More rural community, again out of Montana

My last post was about how folks in rural places--specifically those in proximity to the Amtrak crash last weekend--came together to help others.  Now comes an even more thoroughly feel-good story out of Montana, from the New York Times, about Jeff Ament's investment in Montana communities.  He's a member of Pearl Jam, and his foundation is building a skate park in every Montana city or town that will have one, from the Blackfeet reservation to post Bozeman.   Here are some excerpts: 

Ament has paid for, or helped pay for, 27 skate parks, most of them in Montana. He has also helped build three on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Three more are planned for reservations in Montana and South Dakota, including one at Wounded Knee.

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Ament weathered his own emotional storms, he said, with the help of a backyard skateboard ramp in a small and remote Montana town called Big Sandy, where he grew up. Skateboarding, he says from personal experience, is deeply therapeutic for disaffected youth in similar places.

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Growing up in Big Sandy, with fewer than 600 people, Ament said, the highlight was dinner at the nearest Dairy Queen, a half an hour away. His father was the Big Sandy barber, drove a school bus and raised chickens, pigs and cows.

Rural Montana towns are often big on team sports, particularly basketball and football, even when the towns are so small they can only field six-man football teams. Ament was a standout in multiple sports, and was offered a scholarship as an all-state linebacker. But there is always a subset of young people who aren’t cut out for team sports, and are in need of another outlet.

Ament grew up near the Rocky Boy’s reservation and knows second-hand the extra difficulty of life on a reservation. Skateboarding, and going to skate parks, “gives kids a reason to see the rest of the state, the rest of the country and possibly the rest of the world,” he said. “There’s an old-school mentality that says you are giving up on your community if you leave and go to college somewhere else.” He shook his head.