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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ostling41" data-source="post: 1605714" data-attributes="member: 62109">I rode into Butte on my Honda XL500, with clothes in my pack, and suitcase full of belongings soon to follow on Greyhound package express. I'd just accepted a job there as a research engineer, after living in New Zealand for six years, and I didn't own any furniture. I rented a house a block from the Berkeley Pit, then in operation, not far from Dirty Mouth Jean's bar The Stockman, and near the house of Tony the Trader.  I had no car, so in wintertime I had to take the bus to Missoula for Christmas shopping. Not only did Butte not have a Walmart, it didn't even have a McDonald's. I took the last known photo of the roller coaster at Columbia Gardens, which was bulldozed the week I arrived in town. Japan finally made a car I could fit into, so in 1982 I bought a Nissan Stanza, and left Butte in that. Growing up in Seattle, there was no way I would have considered buying an American car. My next job was in Barrow, Alaska, which wasn't as cold as Butte. On Arctic shores I looked at tundra swans and oldsquaws through my Bushnell 6x26 custom compacts. On the lam from the Barrow mob, I holed up in Sitka (where my mother was raised) for a week. I read in the local paper that Ivan Doig was giving a reading there, of his new book The Sea Runners. I went to the JC and was the first to arrive in the empty auditorium. Then Doig arrived and sat near me. "Do you think you and I are the only two people in this room who have been to Ringling, Montana?" I asked. We laughed. I knew, from reading This House of Sky, that he went to school there, but didn't know then that he'd actually been born in White Sulphur Springs. I didn't know about the history of Meagher until you told it. In fact, I didn't even know how to pronounce the name of your county. White Sulphur Springs may be poor economically, but I think it is one of the nicest spots on the entire US 89, which until 1992 ran from Canada to Mexico, passing right thought Phoenix, where I have lived since 2001. I retired as a rocket engineer three years ago, and decided to stay here until it seems time to leave. Montana always beckons.</blockquote>

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