Sam Louden

Sam Louden, primarily a gardener, also writes poems, short stories and other ridiculous foolishness.



“This is my idea, see?” said Lenny. Lenny was always pitching something. Sometimes it was softball; sometimes it was the hull of a ship; usually it was a deal or a scheme—depending on one’s perspective. He could sell lonesomeness to Ekalakans. He could talk the pants off a nun. He could negotiate with terrorists. He was smooth and persuasive. He was also ugly as all hell.

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Virginia, grabbing a firm hold of her pants.

“Musicals! People love musicals. They love to make fun of them. They love to gag at their ridiculous sentimentality. They love to point out the absurdity of people breaking out into song — in harmony, with dancing. People love to pretend they hate musicals, but they can’t get enough of them,” he said.

“I’m skeptical,” she said, debating if he looked more like a javalina or a road kill.

“Of course, I’m just beginning!” said the man, who in truth resembled a severe laboratory accident in progress more than javalinas or road kill. He expounded on the need for Butte to have yet another blue ribbon tourist attraction. He continued with how the glorious city needed — deserved — an emotional pick-me-up. He concluded with the saliva of sincerity dripping from his malformed mouth at the climax of his argument eloquently tying the entirety in one beautiful whole. “Yes, Butte, whose history begs for the honor it long ago earned in sweat and blood and has so long been denied; Butte whose people—strong, pulchritudinous, and hospitable magnify its glory in too humbly mute of tones; Butte whose best days are yet to come; this Butte, my Butte, our Butte; our majestic, beautiful Butte is the miracle it has waited for!”
Virginia, enthralled, wordlessly begged for the miracle. Her wide eyes, doublewide with excitement, implored Lenny for the clarification he paused to make. He clarified magnificently, explaining how a musical play about the Mining City, performed there would attract tourists, employ locals, boost the local self-esteem, and reestablish the Richest Hill on Earth as the preeminent cultural force in the Inter-mountain West.

This would take organizational skills Lenny lacked. Virginia, however, was practically made of organizational skills. She had developed a formula to determine anyone’s personal sock needs. She was ridden out of Helena on a rail for demonstrating shortcuts through red tape that could eliminate hundreds of state bureaucratic jobs. She trimmed out nearly fifty percent of her own useless DNA. This was why Lenny needed her. Holy Butte would rise from the ashes, borne by the silk of Virginia Sullivan’s networking and Lenny Crenshaw’s hot air.

Lenny neglected to go into the devilish details of his plan. The specifics were in some cases too sensitive to leak for fear of Anaconda beating them to the punch. Other details, namely the Screaming Panda bit, were sensitive for other reasons. Some things simply need the context of the entire Butte the Musical experience to even comprehend. In minutes Virginia had secured two theater venues, acquired the necessary permits from her cousin Eddie in City Hall, and enlisted the support of the unions. Now Lenny sat gaping in awe of the presence of excellence.

“Can you find me producers?” he asked.

“There isn’t enough loose capital here to float a Sunday school skit. There’s no way we can scrounge up the scratch around here for the epic production we’re talking about,” said Virginia, as yet unaware of the obligatory Hungarian contortionist or the expensive yodel chorus.

“Do you know anyone in Bozeman?“ he said.

Liz McRae

Liz McRae, poet, is currently putting the BIG in Big Sky, where she nests, recreates, vocates, and is (at the time of writing) extremely pregnant - due tomorrow!



Virginia closed her eyes and imagined a floating Rolodex before her. Lenny watched, mesmerized as she raised up her arms and flicked her fingers in front of her face like some sort of off-the-hook administrative assistant. She feverishly flipped through her 400 nonprofit connections in Bozeman. No, she thought, we need cash, not the under-funded, liberal crowd.

And then she hit ‘F’. Virginia opened her eyes, looked Lenny as straight in his crooked face as possible, and said, “I think I’ve got our man.”

