Strange But True Story

My strange but true story starts twenty-five years ago, when I was sixteen. I had just hitched a ride back out to Interstate 90 as the sun was setting. The previous night I had been caught alone in the back country on the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park, in a freak May blizzard. A grizzly bear pawed the ground outside my tent in the middle of the night, scaring me half to death. That, however, is another story.

This strange-but-true-story starts with me standing on the side of the freeway ramp, with my thumb out. Even here in the valley near Livingston there was snow on the lilac flowers, and my tennis shoes were still wet from stumbling (lost) through the mountains earlier in the day. After an hour or two, a car finally pulled over, and this is how I met Violet.

It was tough to determine her age, but from the stories she told, I guessed she was in her fifties. She was on her way home from her brother's trial in Bozeman. When I asked her what he was on trial for, she told me "He killed his girlfriend," and in case I doubted her, she flipped over the newspaper on the seat. There she was on the front page, with the headline, "Sister Says He Should Be Hanged."

"He just cut her up for no good reason," she explained. Not knowing what to say, I said nothing. Although she seemed perfectly comfortable talking about it, she graciously changed the subject.

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