Monday Matters: Born to be wild?

By Jeff Gibson - 08/20/2007

Jeff Gibson

Old pirates?

Some of the motor-cyclists who filled Butte’s streets during Evel Knievel Days wore helmets, but many had only a scrap of cloth on their heads — the biker’s do-rag, or a billed or short-visored cap. Some were bareheaded. Bikers don’t have much use for protective headgear. They dislike helmets so much that they have successfully lobbied 30 states to repeal or reject mandatory helmet laws.

That’s one reason, say the highway safety people, that motor-cycle fatalities have risen for nine straight years. Bikes also are more powerful today, and booze plays a part in fatalities, just as it does in many car accidents.

Also, people over age 40 now own about half the nation’s motorcycles. One-fourth are owned by people over 50. Older people generally understand that they are neither bullet-proof nor skid-proof and, presumably, drive fairly sensibly. But here’s a guess: Those who start to ride motorcycles later in life might be at greater risk than those who started young. The most skillful older riders we know were on small motorbikes by the time they learned to walk, approximately. They grew up on motorcycles.

Today, one automotive writer contends, many a Harley “is piloted by a middle-aged man looking to recapture his pirate youth.” It helps if these guys really were pirates, once upon a time. Some of the bike- riding old-timers we saw wobbling along Butte streets during EK Days looked like they never had a swashbuckling day in their lives. Be careful, geezers, and wear those helmets!

Flashy A recent report said that rich people who donate money prefer to give to arts and cultural groups. Less-affluent givers tend to donate to human services groups. Bill Gross, a billionaire liberal and a Wall Street “bond king” commented on this recently.

“Multiple vacation homes ... multi-million- dollar birthday bashes and ego-rich donations to local art museums ... are ... ways that rich people waste money ... When millions are dying from AIDS and malaria ... it is hard to justify the umpteenth society gala held for ... a performing arts center or an art museum. A thirty million dollar gift for a concert hall is not philanthropy, it is a Napoleonic coronation.” Self- coronation, that is.

Which brings to mind the Bozeman Museum of the Rockies’ annual “Wine Classic” and fundraising auctions. Rich folks bid $13,000 for a bamboo fishing rod and some flies, $97,000 for a small horse statue, $50,000 for a private tour and tasting at a Napa Valley winery and $45,000 to eat dinner with Tom Brokaw and his wife. A man who attended said that many of the bidders arrived in limousines. Limousines are fancy cars that people feel important to be seen stepping out of.

The Museum of the Rockies is a fine institution. It’s nice that people donate to it. And it’s quite possible that some of those big givers also give heavily to rescue missions, food banks and groups that help disadvantaged kids. There’s not much flash in donations like those, but they do tend to separate the altruistic from the egotistic.

Mixed values The Museum of the Rockies auction (item above) did offer some traditional Montana cultural experiences. A private elk hunt was offered by one ranch owner. The ranch, however, is only 400 acres in size, not exactly a spread by Montana standards. Maybe it adjoins a public forest. A youth elk hunt was offered by another landowner. We don’t know what these hunts brought at the auction.

A land company offered “Roosters on the Range,” a guided, catered pheasant hunt for two on a Gallatin Valley property. Even the shotguns came with the package.

Fishing trips were auctioned off, as well. Actually, “angling,” not “fishing.” Makes a difference with this bunch. Somebody seeking more than a Montana trout experience bid $12,000 to angle in Argentina. Somebody else bid $16,000 to go fishing and crabbing in the San Juan Islands, and somebody else yet paid $80,000 take a boat ride on the French Riviera in a Gallatin Valley gated community’s private yacht.

Billionaire Bill Gross is right, even if he is a rich liberal: There have got to be better ways to spend that kind of money.

Beanpole Back when our kids were small, various “parenting” magazines published formulas for estimating how tall your child would be at maturity. You were told to take their current height, add this much, subtract that much, divide by another number, and you would get, supposedly, the child’s height at age 18. At age 5, it looked like our daughter would top out at 7 feet, but she didn’t.

Our oldest grandson is 6. He plays youth baseball in another town, and the team prints up baseball cards of the players each year. The cards list the kids’ weight, height and age. When our grandson was 5½, he was 3 feet, 9 inches tall and weighed 44 pounds. A year later he had grown to 4 feet, 1 inch, but his weight had increased to only 49 pounds. Simple arithmetic tells us that when the lad hits 98 pounds, he’ll be 8 feet, 2 inches tall. There’s a future in athletics for that boy, but it won’t be in baseball.

Down the YouTube Columnist Mitch Albom wrote in the Standard two weeks ago that “YouTube” is the future. In fact, the YouTube future is already here, Albom said, and he suggested that this is not necessarily a good thing.

We wouldn’t know, being an “offline” sort of person. We don’t have a cell phone, cable TV, voice mail or any of the electronic toys that have revolutionized society — without our even noticing. Strangely enough, our life has not been diminished by the absence of these things. Nor do we see how it could be much enhanced by their presence, but it’s hard to be sure of that. All we know about YouTube is what we read.

Revolutionary advances in infotainment media are OK, but what about the simpler pleasures of yore? Whatever happened to Pac-man?

— Jeff Gibson is a retired Montana Standard editor.