{"id":1656,"date":"2014-04-21T10:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T16:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=1656"},"modified":"2014-04-22T09:40:01","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T15:40:01","slug":"miles-city-a-man-walks-into-a-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/04\/miles-city-a-man-walks-into-a-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Miles City: A guy walks into a museum…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gumbo\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

This is the 80-pound ball of gumbo removed from a calf's hoof in Ingomar. But it also looks something like a giant prehistoric doughnut, perhaps one made several thousand years ago by the mother of a cyclops.<\/p><\/div>\n

MILES CITY \u2014 Here\u2019s why I love the Range Riders Museum.<\/p>\n

I stopped in at the Miles City landmark on Friday, hoping to get a photograph of what I have long thought of as the most emblematic artifact on display anywhere in Montana.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t been there in years, but there it was, in a display case not far from the main entrance to the extensive museum \u2014 an 80-pound clump of gumbo that was pulled off a calf\u2019s hoof near Ingomar.<\/p>\n

Gary Miller, co-curator of the museum with his wife, Bunny, said nothing else was known about the ball of gumbo. It was not known who the donor was, when it was given to the museum or exactly what feelings of pleasure were experienced by the calf when the gumbo was pulled from its hoof.<\/p>\n

I told Miller I might write something about the ball of gumbo, though I wasn\u2019t sure quite what. Mostly, I said, I just loved how weird it was, possibly the only giant chunk of gumbo on display at any museum in the world.<\/p>\n

In fact, though the museum\u2019s many buildings are stuffed with really fine, fascinating items \u2014 just check it out<\/a> \u2014 I always think of the odd little pieces tucked away here and there throughout the complex.<\/p>\n

\"Bul<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Tom Gilmore's collection of 15,000 empty Bull Durham sacks, graciously donated to the Range Riders Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n

When I said something to that effect to Miller, he just smiled, pointed up toward the ceiling and asked if I knew what it was that was hanging from a rafter. I was still processing what my eyes were taking in \u2014 it looked something like a giant hornet\u2019s nest \u2014 when Miller spilled the beans.<\/p>\n

It was a collection of 15,000 empty Bull Durham sacks donated by Tom Gilmore, \u201can old cowboy, a bachelor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he died of natural causes at 80-plus years old,\u201d Miller added. Sure enough, in the Pioneer Memorial Hall at the museum, there was a photo of Gilmore seated on a horse, and it said he lived from 1893 to 1973. Another portrait showed a handsome and apparently hale Gilmore.<\/p>\n

And who knows whether Gilmore donated only a portion of the Bull Durham sacks he emptied in his lifetime. In any case, he smoked a lot of those very harsh cigarettes. I used to roll my own and I smoked Bull Durham for a while. You could get 15 to 20 cigarettes out of one muslin sack, so that collection of bags represents anywhere from 225,000 to 300,000 cigarettes.<\/p>\n

I was still taking that in when Miller said there was something else I might find interesting. What\u2019s that? I asked.<\/p>\n

\"Doughnut\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

The famous 150-year-old doughnut.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWell, last week we had a birthday party for a 150-year-old doughnut we have here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t kidding. Supposedly, a young man named W.B. Chick left Portland, Maine, on April 13, 1864, to fight with the Union Army in the Civil War. His mother made him some doughnuts on the day he departed, and 15 years after the war he came out to Miles City to serve at Fort Keogh.<\/p>\n

When Chick arrived, Miller said, \u201che was cleaning out his backpack and he found that doughnut,\u201d apparently the only one left of those made for him by his mother. Chick gave the doughnut to his sister and it passed through several other hands before Mrs. H.K. Kroudy donated it to the Range Riders Museum when it opened in 1942.<\/p>\n

On April 13, the museum hosted the doughnut\u2019s 150th birthday party, which was attended by descendants of W.B. Chick from all over the country. Also on hand were two men in Civil War uniforms detailed to guard the doughnut.<\/p>\n

It must be said that the doughnut doesn\u2019t look anywhere near 150 years old. You\u2019d almost swear it was still edible, though you\u2019d probably want to dunk it in coffee first.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MILES CITY \u2014 Here\u2019s why I love the Range Riders Museum. I stopped in at the Miles City landmark on Friday, hoping to get a photograph of what I have long thought of as the most emblematic artifact on display anywhere in Montana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[498,499,497,496,495,500,501],"class_list":["post-1656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversions","category-montana","tag-civil-war","tag-fort-keogh","tag-gary-miller","tag-miles-city","tag-range-riders-museum","tag-tom-gilmore","tag-w-b-chick","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}