Old Missoula

Dam Foolishness

Author Pokes at Pork Barrel by Jim Crane

Montana and Missoula have a strong admirer and detractor in A. B. (Bud) Guthrie Jr.

“Though I dislike the snow and I wish they’d clean up this town, I choose to live in Montana,” says the state’s author-in-residence.

Guthrie, a 1950 Pulitzer Prize winner, has lived the past two winters with his sister, Mrs. Jane Haugen of 306 Agnes Ave. [Missoula]

Summers are spent at his cabin west of Choteau. He has 800 acres there. “It’s worthless, but it’s mine,” he’ll tell you.

His years of critical reading as a city editor on the Lexington (Ky.) Leader show through when Guthrie talks of his craft. Gerundives, sentence diagramming, all the abused tools of grammar that schoolboys and cub reporters curse flow easily in talk with the author of “The Big Sky,” “The Way West” and other books.

“The only thing I miss about not being a newspaperman,” Guthrie says, “is the sense of a community,” the feeling of the pulse of a town that makes newsmen insiders in community activities. He figures the 22 years he spent on newspapers are sufficient for him. “Once in a while I write letters to the editor.”

The 66-year-old Montana native hasn’t retired, though. Since publication of his autobiographical “Blue Hen’s Chick,” he’s written several short articles for magazines such as Saturday Review and Esquire.

Now he’s working on a play about George Rogers Clark, “unsung hero of the Revolution” and brother of Louisiana Purchase explorer William Clark.

Next fall he hopes to start a novel about Montana between 1885 and the beginning of World War I. Emphasis will be on the political fight between William A. Clark and Marcus Daly and their purchases of newspapers and newspapermen.

He’s an outspoken critic of “Board of Commerce promotions,” the Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of Engineers.

Promotion of a town for industrial growth often is spurred by the theory that a broadened tax base will result in lower taxes. “I’ve never seen taxes go down,” as a result of increased industrialization, Guthrie contends. The whole theory gives him “sour amusement.”

The Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation are “the strong right arm of the pork barrel in Congress,” he says. “I became disillusioned with both in 1952.”

Guthrie and Lewis and Clark historian Bernard De Voto were given the cook’s tour of the Missouri River from Fort Peck to Kansas City in 1951.

“The very biggest brass” told them that rivers should be harnessed for use and for protection. The government officials pointed proudly to channel work around Kansas City as an example.

“The very next year Kansas City had the worst flood in its history.”

Now flood-worried persons on the Sun River drainage are expecting construction of a multi-purpose dam to help existing Gibson Dam protect downstream areas.

“My God. Will they never learn?”

Downtown blight partly is the fault of chambers of commerce and newspapers, Guthrie says. Great Falls is a prime example. “It got to be embarrassing for a woman to walk from the Rainbow Hotel to the Civic Center” – a distance of about three blocks.

The slums and skid row had already taken over part of the city. “A good newspaper would never stand for that.”

(Urban renewal, prompted in part by the Great Falls newspaper, has since cleaned up part of the section.)

 

The above article (accompanied by a photo of Guthrie) appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on May 14, 1967.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349974626/

 

This article failed to mention that Guthrie lived in Missoula long before that. He graduated in journalism from U of M in 1923. A short biography for him appears at the link below:

https://mhs.mt.gov/Portals/11/education/Montanans/ABGuthrie.pdf

 

The Missoulian article did mention Guthrie’s penchant for writing letters to the newspaper. One of his letters blasted a former Missoulian, U of M professor (and controversial author) Leslie Fiedler. The letter appears below:

“Not Forgiven”

“Though I seldom have agreed with Leslie Fiedler and, indeed, have been infuriated with him, his troubles give me, not rejoicing, but profound depression.

“I do not presume to prejudge the case; but the very fact of his giving occasion for arrest hurts the entire intellectual community.

“The anti-intellectuals, the knucklheads (sic), will ride high now, making his case the damnation of all thought that opposed conformity.

“I cannot forgive him. No shall I forgive them. – A. B. Guthrie Jr. 306 Agnes Ave., Missoula.”

 

The Guthrie letter appeared in The Missoulian on May 10, 1967.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349973132/

 

Controversial does not begin to describe Leslie Fiedler’s tenure at U of M in Missoula. A nationally known literary critic, he delighted in criticizing long held beliefs and opinions, especially regarding the “codes” of the west. He was at U of M from 1941 to 1964, excluding his military service during WW2. He resigned his U of M position in 1964 and moved to the State University at Buffalo, New York. In 1967 he was arrested in Buffalo for maintaining property where narcotics were allegedly used. Charges against him were eventually dismissed.