Rugged Stuff

Remembering Butte

By R. Keith Rugg, 11-24-08

	At the observation deck overlooking Berkeley Pit, Butte.

If you click on over to Bob Wire’s music page, you’ll notice his latest track that’s available for free download, called “Go Butte!”

Others have also immortalized this city in song- the recent “Me and My Gang” by the group Rascal Flatts starts out,

“Way on down to southern Alabama
With the guitars jammin’ that’s where we’re headed
Straight up to Butte, Montana singin’ Lord I was born a ramblin’ man.”

Ray Stevens throws a bigger bone to Butte in his song, “The Haircut.” The whole first verse is dedicated to the haircut that he got in Butte, and ends up,

“Now, you may think that Butte, Montana, haircut’s the worst any man could ever get...Wrong!”

He goes on, you’ll remember, to get other haircuts- one in Los Angeles and one down South- but the Butte one is my favorite.

There’s also Jessie Hunter’s “Long-legged Hannah from Butte, Montana,” and Tim Montana’s “Butte, America.” A city as colorful as Butte is bound to draw attention from artists of all stripes.

So I downloaded Bob Wire’s “Go Butte!” last night, and it brought back memories that haven’t surfaced in decades.  And as I pulled out the mental drawer labeled ‘Butte’ and shuffled through it, I found that the city with the Richest Hill on Earth has played a larger part in my life than I had realized.

My high school friends and I had a lot of good pals from Butte, and I thought about the road trip we made from St. Ignatius to Butte to celebrate their graduation with an all-night party, and then the drive back home, rolling the windows down so that the cold pre-dawn air would help us stay awake, and then finally pulling over somewhere between P-burg and Rock Creek to catch a little sleep.  Our Butte buddies also came over for our graduation party, the one where we took a bus up to Kalispell and had the run of the Outlaw Inn overnight.  I know one of the Butte guys went into the army after high school, but as for all the rest, I’ve no idea where they are today.

My maternal grandmother was the first person in her family to be born in America, and she grew up in Walkerville, the mining town adjacent to Butte, that was populated mostly by miners who had come over from Cornwall, England.  After my first daughter was born, I drove over with my mother to Butte to show the new baby off to my grandmother, who was living there with my aunt, my mother’s older sister.  Grandmother, aunt and mother have all passed away, so that’s one of those ‘gathering of family’ memories that’s kind of nice to have.

Bob Wire mentions the Berkeley Pit, and that’s one of the places I took my not-yet-then-wife sight-seeing during our college days when she came out to visit from the East Coast.  It was part of the package that included the Mission and Bison Range at St. Ignatius, the U of M, the Rimrocks at Billings, and the Little Bighorn battlefield- I overloaded her with the whole tourism bit, and then it was a 24-hour drive straight through on back to our college in the Midwest.

There’s tons of other Butte memories- a visit to the ‘rock museum’ during an eighth-grade field trip; a crushing defeat at the state track and field championships in ‘86; a day spent wandering the streets, killing time before my flight to boot camp- and they all came back to me after listening to the download from Bob Wire.

So thanks, Bob.  It’s good to remember once in a while.

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