The Mean Streets of Helena
local characters and important legislation
-Wait a minute, Shumway. You’re back here in Helena again? Isn’t that where you started? I thought I just saw a trip-ending video. What the deuce?!
It’s true, the trip is finished. But with all the driving and moving about, I didn’t have time to post a lot of trip pics and get my observations down on ‘paper’. Here are some thoughts from my first stop on the late- winter-circle tour.
My 1st-floor room at the motel in downtown Helena. Yes, I could have stayed for five bucks more at the new Wyndham along the freeway, with a Love’s Truck stop, McDonald’s, Arby’s and Starbuck’s next door, but you can do that in literally every state in the lower 48. Boooring! This place was right across the street from the Union Gospel Mission, a few blocks from the jail and only a stone’s throw from old downtown, so there was a little character to the neighborhood, which was a bit seedy but not dangerous it seemed.
My next-door neighbor, Gary, was living here full time on his veteran benefits. I met him as he was shuffling back with his walker from the garbage can- he’d just tossed in a bunch of aluminum cans. I peeked into his room and it was a mess. Gary lit up a cigarette and chatted me up for a while. There were the usual pleasantries and where are you froms and such, and then there was a pause so I said, “You got any good stories?”
-Not unless falling on the ice is a good story.
-Tell me about it.
-Well I was down at Lucky Lil’s drinking free beer and I guess I had too much ‘cause I come out on the ice in the parking lot and down I went. You see this hole in my head?
I looked at the obvious indentation about an inch up from his right temple. “Yes, I see it.”
-Well, that wasn’t from the first fall. I got up and started walking again, ‘n then I went down again, this time a lot harder. The first fall caused a lot of pain. The second one caused the blood vessel in my head to burst. I guess there was a lesson to all that.
-Maybe God was telling you to stop drinking and gambling at Lucky Lils!
-Maybe, but where else am I gonna go? I just go down there to be around people. Same with Freddy’s card house up the street here. There’s always someone to talk to.
-Do you play cards at Freddy’s, like poker?
-No, I just play slots and stuff, and talk to people. And I play Keno over at Lucky Lils.
-So you like had an aneurism and there you were lying on the ice?
-Yep, they had to medivac me outta there to the hospital in Great Falls. That hospital is pretty good but those doctors didn’t think I was gonna live. But I did. Now I’m down here, trying to be careful.
-There’s still a lot of ice on the ground.
-Yep. But it’s meltin’.
Gary told me how he’d chosen to enlist in the Air Force just as Vietnam was getting started, because he didn’t want to end up humping a rifle and a pack through the jungles and rice paddies and getting shot at. So they sent him to Germany and then over to Algeria and things were getting hot and there was talk of a shooting war in the Middle East with the Soviet Union.
-I was in nuclear safety. I had to make sure the bombs were taken care of correctly. It was a pretty good job and I was in Spain for a while. That was nice. Then the war scare calmed down a bit and it didn’t seem like we were going to fight Russia.
-Then did they transfer you to Vietnam?
-No, they sent me back to Germany. That was OK too. We still had a lot of nukes over there and they needed taking care of.
An old, brown Camry pulled into the lot. “Hey,” said Gary, brightening up, “here comes my helper. That’s Dianne.”
I thought of Wilma my German neighbor and her charge Billy, the mean old army vet who wanted to slit my throat. Billy had a VA nurse come out three times a week. I met the nurse in February and told her she was a saint.
-Is Dianne from the VA?
Gary gave me a hard stare and said, “No! I hired her myself. She comes and cleans up around here.”
Dianne was a semi-gruff but friendly, greasy-spoon-diner-waitress type. There was a bunch of junk in her car. She said hello to me then gave Gary the business for letting his room get so disorderly. “Yeah, you’re right Dianne. I gotta do better.”
Dianne shook her head and went into Gary’s room and got busy. Gary watched her go in, then looked at me and said, “Dianne’s a good friend, and I wish she were my wife.”
I said, “Well, you’re working on it, though. Right?”
Gary said, “Yes, I am!” and then he walked into the room.
There was enough light still to take a walk around town and see stuff. First I walked up the hill to the big cathedral. I told you before about coming here, inadvertently during Saturday mass, and walking in, sitting down in the last row and taking in the huge sanctuary with the beautiful stained glass and heavenly music that so impressed my son.
