Trailwatcher: How to find love

The worldwide Internet generated by computers is now providing an unbelievable source for millions of humans seeking companions ... for honest reasons as well as evil reasons.

Reading about what’s happening on the Internet in those matters got me thinking about how it was before that science began. Just 25 years ago, I did a column on this fascinating human activity and dug it out to see the differences of then and now...

In several Arab countries men are buying their wives from India and Sri Lanka because their native girls are asking too much for dowry.

That news item stirred up a coffee conversation about the seemingly crazy things people do and the travail men and women often endure because of a basic need for human companionship.

Foreign countries do not have a monopoly on mating problems.

The quest for wives and husbands is a huge time- and money-consuming business right here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

There are private searches of unnumbered varieties, from joining a square dance club to patrolling singles bars.

Then there are commercial operations on small as well as grand scales. Some are legit and some pure con.

Here are recent published examples.

“Meet Christian Singles-Local/Nationwide-Phone/Mail-Introduction magazine-fees-donations only...”

“Tall, athletic lady, 33, experienced in homesteading and wilderness living. Desires permanent relationship with Alaskan or Northern Canadian gentleman. Drug users or dedicated drinkers need not reply...”

“Meet pretty oriental girls, all ages/areas. Select yours from exciting photo directory, Send $1 handling...”

Tens of thousands of ads like these appear each month in American journals, newspapers, flyers and magazines.

We are talking here about wall-to-wall insecurity and world class loneliness, legitimate human emotions; but that picture doesn’t quite square with the world portrayed on TV or the “slick” magazine ads for breath sweeteners, Cadillacs, underarm deodorant, diamond earrings and the correct wine for “those who know where they’re going.”

In the fall of 1968, I was hunting antelope in a land so lonely and harsh it somehow seemed perversely magnificent. It was 50 miles from the nearest wide spot in a dirt road, right on the Montana-Wyoming line southwest of Biddle, between the main and the little Powder Rivers.

The closest settlement of any consequences was Spearfish, S.D.

I wandered onto a remote ranch, marked by old log buildings, plus a modern mobile home. A new windmill performed the duties of pumping water from a deep well and running a battery charger to store electricity in batteries. There was not a lawn or white picket fence but plenty of barbwire.

An old man was leaning against the gate post. He was tough, browned and gnarled as the high plains’ pines that fought for life on the wind blasted hills around him.

Sam Raskoff was 18 years old when he built a homestead shanty there in 1900 and was 38 when he ran a “wife wanted” ad in the Denver Post.

He went by buggy and train to Billings to pick her up. Florrie was 18 when she married Sam. She was 66 when I stopped by.

I didn’t meet their 22-year-old son because he was on a three-day trip to Miles City picking up a new bull for this flourishing herd of Herefords.

I received permission to hunt on the ranch, and that’s where I met a geologist from Casper.

He was supervising an oil drilling operation and while we were talking he said he hoped this well was as good as the first one they drilled for the Raskoffs.

Sam and Florrie had each other for the first 38 years of their marriage, plus bad crops, very little money, far away neighbors, drought, howling blizzards and no children. But in 1958 they took in a 12-year-old orphan boy from Chicago, who was “down on his luck and runnin’ away.”

They let him stay longer than planned because he “helped out a lot” and Sam couldn’t work like “he used to.” They adopted Robbie when he was 15 because  “that boy made our life complete.”

Seems to me, how a person finds a mate ... of a son, is not quite as important as how much love is applied under duress ... deodorant, dowries and the right wine withstanding.