Match Made in Dry Creek

Winter and guilt didn't go well together in Dry Creek, Montana. Not even for Mrs. Hargrove, who, after decades of living in the small town, was used to the icy snow that sometimes trapped a person alone inside her house for days with only her own thoughts for company. Mrs. Hargrove had lived her life with few regrets, so she generally spent the snowy days peacefully chopping vegetables for soup or putting together thousand-piece puzzles. This past winter she hadn't been able to do either of those things, however. Her conscience was troubling her, and she lacked the focus needed to figure out a puzzle or decide what to put into a pot of soup. Instead, she sat and stared at the pictures on the mantel over her fireplace. There was the picture of her and her late husband, taken on their wedding day. And then there was a picture of her daughter, Doris June, taken when she graduated from high school. It wasn't a particularly good picture because, even though Doris June was smiling, she had a certain stiffness in her face that Mrs. Hargrove hadn't noticed until recently. The graduation picture had been a last-minute idea and had been taken in a department store instead of at the high school like the pictures of the other students. Doris June hadn't seemed to care about a picture, but Mrs. Hargrove had wanted one even though, for years now, she had expected to exchange that graduation picture for a glowing picture of Doris June on her wedding day. The wedding picture was going to be the real picture on the mantel place. It was what Mrs. Hargrove was waiting for. But that wedding day never came. This winter, as she sat on her sofa looking at the picture she did have, Mrs. Hargrove finally accepted the truth. Doris June was not going to get married. The one huge miscalculation Mrs. Hargrove had made in her life had come back to haunt her and she couldn't stop fretting about it. She had unknowingly pushed away the only man Doris June had ever loved. For years, Mrs. Hargrove had hoped God would take care of everything in His own time, but He had not. It had all come crashing back into Mrs. Hargrove's awareness in early January when she and Charley Nelson had sat down at her kitchen table to begin writing a history of their small town. The two of them were the oldest of the two hundred some residents of Dry Creek, and, when the state tourism board asked the town to write a section for an upcoming guidebook, everyone said she and Charley were the natural ones to write it. Both of them agreed to do the work, thinking it would be a good way for them to pass the cold winter months pleasantly. It didn't take them long to realize what kind of trouble they were in, however. They knew it as soon as they opened the large white envelope the state tourism board had sent in care of the local cafeacute;. Mrs. Hargrove and Charley had not known until then that the guidebook was being calledStop at One-Stop-Sign Towns in Southern Montana.Each town was supposed to begin their two pages of history and visitor attractions with an opening paragraph telling what made their particular old red stop sign unique. It was a clever advertising idea and the state had invited several high schools in the area to help them with the tourism guide so the whole thing was a worthy project. Some art students were even going to take pictures of the signs and make a collage. Mrs. Hargrove and Charley were both one-hundred percent in favor of anything that helped students learn. However, the stop sign in Dry Creek was the last thing either one of them wanted to write about. Mrs. Hargrove wished people would just forget about that old sign. Dry Creek's one stop sign was at the south end of town next to the Enger home place. Twenty-five years ago two local teenagers had hit the sign with an old blue pickup truck as they were beginning their elopement to Las Vegas. The passenger side of the truck had bent the signpostTronstad, Janet is the author of 'Match Made in Dry Creek ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373874279 and ISBN 0373874278.