Letter: Proud of work on ‘Shovel Brigade’

Monday, Jan. 5, 2004 | 8:34 a.m.

As a "Jarbidge rebel," I must respond to the "Road Rage" column by the Sun's Susan Snyder.

I didn't go to Jarbidge on a whim -- not when anyone with the temerity to touch a single clod were being threatened with jail time. The rebels didn't really fix the road. Our biggest tangible accomplishment was actually the hauling out of an outhouse full of dung, 5 gallons at a time, which was left there by wilderness hikers. This is the same outhouse the feds just emptied again, for $15,000 worth of helicopter time.

But Jarbidge isn't about a road, or a fish, or buckets of dung. When the work was done, we all got together and sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." I was standing next to this cop -- mirrored shades, at least 10 feet tall and half that wide, the works. But he was belting it out like Pavarotti. We all were. When we finished, I turned to shake his hand. But first, he had to pull his shades and wipe his eyes. I wasn't too dry myself. Never have I felt prouder to be an American than I did when I shook that man's hand at the bottom of that canyon on the Fourth of July.

If Snyder truly feels she got the Jarbidge story, then I propose that she confirm it by going to Jarbidge and handing out copies of her Road Rage column to the locals. We'll see how proud she is then.

DAVE SKINNER Whitefish, Mont.