For his part, Lenny was taken. Not only did this woman have some organizational skills, she was a magician. Maybe he could write in a part for her in the musical, or maybe just be her manager. He wasn’t sure whether to take off her now-steamy glasses and kiss her, or sit down, shut up and listen. Although it was not in his nature, he sat in awe.

When Virginia hit the ‘F’ section of her Rolodex, she quickly came to Irwin Finklestein. The image of this eccentric, Jewish New Yorker flashed before her as she last saw him. He was standing in front of a window fan in his Manhattan apartment, long gray hair blowing in all directions, leopard skin briefs - whoa. The image wasn’t all that appealing. A down-side to channeling contact people was that you always got that last vision of them… Irwin was a scholar of ancient Tibetan script, specialized in growing rare orchids, and was Virginia’s former lover. He lived between his apartment in downtown Manhattan and an old, renovated grain tower outside of Bozeman. Like many Tibetan scholars and rare orchid growers, Irwin had a sizable trust fund and was highly connected in NYC. Also notable, she explained to Lenny, was his production of the very popular Oklahoma performance in Lhasa - the only western musical of its kind performed entirely by Tibetans for Tibetans.
At this point, Lenny’s mind was scheming like a whirling dervish. Visions of Virginia as the next David Copperfield blended with saffron-robed monks yodeling and dancing across his Butte stage. People would come from China, New York, hell, maybe even from the Yellowstone Club, to visit and fall in love with the land of pulchritude and plenty, Butte! He nearly
was in tears with visions of fame, money and people bursting into song.


Seeing Lenny’s reaction to the mention of Irwin, Virginia realized she was going to need to call him. This would be a little awkward in lieu of their last meeting, but she just had to rise above it. After all, cross-dressing had never been a crime, and even though she felt very uncomfortable with the reptiles, she just had to remember that not all people were brought
up with the strong family values she was - thank god - instilled with as a young girl.

Heidi Lasher

Heidi Lasher is a freelance writer and editor with a knack for saying yes to fun, time-consuming projects. She is a mother of one, and is currently incubating number two.



Irwin leapt from his chair and twirled with delight. “My Pangolin! She LIVES!” he exclaimed. His index finger circled his iPod, landing quickly on “O What a Beautiful Morning,” by the dashing and flamboyant Jengbu Lakhpa. He shook his hair loose from its rubber band, and held the Bozeman Daily Chronicle to his cheek. Wearing nothing but his leopard-skin briefs, he pirouetted in front of the picture window and giggled in anticipation.

For nearly 12 days Irwin had scanned the Bozeman police blotter for news about the rare and scaly anteater he’d rescued from a Chinese restaurant in Lhasa. He shuttered, remembering how the poor creature had been dying a slow death in a cage, losing up to six scales a day to greedy customers eager to enhance their sexual performance by drinking tea spiked with her potent scurf. Moved by the animal’s dismal existence and the sense that he could provide a better life for her (and perhaps a more lasting sexual state of arousal for himself), he devised a plan to rescue her like he’d done for so many other reptiles in the past.

Under the cloak of darkness, Irwin and his thespian friends liberated the animal from her cage and ran to a local monastery for cover. The following morning, Irwin bid a tearful adieu to his friends and smuggled the terrified and slightly odorous creature over three borders and past a suspicious TSA agent who was tipped off by a 6 ounce tube of hair gel floating in his carry-on bag without the protection of a Ziplock baggie.

Fortunately, the scaly creature hiding in Irwin’s saffron robe did not catch the agent’s eye.

For the past month, Irwin safely harbored the Pangolin in his renovated grain tower apartment in Bozeman. With love, plenty of fresh, local, organic ants and water, her scales grew back to their God-given glory. Irwin, too, began to heal the emotional scars of his previous relationship, pouring his pain and humiliation of their last sexual encounter into a deep and soulful song called “O Virginia.”

Then, one night, without warning, the reptile vanished. Her plush cedar bed from L.L. Bean still bore her outline, but she was nowhere to be found.

Every day since, Irwin had combed the neighborhoods, calling her name. His devout prayer was that a neighbor would spot her and call the police. And today his prayer had been answered. The Pangolin was spotted by the dishwashing staff at the Panda Buffet, scuttling across the parking lot.

