BasinCamp

A Trip to Yellowstone – 1974 (Part 1)

I had just completed my junior year at the U of M. The last quarter I had lived with a quadriplegic in Missoula who was from Anaconda. I helped him with his meals and drove his van for him. I had decided I wanted to return to Anaconda having just completed my University Year for Action there in March. I wanted to get a job working at the smelter to truly experience the plight of the working class and identify with that Union Angst! I had built a small wooden camper on the back of my 1961 IH truck. I figured I could sleep in that and cook with my camping gear, no matter what happened. I arrived in Anaconda on a Friday night and made my way straight to Pal's Bar where I had spent considerable time the past winter. I met up with Joe La Forge, a Crow Iron Worker and told him my plans to work on the hill. He told me there would probably be a strike in July as it had been 3 years since the last contract. Then he proceeded to tell me Jennie, his wife had kicked him out of the house and he didn't know what to do. I told him I planned to travel to Bismark and meet my folks at the airport, and then take them to SD for a church meeting and on to Denver for the International Kiwanis Convention. He said maybe I could take him back to Crow so he could see his dad and get his head on straight about Jeanie. I said sure and we spent the rest of the night drinking at Pals. When it was closing time he suggested we go to Butte and spend the night at his aunt's house.

I awoke the next morning to find my truck parked next to a small miner's cottage on the edge of the Berkeley Pit. I was a little concerned that if I had not been more careful, we might have ended up in the murky drink itself! We made our way back to the freeway and headed east. We stopped in Bozeman for gas. After I filled up I backed up the truck to move away from the pumps and enter the convenience store. In doing so, I ran my truck into a young lady's car. This was no doubt a combination of my hangover and the lack of side mirrors to see around the homemade topper. I told her I could give her some money, but I needed what I had at that point. We agreed to exchange addresses, she would get an estimate and send it to me. We headed back on the trail. The truck developed an unnervingly annoying vibration at the speed of about 45 mph that made the truck bounce all over the road. The only solution was to drive slower than 45 or faster than 60. We didn't have a radio and the vibrations were driving Joe crazy, what with his distraught over Jennie also. We stopped in Big Timber and looked for a radio with no luck. Back on the road and off again at Billings. I was driving down First Ave So., when I changed lanes and sideswiped a cowboy. He wasn't going to hear of me giving him my address, so he followed us to the 27th Ave Safeway (now Albertson's) and I cashed $60 in traveler’s checks to pay him off. I think Joe probably figured at this point I had a little money, although it had to last me until I found some work. We then headed down to Lodge Grass where we looked up his dad. He said he needed to meet some other men and go take a sweat, but I was too white, so had to wait for him. We spent the next three days driving back and forth between LG and Billings, looking for his relatives, the man that held the lease to his family land and trying to get some money. I said I really wanted to go to Miles City and see if I could find my old girl friend Joyce who had been in UYA with me the last year, so one night we drove the back road from Hardin to I-90 and east to Miles. No luck finding Joyce. Joe told me he had been a tribal policeman and also was a one time pimp in Billings. He really missed Jennie and decided he wanted to go back to Anaconda and see if she would take him back. I said I wasn't going back that direction as I still had to go to Bismark. Back to Billings again and I loaned Joe enough money to take the Greyhound back to Anaconda.

