Category Archives: Blog

Two books, one small western Montana hometown, 800 pages of storytelling

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Photo shows Deer Lodge, Montana

Main Street in Deer Lodge, Montana, as it looked in 2013. This photo, by Pat Hansen, was published in the Montana Standard.

Since I wrote this post I’ve published a third book of interest to Montanans: my biography, One Woman Against War: The Jeannette Rankin Story.

By Kevin S. Giles

A wise uncle told me once that when I found a good place to live, don’t blab about it. There’s no faster way to ruin paradise, he counseled me, than putting it on the map.

Sorry about that, uncle. The secret’s out.

I’ve written about Deer Lodge, Montana, in my two latest books, which I imagine is just about the most anybody has written about a hometown anywhere in Montana. I doubt either book will start a stampede to Deer Lodge. Word’s getting around, though. It’s a town that’s climbing in the search engine rankings, and in today’s digital world, that’s something.

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Rough and rumble on a hot August night in 1958 in Deer Lodge, Montana

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Photo shows Deer Lodge, Montana

In the 1950s, Main Street in Deer Lodge was a happening place with not one — but two — stop lights. Teenagers found the long wide street, also known as State Hwy. 10, great for cruisin’ (and sometimes looking for a bruisin’).

By Suzanne Lintz Ives

The gangs in my high school time were from Anaconda. Hairy girls tucked cigarettes packs into their rolled-up T-shirt sleeves. They were tougher and meaner than bear. They were really scary.

One Sunday afternoon, a couple of those wild females ones from Anaconish (as we sometimes called the neighboring town of ruffians), were quietly strolling Main Street in Deer Lodge. My gang and I (five of us) were cruising the drag in my Dad’s Pontiac (the one with the clutch), when my buddy, Dood, yelled out the window, “Hey, look at that! Street walkers!”

That’s when the brown, sticky stuff hit the centrifuge …

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Memories of older brother from Montana: Vietnam killed him, but years after the war

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Photo shows Marine in Vietnam

Dan McElderry, shown in Vietnam after the Tet Offensive and before he was wounded three times. Dan eventually left Vietnam, but he never escaped it. (Photo courtesy of Bob McElderry Sr.)

By Bob McElderry Sr.

(Bob writes about his older brother Dan McElderry, who graduated from Powell County High School in Deer Lodge, Montana, in 1967. Dan joined the Marines with three other young men from the same town when it became apparent they would drafted in the Army if they didn’t enlist. The recruiter promised them they would stay together in a “Montana platoon” but the Marines quickly split them up. Bob’s words about his brother will resonate with many Vietnam combat veterans.)

Like the small Montana town he grew up in, he was friendly, fresh and full of hope for the future. He was engaged to his sweetheart, a high school cheerleader and a gal many guys had pursued. He spent his days picking up odd jobs and his evenings working at the local post office.

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Here’s what Author Kevin S. Giles said to graduates of Montana high school … in 1984!

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Photo shows Powell County High School

A postcard shows the “new” Powell County High School in Deer Lodge, Montana, which opened in 1903. An addition was added in the 1950s. The original building remains the heart of the school.

By Kevin S. Giles

(I was commencement speaker at Powell County High School in 1984, a special privilege because my sister Kerry graduated in that class. Here are selected comments from what I told those 100 or so graduates. You’ll see that the onset of the computer age played big. My initial comments referred to my own experiences in that high school in the 1960s.)

We always complained there was nothing to do in Deer Lodge, and then stayed out all night getting it done. And, of course, we were always ready to give adults the full benefit of our inexperience.

…

We expressed a burning desire to be different by dressing exactly alike.

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An author’s love letter to his native Montana, the ‘state of mind’

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Photo shows Deerlodge National Forest

Snow and clouds obscure the Deerlodge National Forest in southwestern Montana. Western Montana is a canvas of unspoiled mountains, ripe for a writer’s (and photographer’s) imagination. Photo permitted by Paula Krugerud

By Kevin S. Giles

Dear Montana,

You stole my heart. You own my soul.

Can you help me understand why I left your embrace, crossing over your borders to places far from the rhythm of your waters and the beckoning from your tallest peaks? To live apart from you for all these years?

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Makings of a writer (as an adventuresome boy) in western Montana

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Photo shows Author Kevin S. Giles as Boy Scout

In May 1964, I left at 6 a.m. to attend a Boy Scout campout at Dillon, Montana, according to my mother’s notes on the back of the photo. I was suitably prepared with my dad’s sleeping bag.

By Kevin S. Giles

I often wonder why I didn’t write more as a boy, or if I did, where it all went. My father, forever inclined to purge the attic of anything resembling sentimentality, might have pitched whatever I wrote. Or, maybe, I hardly wrote at all?

Writing seemed painful then. I realize now that was my first lesson about this craft of putting words to innermost thoughts.

In 1965 – the year that my novel Summer of the Black Chevy takes place – owning a personal computer seemed as far-fetched as landing on the moon. My mother had a black Royal typewriter with big round keys that clunked when pushed. Until I was a high school junior I didn’t know how to type anyway, and writing on tablets echoed homework, so I kept stories in my head and went to hang out with friends.

