Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Cryin’ Time
Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)
I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail
Waitin’ in Your Welfare Line
Together Again
Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. was born the son of a sharecropper along the Red River in Texas on 8/12/1929. The family had an old mule named Buck and one day at the age of 3 or 4 Alvis walked into the house and announced his name was now Buck. He has been Buck Owens since that day. Buck’s family moved to West during the depression in 1937 when he was eight. The trailer hitch broke in Mesa outside of Phoenix and there the family stayed. They did farm work there to survive and sometimes migrated to the San Joaquin where they worked crops around Bakersfield. Buck decided he didn’t want to be poor when he grew up; he learned to play the guitar and at 16 was on a radio show in Mesa. At 21 he moved to Bakersfield, CA where he got some work playing songs and driving truck. Buck was a pioneering founder of the Bakersfield sound (AKA California Honky Tonk), a gritty blend of honky tonk, rockabilly and hard scrabble songs which arose to compete with Nashville. Buck worked with such early country music collaborators as Wanda Jackson, Wynn Steward, Ferlin Husky, Tommy Collins, Merle Haggard, Sonny James, Del Reeves, Faron Young and Lefty Frizzel.
In 1953 the song “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud Loud Music)” later popularized by the Flying Burrito Brothers was inspired by some of Buck’s early gigs. Buck received national attention with his first top ten recording of “Under Your Spell Again” in the fall of 1959. He followed this with “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)” in the fall of 1960 which peaked at #2 on country charts. In 1961 he recorded “Above and Beyond” and “Foolin’ Around” which hit #1. He followed with a string of 20 #1 hits during the sixties including standards such as “Act Naturally” (later recorded as a critical success by the Beatles, they had all Buck’s albums and he collected all theirs!), “My Heart Skips a Beat” and “Love’s Gonna Live Here”. Ringo and Buck recorded Act Naturally and made a music video together in 1989.
Buck played San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium in 1968, not normally a country venue, to an enthusiastic crowd of young hip music lovers. Credence Clearwater gave Buck a nod with the line “listening to Buck Owens” in the song “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” and the Grateful Dead claimed Buck as an important influence in their work. Rolling Stone magazine wrote a country piece prominently featuring Buck along with several other country stars which was later expanded into a book by John Grissim, Jr. titled Country Music: White Man’s Blues. In 1969, Buck premiered on “Hee Haw” as a summer replacement for the “Smother’s Brothers Show”. In 1971 Buck released “Ruby”, an album which introduced a whole new generation to the bluegrass sound with traditional tunes, like “Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms”, “Ashes of Love”, “Salty Dog”, and “I Know Your Married (but I Love You Still)”.
During the 70’s and 80’s there was a revival of the Bakersfield sound and Dwight Yoakam, Emmy Lou Harris, Gram Parsons first with the Byrds and later with The Flying Burrito Brother’s, Chris Hillman, Ricky Van Shelton, Randy Travis and Ricky Skaggs all recorded some Owens songs and other Bakersfield sounds as the public grew weary of the syrupy pop sound coming out of Nashville. This move paralleled the rise of the Outlaw Movement and the development of the current Texas Sound. In 1988 Dwight Yoakam convinced Buck to come out of retirement and re-record Buck’s “Streets of Bakersfield” with the line “I came here to find something I couldn’t find anywhere else”. This line is a true tribute to Buck Owens and the sound that doesn’t exist anywhere but Bakersfield. Buck Owens passed on March 25, 2006.
To paraphrase a Gram Parsons song, Tonight the Angels in Heaven Rejoiced. RIP Buck!
Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)
I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail
Waitin’ in Your Welfare Line
Together Again
Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. was born the son of a sharecropper along the Red River in Texas on 8/12/1929. The family had an old mule named Buck and one day at the age of 3 or 4 Alvis walked into the house and announced his name was now Buck. He has been Buck Owens since that day. Buck’s family moved to West during the depression in 1937 when he was eight. The trailer hitch broke in Mesa outside of Phoenix and there the family stayed. They did farm work there to survive and sometimes migrated to the San Joaquin where they worked crops around Bakersfield. Buck decided he didn’t want to be poor when he grew up; he learned to play the guitar and at 16 was on a radio show in Mesa. At 21 he moved to Bakersfield, CA where he got some work playing songs and driving truck. Buck was a pioneering founder of the Bakersfield sound (AKA California Honky Tonk), a gritty blend of honky tonk, rockabilly and hard scrabble songs which arose to compete with Nashville. Buck worked with such early country music collaborators as Wanda Jackson, Wynn Steward, Ferlin Husky, Tommy Collins, Merle Haggard, Sonny James, Del Reeves, Faron Young and Lefty Frizzel.
In 1953 the song “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud Loud Music)” later popularized by the Flying Burrito Brothers was inspired by some of Buck’s early gigs. Buck received national attention with his first top ten recording of “Under Your Spell Again” in the fall of 1959. He followed this with “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)” in the fall of 1960 which peaked at #2 on country charts. In 1961 he recorded “Above and Beyond” and “Foolin’ Around” which hit #1. He followed with a string of 20 #1 hits during the sixties including standards such as “Act Naturally” (later recorded as a critical success by the Beatles, they had all Buck’s albums and he collected all theirs!), “My Heart Skips a Beat” and “Love’s Gonna Live Here”. Ringo and Buck recorded Act Naturally and made a music video together in 1989.
Buck played San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium in 1968, not normally a country venue, to an enthusiastic crowd of young hip music lovers. Credence Clearwater gave Buck a nod with the line “listening to Buck Owens” in the song “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” and the Grateful Dead claimed Buck as an important influence in their work. Rolling Stone magazine wrote a country piece prominently featuring Buck along with several other country stars which was later expanded into a book by John Grissim, Jr. titled Country Music: White Man’s Blues. In 1969, Buck premiered on “Hee Haw” as a summer replacement for the “Smother’s Brothers Show”. In 1971 Buck released “Ruby”, an album which introduced a whole new generation to the bluegrass sound with traditional tunes, like “Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms”, “Ashes of Love”, “Salty Dog”, and “I Know Your Married (but I Love You Still)”.
During the 70’s and 80’s there was a revival of the Bakersfield sound and Dwight Yoakam, Emmy Lou Harris, Gram Parsons first with the Byrds and later with The Flying Burrito Brother’s, Chris Hillman, Ricky Van Shelton, Randy Travis and Ricky Skaggs all recorded some Owens songs and other Bakersfield sounds as the public grew weary of the syrupy pop sound coming out of Nashville. This move paralleled the rise of the Outlaw Movement and the development of the current Texas Sound. In 1988 Dwight Yoakam convinced Buck to come out of retirement and re-record Buck’s “Streets of Bakersfield” with the line “I came here to find something I couldn’t find anywhere else”. This line is a true tribute to Buck Owens and the sound that doesn’t exist anywhere but Bakersfield. Buck Owens passed on March 25, 2006.
To paraphrase a Gram Parsons song, Tonight the Angels in Heaven Rejoiced. RIP Buck!
Don't Come Knocking
This film premiered in Butte last weekend at the Mother Lode Theater and I was privileged to serve as an usher to a crowd of 1200. It is a Wim Wenders' film (Wim was present at the showing, but not the other actors) based on a screenplay written by Sam Shepard. Shepard stars as Howard Spence and Jessica Lange as Doreen his onscreen former love interest and also his real life sweetheart. This story is about an aging actor whose life has passed him by as he wasted it in decadent living and alcoholic swill. He walks off the set of his current film, stops to see his 80 year old mom in Elko, NV whom he hasn't had contact for nearly 30 years only to learn from her he may have a child he never knew about from a fling during the filming of his last successful movie in Butte, MT over 20 years ago. He leaves Elko for Butte to see what part of his past he can redeem as the plot takes several twists and turns in Montana's century old Mining City of Butte. T-Bone Burnett does the music, featuring an instrumental version of “Walk the Line” as one of the background tunes which gives the film some a similiar feel as the movie by the same name he recently did the music for with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.
