The New American Digest

The new Burpee catalog has arrived.

Sometime around Thanksgiving, my fairly new wife and I realized it was time to leave Colorado and start our lives someplace else. She was a foreigner with green card and only knew LA (where she attended language school) and the Front Range so the selection of “where” was up to me.

I knew I didn’t want to move east. I had lived and worked in most every state west of the Rockies and preferred that region of the country. But when it came down to betting my life on this decision, I decided to leave it in the hands of God … or fate … or pure circumstance.

California was out. Seattle was out. Both of us had professional degrees so our selection needed to account for job possibilities. We discussed options and came down to three choices: Oregon, Idaho, or Montana.

I wrote those choices on pieces of paper, rolled those pieces into little balls, and tossed them in the air like flipping a coin.

Funny how life can take a turn …

I held my hand out to catch one of the balls.

One ball missed my hand completely, another bounced off my thumb, the third landed in the middle of my palm.

We arrived 25 years ago today.

Welcome to Idaho

You may not like guns.
That is your right.

You may not believe in God.
That is your choice.

But if someone breaks into your house,
The first two things you are going to do are …
Call someone with a gun and pray they get there in time.

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And I can tell people we arrived here in the ’90s

🙂