Most everyone has a hometown. Mine is Deer Lodge, Montana, still fresh in my mind

Photo shows Deer Lodge, Montana

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. This view looks south toward the old prison, towers visible in the distance.

By Kevin S. Giles

I have memories of my father building a contraption that sprinkled used motor oil on the gravel road beside our house. He hitched it to his 1953 Chevy pickup, driving it back and forth to keep the dust down. Neighbors who wanted to help with this endeavor, which included everyone living in the four houses at the intersection of College Avenue and Claggett Street, stood on the

Photo shows digging basement

This photo from 1965 shows a conveyer belt hauling earth out of our expanding basement at the corner of College Avenue and Claggett Street in Deer Lodge.

contraption as it bounced along, turning faucet handles that released the oil. It seems gravity created the flow. Possibly it was something more ingenious than that, such as a pump, but time has blurred the details. Dad was blue collar to the core. His first love, I think, was tinkering with machinery. When he wasn’t working inside the walls of Montana State Prison, he was running machines in the detached garage behind our house. He rebuilt motors. He also owned at least a dozen machines for sharpening saws and blades. Often, he kept several running at once, a cacophony of grinding and screeching. Even today, I hear those ear-wrenching sounds.

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Tale of mysterious 1966 hit and run death in Montana draws strong interest

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.”

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Memories of summer jobs, and that oh-so-regrettable mosquito truck incident

Photo shows two Montana boys

Cousins Hugh Wales and Earl Cook (right) outside hop kiln, Yakima Valley, in the summer of 1967.

By Earl Cook

Kevin S. Giles’ novel, Summer of the Black Chevy, took me to a time and place where our community had a spirit of vitality and promise. Young Paul Morrison was typical of many young people then who started early on with some work after school, or on weekends, and then a summer job. Opportunities to work were plentiful.

I once delivered the news. Grade school. It was The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Sunday edition, delivered Monday after dinner. Twenty cents a copy. It was a tough sell and I had but seven to 11 regular customers, for a very short run. It was hell going door to door in sub-zero temperatures. I believe my customers subscribed out of empathy. I got to keep a dime for each paper sold. And though I wasn’t going to get rich, it was worth its weight in “funny papers.”

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Houses in Montana when we were kids, and the meaning of being at ‘home’

Photo shows childhood house

Here’s my final home in Deer Lodge, Montana. It was the last of six houses where various stages of my youth took place. I returned here many times, but as an adult. It was a homey place, a refuge.

By Kevin S. Giles

I lived in six houses in the 12 years I spent in public schools, all of them in Deer Lodge, Montana. Each time we moved I left a piece of me behind, less perceptible than the pencil marks on the walls where my mother measured my escalating height. Scattered behind me, like pages ripped from a diary, were memories formed by physical proximity.

They linger in the shape of walls and size of rooms, and the number of rooms, and stairwells and pantries, and dim lights that made it tough to read a textbook at the kitchen table after dinner. Physical spaces frame events and interactions that make us who we are. It’s destiny to find our more mature selves in unfamiliar rooms of the next house.

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

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

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!

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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Lyle Gillette: Retired Montana teacher stood for kids, now needs help himself

Photo shows Montana prison tour

Lyle Gillette, in the purple cap at left, briefs people inside Old Montana Prison before beginning a tour in 2009. He led tours inside the prison, now a museum, for years. Many of the people attending this particular tour were participants (or their relatives) in the 1959 prison riot. The Montana National Guard ended it after three days. (Photo by Kevin S. Giles)

(Sad update: Lyle Gillette died Aug. 21, 2015 after, his son reported, five days of terrible pain.)

By Kevin S. Giles

The first time I met Lyle Gillette we were a rowdy bunch, some of us more than others, as he took charge of our eighth-grade gym class.

We wore red gym trunks that we stored with our tennis shoes and jock straps in wire baskets in the basement below the basketball floor. Every so often, when the air in the locker room ripened, Lyle would get after us for neglecting the washing machine.

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Writing Jerry’s Riot: Eyewitnesses recalled danger, intrigue, even a bit of compassion

By Kevin S. Giles

Readers often ask how I found the high level of detail that appears in Jerry’s Riot: The True Story of Montana’s 1959 Prison Disturbance.

The short answer is this: from people who were there. The longer answer is a bit more complicated.

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