Irwin pulled a saffron robe over his head and grabbed his Sorels. Just as he was walking out the door, the phone rang.

Craig Kenworthy

Craig Kenworthy is a poet, playwright, comedy writer and sports columnist who is known for his single-minded focus.



After three hours, Irwin finally gave in and bought the mortgage disability insurance.

Fortunately, he had call-waiting and spent fifteen minutes of that time talking with Virginia. That girl had nerve, calling him for a favor after what she’d done to him in Des Moines. But any show that included two different troupes of blind acrobats reenacting a mining disaster and the exhumation of the body of the late Bob Keeshan, a.k.a. Captain Kangaroo, was a show he wanted to be a part of. He hit 666 on his speed dial and called his former partner, Squids Guggenheim.

Squids’ nickname had nothing to do with his penchant for seafood and everything to do with the fact that he bought only cheap ballpoint pens. The good news was that Squids loved the idea of a musical set in Montana. The bad news was that he loved it so much that just the week before he’d sunk all of his money into a new play called “Custer slept here… forever,“ by an up and coming Native American playwright.

“The guy is brilliant. He wrote that Shakespearian drama set in a tribe’s casino.”

“Macbet?”

“No. Taming of the less than Shrewd. Listen, Irwin, I can’t help you but I know a guy in Big Timber who might. His name is Still Bottled Water. Runs a small family foundation that supports the arts. Some of their standards for grants are a little strange. You don’t happen to have an anteater, do you?”

After a quick trip to Panda Buffet and three Diet Cokes with oat bran later, Irwin finished perusing the foundation guidelines. He figured Virginia could care less about the requirement that the male lead weigh no more than 150 pounds, have all of his toes and speak fluent Mandarin, but this part about using only compact fluorescent bulbs in the footlights? Still, he thought his proposal had merit, based on the digital photo of the anteater Irwin emailed to him, although he wasn’t really clear on why the man insisted that the animal be wearing only high heels and a pioneer bonnet.

Three Diet Dr. Peppers with spinach and a Vodka Collins later, Irwin finished proofreading the grant application and clicked “Send.” He went downstairs to look in on his cold-blooded guest. As he entered the reptile’s room, Irwin smelled moderately priced perfume and felt a damp breeze. Looking up at the shattered glass of the skylight, he spotted a woman’s leg disappearing through the opening. He leaped up to grab it, then remembered he was only five foot four and should never have put a vaulted ceiling in the laundry room. By the time he returned with the extension ladder, the foot was gone, but he found a note lying on the floor. His palms adrift in sweat, Irwin read it over and then read it again. The note contained only ten words, but they were words that no sane person ever wants to see.

Rebecca Kinman

Rebecca A. Kinman is a spoken-word artist, herbalist and blossoming freelance writer who continuously celebrates and seriously concentrates on holistic, authentic endeavors that create positive change for all.



"Take the garbage out and unclog the bathroom drain."
-Mom"

Irwin felt a moment of remorse for allowing his mother to live in the PVC pipe tree-house outside. He also regretted connecting the two houses with a swinging bridge. To Irwin's further dismay, he found that the lizard's swimming pool, cappuccino machine and hair-rollers had yet to be used, and the Pangolin herself, Sweet Banana Tail II, had vanished once again.

Irwin paced the house, calling her name to the melody of Rain Drops Falling on My head, but then jumped into his hot pink helicopter and searched Peete's Hill and Beyond for his Precious Darling.

In the meantime, Still Bottled Water read Irwin's proposal, jumped from the bed of nails that he was meditating nude upon, and emailed an excited "YES" back to Irwin, exclaiming that this was just the type of production he had wanted to be a part of.

Irwin stopped searching for his Precious Darling for just a moment to call Virginia with the latest news.