I headed towards Glendive where my friend Kenny had gone after his year in UYA. We bummed around 'River City' until he had to go to work at the local radio station. I figured while he was working I could hitch-hike back to Miles and try to look up Joyce again. I made it there by dark fall, but no luck, so I turned around and hitched back to Glendive by dark. Another day or so, and a little pot smoking with Kenny and I headed eat to Bismark. I stopped at the rest area past Wibaux and saw someone getting some Ole out of a cooler. I was really thirsty and didn't realize I was singing aloud about my desire for a brewski. Fortunately he didn't pay any attention to me. I headed out and spent the night outside of Dickenson, ND. I killed some time there the next morning making sociological observations about the businessmen of town as they gathered at a local cafe for coffee. I didn't want to get to Bismark too early. I headed out around noon and met my folks when their plane came in. We drove down to the Standing Rock Reservation where we lived from 1955-62. We had moved from there to Pine Ridge after I completed the third grade. The truck battery started discharging near McLaughlin on Hiway 10 and we had to stop and get the generator repaired. We made it to St. Elizabeth's Mission where we had lived and the convocation was being held. The seven Lakota tribes of SD would meet and camp in their traditional circle with the Standing Rock or Hunkpapa occupying the space near the opening of the circle each year, just as they had when conducting Sun Dances and buffalo hunts in the past. My dad and mom visited with folks they had known. I met the daughter of another priest I had known growing up. She was a young Lakota girl who had lived in Pine Ridge when we were there. She was away at a boarding school at lot when I was in high school and we both had done some growing up and had some attraction for one another. Unfortunately we didn’t get much chance to explore these interests that evening as my folks had a motel in Mobridge and I had to drive them there. I spent the night in the camper outside their motel. The next day we headed to Pine Ridge where we spent the night with a church worker lady we had known there. The next day we headed for Denver. I stayed with my folks in the convention center there and attempted to determine where the vibration in the front end of my truck was coming from. A fellow Kiwanian from my folk’s home town of Reedley, California took a look at the truck and told me it could be the king pins. I figured I couldn't do anything about that til later, so I left my folks in Denver and headed back towards Wyoming and Montana. I was thinking, I could still get that job at the smelter before the strike in July and have the experience of working a short time at least and then being on strike.

Trip to Yellowstone (Part 2)

I picked up a couple of young hitch-hikers in the middle of Wyoming. They were on vacation from Minnesota and wanted to see Yellowstone Park. I said I was headed through there on my way back to MT. Mike and Ted said they would like to try some Coors since they were out west. I said I would buy it because I was 21 and they were only 19 and 20. I learned later the legal age in Wyoming was only 19. We drove up to a drive up cold serve window, similar to a Frosty Freeze, which is a unique phenomena in the Cowboy State, bought a case of beer and promptly began to consume it. When the evening grew long, we found an open space on the prairie and spent the night. Mike and Ted beneath the stars and me in the camper. The next day, I dropped them off at the South Gate of Yellowstone and headed for Old Faithful. I had a friend from college working there and thought I would look him up. I walked into the employee dining room at Old Faithful Inn and said I was looking for a guy with a beard. They all laughed because the company policy did not allow beards when employed by the YP Company. I found my friend Mike. He said they were having a hard time keeping employees and I should apply for a job there and save up enough money for my king pins. The next day he rode up to Gardiner with me where I was hired on the spot as a dishwasher. They assigned me to the Old Faithful Lodge. I had three helpers when I started, but they all quit and I had to run the dish machine all by myself. I was so fast they called me Golden Boy. The cook was a black man by the name of Jim. He would give me $5 and tell me to sneak out the window, go to the Hamilton Stores and buy him a flat pint of Old Black Crow. One day I came to work and Jim wasn't there. I asked where he was and the manager said he had gone into DT's in middle of the night and they took him to detox. I became a cook that day. Everything was pretty much frozen. You either put it in the oven to bake (TV type entrees in a big pan), dropped it into the deep fat fryer (chicken and fries) or fried it on the grill (steaks and trout). Of course, it was all billed as fresh on the menu, like Trout caught fresh in the Rocky Mountains. The waiters would tell the “touri” that it was the “altitude” if they had any complaints about the food. On payday, we would each buy a bottle and have a party in my dorm room because I was the only one with a record player. Our favorites were the Grateful Dead's ”Europe 72” and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's ”Will the Circle be Unbroken” One pay day, we were sitting around listening to music and sipping from our bottles when a Galliano bottle fell off a shelf, hit the garbage can, broke and the short half came back up and hit me behind the ear. The blood gushed out pretty hard. My friends bandaged me up with a lot of cloth. We were able to keep partying though. The next morning when I went to work I looked like a civil war veteran returning from a battle. The manager sent me to the Lake hospital to get some stitches. Towards the end of the season, the crews were running short because people would just leave when they tired of the work. The management brought in a bunch of students from the cooking program at the Missoula Vo-Tech. One of them got drunk and beat his head with an ashtray. I think he had gone into a depressed state. He really liked the band Motor Head, so we called him Ashtray Head after that. Our chef/ manager left the employment of the YP Company about mid season. He had an argument with top management and told all of us he was going to the Davenport Hotel in Spokane and we could have a job if we came out there. A lot of the staff went hot potting (jumping into the hot springs) and had to run away or get a ticket if the ranger discovered them. I didn't ever get to go, because as a cook and dishwasher I had to stay in the kitchen longer to clean up and everybody had already left before I got through with my duties. I ended up staying until almost the end of the season in late August. Obviously, I didn't get back to Anaconda to work on the smelter.

