When I attended a banquet in Japan, two of these young women came to me with a camera, gesturing they wanted their photo taken. Three more jumped into the picture seconds before it was taken. I think they liked that I am tall.

By Kevin S. Giles

I told someone the other day about visiting Tokyo-Yokohama, an imagination-stretching megalopolis of 38 million people. Riding a bus into the heart of Tokyo from Narita International Airport took three hours. It was after dark. Even in the night, young business types toting briefcases streamed down the sidewalks. That scene continued for most of my journey to a downtown hotel where I could extend my arms to reach both walls in my room. In a megalopolis, space is precious.

Raised a small-town Montanan, I never felt inclined to intentionally seek out big cities. I’ve seen my share, such as Chicago and Honolulu and Sydney. I’m probably a better man for it. A good life is one of resonance, particularly for writers. Fabled large cities bring perspective to our occupation of this good earth.

When I was a boy in western Montana I thought of big cities as places read about in history books. I spent the first years of my life in Columbia Falls. Then we came to Deer Lodge when my dad, Murry, took a guard’s job at the prison. In my youth I thought of Deer Lodge as a plenty-big town where the city limits stretched far enough to hold our interest. It was all of 4,600 residents at its peak.

Minneapolis-St. Paul and Seattle-Tacoma were the two largest metro areas I remember seeing during those long-ago years. Murry took my brother and me to a Minnesota Twins baseball game on a summer afternoon where a roaring crowd filled old Metropolitan Stadium. He told us we were seeing ten times more people than the entire population of Deer Lodge. It was an early lesson in matters of scale.

Deer Lodge, to me, was the world. The town was outfitted with friends on every block and a busy Main Street with two functioning stoplights. We had a summer fair and carnival that drew actual crowds, probably in the hundreds. The December arrival of Santa Claus, descending in a helicopter in front of City Hall, drew most of the kids in town.

Deer Lodge once was a two-stoplight town. It’s a quieter, less-populated place now. The town lost 1,000 residents after the railroad pulled out.

In the days of my youth, going to the big city meant a trip to Butte, Anaconda, Helena or Missoula. Great Falls was a distant destination. Butte was on the hind end of its mining heyday but still had a bustling uptown full of characters. Anaconda, Butte’s little brother, was big enough for a Class AA public high school and a Class A Catholic high school. Helena’s Last Chance Gulch, in its pre-“urban renewal” days, had an impressive district of towering 1880s buildings. Missoula was different yet, a coaxing mix of blue-collar labor and cosmopolitan culture, a state university at the center of it all.

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Today, Butte and Anaconda are shadows of their former industrial titan days. Helena and Missoula count themselves among the booming Montana cities. Great Falls is no longer the state’s largest city. Deer Lodge, having lost more than a quarter of its population, takes a place among smaller Montana towns. Anyone who’s watched Montana over the years understands it has undergone a dramatic redistribution of population.

When I was a college journalism graduate, still pretty much unknowing of cities, I moved with my new wife to Brisbane, Australia, where she had a teaching job. I went to work as a reporter for a daily metro newspaper. Brisbane was a port city of about a million people, many of them recent immigrants from other Commonwealth countries. I learned how to ride commuter trains, interpret colloquialisms, bridge cultural differences and understand the politics and history of a city 8,000 miles from my hometown. Brisbane was a far cry from Deer Lodge.

I spent the final twenty years of my newspaper career in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Nearly as many people worked in the newsroom as the entire enrollment at my high school in Deer Lodge. The metro area gained a half million more residents in the time I spent at the paper. It now tops three million. Again, a far cry from my rural upbringing.

This summer I stopped in Deer Lodge where I was invited to speak about my books to a Class of 1966 lunch gathering. Two of my books, Jerry’s Riot and the novel Summer of the Black Chevy, are set in Deer Lodge. I talked about how my formative years in our little town led me to writing them. It was the middle of the day but few cars were moving on Main Street. I’m well acquainted with the town’s economic struggles since the railroad pulled out. It was a reminder that nothing remains the same. Many former Deer Lodge residents now live in cities and most of them, I’ll bet, went because jobs took them there.

These days, I’m more of an “incidental traveler” to large cities, sometimes under protest. I barely tolerate crowds and hate traffic congestion. Our large cities impose stress over getting places, over crime, over the feeling of being a tiny speck in a sea of humanity.

Then again, I learn something new (and good) every time I visit a large city. Large cities are depositories of art, history, culture, diversity, entertainment, social trends and political influence. Living close to a major international airport is useful for getting around.

Kevin S. Giles wrote ‘Summer of the Black Chevy,’ a novel, which tells the story of teenagers finding their way in life.

Still, the country owns my heart. I like places of nature more than places of asphalt and traffic. The city where I live now has about 20,000 residents. It’s big enough to make life interesting but small enough to feel like home.

I consider myself an adaptable person who can hold a conversation with most anybody. That’s what journalists do. Size and place don’t matter when we find ways to connect with another person.

Years ago, when I visited Japan, I traveled with a “friendship” delegation from North Dakota. I was editor of a daily newspaper then. Our delegation included Miss Rodeo North Dakota and a prominent Lakota Sioux artist. All three of us were asked to pose for photographs. The only reason for my popularity, I think, was because I stood head and shoulders above everybody around me.

I attended a banquet where tables of food stretched fifty feet long. I came across an odd display of hand-size wooden boxes stacked next to carafes of apparent liquor. An older Japanese man saw me standing there, confused. He reached for one of the wooden boxes, about the size of a small coffee cup, and handed me one. He brought it to his lips, explaining its purpose was to drink. He poured a clear liquid from the carafe into my small wooden box. He then poured his own. He bowed slightly, and I bowed slightly, and we drank. I had my first experience with Sake.

The first sips tasted bitter. The next ones, better. My new friend and I poured a second drink of Sake. Neither of us could understand each other’s language, but no need. Nodding and smiling at each other, and our sharing of a traditional Japanese drink, did the talking.

Just when I get down on cities, I think of times like that. My life is richer because of them. Rural or urban, the experiences we acquire over time make us more worldly people. I suspect it worked for me.

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.