"Irwin, that's great but you KNOW how those scaly things always take off whenever you mention my name,” said Virginia, rolling her eyes. This reminded Virginia of the time that Irwin had tried to take her to the Bistro wearing a polka-dotted boa and cat-eye glasses. The pet at the time was so jealous that she skipped town immediately and was found three days later singing karaoke at the Owl in Livingston.

The current situation wasn't all that different. This pet was one pissed Pangolin. Sweet Banana Tail II was fed up with Irwin's lack of decency to forget their twelfth anniversary (in Pangolin years).

She scurried west on 1-90, sensing that somewhere — in that direction — she would somehow come closer to achieving her dream. She didn't need Irwin any longer, she had her strength and her trusty book entitled "From The Cage to the Red Carpet: How to Succeed as an Exotic Pet Actress". She confidently ran down the highway as semi-trucks and multicolored Hummers with ski racks wailed past her.

But just then, snow began to flitter down around her double-jointed ankles and soon, she was covered in two feet of slush. She gradually moved slower and slower down the Interstate until she came to a complete, cold-blooded stop, right next to the NASCAR track in Belgrade.

Hours passed. But then, even though Sweet Banana Tail II was almost completely frozen, she managed to spot a large mass in the distance slowly approaching.

Sid Gustafson

Sid Gustafson is a novelist, veterinarian, and professor of equine studies at UM-Western, where he manages the Natural Horsemanship Program. he was born in Montana, as were his parents and children. His latest novel is HORSES THEY RODE. He hides out in Bozeman.



Before she could see what it was, Sweet Banana had identified the crawling creature with her vomeronasal gland. It was none other than her old nemesis, the dogwoman from the Heel of the Valley Animal League. Evidently someone had reported what they perceived to be a dazed, lost Lhasa waltzing down I-90, but then Banana did have her Tibetan roots.

Sweet Banana had dealt with righteous riff-raff of the dog-catching sort on a previous animal-at-large escapade. Banana belted the control officer good with her powerful tail, up one side and down the other. By the time the dog-catcher had Banana bagged and in the trunk, she’d taken a real beating. In the quarantine ward at the pound the bruised animal officer scanned Banana and, sure enough, picked up a bleep under Banana’s mange-riddled hide. She subsequently traced the electronic ID to Irwin’s address at his silo flat. They called Mr. Irwin Finkelstein, but to no answer. The League conferred, finding it in their hearts to sedate and deliver Banana to her rightful owner. Next thing Banana found herself in the treehouse with a bowl of maggots, and Irwin’s mommy was back fermenting in the silo with her dandered son.

The following morning, after serving his mother an oatmeal-and-raisin breakfast in bed, Irwin checked his email and found another message from Bottled StillWater, (his real name, in the proper Absaroka order). Irwin called the Native. Bad news. Apparently, StillWater had checked out the Lenny play under consideration and discovered it had been written to good affect by a failing horsedoctor, and previously produced at High Horse University in Dillon, sell-out cowboy crowds for a three-week run. “Stole the thunder plum away from Butte.”

“Couldn’t be,” cried Irwin. “Virginny swears her pal Lenny wrote it all his self.”

“Nope,” said StillWater , “that Lenny’s a literary thief with a faux bibliography long as Pangolin tail. The horsedoctor had himself a hit in Dillon, and later in Dell on the Red Rock River.”

“How’d you know about Pangolin?” Irwin asked.

“Oh, I have my informants in Bozeman. Police and the like. Plainclothesmen.”

“Are you sure it’s the same play?”

“Same play, same clowny, cowboy plot,” said StillWater.

“What about the music?”

“I didn’t hear the music. Can’t read music.”

“Well, can’t we just change the music, if that’s the case?” asked Irwin.

“Well I suppose we could. We could change the words too, as long as we were at it. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.”

“Well jeez, let’s do that. Change the words, write the music.”

“Any ideas who might accomplish that?” asked StillWater.

“No problema. There’s enough deluded writers hanging about the Seed and Bean coffeehouse to have a circus, and all those ring-nosed musicians strumming away just outside the door, I’m talking tattoo talent.”