Epilogue - I got back to Missoula and had a letter in my mailbox telling me I was being assigned to the Office of Developmental Disabilities in Spokane to do my social work practicum. I reported to the office there and found a room to live in above the “All in the Family Inn” (an Archie Bunker ripoff) that was called the Longbaugh Rooms (Harvey Longbaugh, aka the Sundance Kid and another story). I had purchased king pins in West Yellowstone for the IH, but didn't have the tools to put them on. I took them down to the Goodyear store. They found out all I needed was to balance my tires. There was no need for the kingpins. I also had a letter from the lady that I ran into in Bozeman. She had a little over $100 in damages to her car. I made payments to her that fall until the debt was fully paid. I found out she had spent the summer working in Yellowstone Park, at the Lake Hotel. I decided to check in my old boss from the park down at the Davenport Hotel. Sure enough Roy was there and he was good to his word. He gave me a job as a dishwasher. I worked three evening a week, plus Saturday and Sunday. It was enough to cover my expenses. The World's Fair was winding down. The Davenport had bought special china at a cost of $4000 for the Shah of Iran when he visited the fair and stayed at the Davenport. I also went to a Episcopal Church in Veradale where the priest was the father of one of my fellow employees at Yellowstone. I saw Mary, her boyfriend and another friend of theirs from Yellowstone at Christmas just before my practicum was over. I also got the opportunity to spend a week in the bishop’s mansion in Spokane to house sit as a result of this connection.

PRPS “FIGHT” SONG

Everywhere we go, people want to know, who we are.
Everywhere we go, people want to know, who we are.
This is what we tell them, This is what we tell them.
We're the Mighty Mighty Sioux!
We're the Mighty Mighty Sioux!

My Confirmation picture (1965), I am the white kid with the red tie on the left, my friend Chauncy is the slightly pudgy kid on the left with the blue tie. The bishop used to come once a year for his annual visitation and stay at our house. He would bring bacon and jam with him because we didn't usally have those foods for breakfast. Double click picture to enlarge for a better view! 

The Day I Bought a Car in Three Forks for $120 – 1973

I was 20 years old and working for the Juvenile Probation Office in Anaconda as a Deputy Probation Officer through the University Year for Action (a branch of VISTA). There were two of us on this project. The Chief Probation Officer (CPO) was fairly innovative and wanted to start a summer camp for kids as kind of a pre-delinquent crime prevention effort. Ed and I were the organizers and counselors. The Probation Office hired a director and later a cook and assistant. Ed and I made up lists of kids based on referrals from Welfare, Social Services, Schools, local Indian Alliance and Probation Records. We didn’t choose any serious offenders, but those who had mainly had statutory violations or indications of potential abuse and neglect or simply needed some extra stimulation. The sessions lasted ten days each and then we had a four day weekend before the next session. Usually we would get together at our apartment with the director to have a little alcohol debriefing after the camping session.