Two mainstays in the scenes of action are the Historic Finlen Hotel and the world renowned M & M Bar. Wim Wenders stayed in the Finlen in 1978 when he made his first trip to Butte in 1978 searching for historical and emotional roots of Dashiell Hammet's novel Red Harvest based on labor events surrounding the IWW heyday and Frank Little's murder in a long ago Butte. Wim heard fire trucks roaring by the Finlen on that trip to later learn of a major fire in Butte (unfortunately a common occururence in Butte in the 1970’s.) He later would write the fire trucks into "Knocking". Howard Spence in his leading role seeks to connect with something of meaning in his life and roams the streets of Butte for several days in this attempt. The cinematography shows Butte at its best although the streets are eerily disserted and devoid of activity. Howard makes some sense of his messy life although he has many miles to go before totally repairing the wreckage of his past life and leaving the bottle behind. I would rate this movie two thumbs up for the great scenery, realistic shots of Butte and the story of redemption and release.
My wife and I spent our wedding night in the Finlen in 1977. The next morning we dined with our best man at the M & M. Elko has frequently been a stopping point on our trips to CA, the Commercial Club and downtown Elko have some of that same sense of past glory and present desperation that Butte shares. Wim captures that same sense in Howard Spence's role. Although I have walked some of these same steps in an alcoholic daze on the streets of Butte, I am glad to have found my sobriety and serenity, hence I won't be facing the same ghosts as Howard at age 60. This is not to say there is much in this film I can identify with. Hopefully everyone who has ever had an attachment to Butte,has failed to appreciate their past personal attachments, have lived to regret those loses and made some attempts to seek a form of redemption and restoration will find enjoyment in this film.
This film premiered in Butte last weekend at the Mother Lode Theater and I was privileged to serve as an usher to a crowd of 1200. It is a Wim Wenders' film (Wim was present at the showing, but not the other actors) based on a screenplay written by Sam Shepard. Shepard stars as Howard Spence and Jessica Lange as Doreen his onscreen former love interest and also his real life sweetheart. This story is about an aging actor whose life has passed him by as he wasted it in decadent living and alcoholic swill. He walks off the set of his current film, stops to see his 80 year old mom in Elko, NV whom he hasn't had contact for nearly 30 years only to learn from her he may have a child he never knew about from a fling during the filming of his last successful movie in Butte, MT over 20 years ago. He leaves Elko for Butte to see what part of his past he can redeem as the plot takes several twists and turns in Montana's century old Mining City of Butte. T-Bone Burnett does the music, featuring an instrumental version of “Walk the Line” as one of the background tunes which gives the film some a similiar feel as the movie by the same name he recently did the music for with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.
Two mainstays in the scenes of action are the Historic Finlen Hotel and the world renowned M & M Bar. Wim Wenders stayed in the Finlen in 1978 when he made his first trip to Butte in 1978 searching for historical and emotional roots of Dashiell Hammet's novel Red Harvest based on labor events surrounding the IWW heyday and Frank Little's murder in a long ago Butte. Wim heard fire trucks roaring by the Finlen on that trip to later learn of a major fire in Butte (unfortunately a common occururence in Butte in the 1970’s.) He later would write the fire trucks into "Knocking". Howard Spence in his leading role seeks to connect with something of meaning in his life and roams the streets of Butte for several days in this attempt. The cinematography shows Butte at its best although the streets are eerily disserted and devoid of activity. Howard makes some sense of his messy life although he has many miles to go before totally repairing the wreckage of his past life and leaving the bottle behind. I would rate this movie two thumbs up for the great scenery, realistic shots of Butte and the story of redemption and release.
My wife and I spent our wedding night in the Finlen in 1977. The next morning we dined with our best man at the M & M. Elko has frequently been a stopping point on our trips to CA, the Commercial Club and downtown Elko have some of that same sense of past glory and present desperation that Butte shares. Wim captures that same sense in Howard Spence's role. Although I have walked some of these same steps in an alcoholic daze on the streets of Butte, I am glad to have found my sobriety and serenity, hence I won't be facing the same ghosts as Howard at age 60. This is not to say there is much in this film I can identify with. Hopefully everyone who has ever had an attachment to Butte,has failed to appreciate their past personal attachments, have lived to regret those loses and made some attempts to seek a form of redemption and restoration will find enjoyment in this film.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Putting the cuffs on Howard (Sam Shepard) on Iron St across from Land of Magic restaurant on South Utah in Butte from the movie - "Don't Come Knocking" (notice the ghost sign for Highlander Beer on the building - a former locally brewed Butte beer)
Amber (Fairuza Balk) furniture dancing while Earl (Gabriel Mann) plays the guitar on Alabama St. just south of the Anselmo headframe in Butte from the movie, "Don't Come Knocking"
Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) in the movie "Don't Come Knocking" walking by the sign on the side Jerry's Corner Bar at the corner of Platinum and Main St. in Butte (Jerry's Corner formerly had a sign on the door that read "No Miners Served")
Sky (Sarah Polley) from movie "Don't Come Knocking" looking over Butte from the "M" Hill
Monday, March 27, 2006
When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem….but the people would not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. Luke 9:51-53
Jesus discerned His Father’s will to go to Jerusalem and complete the events before him. Jesus understood the Lord’s will because He was in perfect unity with God the Father. Still He faced the same anxiety we face when presented with decisions between our will and God’s will. As Jesus set His face to follow God’s will in submission to the events of Holy Week, He faced questioning and opposition from others. The disciples didn’t want Jesus to endure the agony of crucifixion. They didn’t want to see Him suffer. They didn’t want to lose their friend. The Samaritans were uncharitable to Jesus because he recognized Jerusalem as the Holy City, not their appropriate location for the Passover Feast. The Samaritans didn’t agree with His religious beliefs.
How often do we face these same issues? We have friends who don’t want us to follow the Lord’s will and lead us into temptation or we also may be the friend leading others astray. There are those who oppose our religious beliefs and try to dissuade us from walking in the ways prepared for us by taunts, torment or tirade. Besides there is the matter of discerning God’s plan and will for us. Jesus lived a perfect life and was in constant unity with the Father. We need to strive very hard to be in unity with His will even a small part of the time. What of the times when we are convinced we are right and in fact we are dead wrong, walking in opposition to the Lord’s will. It is harder to listen to Christian friends then. Can we hear them at all?
What help is there? We only need to look to Jesus’ life and seek to emulate Him. He used prayer and meditation to know His Father’s will. He knew and frequently quoted scripture. He associated with fellow seekers of the Way! A favorite quote of mine is the 11th step from AA which says, “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power (Spirit) to carry that out.” To put God’s power to work in our lives, we need to seek Him in regular prayer and listen for His guidance daily.
May we set our faces towards Jerusalem and seek His will!
Jesus discerned His Father’s will to go to Jerusalem and complete the events before him. Jesus understood the Lord’s will because He was in perfect unity with God the Father. Still He faced the same anxiety we face when presented with decisions between our will and God’s will. As Jesus set His face to follow God’s will in submission to the events of Holy Week, He faced questioning and opposition from others. The disciples didn’t want Jesus to endure the agony of crucifixion. They didn’t want to see Him suffer. They didn’t want to lose their friend. The Samaritans were uncharitable to Jesus because he recognized Jerusalem as the Holy City, not their appropriate location for the Passover Feast. The Samaritans didn’t agree with His religious beliefs.
How often do we face these same issues? We have friends who don’t want us to follow the Lord’s will and lead us into temptation or we also may be the friend leading others astray. There are those who oppose our religious beliefs and try to dissuade us from walking in the ways prepared for us by taunts, torment or tirade. Besides there is the matter of discerning God’s plan and will for us. Jesus lived a perfect life and was in constant unity with the Father. We need to strive very hard to be in unity with His will even a small part of the time. What of the times when we are convinced we are right and in fact we are dead wrong, walking in opposition to the Lord’s will. It is harder to listen to Christian friends then. Can we hear them at all?