Recently I had a discussion with Greg, an engineer from Canada who attended an Evangelical church in Calgary with his family. I mentioned that I struggled with the idea that churches needn’t be beautiful and it was fine and dandy for us Protestant, non-denominationalists to just throw up a bunch of plywood, drywall and siding, stick a cross on it and call it a church. Wasn’t there something wonderful about the buildings of the old time Protestant denominations, Presbyterians and Methodist and Episcopalians, who vied with the Catholics for the most magnificent churches in town? I mean, we go to all kinds of trouble to make our houses and yards beautiful. The museum and the university and the government buildings are all spectacular- why skimp when it comes to what should be the holiest building in town? Greg’s wife Jill had the usual answers to that. We carry the savior in our hearts- that’s where the beauty is; We focus on things above; The church is fellowship and glorifying God, not statues and stained glass and gargoyles; etc.
I said I understood all that and you’re right, Jill, but there’s just something wonderful about all those quaint, old European towns, where by law or custom the tallest building was the church, and it and the surroundings are always beautiful. Imagine throwing up one of our pre-fab Pentecostal churches with plastic siding in the middle of a medieval French or German town! Roland would be rolling in his grave!
Then Greg gave his theory about putting too much effort into church construction. He reckoned that every institution of any sort becomes corrupted after just one or two generations, so why build a magnificent building for an organization that’s just going to go south?
Just down the block, we see the Methodists still putting efforts into making a magnificent place of worship. I don’t know whether to give them a D- or an F.
There’s a section of Helena with grand, old 19th century mansions; a bunch of them have been converted into Bed and Breakfasts. Why skimp on churches, where all social classes worship, and be lavish on boutique hotels that only the upper middle and rich classes can afford?
I liked this place, with the little library in front, of the same design:
Down by the capitol, the streets were less cleared of snow and ice and slush. It was a mess and kind of tricky walking around. I told myself I should have put on my muck boots. I treaded carefully, remembering the long winter of ‘22/’23 when I slipped and landed hard on the driveway ice in front of the cabin, five times!
At the capitol, the full-house floor session began with a prayer, belted out in full-throated opera style. Currently the Republicans are in charge in this now purple but once red state, where devout families name their kids Caleb, Joshua, Isaiah and Jeremiah, not Scott, Steve, Matt and Tim. So the prayer, sung by a big man in a grey suit, is going to have a bit of an Old Testament feel to it. It is sung in English and Hebrew. “He who keeps Iss-ra-eeeellll…”
Here were some of the bills being voted on, after short speeches and debates:
HB 434- On interactive ATMs at banks. Passed unanimously.
HB 439- Feds must give notice to local sheriffs before conducting raids and such, so dangerous confusion doesn’t ensue. One Republican rep talked about an FBI raid that went bad. Federal government supremacy laws were brought up. A Democrat expressed shock that Montana would dare question the right of the Feds to do whatever they damned well pleased. He mentioned the successful apprehension of the Unabomber in Lincoln and said, “We cannot pass a state act regulating federal law enforcement agencies!”
A Republican rep talked about local officer safety if they responded to a call on a federal investigation they were unaware of. Another Republican said, “I don’t want to spend my life on my knees to the federal government!”
The law lacked unanimous Republican support, with the RINOs siding with their statist partners on the other side, and the bill went down, again after many previous attempts. Long live Big Brother.
HB 486- Revise county deputy sheriff compensation. Passed 93-7. Interestingly, our local rep Overstreet was one of the nays.
HJ6- Don’t quote me on this one as I was simultaneously chatting with a doctor from Missoula who was there with the MMA to put pressure on the legislators. I think the bill was for Montana to say Happy Birthday USA on the upcoming ‘26 Semiquincentennial.
I’m not at all passionate in opposition to this but I think such bills, even if they are crowd pleasers, are a waste of time and our legislature has more pressing matters to consider. The bill passed easily, with only a handful of curmudgeons on the nay side. Guess what, ol’ Zooey Zephyr agreed with me on this one!
