Old Missoula

Missoula – God’s country – From ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac

“During the depression,” said the cowboy to me, “I used to hop freights at least once a month. In those days you’d see hundreds of men riding a flatcar or in a boxcar, and they weren’t just bums, they were all kinds of men out of work and going from one place to another and some of them just wandering. It was like that all over the West. Brakemen never bothered you in those days. I don’t know about today. Nebraska I ain’t got no use for. Why in the middle nineteen thirties this place wasn’t nothing but a big dustcloud as far as the eye could see. You couldn’t breathe. The ground was black. I was here in those days. They can give Nebraska back to the Indians as far as I’m concerned. I hate this damn place more than any place in the world. Montana’s my home now – Missoula. You come up there sometime and see God’s country.” Later in the afternoon I slept when he got tired of talking – he was an interesting talker.