What help is there? We only need to look to Jesus’ life and seek to emulate Him. He used prayer and meditation to know His Father’s will. He knew and frequently quoted scripture. He associated with fellow seekers of the Way! A favorite quote of mine is the 11th step from AA which says, “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power (Spirit) to carry that out.” To put God’s power to work in our lives, we need to seek Him in regular prayer and listen for His guidance daily.
May we set our faces towards Jerusalem and seek His will!
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Here I am Drunk Again or the Top Ten Reasons I am now in a 12 Step Group
# 10 – My Truck was Stolen 1975
I was drinking at the Oxford in downtown Missoula. I parked near the old library and walked the block to the Ox. I went back to the truck, drove around and parked in another spot. I went back to the Ox, drank some more, came out and couldn’t find the truck near the library. I walked a couple blocks to the west to the city police station and reported my truck had been stolen. I sat in the lobby about half an hour. Then the dispatcher told me the truck had been located. I asked if it was okay and if the keys were in the vehicle. She told me where it was and I walked over to it. I guess I was really lucky they didn’t book me on public drunkenness, besides the fact they let me drive away in an obviously intoxicated condition.
# 9 – How I Lost all the Buttons on my New Shirt 1973
New Year’s Eve I went out wearing a shirt I had just received for Christmas. The destination that evening was the Wonder Bar in Anaconda. It was a full house and a wild evening and I remember asking Janie Frankovich to dance. I went home and woke up the next morning to find all the buttons ripped off my new shirt. For a short while, I imagined Janie or some other young girl had ripped them off trying to tear off my shirt at the Wonder Bar. I soon enough realized I had assumed, in my drunken state, it was a western shirt and the snaps would just open if I pulled on them, instead I had ripped all the buttons off.
# 8 – Wrecked Truck, Memorial Day Weekend 1976
I took a trip to Yellowstone with my friend Cathy. We headed back towards Anaconda on Sunday morning, and found out we couldn’t buy beer due on Sunday morning due to the blue laws. It was afternoon when we got to Livingston. I gassed up the truck and went in to pay and buy some beer. Cathy went to the restroom and also bought some beer. We picked up a couple of hitchhikers, but they had the good sense to get out on Homestake Pass. At the exit for Fairmont Hot Springs, Cathy said she would like to see the hot springs before we returned home. I was tired and wanted to head straight for Anaconda and call it a day. I swerved the steering from right to left and back again as if I couldn’t decide which way to go. The truck decided. We ended up rolling twice and landing right side up. A Silver Bow Sheriffs’ deputy was driving by. He said to go into Anaconda and tell the police there what had happened. We had almost reached the Anaconda exit (with no windshield and an obviously wrecked vehicle) before the HP stopped and made us go back and clean the mess up. I had a camper that was in quite a few pieces and there were numerous beer cans around. The HP said “what is wrong with you people from Butte and Anaconda, you think you can wreck your car and just drive away.” He asked if we had been drinking. I said no and it was good enough for him.
#7 – Statistics - “Pass/ Fail”- What are the Percentages? 1975
I had to take Statistics to graduate. I took it “Pass/ Fail” figuring I could get probably get a passing grade. I had a “C” average going into the final so I proposed to the instructor that I be allowed to skip the final as I had a fifty/ fifty or better chance of doing equally well on the final and he could just give me a “Pass” as the statistics indicated I would probably pass. He said no! I did terrible on the test, so I went out that weekend and bought a bottle of Muscatel before the final was scored to drown my disapointment I lay under the Higgins Street Bridge in the late afternoon spring sun on the grass and drank the strong wine out of a brown paper sack. A young lady crossed the bridge and saw me. She asked if she could have some wine if she came down there. I said sure. The bottle was drained fairly quickly as I had had a good start already. We walked up to Stockman’s Bar to get another. She started talking to two other guys and soon we were all in a car together going up Pattee Canyon. Before long, I was so drunk and obnoxious the other two guys wanted to get rid of me. They dropped me off up the Canyon where the police soon found me and brought me back to the apartment. No charges, but I had messed myself up pretty bad. I did pass the statistics class against all odds!
#6 – Jumping into a Moving Vehicle 1972
We were cruising around a friend’s jeep in downtown Missoula on a week night and enjoying a few beers. The jeep stalled and wouldn’t start again. I suggested we push start the jeep. It started and I ran to catch up. I jumped into the rear cargo area. Unfortunately, I jumped in head first and hit my head on a tire iron. My friends had to take me to the campus health center to get some stitches. It didn’t interrupt our partying for long however.
#5 – Sleeping at the OX 1975
I was at the Ox one night feeling sorry for myself and trying to identify with the working class. I spent the evening there and ended up falling asleep in the shoe shine chair and waking up there the next morning. My contacts were still in my eyes and hurt pretty bad. I figured I couldn’t stay there any longer, so I walked the block to the Palace Hotel. There were some pretty comfortable easy chairs there and I sank into one and soon fell asleep again. It was only too soon that I was awakened by the Hotel staff telling me I could go downtown, uptown or take an out of town Greyhound, but I couldn’t stay there! Another time I partied too much and forgot to take my contacts out. When I awoke I put a spare pair in. I couldn’t figure out why my eyes were so irritated and went to see the eye doctor. It wasn’t hard for him to discover the second pair.
#4 – An Eye doctor Appointment in Missoula 1976
Having gotten a social work job in Anaconda, I was becoming well established with a regular salary and a degree of respectability. I thought I should get my eyes checked and made an appointment in Missoula for a Monday in early spring. I arranged to take the day off and planned to drive over on Friday night after work so I could spend the weekend enjoying culture in a University town. However, a fellow social worker of mine encouraged me to have just one beer at the Reno Club across the street from our office. One beer led to another and about eight thirty I decided I needed to be making my way to Missoula. I made it up to Georgetown and down the Flint Creek Pass with no problem. About ten miles north of Phillipsburg I missed a curve and went off the road. I somehow sailed over a ten foot deep ditch and landed on the railroad tracks. I tried to back up, but the truck wouldn’t move. I hiked back up to the road and started to walk towards Maxville hoping to find some help. About half an hour later someone stopped, gave me a lift back to the truck and took a look at the situation. They couldn’t figure anyway to get the truck back on the road. All four tires had popped and the rear window was out. He took me back to Phillipsburg and called a few folks to see if they could help but, to no avail. Finally he took me to the County Jail. There the Sheriff said he would help me. The Sheriff kindly let me spend the night in the jail and the next morning we went out with a wrecker to retrieve the truck. We towed it back to the ‘Burg where the Ford garage was able to repair it in a couple of weeks.
#3 – Christmas in Yellowstone 1974
I spent the summer working at Old Faithful. Several years previous, there had been a big snowstorm in August. The park was pretty nearly shut down. The staff were all sad because in a few days the season would be over and they would be going back to their homes and wouldn’t see each other again. They decided since they wouldn’t be together at Christmas time they should celebrate it early in the midst of the snowstorm. It was great fun and a tradition was born which included decorating a tree and exchanging gifts. There was great anticipation to this celebration every year and 1974 was no different. I don’t think alcohol was intended to be part of the celebration, but it was a part of almost everything I did. So I had a few drinks with my friends and before I ever got to the celebration. I had so much to drink I passed out and missed all the festivities.