“Well, let’s get down there and see what kind of creativity we can resurrect, see what kind of music waiting writers can conjure up for us. See if they can dance the words. Maybe we’ll find some actors sipping lattes to script in, too. Maybe we can turn this keyboarding charade into something real, a real play, with live music and actors. Something like art.”

“Things are coming together, and o so sweetly. We’ll have those Willson and Main juggernauts write a play, find some strummers to strum in, drag actor folk off the street and turn this into a real production behind a real script, a story with a morality and resonance? Something people will watch and be better for it,” declared Irwin.

“See you down there in an hour.” StillWater, Montana-CoffeeHouse-AmericanIndian-PlayProducer he was, fired up his Pontiac and headed to BozAngeles.

Irwin blipped off his phone, did the silo dishes, kissed Mom on the top of her head, fed and slopped the anteater, hopped on and pedaled his ten-speed through the slush to meet StillWater at the Seedy Bean…

Marjorie Smith

Marjorie Smith is a freelance writer and editor who likes participating in Foolish Words because you don't have to finish what you start.



Donna Lou deChris hurried to the Seedy Bean immediately after work, as she did every day. She ordered her hazelnut latte, put on her shades and slouched into her regular chair at her regular table with the insouciance she knew marked her as very experienced.

She wished there were mirrors on the wall of the Seedy Bean so she could check to be sure that the experience she evinced was as an actress, and not as a typist in a yogurt brokerage, her day job. Bozeman was full of filmmakers – not just students from the university but authentic Hollywood types eager to cash in on the Big Sky on the Big Screen. One day soon someone would spot her and catapult her to stardom.

She recalled her childhood naiveté when she had spent every daylight hour in the front yard looking cute, waiting for Samuel Goldwyn Mayer to drive by and recognize her as the next Shirley Temple. She had learned a great deal about geography in the interim.

Now, at 25, she knew that a front yard in Absaroka, Montana, was no place to be discovered. The Seedy Bean on Main Street in Bozeman – that’s where producers hung out.

Donna Lou carefully wiped foam off her slightly lopsided lips and reapplied lip gloss before continuing to sip, projecting her image – bored, sophisticated and glamorous. Perhaps it was just as well that there weren’t mirrors on the walls - it was
easier to feel glamorous from inside her face rather than from the outside where she would be confronted with her single eyebrow, mismatched eyes, and cheekbones buried in mounds of pudginess – to say nothing of her bulbous nose. But hey, with talent, anything was possible.

In the Rolodex of her mind, she flipped through memories of her stint as a film actress three years ago when she had been approached at this very table by an intense young man who needed to replace a cast member in his junior film. “I originally saw this part as being for an old man,” he told her, “but I think I can use you.”

It had been the most wonderful experience of her life. The whole thing – the days of filming on snowy Bozeman streets wearing soggy bedroom slippers and ugly knee high stockings, the student makeup artist patting powder on her fevered brow, the hours spent huddling in a huge pile of fallen leaves while someone crashed through it driving a car much too fast
whereupon she would pop out, usually unbloodied, providing the comic relief the story required. And of course, the intensely passionate if brief love affair with the author-director, whose name was Gary Geek.

“Ah, Gary,” Donna Lou sighed, closing her eyes, reliving scenes of unbridled passion. Oh, why did she have to be such a nitpicker! For the thousandth time she recalled that final argument. She just couldn’t let him go through life under the mistaken impression that anteaters were reptiles. But why had she made such a big deal of it? She’d screamed at him right out there on Main Street, “Tits, Gary! They have tits!”

Gary Geek had strode away from her, never to return. She knew he had gone on to graduate and hightailed it to Hollywood where he would one day be famous, or at least employed, and here she sat, at the same table in the Seedy Bean, waiting to be discovered.

A large tear oozed out of her brown eye and plopped into her latte and she opened her eyes to search for a Kleenex. And there, standing beside her table were two men: a strange-looking little man and a tall, handsome man of the Native American persuasion... or so Donna Lou assumed since he wore his hair in long black braids.

“Excuse me,” said that smaller man. “Are you by any chance an actress?”