Arlo Dean Kittleson

Arlo Dean Kittleson died in Billings on September 9, 2026, at seventy-seven. He was born there on November 5, 1948, when a refinery was a clock and a river was a weekday neighbor. His father kept a wrench running in weather that punished hesitation. Arlo learned a splice before he learned a highway south. Thirty years of his life went into pipe that other men only blamed. He arrived early. He did not advertise. Foremen called him because he would write up a cracked fitting even when the turnaround was already called. He kept a notebook of machines, not clients. The notebook had grease on the edges. He married Glenna Kittleson in 1971. They raised two sons in a bungalow that needed a new mudroom every decade. After Glenna died in 2019 he still came out for a favorite unit, moving slower, swearing with more precision. Friends remember a man who would jump a battery in a lot that looked like a glacier, who could sit through a long potluck without making the wind a personality, and who owned one good parka. He liked the rimrocks early, before the heat. He died in Billings, among hills he had never needed to explain. The yard still opens. Someone else will hear the knock that means a line is tired.