Category Archives: Media

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Heard of Zip to Zap? The North Dakota National Guard did. No shots fired.

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By Kevin S. Giles

Ever heard of Zip to Zap? I hadn’t either until my chance discovery of black and white photographs revealed possibly one of the oddest National Guard deployments during our country’s legendary student unrest of 1969.

I was a Montanan working at the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota when I found a fat brown envelope marked “Zip to Zap” in the newsroom library. (I had traded the Rocky Mountains for a prairie state where tourism billboards crowed, “Mountain removal project complete.”) The envelope contained two or three dozen print images, taken by Tribune photographers, of a rowdy beer bust involving as many as 3,000 college students. Zap, you see, was a farming village, hardly a blip on the North Dakota map, chosen for the marketing value of its name.

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Rules of the rails: A 20-point guide to Amtrak travel, St. Paul to Whitefish, Montana

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By Kevin S. Giles

•  You’ll see some of the best creative graffiti in America in the switching yards of Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana.

•  You’ll see some of the best forgotten (rusted) classic cars anywhere huddled in rows on farm property alongside the tracks.

•  Riding “coach” on Amtrak’s Empire Builder improves your tolerance for snoring, nose-blowing and occasional disruptive cell phone chatter (especially at night).

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Personal experience in reviving a dying child, and thoughts on lifesaving rescues

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Photo shows CPR

CPR on a small child requires a lighter touch to avoid breaking ribs. This photo links to a site that explains the procedure in detail.

By Kevin S. Giles

Commotion from a crooning bear named Billy Bob and his band’s clashing symbols hid the first cries of distress. I didn’t expect to encounter a dying toddler at ShowBiz Pizza.

I had gone there with my family for lunch. We were somewhere in Kansas City several years ago.

As the girls watched Billy Bob and his cacophonous crew in the back room, I went to the men’s room. I heard wailing. It was high-pitched and mournful.

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My brush in Montana with actors in a western movie, in six easy interviews

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By Kevin S. Giles

It was a big deal, interviewing those movie actors in person for the newspaper. Natalie Wood’s sister Lana? Wow. And Ben Johnson, winner of an Academy Award? Yes.

I was a young writer at the Helena Independent Record when American International filmed “Grayeagle” east of the city. Sensing an opportunity, I volunteered to write profiles of the top actors. Then the fun began.

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How a young Montanan found his way into an Aussie newsroom, on hardly a dry note

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By Kevin S. Giles

We shared a desk maybe four feet wide, sitting side by side. He responded to my questions with grunts and wave-of-the-hand dismissals. He was older and knew the drill. I felt intimidated.

We worked the evening shift at the Courier-Mail, the large morning daily newspaper in Brisbane, Australia. We were “sub-editors,” meaning we edited stories and wrote headlines before the presses started late at night. Our combined desk sat at the end of a long room full of other desks, all empty by that time. We sat alone in this room, known as Trade and Finance, staffed in daylight hours with reporters and editors who wrote the business section of the paper. Frosted glass separated us from several other night editors who cussed and coughed beneath a cloud of blue cigarette smoke.

Geoff was an Aussie. I was a Yank, seemingly a fatal distinction to him.

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First congresswoman Jeannette Rankin was an early opponent of the Electoral College

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Kevin S. Giles, a native of Deer Lodge, Mont., authored the biography, One Woman Against War: The Jeannette Rankin Story. It tells of the pacifist convictions of the first woman elected to Congress. Her campaign came just two years after Montana legislators gave women the right to vote. This essay first appeared on lastbestnews.com, a Montana independent news site.

By Kevin S. Giles

Imagine being the first woman elected to Congress, taking a seat in the US House amid a sea of men on the eve of President Wilson’s appeal to declare war on Germany.

Jeannette Rankin voted no.

Imagine being elected a second time to Congress while Hitler’s Germany rampaged through Europe. Then came Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt asked for a war declaration against Japan.

Again, Rankin voted no.

BUY! One Woman Against War

Rankin, of Montana, became a full-fledged pacifist between the world wars. She believed she was voting the will of her constituents back home, which was partly true, but she also objected to government’s close ties to corporations that profited from war.

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Extra! Gangs of newsboys once ruled street corners in uptown Butte, Montana

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Photo shows newsboys smoking

Newsboys ruled uptown Butte, Montana, and similar cities where news was a hot commodity and newspapers competed for readers. (Public domain photo)

By Kevin S. Giles, author of Mystery of the Purple Roses

Newsboys once commanded the streets of uptown Butte, Montana, fighting each other for turf but uniting against newspaper publishers.

Hundreds of newsboys competed for prime selling spots: bars, the miners’ pay office, sections of the red light district, card rooms and mine gates, streetcar stops, ballparks, churches and theaters, and anywhere else where large crowds might gather.

They bought newspapers at a wholesale price, sometimes two copies for a nickel, and then sold them for a nickel apiece to make a 100 percent profit.

Buy! Mystery of the Purple Roses

In Butte’s early years, newspaper offices dotted the extensive business district. Cries of, “Paper, mister!” could be heard on every street corner. They sold the Standard, the Butte Miner, the Inter-Mountain, the Daily Bulletin, the Butte Daily Post, the Appeal to Reason, the Montana Socialist and others.

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About that pacifist, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin from Montana …

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Photo shows Jeanmarie Bishop

Jeanmarie Bishop has performed dozens of roles in regional theatre and stock in the US and Canada and began directing while still in her teens. Jeanmarie is founding artistic director of the Nevada Shakespeare Company, from which she retired in 2008. She lives in Arizona, where she continues to act and write.

(I wrote this as the foreword for Jeanmarie Bishop’s new published play about Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress. “Tens of thousands have seen the play in theatres, meeting halls and living rooms throughout the world,” Bishop writes.)

By Kevin S. Giles

It’s been said that to truly understand Jeannette Rankin requires practicing what drove her through a lifelong pursuit of pacifism. Otherwise we stare at her through a looking glass from afar, seeing eventful mileposts but never breathing the rarefied air of her innermost thoughts. Yes, Rankin was the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She was the only American to vote against two world wars. She was widely vilified for doing that, but why?

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‘Down Under’ … yes, even years later, our living in Australia remains unforgettable

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Photo shows wallabies in Australia

Becky and Kevin S. Giles found a few wallaby friends in Queensland, Australia.

(I wrote this for Australian newspapers after our visit in 2002 to renew friendships made when we lived in Brisbane. It’s worth repeating for anyone interested in a journey Down Under.)

By Kevin S. Giles

The conversations go something like this:

“I heard you went somewhere exotic on your vacation?”

I grin, because I can hardly stop myself from sharing one of those dreaded “you know what I did?” travelogues.

“Yes, I went to Australia.”

“That’s so cool!” comes the reply. “I’ve always wanted to go there. I hear it’s a really great place.” And then comes the puzzled question: “Where exactly did you go?”

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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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