#2 – A Trip to Riverton, WY 1977
My friend Mike and I decided to take a road trip to Riverton to see my high school friend Bill Sydow, and also stop in Livingston on the way home and look up a former college instructor. We left Anaconda on a Friday night and consumed a six pack by the time we got to West Yellowstone. We slept in the camper in his truck outside of town and in the morning drove into West. We bought a six pack and decided to drive through the park to get to Riverton. We had a flat tire near Canyon, changed it and threw the flat in the back of the camper. We got to Riverton and attempted to look up Bill. He didn’t answer his phone after several attempts. We were both members of the Elks so stopped in at the local club. We asked around to see if anybody there knew Bill who worked for Amoco. Someone said he had gone back to Nebraska for the weekend. We saw a sign on a local grocery that said Pearl Beer was on sale for $3.99 a case so we stopped and got two cases and headed back out on Highway 20. We took turns driving Mike’s Ford Ranger. When we were traveling through I think it must have been Thermopolis or Worland, I was driving and I hit the median between the traffic lanes. I quickly corrected and recovered without incident. It wasn’t too long later, I reached for another beer and Mike grabbed my hand and said I had, had enough. I calmly reached out with my other hand and took the beer with that hand. Mike grabbed that hand also and said no more. At that point he had both my hands, which occupied both his hands also and left nobody’s hands on the steering wheel. Needless to say we drove off the road. Again there were no major problems and we continued the journey after Mike assumed the responsibilities of driving. We made it to Billings late that evening and decided to sleep at the Pictograph Caves state park outside of town. When we woke up in the morning, we found we had another flat and since we hadn’t repaired the first flat there was no spare! Mike said he would walk into town and get it fixed. I said I would try to cook some breakfast. He came back several hours later with the repaired tire and I had cooked a bunch of eggs. We drove back to Anaconda and postponed the visit with former professor.
# 1 – Another Broken Record 1978
I had made two attempts to quit drinking at this point and been to several AA meetings. I had also gotten married during one period of sobriety and taken a promotion as social worker II in Deer Lodge with responsibility for Granite Co also. We were contemplating a move to Deer Lodge in the summer, but I was commuting during the interim. My supervisor lived in Butte and would make weekly visits to Anaconda with bi-monthly visits to Deer Lodge. It so happened that this particular day, Nancy was coming to Anaconda and I was preparing for my weekly trip to Phillipsburg. Nancy had called the day before and said I should plan to meet her for lunch at the Hofbrau west of Anaconda after a quick trip in the am to the Burg. I said sure. We met and had lunch with a pitcher or two of beer which extended into the afternoon. I called my young wife to tell her I had met Nancy for lunch and would be home later that afternoon as there really wasn’t any need to go back to Deer Lodge at that point. The hours crept by and we had a few more pitchers. I made a few more calls to my wife to tell her I would be home sooner or later. About seven or so, Nancy said she really needed to get back to Butte, but I should follow her over there and have another drink or two. We stopped at the District Office which was in the Executive Village on Front Street and at that point she realized I had had quite enough to drink. She said she needed to make a couple of calls, take care of some things and then she would drive me back to Anaconda. While she was calling in the other room, I slipped out the back of the EV and somehow drove myself to uptown Butte where a girl I knew from college lived. She was entertained for a while by my behavior. I did some Indian dances, some rock stomps and a few other jigs I knew for her. She decided eventually I was way too intoxicated to be on the highway and called a mutual friend that MaryLynn and I knew. He convinced her she should drive me back to our house in Anaconda. My wife was pretty upset by this time. She had broken a few records from my collection and they littered the floor of our living room. She had decided to break one record every half hour I didn’t come home, then upped the ante to one every fifteen minutes. When I walked in I didn’t even see the broken records and just walked across them to the bedroom. This was the beginning of the end of my drinking. Yet it would be another 20 months or so before I took the steps necessary to find sobriety and serenity.
# 10 – My Truck was Stolen 1975
I was drinking at the Oxford in downtown Missoula. I parked near the old library and walked the block to the Ox. I went back to the truck, drove around and parked in another spot. I went back to the Ox, drank some more, came out and couldn’t find the truck near the library. I walked a couple blocks to the west to the city police station and reported my truck had been stolen. I sat in the lobby about half an hour. Then the dispatcher told me the truck had been located. I asked if it was okay and if the keys were in the vehicle. She told me where it was and I walked over to it. I guess I was really lucky they didn’t book me on public drunkenness, besides the fact they let me drive away in an obviously intoxicated condition.
# 9 – How I Lost all the Buttons on my New Shirt 1973
New Year’s Eve I went out wearing a shirt I had just received for Christmas. The destination that evening was the Wonder Bar in Anaconda. It was a full house and a wild evening and I remember asking Janie Frankovich to dance. I went home and woke up the next morning to find all the buttons ripped off my new shirt. For a short while, I imagined Janie or some other young girl had ripped them off trying to tear off my shirt at the Wonder Bar. I soon enough realized I had assumed, in my drunken state, it was a western shirt and the snaps would just open if I pulled on them, instead I had ripped all the buttons off.
# 8 – Wrecked Truck, Memorial Day Weekend 1976
I took a trip to Yellowstone with my friend Cathy. We headed back towards Anaconda on Sunday morning, and found out we couldn’t buy beer due on Sunday morning due to the blue laws. It was afternoon when we got to Livingston. I gassed up the truck and went in to pay and buy some beer. Cathy went to the restroom and also bought some beer. We picked up a couple of hitchhikers, but they had the good sense to get out on Homestake Pass. At the exit for Fairmont Hot Springs, Cathy said she would like to see the hot springs before we returned home. I was tired and wanted to head straight for Anaconda and call it a day. I swerved the steering from right to left and back again as if I couldn’t decide which way to go. The truck decided. We ended up rolling twice and landing right side up. A Silver Bow Sheriffs’ deputy was driving by. He said to go into Anaconda and tell the police there what had happened. We had almost reached the Anaconda exit (with no windshield and an obviously wrecked vehicle) before the HP stopped and made us go back and clean the mess up. I had a camper that was in quite a few pieces and there were numerous beer cans around. The HP said “what is wrong with you people from Butte and Anaconda, you think you can wreck your car and just drive away.” He asked if we had been drinking. I said no and it was good enough for him.
#7 – Statistics - “Pass/ Fail”- What are the Percentages? 1975
I had to take Statistics to graduate. I took it “Pass/ Fail” figuring I could get probably get a passing grade. I had a “C” average going into the final so I proposed to the instructor that I be allowed to skip the final as I had a fifty/ fifty or better chance of doing equally well on the final and he could just give me a “Pass” as the statistics indicated I would probably pass. He said no! I did terrible on the test, so I went out that weekend and bought a bottle of Muscatel before the final was scored to drown my disapointment I lay under the Higgins Street Bridge in the late afternoon spring sun on the grass and drank the strong wine out of a brown paper sack. A young lady crossed the bridge and saw me. She asked if she could have some wine if she came down there. I said sure. The bottle was drained fairly quickly as I had had a good start already. We walked up to Stockman’s Bar to get another. She started talking to two other guys and soon we were all in a car together going up Pattee Canyon. Before long, I was so drunk and obnoxious the other two guys wanted to get rid of me. They dropped me off up the Canyon where the police soon found me and brought me back to the apartment. No charges, but I had messed myself up pretty bad. I did pass the statistics class against all odds!
#6 – Jumping into a Moving Vehicle 1972
We were cruising around a friend’s jeep in downtown Missoula on a week night and enjoying a few beers. The jeep stalled and wouldn’t start again. I suggested we push start the jeep. It started and I ran to catch up. I jumped into the rear cargo area. Unfortunately, I jumped in head first and hit my head on a tire iron. My friends had to take me to the campus health center to get some stitches. It didn’t interrupt our partying for long however.
