It seems like just yesterday, a person could walk into any grocery store in Bozeman and find a decent selection of pickles. Not just dill spears, mind you, but bread and butter, sweet gherkins, even some of those spicy ones that make your nose tingle. Now, I wander the aisles, and it’s like a desert. A pickle desert.

I’m not talking about those fancy, artisanal jars that cost more than a gallon of gas. Those are fine for a special occasion, I suppose, if you’re trying to impress someone with your fermented cucumber choices. I’m talking about the reliable, everyday pickles. The kind that go with a sandwich, or straight out of the jar for a little something extra.

It feels like a slow, quiet disappearance. First, the half-sours vanished from one store. Then, the good quality whole dills from another. Now, it’s mostly just the big, bland brands that taste more like vinegar water than actual pickle. Is this what progress looks like? Fewer pickle options?

I’ve lived in Bozeman for a long time. I remember when the biggest debate was whether Main Street should be one-way or two-way. We had clear priorities back then. Good pickles were just a given, like fresh air and a view of the Bridgers.

Now, you hear all this talk about growth and development. New buildings going up everywhere you look, turning what used to be open fields into… well, into more buildings. And with all this change, I can’t help but wonder if we’re losing sight of the fundamentals. Like a well-stocked pickle aisle.

I asked a young man stocking shelves at the big chain store out on North 19th. He just shrugged and said, “Supply chain issues, ma’am.” Supply chain issues for pickles? It sounds like an excuse, if you ask me. Pickles are cucumbers and brine. How complicated can that be?

My neighbor, Mildred, who moved here from California about eight years ago and now considers herself a true local, says it’s just Bozeman evolving. She says maybe people don’t eat as many pickles anymore. But I see people buying chips, crackers, all sorts of snack foods. What’s wrong with a pickle? It’s practically a vegetable!

It’s not just the pickles, if I’m honest. It’s the feeling. It’s like the things we used to take for granted are just… gone. Like the way traffic moves slower than a snail on a hot day, even when it’s not rush hour. Or how you used to be able to find a parking spot downtown without circling the block five times and then paying for it.

Maybe it’s a small thing, the pickles. But small things add up, don’t they? They add up to a feeling. A feeling that something essential is being overlooked in all the hustle and bustle. That maybe, in our rush to build bigger and newer, we’re forgetting about the simple pleasures that made Bozeman, well, Bozeman.

We have all these new restaurants, many of them quite lovely, serving up all sorts of exotic dishes. But sometimes, a person just wants a good, honest pickle. A reliable pickle. A pickle that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and wasn’t “crafted with artisanal sea salt sourced from Himalayan caves.” Just a pickle.

I think the city commission should look into this. Not just the housing crisis, not just the roads, but the pickle crisis. Because if we can’t get our pickles right, what does that say about everything else? It says we’re losing our way, one bland cucumber at a time.

Lorraine Hubcap is a longtime Bozeman resident and pickle enthusiast. She serves on no boards and holds no titles, which she believes qualifies her to speak freely on matters of public concern.