"New Driveways" said another.
And with that, the Miller Creek Journal
Since then, the newspaper has grown in ways that other publishers wouldn't dare dream. Its circulation area now rivals the New York Times' (from Alaska to New Zealand), and its circulation has multiplied 26 times in its 18-month history.
Meet the editor, publisher, reporter, sports writer, typesetter, circulation manager, delivery boy, chief ad salesman - and, as luck would have it, the chief advertiser - at the MCJ:
It's Nels E. Tate.
He's 10 years old.
The Mayor Of Miller CK
By Nels Tate
MCJ Editor
The unofficial Mayor of Miller CK is Mrs. Arlyne Craighead, who has some thoughts she would like to share with us. "Mrs. C." - should we call her - has lived here for 27 yrs. How she came to be called the Mayor is when one of her neighbors pointed out to her how long she had lived here and said, since you have lived here so long why don't you become the Mayor of Miller CK? So Mrs. C. decided to do that and now is the unofficial Mayor.
Mrs. C has seen many different changes in Miller CK over the years. One of the changes she has seen was traffic. It became a big problem to her and she didn't like it at all. With this problem came a bigger problem. Dust ... she hates it completely. She has seen good changes though, like new houses (which she thinks are going up like weeds), loggers (which she hopes don't take to much wood) and in the winter time people driving snowmobiles on the road (which she thinks isn't safe). I really enjoyed interviewing her.
(From the December, 2002 MCJ)
"One morning I was doing my project, studying parts of the newspaper," says Tate, who is home-schooled. "My mom decided to make me do one article, but I looked ahead and saw you were supposed to make a whole newspaper."
Janice Tate didn't intend for her then-9-year-old son to take the project that far, but next thing she knew, he'd hand-written a two-page newspaper he called the Miller Creek Journal.
"He beat me to the instructions," Janice says. "What a good reminder not to limit him."
The first edition featured hard news ("Three new driveways came in, in one day. All driveways were made by JTL group inc.") and a headline worthy of the National Enquirer ("Squirrel Attack" reported that "Squirrels have been spotted in the trees recently. Many different sizes of them in many different places over the neighborhood.").
Page 2 contained a weather report and the sports section, about badminton rules.
A World War II Hero
By Nels Tate
MCJ Editor
Hi, my name is Nels Tate, Editor of the Miller Creek Journal. I have been studying World War II. I read a book called "Sky" written by Hanneke Ippisch. She worked with the Resistance, a special force set up in time of war to protect a country from it's enemies; during World War II. She was taken captive by the Germans, who were the enemy at that time, and was held prisoner for a long time. I had the privilege to interview her this week and here are the facts I got: She was born in Godlinze, Holland and growing up liked the sport(s) running, jumping, swimming and rowing. Her family was very, very upset when the war started. She was involved with the Resistance and was trained to never be nervous or afraid, which came in handy when she was delivering five million dutch guilders (worth about three million U.S. Dollars) to Zwalle from Amsterdam on her bicycle. Later on she was taken captive and held in prison for over a year! While she was in prison she wrote notes to her family, with a broken-off fingernail, which were
1 in. x 3/4 in. of toiletpaper. She put them in the tags of laundry shirts which were x-rayed before going in or out. The letters she received from her family she swollowed right after reading, but her family kept the ones she sent, which are still readable today.
Now she and her husband run a bed and breakfast near Huson, M.T., which is thirty miles northwest of Miller Creek. She also writes, makes wooden crafts, and gives speeches on World War II.
I think Mrs. Ippisch is a great woman of courage and I think you should read her book "Sky."
(From the May, 2003 issue)
The pastor at the Tate's church, Jeff Valentine, was the first to ask if he could subscribe to the Miller Creek Journal.
"He asked me how much," Nels says, "so I said $6 a year, and he said, 'Here you go.' "
Neighbors, friends and relatives joined in, and MCJ has come out once a month since, growing from two hand-written pages to six.
Circulation has climbed to an all-time high of 26 with the addition of a Ronan subscriber this week. And what do readers get for their $6?
Interviews with long-time Miller Creek residents such as Craighead, Bill Harlan and Dean Hoffman.
Up-to-the-minute weather forecasts (Nels used to copy the information out of the Missoulian, but now contacts the National Weather Service himself shortly before his deadline).
Comics (his pal, Chief Charlo student Lincoln Palmer, is the cartoonist).
Sports (often an update of Nels' soccer and baseball activities, although in the November, 2003 issue, he interviewed University of Montana quarterback Craig Ochs).
Nature news (the second issue of MCJ reported that many birds fly south, but few elk have gone that direction).
Letters to the editor (after the family ran into Gov. Judy Martz at a Missoula restaurant and Nels' little brother, Jeremy, asked her a question, Martz wrote a letter to the editor that included these sentences: "Please tell your brother that even though I am a great supporter of President Bush, I am not married to him. My husband's name is Harry").
And classified ads, where Nels himself is the advertiser peddling everything from polished rocks, pine cones, picture framing, a bicycle (he lists the price as $30, then notes he will go as low as $25), and homemade applesauce ("must sell!").
The Hike
By Nels Tate
MCJ Editor
Last Saturday my friend, Lincoln, and I went on a hike up our mountain. For the trip we took: a knife, two hatchets, two walkie-talkies, a camera, snacks, a hammer and nails, a first aid kit, a board, and water. We took all these supplies in my new backpack.
It took us about an hour to get to our destination. When we got there we explored the bushes and picked out a place to "Set Up Base" (S.U.B.) and got to work chopping down trees. We cut down about three trees then ate our snack. After that we cut down another tree and added it to our fort. Then we carved a sign out of the board which read "Linc and N.E.T.'s Base" and nailed it to a tree. Then we packed up. On our way back home we picked wild flowers for Mom like: the Larkspur, the Balsomroot, Indian Paintbrush and Wyeth Biscuitroot.
Larkspur has 3-10 rich blue-purple flowers about 1/2-3/4 in. long. Rangeland cattle eat Larkspur and die because of their poison acids in the Spring.
In the Spring, Balsomroot often color dry hillsides in a golden-yellow. The nearly leafless stalks attain a height of
24 in.
Flowers, of the Indian Paintbrush, are about 1 in. long, tubular, yellowish-green at times tinged with a scarlet. The plant grows 1-3 ft. tall. In full bloom it colors landscapes.
The last one is the Wyeth Biscuitroot with small yellow flowers that grow to a height of 6-24 in. It looks, smells and tastes like parsley. The most interesting part about it, is that Indians used to eat it raw or grind it in to meal to make cakes.
I enjoyed our hike up the mountain and plan on doing it again soon.
Nels' father, Ross, has a copying machine in their upper Miller Creek home, so the boy didn't have to invest in a "press."
But he buys the paper to print the Miller Creek Journal, purchases the stamps and envelopes to mail it to his out-of-town subscribers, and he pays his friend who draws the cartoons.
And the young writer can already turn a phrase. In a sports article on the swimming lessons he was taking, Nels wrote, "Instead of dreading water I am treading water."
"It's turning into a big business," Janice says of the one-article assignment that turned into a newspaper. "It's helped him learn the responsibility of a job. And what I like is the creativity involved in doing it."
Nels isn't sure if he wants to go into journalism some day - "It's an idea," he allows - but he does plan to keep on publishing, possibly through his high school years.
That's good news for a skyrocketing subscriber base that has come to count on the Miller Creek Journal for news readers can't find anywhere else.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 523-5260 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com
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