Richard A. Harlow organized the Montana Railroad on May 26, 1895 to run originally from Lombard on the Missouri River where it connected with the Northern Pacific running approximately 56 miles to Leadboro in the Castle Mountains which was in the throes of a silver boom.
The Depression of 1893 caused the demise of profitable mining in the Castle area and Richard Harlow came up “a day late and a dollar short” when he entered into transportation of ores from the Castles.
The Montana Railroad in its early years rarely if ever made a profit so when Mr. Harlow decided in 1899 to extend his rails into the Musselshell Valley and eventually to Lewistown, he had to use much persuasion or “jawboning” to achieve financing. Hence, the moniker “The Jawbone” came to be associated with the Montana Railroad.
Tracks reached Merino in June of 1900. A new town was formed here and rail yards were constructed which were renamed Harlow after the Montana Railroad’s builder but the United States Post Office required the name be changed as it appeared to close to “Harlem” a town and railway station on the Great Northern Railway in northern Montana. So, to comply, the name was amended to Harlowton, which is what it is today.
In its final configuration, the Montana Railroad operated over 157 miles of tracks which was incorporated into the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway system in 1908.
For those that ski, this is some pretty exciting news. The ski slopes have been somewhat lacking of late and have caused a bit of concern for our mountain resort owners.
Whitefish currently only has a settled base of only 16 inches, whereas Showdown isn’t reporting a base. Showdown is expected to open on Dec. 10.
Red Lodge Mountain is reporting only 12 inches at the base, but the weather has produced another 8 inches just today.
The current weather forecast for Red Lodge Mountain looks to be cold and somewhat snowy throughout the week.
Last night we attended the 38th annual Christmas Stroll here in town on Central.
Seemed to not be as vibrant as some of the other past strolls were though. Sure, there were lots of people milling about, but it didn’t seem as well lit and as festive as we had become somewhat used to.
I remember Santa and his reindeer camped out in the D.A. Davidson parking lot complete with all of the straw bails and lights with the children all lined up expecting to meet him. The ski jump, the street bands and dancing.
Just a few years ago we had stopped in at the now closed JJ’s for hot chocolate, and hanging out outside of the In Cahoots for Tea, which, incidentally, was closed as well.
The Army Surplus store was always seemingly a big hit too, but it’s closed down. The downtown antique mall is also closed down.
The only place that was selling hot chocolate was Tracy’s. Tracy’s had a wait time of 45 minutes, and it took another 35 minutes to get our food. We nearly could have spent the entire stroll period at Tracy’s. Can’t blame Tracy’s though, because if there had been more places opened that served actual food, Tracy’s wouldn’t have been so busy.
We didn’t stop in at Dragonfly Dry Goods because we don’t actually live in …. Seattle.
The Yellow Submarine truck was parked at the intersection outside of Tracy’s playing, of all things, Beatles music — No Christmas music … just Beatles. It wasn’t even lit up — It just sat parked in the dark, playing the Beatles
A band played on the lower level of the Times Square, and it seemed there were more small vendors on the street level. The elevators there always seem to be quite a draw with the younger folks.
The only real exciting part was the annual polar plunge. The rest were just maybe 4, maybe 5 food vendors. The Parade of Lights was much more crowded and well attended this year it seems – um … and more stores were open.
We didn’t need tattoos and we didn’t have the desire to rent board games or enroll in online college, so we settled on Tracy’s for food, and Feather Your Nest for gifts.
Could have probably spent more money if there had been stores open on Central that were more in touch with the community. We might have actually spent quite a bit more if going to the Bar was our thing, but we don’t feel the need for alcohol when we’re out being social. We just pretty much like to poke around and shop our interests as they might relate to our being functional and practical.
We did pick up a few things at Feather Your Nest however, Dustin got a really cool set of fold-up binoculars. He seems to have an eye for things that might be dated and old. We joke around sometimes about him growing up to own an antique store but never selling anything because it’s all a part of his collection.
I’m not quite sure why the Stroll was a bit off this year. It could be that the folks that used to put it on retired and a bunch of new folks came in to take their place. Could also be that downtown vendors just moved out or quit. It could be any number of reasons I suppose. I was mostly just disappointed that it didn’t have all of the panache that the Parade of Lights or the 4th of July Parade had.
I’ve got this little habit of collecting various older computers and rebuilding them to modern standards. I mostly concentrate on boxes produced between 1999-2007, but a few weeks ago I happened across this HP 260 G2 Mini computer.
Sure, it’s not exactly vintage, but it caught my eye due to it’s size and power. When I say power, I’m talking about power in it’s class. This thing sports a snappy little Intel Pentium CPU 4405U and runs out at 2.10 GHz.
Anything running less than 2.00 GHz is really sort of a dog in my opinion, so I outfit the units with new motherboards, processors, and other what-nots.
At any rate, I upgraded the operating system from Windows 10 Pro, to Windows 11 Pro. Short of not having the required TPM 2.0 that Windows 11 might require, the operating system does everything that it’s supposed to do. This little mini came with 4GB of RAM, which I promptly upgraded to 8GB. The 500GB HDD has plenty of room as well.
This thing has everything that a mid-range notebook might have, right down to the built-in wireless networking card, the Bluetooth, and the HDMI port on the back.
I like the fact that it’s so small. I never really ever get anything like this in my little shop to repair, so for now it’s somewhat of a novelty. While doing my research on this little computer, I became a little more interested in the mini’s in general.
I went to Amazon and discovered that there are mini’s that are way more powerful than a lot of the full sized towers and laptops that are in circulation now.
For instance. There’s a Beelink SER Mini PC AMD Ryzen 7 3750H 4C/8T Windows 10 Pro Desktop Computer for right around $600 bucks. Considering just how small my overall work area is, it might be something I could be interested in at a later date should the notion suit me.
This little HP 260 G2 DM holds it’s own for it’s size. Sort of like a lower to mid-range notebook, but my HP Core 2 Quad is still much faster than this. Not real sure what I’ll do with this little box. I may sell it, or keep it. If I ever did decide to use it in any capacity, I’d have to get into the habit of keeping my desk pretty much free of the clutter in order to prevent it from being perpetually buried in the mess.
For as old as this unit is, and the fact that I didn’t really have to upgrade anything but the operating system and the RAM, I think I’ll hang on to it for a while.
Processed milk contains numerous chemicals that can, and often times do, effect your health. Treated milk contains the hormone IGF-1 and has been proven to be a major cause of breast, colon, and prostate cancers.
Milk bought from the grocery store also contains Anti-inflammatories like (niflumic acid, mefenamic acid, ketoprofen, diclofenac, phenylbutazone, naproxen, flunixin, diclofenac), and Sex hormones (17-beta-estradiol), and Anti-fungal drugs (triclosan).
It doesn’t stop there.
Store bought milk also contains, Antibiotics (florfenicol), Steroid hormones (17-alpha-ethinylestradiol), and Anti-malaria drugs (pyrimethamine).
A little something to think about the next time you tank up on milk from the grocery store.
It’s hard to think of people just being simply lactose intolerant when we find all of these other chemicals in milk.
