Ahhh… lovely fortune cookie today.

“Your lover will never wish to leave.”
lucky numbers 12,14,16,23,25,31
Learn Chinese – Happy Birthday = Shreng-ri kuai-le

Pet psychic was adorable tonight… pug, llama, kitties, parrot…a load of AwwWw!

Holy moley! That’s keen! A real walker, with actual industrial use! I want one to cruise around town in!

Man found dead, confirmed by family, calls home next day.

Police try everything to stop a raving lunatic, everything short of actually shooting him seems to be ineffective

Monks physically fighting over the placement of a chair.

Been reading about Liver Eatin’ Johnson…Standing 6’2″ in his stocking feet and weighing nearly 250 pounds, he was a mountain man among mountain men, one of the toughest customers on the western frontier. One morning in 1847, he returned to his Rocky Mountain trapper’s cabin to find the remains of his Indian wife and her unborn child, who had been killed by Crow Indians. The discovery made Johnson vow vengeance on the entire Crow nation, and tracking its warriors singly and in groups, he killed 300 of them, scalped them, and ate their livers. Much of the world now knows mountain man John Johnson as Robert Redford in the movie Jeremiah Johnson. The real Johnson was a far cry from the Redford version, but an amazing person.

Arriving on the scene in St. Joe, Missouri in the fall of 1843, Johnston got himself outfitted with the necessities of a trapper, a .30 caliber Hawken rifle, a Bowie knife, some traps and a horse, then headed west. Where he came from nobody seems to know, but the 20-year-old greenhorn was to become a legend in his own time leaving an indelible legacy.

He took up with Old John Hatcher, a mountain man of some repute, and learned how to be a mountain man himself… and how to stay alive. Johnston was an apt student, and stayed with Hatcher at his cabin on the Little Snake River in Northern Colorado. When Hatcher left the mountains in 1846, Johnston took over the cabin set out with a new trapping partner, Del Gue, but life wasn’t the same. Hatcher had a couple of Cheyenne women that did all the chores for the two of them and when he left had sent them packing.

Now, Johnston wasn’t too keen on doing his own cooking, so in the summer of 1847 he set out for the Flathead (Salish) camps in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, south of present day Missoula. The previous year, a sub chief had offered his daughter, “The Swan,” to Johnston in a trade, but now he was looking for a wife. The appropriate exchanges were made, and he and The Swan left on the return trip to the Little Snake. During their time on the trail, Johnson gave her a rifle, powder and ball and taught her to shoot so she would have meat during the winter while he was gone trapping. Out of respect for her, he learned to speak Salish. By the time they reached the cabin it was early fall, and after setting up stores for her comfort, he set out for the winter’s trapping.

Sometime in the summer of 1848, the scalped and mutilated bodies of Crow warriors “and only Crow warriors” began appearing throughout the Northern Rockies and the plains of Wyoming and Montana… wherever the Crow roamed. The mutilation found on each warrior was always the same, a slit beneath the ribs and livers removed. In time, it became known that Johnston was carrying on a one-man war with the Crow, killing, scalping and eating the livers of his victims. From that point forward, Johnston was known as the “Crow Killer” or simply “Liver-Eating Johnson”. It wasn’t known initially what set Johnston on the trail of the Crow, but in time, it was learned that Johnston was on a mission of vengeance.

In the spring, he returned to the cabin only to find the bones of The Swan in the doorway, victim of a Crow hunting party. Amongst the bones was a small skull about the size of a grapefruit, his unborn child. He took care gathering the bones and secreting them in a crevice among the rocks and hid their location from predators, man and beast alike. From that moment, no Crow warrior was safe from his wrath. In time, the Crow sent 20 handpicked warriors on the trail of the Crow Killer. None would return.

Johnston lived a long and adventurous life. He was a mountain man’s mountain man. Later in life, he was marshal of Red Lodge, Montana. His last days found him in a Los Angeles Veterans Home, and in 1900, he died and was buried there. In 1974, his remains were exhumed and he was reburied in “Old Trail Town” near Cody, Wyoming, a more fitting resting place for this man of the wilderness.

History of Old Trail Town.

Mountain Rendezvous.