I had a girlfriend in Miles City, the second one since April from there. So anyway after we had been partying for about three or four hours after camp ended I decided I needed to head for Miles City to see Sari. I didn’t have a car then, so I hitchhiked everywhere I needed to go. I left Anaconda feeling no pain about eight and got a ride that took me to the US 287 and I - 90 junction seven miles west of Three Forks. It was dark and there didn’t seem to be anymore rides that night so I lay down just past the third light to sleep for the night. When I woke in the early morning light there was a skunk walking a few feet away. I stayed real still till he passed then decided I would get up and start walking and hope for a ride. Well I made it all the way into Three Forks, but no ride. About that time I was getting desperate as I only had four days and wanted to get to Miles and back. So I walked into the local Chevy dealer and asked if he had any cheap cars. I had a little more than a hundred dollars in my bank back in Anaconda. The dealer said he had a ’64 Chevy that he could let me have for $120. It was just like the 64 Biscayne my dad had when I was in the fifth grade. It was even the same color of blue. I said deal, he said it needed a little work to make it drive able, but he could fix it. Well we were still there about two in the afternoon. The shifter was mounted on the column and it didn’t always engage when you tried to shift. He got it to work somewhat and I was ready to go. I asked him if I could have an “in-transit” or temporary sticker. He said he couldn’t give me one. (Maybe he had lost his used dealer license?) He told me to just go into Bozeman and get plates. Well I headed out, but figured maybe I would be okay with out the plates. The freeway was all complete except for Big Timber. When you got there you had to drive through the city.

Well I passed the gas station and store on the west side of town and who did I see driving the opposite direction except for the Town Marshall. He was behind a line of three or four cars so he couldn’t turn around right away, but he turned on his lights. I just kept on going and when I passed the turnoff to Harlowtown and the A & W, there was a big bend in the road. I knew a girl that lived down that street so I turned off the main highway and went down that street. I think I made the turn before the Marshall saw me turn as he didn’t follow me down the street. I asked Sheryl if I could park the car there and get it later. She said fine, so I resumed my hitchhike and made Miles City that night.

Turns out, the girl there had decided a long distance relationship wasn’t worth it. I camped out in Miles city and turned around and headed back towards Big Timber and Anaconda. I picked up the car and right away began to have more problems with the shifter. It just wouldn’t work very well at all. So I pulled over in Livingston and looked up a friend there that was working there at the P.O. on the same program I was on. He let me spend the night and I cut a hole in the floor board to try to get at the shifter mechanism and was able to shift gears somewhat with the use of a Vise Grips. Well, I made it to Homestake outside of Butte and didn’t shift in time and killed the engine about halfway up the hill. I left the car there and hitched into Butte. I thought about calling a wrecker, but didn’t have any money so that was out. I hitched a ride back to Anaconda. In the morning Kenny our other roommate, who worked for Adult Parole and Probation and was a UYA volunteer also, took me back to Homestake. We got the car started and shifted into a low enough gear to get it over the pass. We made it back to Anaconda where I purchased a Hurst Mystery Shifter (it was a mystery it ever shifted). Kenny and I put this on and decided to take it for a spin down Park and back up Commercial. Well I had just rounded the Buttrey’s parking lot and headed back on Commercial when I heard a noise. The car quit. We figured out something had broken in the rear end. It was Sunday night and I had to go back to camp on Monday, so I just left the car there.

When I came back ten days later, Kenny said some guy had been trying to get a hold of me about my car, but wouldn’t say what the problem was. I called him and he came over. It turns out his boyfriend had just bought a new car and he was taking it for a spin down Park and back up Commercial and when he headed back up Commercial he rear-ended my car and totaled it out. He said the insurance company had looked at my car and offered me $135 for it. I accepted the money. Later we went to the wrecking yard to see if they would allow me to remove the shifter kit I had just bought and let Kenny get his tools out of the car. They did and several days later I was able to buy a ’61 Cadillac from the Anaconda Ford dealer for $115.

Here is a link to a story about two young Lakota friends, Chaske' and Hake'

www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/2-00lore.html

How I got the name Chaske' Wit'ko

We moved from Oakland, CA to the Lower Brule' Reservation in South Dakota when I was one year old. My father was an Episcopal priest and had just accepted a position as the assistant to a Chippewa priest who served the “Sicangu” Dakota people (”Burnt Thigh”, these were the people that followed Spotted Tail). We lived in old Ft Thompson for one year and my younger brother was born in Chamberlain. Chris, the Chippewa priest thought we needed Dakota names. He named me Tatanka Iyotanka or “Sitting Bull” because when they were putting in the garden I would follow the plow and end up sitting on my rump as I crossed every furrow. He thought I looked like a little sitting bull. The old Ft. Thompson agency would flood when the waters backed up from the Big Bend Dam on the Missouri and the agency town was relocated onto higher ground.

