Onward, Toward Butte
You gotta get young, before you get old
So come on, come on, lighten up your load
There ain’t nothin’ but you and me
And the open road
--Jimmy LaFave
Early Saturday morning and the road is ours, just me and The Turtle humming down the highway, no one else stirring. Leaving Bozeman, Interstate 90 winds its way westward, skirting Belgrade and Manhattan and passing over the Missouri River at Three Forks. We cross the river and approaching Whitehall, from behind us the sun breaks cloud cover, bathing the landscape in an eerie amber glow. The effect is surreal, so stunning that we pull onto the shoulder to gawk and absorb the moment. In the distance to the north rise the Elkhorn Mountains and overhead, raptors glide free on wind currents high above the tree line. Aside from the pavement before us, there's no sign of civilization. No traffic, no billboards, no litter, no power lines or cell towers, no city noise. It's one of those unexpected interludes that fill you with wonder, making you feel small and humble, privileged to be here. We sit, watch, listen, soaking it in until a big rig roars past, bringing us back to reality, and our mission. I begin fiddling with the stereo tuner, pick up KBGA, Missoula's university FM station, loud and clear. They're spinning vintage country, Hank Williams...
"Now, boys, don't start your ramblin' round,
On this road of sin or you're sorrow bound.
Take my advice or you'll curse the day
You started rollin' down that lost highway"
My Dad was no singer but he loved music, everything from the big band sounds of the 40's to bluegrass and traditional country, Cash and Elvis, even some 60's folk, and he'd sing while he drove, keeping time by tapping the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. Lost Highway was one of his favorites, a mournful tune I've heard him belt out dozens of times, and it triggers memories of days past, intimate father and son times you hold close and never forget. On a Saturday morning much like this, barely past sunrise, bouncing over an unpaved caliche road somewhere deep in West Texas, radio blasting, my Dad singing along, I drove for the first time. If I were to pick the instant my love affair with trucks and the open road began, it would be that morning. It was pure magic. I was eight years old.
Army was fresh out of training, cutting his teeth with Gulf Oil. and being the new guy he was assigned all the crap details, jobs no one with seniority would touch. In the beginning he was a well site geologist, on duty around the clock for what they called "sitting on wells." During the week he'd be called out at all hours of the night, and most weekends were spent at remote drilling rigs, studying well logs and analyzing core samples, giving orders to stop drilling or keep drilling. He was low man in the company pecking order, but to me he may as well have been a real life Indiana Jones. Outfitted for work, he looked the part of an adventurer--tropical khakis and a safari helmet, engineer's boots, Ray Ban aviators, and hanging on his belt, a giant Bowie knife that must have been a foot long, a custom blade he'd carried across North Africa and Italy during WWII. He said a man never knew when he might need a good knife, and he wasn't about to leave home unprepared, certainly not when venturing into the boonies. He drove a big orange and blue '53 Ford pickup, a Gulf company truck equipped with a two-way radio and packed with topographic maps and assorted instrumentation, all of which looked complicated and mysterious. And there was the old Winchester 12 gauge pump that I knew he kept hidden behind the seat. He said it was for rattlesnakes or any other critter that gave him a hard time, which struck me as funny because I couldn't imagine anyone giving him a hard time. Not Army. Occasionally on weekends and frequently during the summer I was allowed to tag along, camping at oil rigs, hanging out with roughnecks, sneaking draws on their cheap cigars, being one of the guys. The Bowie, the Winchester, sleeping under the stars in the wild--I was completely in awe, and on that morning when my Dad slowed the truck to a crawl, looked over and said "Want to drive?"...I thought it was surely the best day of my life.
That was the first of many such drives, and they all began the same. My Dad would position me in his lap, place my left hand on the wheel and my right hand on the shifter, cover them with his beefy mitts, and work the pedals while helping me steer and shift. I quickly learned that he wasn't much for spoken instructions. He felt that good driving was intuitive. He told me to feel what the truck wanted to do, and just help it; be one with the truck. He said I should be able to sense when it needed a different gear, more throttle, a different track, or even a rest. When I drove, when we drove together, there were no rules and no limitations. On road, off road, anything I felt bold enough to tackle, he'd let me try. Allowing me to make mistakes and suffer the consequences was the way he taught. Attempt something foolish, get stuck, bog down in sand, bottom out, he'd let it happen, and then help me figure out how to dig my way out. His method was effective; I rarely made the same mistake twice. Treat your truck right, he said, and it'll treat you right. Simple words, advice that holds up today. At the end of every driving lesson he'd give me a sly look, and this admonition: "Son, we don't need to tell your mother about this." It was our little secret, and I never told.
I remind myself that I need to call my Dad tonight.
I start The Turtle and let her idle until she feels happy, pull back onto the highway, and head west toward Butte, a city I'd wanted to visit even before this trip. I've already confessed to being a crime novel junkie and for anyone who appreciates that genre, Dashiel Hammett is required reading. Before Sam Spade and The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man series, Hammett's first novel was Red Harvest, which was set in Butte; in the book he re-named it Poisonville. It's a violent story with a bank robbery, murders, a lynching, gang killings, all based on Hammett's experiences as a Pinkerton detective working there in the 1920's. Red Harvest is believed to be the book that inspired the detective novel tradition, and I want to see where it all started. If that isn't enough, Butte is an historic old west mining town, copper, silver and gold, that in its heyday had a population well over 100,000. It was one of the largest cities west of the Mississippi at the turn of the century but today has shrunk to barely 30,000, much of it now a ghost town. And there's an added attraction. Montana was a regular hangout of the original gonzo journalist, Jack Kerouac. He once described a hole-in-the-wall dive he'd discovered in Butte, the M&M Cafe, as being "the end of my quest for the ideal bar."
I need to see if the M&M is still there. I also need to find an honest breakfast, and gas up.
to be continued...