Lastly the lawmakers ‘debated’ HB 448- Renaming Highway 57, Jim Loud Thunder Gopher Memorial Highway. Jim Gopher was married to Mary Iron Bear Claw Chippewa Murkowski (OK, sorry- I had to throw in the Murkowski). This bill reminds me of the school I used to teach at in San Diego, Balboa Elementary, named after that brave and adventurous explorer, governor and conquistador, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who hacked through the jungle and discovered the Pacific Ocean in the region of modern-day Panama. (no, I’m not going to put scare quotes around discovered. You get the idea!) Anyway, Balboa Elementary later became The Balboa International Baccalaureate Academy, a name which sounded way too high-fallutin’ for an inner city barrio school, just trying to figure out which students would be around next month, and which would be recrossing the border and returning to abuelita’s place in Guerrero or Michoacan.
Well, again, you’ll only get a handful of why fix somethin’ that aint broke curmudgeons to vote down such a bill, and after a number of heartfelt appeals by honorable reps on both sides, and nobody willing to stand up and oppose it, the Jim Loud Thunder bill passed 84 to 16. So long, Highway 57. I didn’t catch Zooey’s vote but I assume Xe would be one of the ayes.
I walked a good mile or more away from the capitol building to find a decent cup of coffee. I tried a place with a high rating on Google. The exterior was corrugated metal siding. The interior looked like a modern sports bar, with TVs showing hockey games and glass and metal tables. The place didn’t feel like the right ambience for coffee, and there was a huge line, so I tromped through the snow and slush down to the McDonald’s. I chatted up an older couple who were in there getting ready to go XC skiing on MacDonald pass, as luck would have it- or maybe they do this as a quaint little custom. I said I wanted to go XC skiing too but didn’t want to backtrack, so the husband said, “Oh, they have great Nordic paths in Bozeman, on the golf course. That’s where you should go!”
There were some old pictures on the wall at McDonalds. That alone gave the place a better ambience than the sports-bar coffee shop. I love those old, archival black and whites from the 19th century. I used to go to the Suzallo Library at the U of W in Seattle and check out the photo archives, not for research but just to thumb through the pictures, coffee-table book style.
Look how they dressed at the street parade back then!
After Micky D’s, I went back to the capitol for the afternoon session, but they were already finished. The halls of the capitol were mostly silent, except for a small group of legislators here and there. One group of big men talking and yukking it up had cowboy hats, obvious Republicans.
Knowing I’d be burning some calories at the XC track, I went hog wild at lunch:
Of course, Chang’s all-you-can-eat isn’t where the state legislators or tourists go. The only customers were the hard-working contractor or Jerry Springer-family types. Two big men with very big girths sat at small tables in front of me. They went back again and again to the buffet. As I passed the second guy, I said, “This place aint bad! I never figured I’d be getting salmon!”
-Yeah, on weekends they do the dinner menu at lunch. That’s why you pay a couple bucks more.
-It’s awesome. Coconut Shrimp too!
-Yeah, you get the seafood with the dinner buffet. That salmon is pretty good.
-I’ll say.
-I come down here when I’m in town, but my wife will have nothing to do with it.
-She’d prefer steak at Ruth’s Chris’.
-That’s about right, heh.
A couple from down in the holler in West Virginny came in and sat across from me. They both had on ski hats, or tuques as they call ‘em up north. Her hat had something Montana-ish and his hat was blue and green and in the same lettering as the soda pop, said, Mountain Dewd. I want one of those! They must have waited 20 minutes before getting up to the feed troughs. I said, “You guys are awfully polite, waiting on your friend before starting, when the salmon and coconut shrimp is just sitting there.”
Mountain Dewd just stared at me but the lady laughed and said, “Yeah, we’re pretty polite all right.”
The friend, who looked like an Appalachia miner or something with his old, worn Derby hat, finally arrived and snuck up behind Mountain Dewd and poked him on the sides to startle him.
“Damn, Ronny. Don’t be doin’ that!”
I went back up to the troughs for thirds, intent on getting some of those doughy sesame balls but some fat 5th grader in a Nintendo t-shirt two sizes too small put the last 7 of them on his plate.
After the gluttonous lunch, I hit the highway, checking the map app to make sure I’d have time for a ski in Bozeman.
On the way I crossed the Missouri river. I stopped at an auto parts store and asked a guy if there was a road paralleling the river, that might be a little more scenic than the highway.
-Yeah, you just go back and cross the bridge and turn left onto the River Road. When you get out on the flats you can turn back east and get on the 287 at Toston.
-Thanks.
-Sure thing. You’ll probably see some elk out there.
Next post I’ll show you something cool I saw on the River Road.