#5 – Sleeping at the OX 1975
I was at the Ox one night feeling sorry for myself and trying to identify with the working class. I spent the evening there and ended up falling asleep in the shoe shine chair and waking up there the next morning. My contacts were still in my eyes and hurt pretty bad. I figured I couldn’t stay there any longer, so I walked the block to the Palace Hotel. There were some pretty comfortable easy chairs there and I sank into one and soon fell asleep again. It was only too soon that I was awakened by the Hotel staff telling me I could go downtown, uptown or take an out of town Greyhound, but I couldn’t stay there! Another time I partied too much and forgot to take my contacts out. When I awoke I put a spare pair in. I couldn’t figure out why my eyes were so irritated and went to see the eye doctor. It wasn’t hard for him to discover the second pair.
#4 – An Eye doctor Appointment in Missoula 1976
Having gotten a social work job in Anaconda, I was becoming well established with a regular salary and a degree of respectability. I thought I should get my eyes checked and made an appointment in Missoula for a Monday in early spring. I arranged to take the day off and planned to drive over on Friday night after work so I could spend the weekend enjoying culture in a University town. However, a fellow social worker of mine encouraged me to have just one beer at the Reno Club across the street from our office. One beer led to another and about eight thirty I decided I needed to be making my way to Missoula. I made it up to Georgetown and down the Flint Creek Pass with no problem. About ten miles north of Phillipsburg I missed a curve and went off the road. I somehow sailed over a ten foot deep ditch and landed on the railroad tracks. I tried to back up, but the truck wouldn’t move. I hiked back up to the road and started to walk towards Maxville hoping to find some help. About half an hour later someone stopped, gave me a lift back to the truck and took a look at the situation. They couldn’t figure anyway to get the truck back on the road. All four tires had popped and the rear window was out. He took me back to Phillipsburg and called a few folks to see if they could help but, to no avail. Finally he took me to the County Jail. There the Sheriff said he would help me. The Sheriff kindly let me spend the night in the jail and the next morning we went out with a wrecker to retrieve the truck. We towed it back to the ‘Burg where the Ford garage was able to repair it in a couple of weeks.
#3 – Christmas in Yellowstone 1974
I spent the summer working at Old Faithful. Several years previous, there had been a big snowstorm in August. The park was pretty nearly shut down. The staff were all sad because in a few days the season would be over and they would be going back to their homes and wouldn’t see each other again. They decided since they wouldn’t be together at Christmas time they should celebrate it early in the midst of the snowstorm. It was great fun and a tradition was born which included decorating a tree and exchanging gifts. There was great anticipation to this celebration every year and 1974 was no different. I don’t think alcohol was intended to be part of the celebration, but it was a part of almost everything I did. So I had a few drinks with my friends and before I ever got to the celebration. I had so much to drink I passed out and missed all the festivities.
#2 – A Trip to Riverton, WY 1977
My friend Mike and I decided to take a road trip to Riverton to see my high school friend Bill Sydow, and also stop in Livingston on the way home and look up a former college instructor. We left Anaconda on a Friday night and consumed a six pack by the time we got to West Yellowstone. We slept in the camper in his truck outside of town and in the morning drove into West. We bought a six pack and decided to drive through the park to get to Riverton. We had a flat tire near Canyon, changed it and threw the flat in the back of the camper. We got to Riverton and attempted to look up Bill. He didn’t answer his phone after several attempts. We were both members of the Elks so stopped in at the local club. We asked around to see if anybody there knew Bill who worked for Amoco. Someone said he had gone back to Nebraska for the weekend. We saw a sign on a local grocery that said Pearl Beer was on sale for $3.99 a case so we stopped and got two cases and headed back out on Highway 20. We took turns driving Mike’s Ford Ranger. When we were traveling through I think it must have been Thermopolis or Worland, I was driving and I hit the median between the traffic lanes. I quickly corrected and recovered without incident. It wasn’t too long later, I reached for another beer and Mike grabbed my hand and said I had, had enough. I calmly reached out with my other hand and took the beer with that hand. Mike grabbed that hand also and said no more. At that point he had both my hands, which occupied both his hands also and left nobody’s hands on the steering wheel. Needless to say we drove off the road. Again there were no major problems and we continued the journey after Mike assumed the responsibilities of driving. We made it to Billings late that evening and decided to sleep at the Pictograph Caves state park outside of town. When we woke up in the morning, we found we had another flat and since we hadn’t repaired the first flat there was no spare! Mike said he would walk into town and get it fixed. I said I would try to cook some breakfast. He came back several hours later with the repaired tire and I had cooked a bunch of eggs. We drove back to Anaconda and postponed the visit with former professor.
# 1 – Another Broken Record 1978
I had made two attempts to quit drinking at this point and been to several AA meetings. I had also gotten married during one period of sobriety and taken a promotion as social worker II in Deer Lodge with responsibility for Granite Co also. We were contemplating a move to Deer Lodge in the summer, but I was commuting during the interim. My supervisor lived in Butte and would make weekly visits to Anaconda with bi-monthly visits to Deer Lodge. It so happened that this particular day, Nancy was coming to Anaconda and I was preparing for my weekly trip to Phillipsburg. Nancy had called the day before and said I should plan to meet her for lunch at the Hofbrau west of Anaconda after a quick trip in the am to the Burg. I said sure. We met and had lunch with a pitcher or two of beer which extended into the afternoon. I called my young wife to tell her I had met Nancy for lunch and would be home later that afternoon as there really wasn’t any need to go back to Deer Lodge at that point. The hours crept by and we had a few more pitchers. I made a few more calls to my wife to tell her I would be home sooner or later. About seven or so, Nancy said she really needed to get back to Butte, but I should follow her over there and have another drink or two. We stopped at the District Office which was in the Executive Village on Front Street and at that point she realized I had had quite enough to drink. She said she needed to make a couple of calls, take care of some things and then she would drive me back to Anaconda. While she was calling in the other room, I slipped out the back of the EV and somehow drove myself to uptown Butte where a girl I knew from college lived. She was entertained for a while by my behavior. I did some Indian dances, some rock stomps and a few other jigs I knew for her. She decided eventually I was way too intoxicated to be on the highway and called a mutual friend that MaryLynn and I knew. He convinced her she should drive me back to our house in Anaconda. My wife was pretty upset by this time. She had broken a few records from my collection and they littered the floor of our living room. She had decided to break one record every half hour I didn’t come home, then upped the ante to one every fifteen minutes. When I walked in I didn’t even see the broken records and just walked across them to the bedroom. This was the beginning of the end of my drinking. Yet it would be another 20 months or so before I took the steps necessary to find sobriety and serenity.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
A Tale of Two Flagpoles 1959 – 1969 (part 1)
It was the worst of times; it was the best of times. In 1959 Kennedy was running for President and talk was of Camelot, in 1969 Nixon was president, JFK, MLK and RFK had all been assassinated, there were race riots in the cities and protests everywhere about Vietnam. The sixties began in an era of innocence with hope we really could make the world a better place. They ended with a sense that we couldn’t achieve world peace, man was just as flawed as ever and pursuing innocence was not to be desired.
I started first grade in the school year 1959-1960. We lived on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation at the St. Elizabeth’s Mission for Indian Boys and Girls. There were about 100 boys and girls that lived at the mission during the school year and attended school in nearby Wakpala, SD. When I started school I rode the mission bus to Wakpala with the mission kids. Wakpala means Oak Creek in Lakota and was located on Oak Creek which is a tributary of the Missouri. Wakpala had about 300 residents. Most of them attended either the Episcopal Church at St. Elizabeth’s or the Catholic Church in town. There was also a small Baptist congregation led by Pastor Rogness who also served as the local postmaster. I have a couple of school related recollections before I actually started first grade. There was no kindergarten in Wakpala, but I remember my mother taking me to a Home Economics class when I was 4 or 5. They were studying human development and were looking for live specimens. I cried the whole time I was there as I wasn’t ready to be separated from my mother yet. I also remember my dad going to O.K. Ehler’s, the school principal’s to watch the 1958 Rose Bowl as his alma mater, Cal was playing that year.