About that time, my dad accepted a position as Priest in Charge on the Standing Rock Reservation, just south of the North Dakota border. We moved there when I was about 2 1/2 years old and my brother was still a newborn. Chris told my dad it wouldn't do to call me Sitting Bull on the Standing Rock as the Hunkpapa people were followers of Sitting Bull. So Chris gave me a new name, Chaske' Wit'ko which means Crazy First Born. First born because of my birth order and Crazy, because I already had indications of being quite independent. My next two brothers were named Horse Looking and Rain in the Face. Their names ever stuck like mine did!

When we moved to St. Elizabeth on the Standing Rock, there was also a home for about 100 Indian boys and girls that was run by the church. My dad didn't have to handle any administrative responsibilities for the school, but conducted chapel for them. Chief Gall had joined the church there long after the Battle of the Little Big Horn or Custer's Massacre as the white people called it. Legend had it that Gall was riding his horse outside the church one Sunday and heard singing in the Dakota tongue. He was so entranced by the sound that he joined the church even though he had to give up his second wife and be the husband of only one wife. He was buried about a mile north of the church in the Episcopal graveyard and I remember seeing his grave many times as we would walk up the hill to the cemetery. One time when the bishop was visiting he asked where Jimmy was and somebody said they had seen me walking up the road to the cemetery. He asked my mother why she wasn't alarmed, she said that I would be okay as I always came back by dinner.

The Folsom Boys 1964-68

I met Chanfield Folsom during the fourth grade. When I left Ogallala Community School, the BIA school to attend Pine Ridge Public School he was the only kid I knew in that school. His nickname was Chauncey. Quite the English name for a Native American. Chauncey was a little overweight, but liked to ride bikes around Pine Ridge. We used to ride in opposite directions in figure eights on the outdoor basketball court at PRPS and try not to hit each other at the point of intersecting circles. It was our own original game of “chicken”. When we rode our bikes through the fields we would get stickers and cockle burrs in the tires and then we would have flats the next day.

My mother never really approved of Chauncey nor my friendship with him. His dad was in the South Dakota State Penitentiary. I met him once. He was out for a short time and then back in again. I never knew what his crime, nor did I ask. Chauncey had six brothers, Timmy, Fred, Chipper, Blaze, Snooks and a sixth who died in a house fire. His mother worked as a waitress in the only café in Pine Ridge. She had a string of boyfriends while Chauncey’s father was in prison. His mom had attended an Episcopal boarding school for Indian boy and girls on the Standing Rock reservation as a child (where we had lived for seven years before moving to Pine Ridge). She told me she had gotten enough religion as a child. She did attempt to see that her sons had some sort of religious education though. Chauncey attended catechism classes and we were confirmed together at the age of 12. Chauncey was my same age, but was always a year behind at PRPS.

Besides riding bikes all over the res together, we would collect pop bottles and return them to the local market for two cents apiece. Some days we would make over sixty or seventy cents. Sometimes the store would pay cash, other times they insisted we take it in merchandise. Those days we had enough gum and candy to choke a horse. We also went to the local creek to fish or swim. Another pastime was making underground forts or having dirt clod fights with other youth around the res. I threw a dirt clod once and hit Chauncey in the head. That was the only time I ever saw him close to tears. It really bothered me that I had done that, but he didn't hold it against me for long. I used to think he was one of the toughest kids I knew. Kind of like Sherman Alexie's, "The Toughest Indian in the World"

I received an electronic car racing set as a gift around fifth or sixth grade I set it up in my room in the basement of our house. Racing those cars quickly became a hit with Chauncey and other kids in the neighborhood. We had five or six boys taking turns operating the stock cars. The cars would swerve and veer off the track if one used too much speed on the corners. We found if you put a little weight on the cars they wouldn’t swerve so badly, kind of like the penny on the stereo needle. Eventually more weight was tried to see if the speed could be increased even more without leaving the track. I had a miniature model of the Iwo Jima and somebody taped that to one of the cars. We had a great time envisioning Ira Hayes keeping the car on track much as he helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima before alcohol got the better of him. I think all those kids in my basement made my mother a little nervous. She would have preferred that I only have one or two friends over at a time.

