Grocery Life July 19, 2014

Grocery Life July 19, 2014
By Tom Butler

Good morning from Ennis, Montana, population 883. I hope everyone is having a good week! My family and I have been in Montana since Wednesday on vacation. Erica and I have been coming out here for years but this is the kids first time. We love it out here and are hoping the kids will also. The more they like it, the more often I will get to come back.

When Erica and I first started coming out here, we stayed at Lakeshore Lodge on Ennis Lake. It is owned by a lady named Lynn. Lynn always went out of her way to make your stay there miserable. She had rules posted all over the place and if you didn’t follow them she would find you and give you a good scolding. It was so bad it was comical. Every time you parked your car, opened a window or turned on a light you wondered if Lynn was going to come out of the office and point out that you didn’t follow the posted rules. My wife had a name for her, actually everyone has a name for her, and it’s not Lynn. Well I decided I was going to make her be nice to me and set out to figure out a way. Our next trip out I decided to bring her some Grainger County tomatoes. They can’t grow good tomatoes out here because of the climate so I figured this might be just the thing to win her over. Guess what, it worked. I don’t know if it was the tomatoes or that somebody went out of their way to be nice to her but we have gotten the VIP treatment every time we have stayed with her since. We can park our car anywhere we want, open any window we want, she lets us use the off limits fire pit and one time when she was booked up she let us stay in her private residence, which is a big Montana ranch house. My wife still can’t believe how much Lynn’s attitude has changed towards us but she doesn’t understand the power of food like I do, especially Grainger County tomatoes.

I think the kids are having a good time so far. We have ridden a train to an old mining town, panned for gold, seen a show in one of the oldest theaters west of the Mississippi, fly fished, and swam in the Madison River and of course Tyson and I have thrown baseball every day. Wherever we are we have to throw baseball every day.

We still have a trip to Yellowstone, horseback riding, and whitewater rafting to go. It gets light here just after 5 a.m. and doesn’t get dark until about 10 p.m. so you can get a lot of stuff in everyday.

I don’t really know what’s going on back at the store this week. When I am gone, we go to a need to know basis on communication. I haven’t heard from them so everything must be running smoothly. It’s nice to have such a good staff! I can take a vacation and not have to worry about work.
Well we are off to Yellowstone!

Have a great day!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler

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Butler and Bailey Market
7513 Northshore Dr.
Knoxville, TN 37919
(865)691-8881