Our first grade teacher was awfully naïve. I remember a fellow student asking permission to visit the bathroom and using a vernacular term to describe his needs. The teacher asked him if that was an Indian word. I didn’t know a lot in the first grade, nor did we use that term in our household, but I had heard the word and knew it wasn’t Lakota, but
English. My parents invited her to dinner at our house one night. I think they thought it would be a good idea to get to know my teacher, what with their oldest child beginning his education. The school lay at the end of the main street leading into Wakpala. It was a K-12 facility. There were about two blocks to the main street between the railroad tracks and the school. Oak Creek ran behind the school. The town pump where everyone got their drinking water including our family was a block south of the school. On the north side of the street was the Post Office and Crazy Jim’s. Crazy Jim’s sold pop and candy and was set up like a bar. Maybe at one time they sold alcohol, but I believe the Standing Rock was a dry reservation and alcohol sales were prohibited. On the south side of the street was a community center directly across from the school and just north of the pump house. Farther down on the south side of the street was Larsen’s Meat Market and John Busch’s general store and gas station. We used to buy gas and a few items at John Busch’s, but bought most of our groceries in Mobridge about 33 miles away across the Missouri river. The younger elementary children were dismissed earlier and had to wait for the older children to be dismissed before the bus would take us back to the mission. This gave us a chance to visit the stores of Wakpala. My allowance was five cents a week in the first grade. That was split 3 ways, two cents to spend, two cents to save and one cent for the offering on Sunday. I didn’t have a lot to spend on candy, but sometimes other kids would take pity on me and share a little something. When it snowed, I learned how to “hook” cars and ski behind them as they traveled down the main street. Crazy Jim, who was a Russian immigrant, saw me doing this one day and told me he was going to tell my parents when they came to town. I can’t remember if he ever did, but I never heard about it from them. I remember an older kid who was in high school from up the river a piece saying hi to me one day. We knew his family somehow. Later that year he was killed in a car accident and his funeral was held in the school gym. I have thought later how many funerals like that were held in small town community centers due to deaths in Vietnam. I also remember being one of only two children that had to pay for school lunch. My father wrote out a check for the whole school year in the amount of $81 which seemed to me to be an enormous sum of money. The only other child who paid for her lunch was the Sherwood girl. We had a community Halloween Party at the community hall that year. She won the costume prize as a bright orange pumpkin. I remember some kids asking if she were related, probably because we were both white. Her parents owned a bar and gas station at Sherwood’s corner on U.S. Highway 12 west of Wakpala, between McLaughlin and Mobridge. Alcohol sales were legal there, as they were in both McLaughlin and Mobridge. Mobridge incidentally was one of the few places between Bismark, ND and Pierre, SD where there was a bridge across the Missouri River. The parts were shipped up the Missouri on a steamship and marked Mo. Bridge, thus the future name of the town. Being in the Central time zone they were an hour ahead of us in the Western zone. When we went to town you had to plan to get there an hour earlier to get to banks and stores before they closed. I had always heard about Indian time and thought that was what it meant. When we went to the white town, they were an hour earlier. We also had some native friends that told my dad he had to lock his car when we went to town because white people lived there. We had a fire in our school that first year and missed two or three weeks of school in addition to the Christmas break. The gym and the kitchen had to be rebuilt. My incident with the flagpole came about one day during lunch hour when we were playing in the courtyard in front of the school. We were playing around the flagpole and there was a rope that was used to lower and raise the flag. I thought it would be fun to swing around on that. It would so happen that a teacher came by just then and escorted me to the principal’s office. I was mortified that I would have to face O.K. Ehlers. I remember waiting a few minutes for him to show up, but don’t remember any repercussions from the visit. I had perfect attendance that year. We had an awards ceremony a few days before the end of school and I received my award. The next day I was sick and missed school. I was worried I would have go give back my award. It was also the day we were going to have a store in our classroom. Each child brought something from home to be sold in the store. I was going to buy a pair of stirrups a kid had brought. I didn’t have to give the award back, but didn’t get stirrups either. I remember the following year in November 1960 listening to the presidential election returns around the family radio. We had a picture of both Nixon and Kennedy that came in the mail. You could display both pictures or turn one side in and the back said President of the United States. My folks had the picture turned to cover Nixon and display Kennedy. I remember a visitor asking if we really supported a Catholic for president. I remember feeling a great sense of hope for our country with Kennedy as the next president.
It was the worst of times; it was the best of times. In 1959 Kennedy was running for President and talk was of Camelot, in 1969 Nixon was president, JFK, MLK and RFK had all been assassinated, there were race riots in the cities and protests everywhere about Vietnam. The sixties began in an era of innocence with hope we really could make the world a better place. They ended with a sense that we couldn’t achieve world peace, man was just as flawed as ever and pursuing innocence was not to be desired.
I started first grade in the school year 1959-1960. We lived on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation at the St. Elizabeth’s Mission for Indian Boys and Girls. There were about 100 boys and girls that lived at the mission during the school year and attended school in nearby Wakpala, SD. When I started school I rode the mission bus to Wakpala with the mission kids. Wakpala means Oak Creek in Lakota and was located on Oak Creek which is a tributary of the Missouri. Wakpala had about 300 residents. Most of them attended either the Episcopal Church at St. Elizabeth’s or the Catholic Church in town. There was also a small Baptist congregation led by Pastor Rogness who also served as the local postmaster. I have a couple of school related recollections before I actually started first grade. There was no kindergarten in Wakpala, but I remember my mother taking me to a Home Economics class when I was 4 or 5. They were studying human development and were looking for live specimens. I cried the whole time I was there as I wasn’t ready to be separated from my mother yet. I also remember my dad going to O.K. Ehler’s, the school principal’s to watch the 1958 Rose Bowl as his alma mater, Cal was playing that year.
