A Feast on Boloney Sandwiches

When we moved to Billings, MT no one in our immediate family had ever been west
 of the Mississippi River. My story is much like in the days of families going
 west in covered wagons looking for a better life. I did have the advantage of
 having a 14 foot cube van and Interstate 90.

The mentality of moving west not knowing anyone or knowing what would happen were much the same.

Our move started one day when I came home rather frustrated. I am originally from
 Upstate New York and after living 7 years in Washingto D.C. We moved back to
 New York State. This day happened after we had been back in New York for about
 5 years.

I basically told my wife that I was tired of New York and wanted to try someplace
 else. Since we had moved 5 times in Washington my wife was getting rather tired
 of moving. She said," OK, but this is the last time. Where do we WANT to live?

That night we got a map of the United States out and started a process of
 elimination. We didn't want to go back to the Rat Race in Washington D.C.
 Florida is nice but a lot of housing is built on concrete slabs so there isn't
 a lot of wood flooring work there. California wasn't appealing to either of us.

My wife had always wanted to move west. We started looking at the state of Montana. What made this interesting is no one in our immediate family had ever been west of the Mississippi River and we were considering moving to Montana, sight unseen.

We contacted people in Real Estate and anyone else we could think of to give us
 some information about Montana.

It finally got to the point where I came to the conclusion that if I didn't just
 move out soon and take a look myself I probably never would move out to Montana.

I had a 14 foot cube van. I loaded it with all the wood flooring tools and wood
 I had. Stocked up on food and my 14 year old son, Matthew and I headed west on
 I-90.

We laid a packing blanket over the wood and that became our bed for the next 10 week.  The cube van was our home, shop, and vehicle.

I drove west till I was too tired to drive anymore and just pulled the truck over
 and went to sleep. I did this drive...sleep...drive...sleep routine for 4 days.
 
I remember the last day we were starting to wonder if there really was any
civilization in Montana. Undeveloped land extended in all directions as far as
 the eye could see. We were fighting a headwind which made it often hard to get
 the truck over 50MPH.

I do remember telling Matthew to get out of the truck just short of the Montana
 State line and run to the sign "Welcome to Montana". I told him this way he could
 say he ran all the way to Montana. (grin)

We got into Billings around 5:00PM so we were just in time for rush hour.
We had no idea where to start exploring Billings so we took the first exit.

We frantically looked for anyplace where I could pull off without hitting someone
 so we could get our bearings. We ended up at the truck stop in the "heights".   On a recent trip out to Montana we discovered this truck stop no longer exists.

 Little did we know this truckstop was to be out home for the next 10 weeks.

After a little exploring we ate dinner and went to sleep. The next day I started
 making contacts. We actually knew no one in Billings. No Relatives to help us out.

Things didn't take off right away. I remember breaking the last 100 dollar bill
 of the money we had brought out with us. We were also running out of food.
It wasn't long before we down to the quarters and all the food that we had left
 were three super size jars of peanut butter. We didn't have any money to go back
 to New York.

We had to make it....somehow. Matthew was helping make the decisions. Do we save the quarters for the phone in case someone does call or do we go to the thrift store and buy day old bread? After three weeks of surviving on peanut butter sandwiches (we had no jelly) I finally got a small job putting in a nosing piece of wood for a tile job. It was a realy small job but we had a little money to spend.

We went to the supermarket and bought 87 cents worth of bologna. We went back to
 the truck and had a feast of balogna sandwiches. Matthew turned to me and
 said," Dad, I never knew balogna could taste this good!!!"

At that moment after weeks of worrying about surviving I realized that not only
 was this an adventure my son and I were sharing but he was learning an
 appreciation for the simple pleasures of life.