My brothers and I received a small portable record player along with a series of classic, gospel and folk songs as a gift around the same time. Later my mother let me join a record club and I bought Johnny Cash’s, “Live at Folsom Prison”. Chauncey loved that record. He convinced me to bring it up to his house where we would listen to Folsom Prison and other records. I remember one of his brothers getting up on the kitchen table with the opened jam and peanut butter jars and doing a little jig to Folsom Prison. A couple of years later when Chauncey's brothers introduced me to drinking, the record player and “Folsom Prison” would make the trip up the hill to the Folsom's house. Their house was one large room, probably about 12’ x 24’, with only one bed, a woodstove and a sink, but no sewer. They used a bucket underneath the sink to catch the runoff. There was an outhouse in the rear and usually a couple of non-running cars in the yard. For a while, there was a car with a radio that worked and we would sit in the car and listen to the radio. One of the brothers pawned the battery to get some beer and later the radio was sold also. One year there was some extra wood available from a neighboring house that was being torn down. Some of the brothers salvaged some wood and made a sleeping porch. For a while Chauncey slept there in the summer. I remember feeling proud of the Folsoms for improving their house. They also built a small porch outside the front door. My pride took a dive however, as the next winter they broke the porch down piece by piece and fed it into the wood stove.

Who was Buddy Red Bow?

Some people have called him the Indian Elvis. Others say he was the perfect blend of Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. Buddy was born in South Dakota and abandoned by his birth mother in 1949. He was cared by a local Police Officer named Pete Two Bulls until, Pete arranged for his daughter Maise and her husband Stephen Red Bow to adopt young Buddy. He was raised in the Red Shirt District on the Pine Ridge Reservation. This area contains what the Lakota call the stronghold. It is the place Big Foot and his band of Minneconju Lakota were headed towards when they were murdered at Wounded Knee in 1889. The stronghold wasn’t just a good hiding place, but a place where the Lakota believed they could communicate with the Great Spirit. The Ghost Dance was practiced there. Buddy grew up in this area among traditional Lakota. He soon developed a love for music and began to write songs about the Indian life in both English and Lakota.

Buddy was the first inductee into the Native American Music Hall of Fame, just ahead of Jimi Hendrix and a year before Hank Williams. Buddy landed a roll in the classic movie, “How the West Was Won”. He recorded music professionally from 1970 until his passing into the spirit world on March 28, 1993. Buddy first album was titled “BRB’ and was an inspiration to many native talents. His second album was “Journey to the Spirit World” which is a personal exploration of his Lakota heritage. His final album released on Tatanka records is a C & W mix of tunes titled “Black Hills Dreamer”. Black Hills Dreamer includes Buddy’s story of his Sundance and vision at the age of 15 and his strength to walk the Lakota Way. Tracks from his albums have been featured on ABC’s Hallmark special DreamKeepers and in the movie Skins. Buddy was simply the best Native American County Singer/ Songwriter. He sang Country Soul with a Native Heart.

He is buried on Red Shirt Table near Christ Church, Episcopal looking over the edge of the Badlands and the Cheyenne River. His gravestone is a metal fabricated guitar. I never met Buddy, although he was only four years older than me and our family was good friends some of his Two Bulls aunts and cousins. One of Buddy’s best songs is called “Ben Black Elk”. Ben is probably the most photographed Indian in the world. He used to pose beneath Mt Rushmore with his drum in traditional regalia. Ben was the son of Lakota Holy Man Nicholas Black Elk who published Black Elk Speaks in 1932. I did meet Ben several times when Buddy’s cousin Buddy (Two Bulls) Hawk stayed with us in the Black Hills when we would vacation there in the summer. Here are a few words from that song.


Why it seems like yesterday that I heard Ben Black Elk say:

“These here Black Hills are our land, stolen by the White Man.

If you wanted to be so fair, on Mt. Rushmore, why isn’t the Indian there?

Sitting Bull, Spotted Tail, Red Cloud - - they’d all be so proud…’

Shrine of democracy, land of the free.

But not for you, or for me”