Memoir: Summer, 1976 by Katryn Conlin The heat was rising on a bright summer morning in Circle, Montana. I was filling up the tank at a gas station when a gawky young man emerged from the building and addressed me with a profoundly bizarre question: “You gals wouldn’t happen to be nuns, would you?” There were three girls on this road trip. We were clad in tank tops and tee shirts over ratty cut-off shorts. Over by a light pole, my oldest sister Dennie was smoking a Kool Menthol Lite. Molly was sauntering back and forth, stretching her long legs, her shiny long blonde hair catching the breeze. I was nineteen years old, the year was 1976, and not a one of us was wearing a bra. We did not look like nuns in the slightest. The trip was Dennie’s idea. “How about we take off a week at the end of the summer and go out to Glacier and do some backpacking?” Having lived in Colorado, she considered herself quite the expert on the great outdoors. Molly, an art teacher, had been laid off from her job teaching art in St. Paul in June. All summer long, she had been job hunting without any luck. She was thoroughly sick of it, so she was more than willing to hit the road. The night before, Molly had driven up to Bismarck from St. Paul. We packed up my dad’s yellow Maverick with its sticky brown vinyl seats and set the alarm clocks for five a.m. At the crack of dawn, we headed out on I-94. Westward ho! But our momentum ground to a screeching halt when I was pulled over by a Montana state trooper shortly after we crossed the border from North Dakota. Page 52
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