Christine Lyall

Stacey (not her real name) is one of more than 380 foster children in Yellowstone County and 3,580 in Montana. She hopes soon to cut all ties with her birth mother, legally take on her foster family's name and attend Montana State University-Billings to study biology. She hopes to put her past, wracked by sexual abuse, behind her and get on with her new life — a life that's been made possible through the Department of Family Services foster care program.

Billings Heights resident Rusty P. has a cousin who does manure art. "He puts a little dye in it and covers it in lacquer. but the truth of the matter is, it's still manure," he said. And that's how he feels about a proposed mobile home park that local developer Gerry Unruh wants to put on a tract of land adjacent to Mr. P's subdivision.

The Mellgren family's kitchen is going to sparkle for the next few days. Because of a deal that he struck with his parents in exchange for permission to camp out at MetraPark Sunday night, 14-year-old Chris Mellgren now has to clean the kitchen.

Monte H., a diabetic for 31 years, has thrown his insulin and needles away. On Oct. 25, 1994, the Billings resident underwent a pancreas and kidney transplant at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle. Now the 34-year-old is no longer diabetic and is eager to lead an active life.

As Sen. Conrad Burns approached the voter registration table at Sandstone Elementary School Tuesday morning, a pollworker asked him if he had any money left. Always the jokester, Burns reached into his pocket and pulled out a small wad of bills. He counted $24. "We're down to the last day of the campaign," Burns said. "It's been a long haul ... I'm glad it's over."

After working most of his professional life as a yard man in the New York City subway system, Frank Jackson retired in 1981 and moved to Billings to live off of his pension. But his pension wasn't enough. Nine years ago, when he was 63, Jackson took a temporary stock hand job at Target during the Christmas season to supplement his income.

HARDIN, MONTANA — Conrad Yerger, a wheat and beet farmer who lives about three miles north of Hardin, joked Sunday that his house looked like the site of a Freeman standoff that turned ugly. But it wasn't bullets that caused damage to Yerger's house and property. It was golfball-size chunks of hail hurled horizontally by westerly winds of 80 to 100 mph.

MILES CITY, MONTANA — Freemen? Who are the Freemen? The 45th Annual Miles City Jaycee Bucking Horse Sale proceeded full-throttle this year, even with the news of a possible breakthrough in the Freemen's standoff with FBI agents in Jordan less than 90 miles northwest of the Cow Capitol.

MILES CITY, MONTANA — When Jeff Wyman approached his neighbors' door Saturday night, covered in blood and yelling to be let into the house, the neighbors thought he was up to his usual Halloween antics. "Jeff is a character," the neighbor woman said Sunday. "When he came to our door, I thought he was pulling a Halloween prank. He looked like a monster."

"I'm gonna put my cheaters on so I can see better," says Hart Glumbik, 87, breaking a moment to don his glasses. "It would help a little bit, wouldn't it?" Punching a few buttons, he programs his portable Casio electronic piano with a bouncy percussion rhythm to accompany his playing as he escorts his audience through a "Winter Wonderland." A woman visiting a friend at the Glendeen Nursing Home in Lockwood takes a seat at Glumbik's side and sings along to the chorus.

There are big bucks in Montana, and we're not talking deer. Agriculture brings in $2.5 billion a year, accounting for 40 percent of the state's economy and yielding an average gross annual income of $102,500 per producer. But that's not all ... Working around the clock for one full month, I wrote articles for Montana Magazine about the state's main industries, including mining, tourism, timber and more.