Kevin S. Giles with high school classmates (and longtime friends) Eric and Don at the July 2019 all-class reunion in Deer Lodge, Montana.
By Kevin S. Giles
Long before social media became a convenient tool for organizing reunions (or displacing them), people traveled great distances to enjoy face-to-face gatherings with friends and relatives.
Today reunions endure. We have reunions to celebrate music, religion, employment, ethnic heritage, history, neighborhoods, cities and military service.
The “new” Powell County High School in Deer Lodge is more than 100 years old. An addition to the west side of this building, at left, was completed in the late 1950s. Senior Lounge was at the back of the school at far right.
By Kevin S. Giles
It probably occurred to reasonable adults that grouping “Senior” and “Lounge” in a singular title was a spectacular admission of what would follow, but so it was.
I’m a veteran (survivor?) of the historic, but short-lived, experiment that began at my Powell County High School in the fall of 1969. We were the new seniors, the Class of 1970, emboldened with a plan that we should be trusted without supervision in a remote corner of the old school.
By Kevin S. Giles
It’s dawn in oil country. Workers leave the motels early in oversized trucks, heading to the rigs. There was a time when they rented every sleeping room within 100 miles of Williston. Travelers heading west through North Dakota ought to plan ahead.
We pack up and cross the border into Montana through some of the emptiest land in America. A fair bit of driving takes us to Glendive, situated prominently enough that it resembles an oasis in the middle of a great prairie desert. It’s a small city, really, but population is relative in eastern Montana where Glendive’s 4,000 folks outnumber residents in some entire counties.
(I originally published a shorter version of this post in my monthly e-newsletter. If you wish to join my free mailing list, add your email address here.)
By Kevin S. Giles
When I was young I knew a man named Mickey. Despite his graying temples he was more of a boy like me. Mickey arrived in our hometown of Deer Lodge, Montana, in the summer. He became a conspicuous presence around town as he rode his bicycle everywhere, a thirty-something man pedaling with an oversized wire basket attached to the handlebars. The basket, he told me, was for running errands for the nuns at the Catholic Church.
Mickey came from the state school for the developmentally disabled at Boulder. My parents explained that a new law sent people who lived in institutions to towns and cities across Montana to live among us. I didn’t know much about such things at my tender age. However, I did come to know Mickey. When he saw me he smiled and shouted my name, showing the big gap between his top front teeth. “Kevvvvin!” he would sing, sincere in his enthusiasm.
On the road, you never know what’s over the next hill. Photo by Kevin S. Giles
By Kevin S. Giles
Only room left in town.
Door won’t latch, casing splintered, footprint on the door.
Ashtray overflowing beneath no smoking sign.
Motel promises local channel. Nothing but gray fuzz.
I go outside. Kitchen chair by the door is the old metal kind with chrome legs and padded seat. Suspiciously resembles furniture at the diner down the road. Had a burger there, two pickles and an onion slice. Ketchup if you ask. Not bad, considering.
Central School, which opened in 1884, had 13 classrooms and commanded a large city block. It was closed and razed in the late 1960s because of concern that its cavernous central hallways and wood floors would feed a disastrous fire. Photo supplied by Dale Case.
By Kevin S. Giles
I am reminded lately of how the disappearance of old buildings changes the character of cities and countrysides in often undesirable fashion. Not everyone agrees, of course, that history-altering demolitions inflict harm. Some people don’t hold sentimental attachments to old buildings, seeing them as impractical barriers to progress.
Recently I wrote about the value of hometowns, particularly mine. Deer Lodge, Montana, is often cited as the first incorporated city in the state. Despite the losses of several notable buildings over the past five decades, Deer Lodge remains a western town. It traces its roots to the early mining and Civil War eras, still wearing its history well, with enough of the very old infrastructure left to impress on us how the past can survive the future.
By Kevin S. Giles
That dog looked obedient enough, staring at us with shining eyes and nary a whimper until the retired teacher told us Tippy was dead and stuffed and nailed to a board. A black poodle she couldn’t bear to part with when the parting time came. Dead dog on a board decorating the living room in the dead old house.
The house sat on a hillside beneath an umbrella of trees, pretty enough at a glance. Just out the back door, half a dozen steps north, the mountain began its steep climb to somewhere a thousand feet above us. Watch for bears when you hang your clothes outside to dry, she warned us. They come around, right down that mountain, wandering into the yard just as they please. They like it best after dusk.
By Kevin S. Giles
My recent post about the lingering mysterious hit and run death of 63-year-old widow Montana Martinz attracted a record number of readers to my website.
Within two days, the number of “hits” topped 1,000. My story also generated dozens of emails and instant messages from readers who ventured theories about who drove the car that killed Mrs. Martinz in Deer Lodge, Mont., on Oct. 15, 1966.
Most commonly stated was that the driver was “the son of a prominent businessman,” coupled with another persistent theory that the driver disappeared after police began investigating. Some people remain convinced that a young teenager drove the car that killed her. Others think the driver was a young adult, in one case a father who moved his family out of town soon afterwards. Many readers used the word “coverup” to explain their interpretation of the mystery.
If you’re just now joining us, here’s some brief background: A coroner’s jury empaneled soon afterwards concluded that two and possibly three drivers were racing when Mrs. Martinz was struck. Paint chips taken from her body indicated the car that hit her was a new, blue, 1966 model Chevrolet or Buick. The jury ruled that she died “by an automobile driven in a careless and reckless and criminally negligent manner by a person unknown.”
(The following story was compiled in 2015 from public court records, newspaper coverage and interviews with public officials and residents. Thanks to Gary Newlon for his research assistance.)
By Kevin S. Giles
Half an hour past twilight, with only a sliver of a moon rising, Montana Martinz began her fateful walk home.
Cradling a sack of groceries, the 63-year-old woman left the IGA supermarket on the main street of Deer Lodge, Montana. It was October 15, 1966. The wind off the mountains felt cold. She stepped briskly through pools of light under the streetlamps.
Four blocks later, she entered the intersection of Fifth Street and Texas Avenue. She was three minutes from her house at 524 Conley Avenue. Mrs. Martinz lived alone. A year earlier, her husband Peter had died at St. Joseph Hospital of coronary thrombosis. Their only child, a son, was grown and gone.
By Kevin S. Giles
I was a young newspaper reporter in Helena, Montana, when a friend’s father tipped me off that the nation’s last living five-star general was seeking relief for his arthritic knees in a nearby radon mine.
I knew enough about World War II history to understand that Omar Bradley was a big deal. He was the “soldiers’ general,” a leader known for his compassion toward his troops. In 1945 he led four armies into the heart of Germany, destroyed the remnants of Hitler’s war machine, and declared: ”This time we shall leave the German people with no illusions about who won the war and no legends about who lost the war. They will know that the brutal Nazi creed they adopted has led them ingloriously to total defeat.”