Our first grade teacher was awfully naïve. I remember a fellow student asking permission to visit the bathroom and using a vernacular term to describe his needs. The teacher asked him if that was an Indian word. I didn’t know a lot in the first grade, nor did we use that term in our household, but I had heard the word and knew it wasn’t Lakota, but
English. My parents invited her to dinner at our house one night. I think they thought it would be a good idea to get to know my teacher, what with their oldest child beginning his education. The school lay at the end of the main street leading into Wakpala. It was a K-12 facility. There were about two blocks to the main street between the railroad tracks and the school. Oak Creek ran behind the school. The town pump where everyone got their drinking water including our family was a block south of the school. On the north side of the street was the Post Office and Crazy Jim’s. Crazy Jim’s sold pop and candy and was set up like a bar. Maybe at one time they sold alcohol, but I believe the Standing Rock was a dry reservation and alcohol sales were prohibited. On the south side of the street was a community center directly across from the school and just north of the pump house. Farther down on the south side of the street was Larsen’s Meat Market and John Busch’s general store and gas station. We used to buy gas and a few items at John Busch’s, but bought most of our groceries in Mobridge about 33 miles away across the Missouri river. The younger elementary children were dismissed earlier and had to wait for the older children to be dismissed before the bus would take us back to the mission. This gave us a chance to visit the stores of Wakpala. My allowance was five cents a week in the first grade. That was split 3 ways, two cents to spend, two cents to save and one cent for the offering on Sunday. I didn’t have a lot to spend on candy, but sometimes other kids would take pity on me and share a little something. When it snowed, I learned how to “hook” cars and ski behind them as they traveled down the main street. Crazy Jim, who was a Russian immigrant, saw me doing this one day and told me he was going to tell my parents when they came to town. I can’t remember if he ever did, but I never heard about it from them. I remember an older kid who was in high school from up the river a piece saying hi to me one day. We knew his family somehow. Later that year he was killed in a car accident and his funeral was held in the school gym. I have thought later how many funerals like that were held in small town community centers due to deaths in Vietnam. I also remember being one of only two children that had to pay for school lunch. My father wrote out a check for the whole school year in the amount of $81 which seemed to me to be an enormous sum of money. The only other child who paid for her lunch was the Sherwood girl. We had a community Halloween Party at the community hall that year. She won the costume prize as a bright orange pumpkin. I remember some kids asking if she were related, probably because we were both white. Her parents owned a bar and gas station at Sherwood’s corner on U.S. Highway 12 west of Wakpala, between McLaughlin and Mobridge. Alcohol sales were legal there, as they were in both McLaughlin and Mobridge. Mobridge incidentally was one of the few places between Bismark, ND and Pierre, SD where there was a bridge across the Missouri River. The parts were shipped up the Missouri on a steamship and marked Mo. Bridge, thus the future name of the town. Being in the Central time zone they were an hour ahead of us in the Western zone. When we went to town you had to plan to get there an hour earlier to get to banks and stores before they closed. I had always heard about Indian time and thought that was what it meant. When we went to the white town, they were an hour earlier. We also had some native friends that told my dad he had to lock his car when we went to town because white people lived there. We had a fire in our school that first year and missed two or three weeks of school in addition to the Christmas break. The gym and the kitchen had to be rebuilt. My incident with the flagpole came about one day during lunch hour when we were playing in the courtyard in front of the school. We were playing around the flagpole and there was a rope that was used to lower and raise the flag. I thought it would be fun to swing around on that. It would so happen that a teacher came by just then and escorted me to the principal’s office. I was mortified that I would have to face O.K. Ehlers. I remember waiting a few minutes for him to show up, but don’t remember any repercussions from the visit. I had perfect attendance that year. We had an awards ceremony a few days before the end of school and I received my award. The next day I was sick and missed school. I was worried I would have go give back my award. It was also the day we were going to have a store in our classroom. Each child brought something from home to be sold in the store. I was going to buy a pair of stirrups a kid had brought. I didn’t have to give the award back, but didn’t get stirrups either. I remember the following year in November 1960 listening to the presidential election returns around the family radio. We had a picture of both Nixon and Kennedy that came in the mail. You could display both pictures or turn one side in and the back said President of the United States. My folks had the picture turned to cover Nixon and display Kennedy. I remember a visitor asking if we really supported a Catholic for president. I remember feeling a great sense of hope for our country with Kennedy as the next president.
A Tale of Two Flagpoles 1959 – 1969 (part 2)
The next year was 1962 and we moved 300 miles south to Pine Ridge, along the Nebraska border. I attended school in Pine Ridge through the eighth grade. I learned in the eighth grade that Shannon County would pay tuition to any student from that wished to attend school outside the county as the only high school in Pine Ridge was a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) high school and not a public school. My family and I felt this would be a good choice as I could take Latin, participate in Band and have better college prep course off the reservation. Thus I began 9th grade at Rushville High, in nearby Rushville, NE. Rushville is about 20 miles south of Pine Ridge and was the community where we often bought groceries. We also shopped in Gordon, which was another 15 east of Rushville. Rushville and Gordon are both on U.S. 20 which continues west through Yellowstone Park. Rushville had a little over one thousand residents. The high school had 200 students; a little over half from out of town. Some came from as far away as 50 or 60 miles and boarded with town families during the week. Others drove cars to school every day. I was impressed so many freshmen had cars and licenses already. Shannon County provided a van and driver for the half dozen or so kids from Pine Ridge that went to school in Rushville for couple of years. During my junior and senior years, the county school district discontinued this practice and we organized car pools to get to school. My experience with reservation border towns up to this point had pretty much been we went there to shop, to visit the library or the doctor. The Indians we knew on the reservations where we lived and those that attended Church with us generally stayed there and didn’t go to town much. The ones that went to town hung around the bars and were drunk a lot. My ideas about drinking as a young adolescent were it should pretty much be avoided. My dad would have a beer once or twice when we took our vacation in the summer. Usually with a picnic lunch while we were traveling. Sometimes he and my mother would have a mixed drink on New Year’s Eve. Alcohol was viewed as a destructive influence on the reservation. Those ideas were to change in my mind as I became older and entered high school. My first year as a freshman was that of a normal freshman. I didn’t talk to a lot of upper classmen. I stuck to my studies and band. I wandered around during lunch with my sandwich and bought a soda with a dime I’d take every morning. A lot of the rural kids ate at the Dairy Queen which wasn’t a drive in, but a café and bakery. It was owned by my friend Bill Sydow’s dad. Bill was in the band also and he played the tuba. We did have a hay ride near the end of the school year and I took along a can of beer I had found alongside the road. I poured it into the punch that we had at the end of the hay ride. I doubt it had any affect when dispersed with the punch.
The next year as a sophomore, my attitudes on drinking began to change more rapidly. Chauncey and his brothers had gotten me drunk the previous June. The Folsom boys had come into a little money and bought two cases of tall boy Budweiser’s. They gave me four over the course of an hour. Needless to say, I was quite wasted. Chauncey walked me back to my house in the rain late that afternoon. I had a tent set up in my yard and thought maybe I could crawl in there and sleep it off before I had to face my parents. However, my mother came outside, found me in the tent, saw that I was obviously quite intoxicated and confronted me about the incident. Chauncey’s brothers began to talk about home brew that summer and dared me to try my hand at making a batch. I saw an advertisement in a magazine for a Dandelion Wine Recipe. I sent away for it and shared the recipe with the Folsom Boys. They contributed raisins (a government commodity item) and chipped in for five pounds of sugar. I gathered the dandelion flowers and soaked them in water for two to three days to make a liqueur which was added to raisins, sugar, oranges, lemons and yeast. After several weeks of fermentation, it yielded a cloudy liquid that was somewhat similar to Muscatel. Pheasant Brand Muscatel was the preferred drink of alcoholics around the Pine Ridge. If you let it sit a day or two after bottling it cleared up considerably, leaving ½ inch or so of residue in the bottom of the bottle. I salvaged old muscatel bottles, mostly flat short pint bottles (four-fifths of a pint) to bottle my brew. The Folsom’s continued to give me advice on how I could improve my techniques. That summer we traveled to Buffalo, New York to visit my mom’s parents. I spent a considerable amount of time walking to downtown Buffalo and researching home brew and home wine making techniques in the Buffalo Public Library.
My sophomore year began to see increased experimentation both with wine making techniques and an increased fascination with drinking. I would spend the night with a friend in town and learn more about high school partying as well as hanging out with the Folsom’s during the summer and on weekends. I learned of Legion Dances in Rushville. A teen dance was held on Friday or Saturday night in a part of the Legion separate from the bar. I never had the courage to ask a girl to dance, but I did continue to experiment with alcohol. If I didn’t spend a weekend night with a friend in town, I would hitch-hike to Rushville on Saturday to take in the dance that evening or hang out with buddies. I only had to get to town and walk down Highway 20 and I would see a friend and hang with them. One Saturday afternoon I hitched to Rushville and bought a five gallon crock as an enhancement to my wine making supplies. I was able to get a cardboard box big enough to fit it in and then carried it on my lap back to Pine Ridge. We had a collection of several buildings on the ten acres the Church had and I converted an unused corner of a shed to create my wine making hobby/ club area. I had an area set for washing bottles and a fermentation closet. I met a kid when I was a sophomore who was named Jurgen Jung. His family was German immigrants who lived just south of White Clay, NE, which was only two miles south of Pine Ridge. He was a wild kid and we had a common interest in partying. One Saturday night near the end of the ‘68-69 school year, Jurgen and I decided to hitch-hike to Rushville and attend the Legion Dance. We figured we could afford a gallon of Muscatel. Little did we realize that although we could afford it that amount of wine was way more than either of us needed. I found a bootlegger who was willing to purchase the bottle for us in return for the first swallow from the jug. We carried our gallon around and went in and out of the dance. We stashed the jug when we went inside to the dance. Later that night as fortune would have it, I was attracted to flagpole outside the Legion Club. It didn’t take long after I swung on the pole that an officer was called and I was being arrested. Some of the veterans from the Legion probably felt pretty strongly about their flag. The Legion club was right behind the County Courthouse and the jail. The officer asked me why I was drinking. I told him it was social pressure. I ended up spending the night in jail and my dad had to pick me up Sunday morning after church. Needless to say, he was disappointed in me. I learned years later that I had been nominated to the National Honor Society and was to be inducted in the spring ceremonies that sophomore year. After that incident, the faculty advisers decided to place my induction on an indefinite hold. I was finally inducted into the society the spring of my senior year. Thus not only was our nation reaching an end of the age of innocence, I myself had lost my innocence, not necessarily to the flagpole, but to alcohol. In the eyes of some, I was not realizing the potential that others felt I had. I had made poor choices in association and in activities. These experiences would be difficult to overcome later, but yet would become building blocks as I developed a sociological and spiritual view of the world I was to live in. The liner notes on Marty Stuart’s recent Badlands CD written about the Pine Ridge reservation contain these words, “Reservation land; A country of stark realities where the sweet taste of liquor can make your soul seem to rise above the poverty that surrounds you.”
