Nation's Center News, Buffalo, SD

My hometown newspaper, Nation's Center News, is one thing I look forward to on weekends. The local columnists write with a knowledge of their neighbors activities. Reading them makes me lonely for home. I would include a link for the paper, but unfortunately there is none.

Four writers are my favorites. One has a short column of pure cowboy humor and I never know if it is true or not. He has written of the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale that was started by an ancestor of my husband; and he writes of the days and nights of ranching with cowboy humor.

Another writes of women cattle ranchers doing what all ranch people do. It is inspirational to read of women who are competant on a horse, working cattle, or in an investment group. They are people with a work ethic, individualism, and a depth of intelligance and good sense. Women widowed or divorced, with children to raise, and ranches to manage. She is one of them and writes from experience and close friendships.

One woman writes of the battles of the ranchers and the State Game and Fish folks. She writes of politics without political correctness. She takes on the State over a Branding Inspector despute. She writes of mountain lions, wolves, and coyotes killing livestock and a cousin of mine that she calls "Chicken Man" who is contracted by ranchers to hunt coyotes by small plane. She spats out her feeling of what she calls "do-gooder environmentalists."

A home town son taught English in Saudi Arabia for 20 years and retired to our home town, Buffalo, SD. He now writes a column of Mid-East history with the inside information of personal anecdotes. Last week he wrote of his father, who was one of the original county cowboys and bronc busters. This week we read of his kidney stone and gout. He concludes his column "that the difference between a doctor and God is that God doesn't go around believing he is a doctor".

It is a darned shame that small town papers are not read by more people. It only goes to 1,800 subscribers.