best article published in The Modern Language Journal in 1978. Jim has traveled in over 150 countries and is an avid long-distance tour bicyclist. He has cycled extensively in the United States, as well as in Europe, Africa, Australia, and on various islands in Oceania. He has presented over 500 travelogues in many schools, churches, libraries, museums, senior and community centers, city auditoriums, as well as on radio and television shows, and has been featured in numerous American and international newspapers. Jim has published more than 60 foreign language textbooks including The Spice of Life (Harcourt), Our Global Village (Harcourt), Poco a poco (Heinle & Heinle), Intercambios (Heinle & Heinle), Nuevas dimensiones (Heinle & Heinle), and Nuevas alturas (Heinle & Heinle). One of his best-selling books, Poco a poco, has been reconfigured into a best-selling book, Plazas: Lugar de Encuentros (Heinle & Heinle). He is also the author of another best seller: Spanish Grammar Flipper (Christopher Lee). Jim has also published articles on psycholinguistics in Foreign Language Annals, TESOL Quarterly, The Modern Language Journal, The Canadian Modern Language Review, and Hispania. Jim has published the following thirteen travel ebooks about his adventures and misadventures: Like a Leaf on a River, North to Alaska!, Vagabond on a Bicycle, Travel is my Passion, Shalom, Israel!, RVing to the Land of the Midnight Sun, Heaven on Earth, Around the World in Thin Slices, South Pacific Odyssey, My Endless Pursuit of Travel, Baja Adventure!, Strange Tales of Jefferson County, and Footloose in Southern South America.

Book preview

COWBOYS, INDIANS, AND ME

(Montana, Minnesota, South Dakota,

Wyoming, and North Dakota)

Jim Hendrickson

Copyright © 2023 

All rights reserved

Distributed by Draft2Digital

E-books by Jim Hendrickson

LIKE A LEAF ON A RIVER (Travels of a Young Man)

THE RESTLESS GLOBETROTTER (Germany, Greece, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the Cook Islands, and the Marquesas Islands)

NORTH TO ALASKA! (Montana to Alaska by Bicycle)

SHALOM, ISRAEL! (Washington State to Israel by Bicycle)

VAGABOND ON A BICYCLE (100,000 Miles and 100 Cultures on a Bike)

TRAVEL IS MY PASSION (Memoirs of a World Traveler)

RVing TO THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN (Washington State to Alaska)

AROUND THE WORLD IN THIN SLICES (From Asia Through the Northwest Passage)

SOUTH PACIFIC ODYSSEY (The Marquesas Islands, the Mariana Islands, South Australia, American Samoa, Samoa, and Indonesia)

HEAVEN ON EARTH (Travels of a Restless Soul)

MY ENDLESS PURSUIT OF TRAVEL (Western, Northern, and Central Canada, Minnesota, Colorado, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and Kosovo)

BAJA ADVENTURE! (San Diego to San Lucas)

STRANGE TALES OF JEFFERSON COUNTY (Stories from a World Traveler at Home)

FOOTLOOSE IN SOUTHERN SOUTH AMERICA (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and the Falkland Islands / las Islas Malvinas)

WANDERLUST IS IN MY BLOOD (Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, Sicily, Germany, Ukraine, the Republic of Georgia, and Armenia)

COWBOYS, INDIANS, AND ME (Montana, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and North Dakota)

ISLAND-HOPPING IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC (Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, and Samoa)

WORLDWIDE ADVENTURES BY BOAT & SHIP (Europe, Arctic, North America, Oceania, Australia, and Antarctica)

RVing AROUND FABULOUS FLORIDA (From Tip to Toe)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

E-books by Jim Hendrickson

INTRODUCTION

1. Montana

2. Minnesota

3. South Dakota

4. Wyoming

5. North Dakota

About the author

1

Montana

In mid-August, I left my temporary home in Chimacum, Washington, and drove my pickup truck to Moses Lake, a much larger town in the same state. I checked into an EconoLodge motel, which once was a Travel Inn. I noticed that the elderly woman who worked at the front desk had a bad cold and a painful right arm. She called me Honey in the friendly and charming American Southern way. Feeling sorry for her, I reciprocated her friendliness by giving her a few sugar-free honey-lemon cough drops, and said, I hope these will help soothe your throat. (I almost added the word Honey after the word throat, but thought that she might have taken it the wrong way.)

Honey assigned me to a clean room except for its very filthy easy chair in which I refused to sit. That night I didn't sleep well because of the constant roar of motor traffic racing by on the busy street out front, in addition to my room's very loud air-conditioner. But hey, I paid only US $51.26 for the room, including all taxes, plus an advertised continental breakfast. Because I ate very little during the day, I was really looking forward to that free meal.

The next morning, Honey unlocked the motel's front door at precisely seven o'clock. I was the first guest to arrive and enjoy the continental breakfast. The tiny dining room was part of the small lobby with only two round dark brown tables, each surrounded by four matching chairs. I wanted to make a waffle, so Honey went to the backroom (presumably where she lived) and stirred up a large bowl of waffle batter, which she set on the dining room counter along with a bowl of hard-boiled eggs.

Unfortunately, the waffle-making machine was extremely filthy, but I used it anyway, without reporting the matter to the local health department. There was no milk for the meager amount of Apple Jacks and cornflakes left over from days past in an old dispensing machine, plus one lonely package of instant oatmeal resting in a bowl. In a plastic transparent bread box, I saw two unopened loaves of bread, one white and one wheat. I didn't dare look at their expiration dates. Beside them was a large plate of small sweet rolls, plus a coffee-making machine, and another machine that dispensed apple and orange juice.

While I was eating my waffle and two hard-boiled eggs, a couple walked in with their cute 6-year-old son, who had a missing front tooth and several gold teeth. That surprised me because he was so young. The threesome were also staying at the EconoLodge.

The mother asked her son, What do you want for breakfast?

I don't care, he answered.

She cranked some cornflakes from the cereal dispenser into a Styrofoam bowl, then looked around for some milk. Noticing her need, I said: There isn't any milk. She spotted a small silver bell atop the front desk, and shuffled over there, and tingled it several times to call Honey. Oh, she stepped out just before y'all came in, I said. She's out walking her dog. The woman shrugged, stepped up to the juice dispenser, and shot a small amount of orange juice into her son's bowl of cornflakes. Breakfast was served.

At 7:30, I left for Missoula, Montana. During the 300-mile drive, it rained most of the way, but I enjoyed the beautiful scenery, especially while driving along Interstate 90 through the mountains of Northern Idaho. When I reached Missoula, I located my Airbnb accommodation, where I had reserved a basement bedroom. My hostess wasn't home, but her middle-aged husband or boyfriend (I never learned which) arrived a half-hour later. He told me that my room key was in a holder attached to the rear door of the garage. I had forgotten about that information item, but...oh well, life is