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Idyllic memories, for the most part, of being a boy in western Montana

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By Kevin S. Giles

Writing a novel set in my childhood brought a flood of memories, many of them good, reminding me that kids in the pre-driving, pre-job years see life with eyes of wonder.

As I drafted Summer of the Black Chevy those memories stirred the senses: Catching the scent of lilacs down the block while walking to school, my grandmother’s chocolate cake coming out of the oven, fresh earth when winter ice gave way to spring thaw. I heard the siren blowing curfew at City Hall two hours before midnight and the chimes ringing on the hour at the Catholic Church. I saw the lights of the big prison on Main Street at night, the spray of stars when the town went to bed, the red fire skies and the black thunderheads sweeping over the mountains.

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Listen closely. The wind tells tales. Author Kevin S. Giles takes note in Maui, Hawaii

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By Kevin S. Giles

(This is a journal entry from June 2015 that I wrote in a fierce wind on the southern seashore of Maui, Hawaii — and with a pencil of all things. I was reading Moby Dick and you can see the influence here.)

Photo of Kevin S. Giles

Trade winds keep the palm trees in constant motion on Maui. This was taken on the island of Maui where the wind and waves kept us mesmerized. (Photo by Becky Giles)

The message comes in the wind. It arrives from a place far away, on the wings of a beginning that’s timeless and remote. We wonder of its origins. And so, the wind is much like a messenger. Think of where it has been.

Think of its travels, what it has seen. It rolls over land and sea as poetry in motion, gathering rain and dust and all other essences it touches. It passes by me with a whisper and sometimes a roar. Where is it going? What have I learned of it?

Wind away. Unfurl your sails and take me aloft. Show me your beauty, your urgency, even fury. Do I look adequate for the journey? You are my inspiration, wind, much like fish and turtles. You tutor me in the simplicity of nature – simple to my eye, perhaps, complex to yours.

Our existence is intertwined and interconnected, born of reliance and toleration. What do I know of you? What you of me? Shall I find a story in you, wind? A breath of understanding in every gust you bring me?

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I’ve read of you many times. You’re Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Ishmael and Charles Lindbergh. You’re a freight train for welcome rain, sometimes a villain of forces beyond our control (hurricanes and tornadoes), a calming lull in our trees. You ride the waves to our shores. I hear you sing.

Shows cover of 'Summer of the Black Chevy'

The novel ‘Summer of the Black Chevy’ by Kevin S. Giles grew from memories of his hometown. The novel also takes place there, in Deer Lodge, Montana.

You can’t disturb a rainbow nor will you move mountains. You will erode them, though, with your eternal touch. The earth feels its hands upon you, as does the water. You carry stories on your lips – places seen, people married, times that existed and changed, cultures that disappeared. Still, you blow.

I’ll write words about you, wind, maybe many more than today. I’ll tell of your comfort. Your strength! Your invincibility! Or is it omnipotence?

You guide boats, stir waves, churn palm trees in perpetual motion, whisk dead leaves from their branches, bring us new snow. Your relentless presence dries the land, or soaks it, while we curse you even for ruffling pages in our books. Shame!

You are our friend, to us always charting a course of your own free will, and we respect you for it.

Blow on, wind, blow on!

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Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.

A Montana writer’s view of Butte, Montana (better yet, it’s Butte America)

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Photo shows Butte, Montana

Uptown Butte in its heyday was a happening place, full of stores, bars, movie theaters and, as this photo shows, a shop that sold furs. Mining kept the crowds coming, although this looks like a quiet day, possibly a Sunday.

By Kevin S. Giles

It’s a temptation to build novels around Butte. Anyone who asks “Butte where?” hasn’t been listening.

Butte, Montana. Butte, America. Butte, for crying out loud.

Mile High City. Mile High, Mile Deep. The Mining City. Richest Hill on Earth. You know.

Once home to Italians, Serbs, Cornish, Irish, Welsh, Finns and a dozen other nationalities who converged on the city, way back, when the mines ran dark and deep and coughed out copper by the ton. Right?

Today Butte is a lesser place, shorn of many of those characters that made it one of the strangest, naughtiest, more daring cities in America. Back then, of course, when men mined tunnels a mile underground and died of accidents, fires and explosions or, later, the lung disease from the poisonous dust they inhaled. Back then.

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Miles traveled: A writer’s journey began in the mountains of western Montana

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Photo shows Kevin S. Giles

This was during the time I wrote “Flight of the Dove.” I was at my paying job (or appearing so) in the Independent Record newsroom in Helena, Montana.

By Kevin S. Giles

Ideas for writing fiction tumbled around in my head for most of the bouncing long road through adulthood. I also deal in fact. I still can’t say with certainty which is harder to write.

I wrote Flight of the Dove: The Story of Jeannette Rankin on a typewriter when my second daughter, Harmony, was a baby. Looking back, writing nonfiction in the pre-Internet days seems somewhat of a miracle. I spent hours in the library at card files, and writing letters to distant places, and trying to revise my story by retyping pages time and again. The new edition of the Rankin book (One Woman Against War), which I launched in 2016, benefits from technology that puts information at our fingertips.

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