The least important things about Great Falls ...

In a post here last Saturday, I evoked the name of the author Richard Brautigan, and mentioned that he had lived for a time in the Paradise Valley south of Livingston. Given that connection, Brautigan sometimes did mention the state in his work -- most notably in a 1980 volume called The Tokyo-Montana Express. Elsewhere, our state appears only peripherally, and in sometimes puzzling ways. Here's a small excerpt from Brautigan's 1967 book Trout Fishing in America ... part of a much longer section that talks about the Electric City and an old Deanna Durbin movie:

I cast out again and continued talking about Great Falls.

Then in correct order I recited the twelve least important things ever said about Great Falls, Montana. For the twelfth and least important thing of all, I said, "Yeah, the telephone would ring in the morning. I'd get out of bed. I didn't have to answer the telephone. That had all been taken care of, years in advance.

. . .

"Fortunately it stopped one day without my having to do anything serious like grow up. We packed our stuff and left town on a bus. That was Great Falls, Montana. You say the Missouri River is still there?"

"Yes, but it doesn't look like Deanna Durbin," Trout Fishing in America said.