The next year was 1962 and we moved 300 miles south to Pine Ridge, along the Nebraska border. I attended school in Pine Ridge through the eighth grade. I learned in the eighth grade that Shannon County would pay tuition to any student from that wished to attend school outside the county as the only high school in Pine Ridge was a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) high school and not a public school. My family and I felt this would be a good choice as I could take Latin, participate in Band and have better college prep course off the reservation. Thus I began 9th grade at Rushville High, in nearby Rushville, NE. Rushville is about 20 miles south of Pine Ridge and was the community where we often bought groceries. We also shopped in Gordon, which was another 15 east of Rushville. Rushville and Gordon are both on U.S. 20 which continues west through Yellowstone Park. Rushville had a little over one thousand residents. The high school had 200 students; a little over half from out of town. Some came from as far away as 50 or 60 miles and boarded with town families during the week. Others drove cars to school every day. I was impressed so many freshmen had cars and licenses already. Shannon County provided a van and driver for the half dozen or so kids from Pine Ridge that went to school in Rushville for couple of years. During my junior and senior years, the county school district discontinued this practice and we organized car pools to get to school. My experience with reservation border towns up to this point had pretty much been we went there to shop, to visit the library or the doctor. The Indians we knew on the reservations where we lived and those that attended Church with us generally stayed there and didn’t go to town much. The ones that went to town hung around the bars and were drunk a lot. My ideas about drinking as a young adolescent were it should pretty much be avoided. My dad would have a beer once or twice when we took our vacation in the summer. Usually with a picnic lunch while we were traveling. Sometimes he and my mother would have a mixed drink on New Year’s Eve. Alcohol was viewed as a destructive influence on the reservation. Those ideas were to change in my mind as I became older and entered high school. My first year as a freshman was that of a normal freshman. I didn’t talk to a lot of upper classmen. I stuck to my studies and band. I wandered around during lunch with my sandwich and bought a soda with a dime I’d take every morning. A lot of the rural kids ate at the Dairy Queen which wasn’t a drive in, but a café and bakery. It was owned by my friend Bill Sydow’s dad. Bill was in the band also and he played the tuba. We did have a hay ride near the end of the school year and I took along a can of beer I had found alongside the road. I poured it into the punch that we had at the end of the hay ride. I doubt it had any affect when dispersed with the punch.
The next year as a sophomore, my attitudes on drinking began to change more rapidly. Chauncey and his brothers had gotten me drunk the previous June. The Folsom boys had come into a little money and bought two cases of tall boy Budweiser’s. They gave me four over the course of an hour. Needless to say, I was quite wasted. Chauncey walked me back to my house in the rain late that afternoon. I had a tent set up in my yard and thought maybe I could crawl in there and sleep it off before I had to face my parents. However, my mother came outside, found me in the tent, saw that I was obviously quite intoxicated and confronted me about the incident. Chauncey’s brothers began to talk about home brew that summer and dared me to try my hand at making a batch. I saw an advertisement in a magazine for a Dandelion Wine Recipe. I sent away for it and shared the recipe with the Folsom Boys. They contributed raisins (a government commodity item) and chipped in for five pounds of sugar. I gathered the dandelion flowers and soaked them in water for two to three days to make a liqueur which was added to raisins, sugar, oranges, lemons and yeast. After several weeks of fermentation, it yielded a cloudy liquid that was somewhat similar to Muscatel. Pheasant Brand Muscatel was the preferred drink of alcoholics around the Pine Ridge. If you let it sit a day or two after bottling it cleared up considerably, leaving ½ inch or so of residue in the bottom of the bottle. I salvaged old muscatel bottles, mostly flat short pint bottles (four-fifths of a pint) to bottle my brew. The Folsom’s continued to give me advice on how I could improve my techniques. That summer we traveled to Buffalo, New York to visit my mom’s parents. I spent a considerable amount of time walking to downtown Buffalo and researching home brew and home wine making techniques in the Buffalo Public Library.
My sophomore year began to see increased experimentation both with wine making techniques and an increased fascination with drinking. I would spend the night with a friend in town and learn more about high school partying as well as hanging out with the Folsom’s during the summer and on weekends. I learned of Legion Dances in Rushville. A teen dance was held on Friday or Saturday night in a part of the Legion separate from the bar. I never had the courage to ask a girl to dance, but I did continue to experiment with alcohol. If I didn’t spend a weekend night with a friend in town, I would hitch-hike to Rushville on Saturday to take in the dance that evening or hang out with buddies. I only had to get to town and walk down Highway 20 and I would see a friend and hang with them. One Saturday afternoon I hitched to Rushville and bought a five gallon crock as an enhancement to my wine making supplies. I was able to get a cardboard box big enough to fit it in and then carried it on my lap back to Pine Ridge. We had a collection of several buildings on the ten acres the Church had and I converted an unused corner of a shed to create my wine making hobby/ club area. I had an area set for washing bottles and a fermentation closet. I met a kid when I was a sophomore who was named Jurgen Jung. His family was German immigrants who lived just south of White Clay, NE, which was only two miles south of Pine Ridge. He was a wild kid and we had a common interest in partying. One Saturday night near the end of the ‘68-69 school year, Jurgen and I decided to hitch-hike to Rushville and attend the Legion Dance. We figured we could afford a gallon of Muscatel. Little did we realize that although we could afford it that amount of wine was way more than either of us needed. I found a bootlegger who was willing to purchase the bottle for us in return for the first swallow from the jug. We carried our gallon around and went in and out of the dance. We stashed the jug when we went inside to the dance. Later that night as fortune would have it, I was attracted to flagpole outside the Legion Club. It didn’t take long after I swung on the pole that an officer was called and I was being arrested. Some of the veterans from the Legion probably felt pretty strongly about their flag. The Legion club was right behind the County Courthouse and the jail. The officer asked me why I was drinking. I told him it was social pressure. I ended up spending the night in jail and my dad had to pick me up Sunday morning after church. Needless to say, he was disappointed in me. I learned years later that I had been nominated to the National Honor Society and was to be inducted in the spring ceremonies that sophomore year. After that incident, the faculty advisers decided to place my induction on an indefinite hold. I was finally inducted into the society the spring of my senior year. Thus not only was our nation reaching an end of the age of innocence, I myself had lost my innocence, not necessarily to the flagpole, but to alcohol. In the eyes of some, I was not realizing the potential that others felt I had. I had made poor choices in association and in activities. These experiences would be difficult to overcome later, but yet would become building blocks as I developed a sociological and spiritual view of the world I was to live in. The liner notes on Marty Stuart’s recent Badlands CD written about the Pine Ridge reservation contain these words, “Reservation land; A country of stark realities where the sweet taste of liquor can make your soul seem to rise above the poverty that surrounds you.”
