Old Missoula

 

Mo Club resists change in quest for success

 

Pub Date: 12/1/2005

 

By Cole Boehler

Back in 1973, as a newly arrived freshman college student at the University of Montana, I was exploring the offerings of downtown Missoula. And, as a typical poor student, I was interested in ferreting out establishments that offered a measure of economy.

Sure, I found the famed Oxford where you could get an egg sandwich for $1 (two pieces of buttered white bread with an over-easy egg between, ketchup optional), but I also wandered into the Missoula Club one block off Higgins Ave. on West Main.

It was a rather ordinary saloon by my far-eastern Montana standards: long bar, numerous stools, high stamped-metal ceiling, florescent lamps producing the equivalent of broad daylight, hardwood floor, yellowing pictures and news clippings of sports teams covering the walls, hopping bartenders in aprons…

The comfortable familiarity of the surroundings made me a regular customer, besides that a fabulous hamburger was a buck and a beer just six bits.

The regulars were decidedly blue collar, though I believe I also enjoyed a good conversation with a sitting Montana Supreme Court Justice over a couple of long-necks more than once. Some of the more rustic college professors and newspaper reporters also regularly bellied up.

Fast forward 32 years.

Traverse the sidewalk on the south side of West Main’; encounter the Missoula Club, its 1940’s-vintage neon sign and unadorned facade unchanged. Step inside, smell the grilling burgers, note the working class clientele, the sports memorabilia plastering the walls, tube lights bright enough to give you a suntan, stamped-tin ceiling, pale institutional green paint scheme…

It seems you’ve stepped into what author Kurt Vonnegut calls a chronosynclastic infundibulum : It’s a time warp for sure. There is no difference between 1973 and 2005.

Well, okay, a few minor differences.

At some point the small shop next door was vacated and the property acquired, adding an area for a few tables and additional stools, a handful of gaming machines, a billiard table and more wall space for more sports pictures and clips. And it seems the men’s room has been updated.

The faces of the bartenders have changed, because these guys hadn’t even been born in 1973. There are just two of them on shift when we arrive at 3:45 on a Friday afternoon. When we depart at 6 p.m., there are five. The place is full and the noise is ramping up. Burgers are being slapped on the grill, then onto buns with military precision and rapidity.

I also recollect that back in 1985 or 86, my new bride and I were in Missoula and I promised to take her someplace fancy for dinner. We went to the white-table-cloth restaurant in the old depot that was adjacent to the Bayern Brewery and Iron Horse Brew Pub at the time. We hadn’t gotten reservations so there would be a long wait, and the posted menu indicated entrees were near $20 quite spendy two decades ago.

So, I told her I knew of another fancy place that would be every bit as good: I took her to the Missoula Club and I think for about $5.50 we had burgers and beers with a side of potato chips. My spouse appreciated the joke but also appreciated the delicious burgers and the money we saved (she is frugal by nature), and she has since become a fan of the Mo Club.

In fact, she insisted we take her parents there when they were visiting us in the early 1990s to experience the timeless ambiance unique to the place.

But back to the present.

We happened to arrange an interview with senior bartender Shane Kelly in the absence of owner Mark Laslovich who was off hunting.

We asked Kelly if he is the manager.

No, says the eight-year Missoula Club veteran and UM graduate. Whoever is working is the manager. We all know our jobs and what to do we do what’s right so the boss kind of lets us do our own thing, he adds nonchalantly.

Indeed, the bartending/burger-grilling crew hustles but maintains a sort of casualness and mechanical efficiency. There are plenty of friendly words and smiles and ribbing for each other and for customers.

Laslovich sounds like an Anaconda family name, and our inquiry confirms it. Additionally, the name Shane Kelly indicates our interviewee may be from the state’s foremost mining region as well.

Yup, I’m from Butte, he says. We try to hire bartenders from Butte because of their inability to get girlfriends, Kelly cracks. They can focus more on working the bar.

And even though they’ve got six toes, they’re pretty fast on their feet.

Indeed, the place has and has cultivated the essence of a good Butte saloon.

Recently the Missoula Club was written up in the New York Times and mentioned in Sports Illustrated as one of the must-see places on any trip to Missoula.

Kelly admits a famous writer who graduated from Yale comes into the place periodically but refuses to write it up because he doesn’t want the place to become too famous for fear it will be corrupted and spoiled by stardom.

But the writers willing to take the risk peg their stories on the world famous burgers grilled there.

According to Kelly, hamburgers have been made at the Missoula Club since around 1903 when they were first introduced at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

What sets them apart?

Well, according to Kelly, the meat is one of the keys. It is purchased fresh daily never frozen from local processor K&C Foods, and the patties are hand-pounded and imbued with chopped onion.

The guy who delivers the meat, Whitey, has been doing it 40 years, Kelly points out. Then he’s quick to note, Whitey’s wife is from Butte.

Hey, you know where a Butte guy goes on vacation? Kelly asks.

We set up for the punch-line: No; where?

Another bar, Kelly says, then yucks it up.

Oft repeated conventional wisdom comes to mind: only Butte guys can get away with telling disrespectful jokes about Butte, much like ethnic minorities are the only ones permitted to tell jokes at their own ethnicity’s expense’; like North Dakotans telling Ole and Lena jokes.

Yeah, we call Butte The Paris of the West, Kelly laughs, now on a roll. The owner is from East LA… that s East Lower Anaconda.

You know why Christ wasn’t born in Butte? No’; why? Because they couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin!

You can tell, this could be kept up indefinitely.

Some people complain about these bright, florescent lights, Kelly says, but we tell them, this way you always see who you’re going home with.

Kelly and crew sport Missoula Club T-shirts emblazoned with the establishment s motto: Warm beer, cold burgers.

You can get breakfast, lunch, dinner or a midnight snack at the Missoula Club, Kelly states, as long as it’s a burger.

And we’re not talking about any upscale yuppy burger here, with sprouts or made from tofu. Nope, these are of good Montana beef and you can get them with onions, pickles or cheese; ketchup and mustard are your condiments. That’s practically the entire menu.

We do one thing and we do it well, Kelly says. Under one billion sold. We don’t do fries. We don’t even do lettuce or tomato.

We do note a big jar of turkey gizzards and another of pickled eggs perched on the back bar. Kelly says of the gizzards, where animal fat, salt and the turkey come together in one of the oldest, divine yet humble culinary creations known to mankind.

If you can nudge Shane Kelly toward seriousness, he’s a veritable fountain of historical information on the place.

This is the oldest bar at one location in Missoula, he relates. It’s been here since 1923. It was originally a couple of doors over and opened in 1890.

He says the Cote family most notably Will Cote had owned the business from about 1933 until 1970, with 50-year bartender Gene Cote having passed away just last year. Joe Dugal acquired it in 1970 (Joe’s step-brother owned the Oxford) then sold it to current owner Mark Laslovich in 2000.

Apparently, the key strategy to maintaining the establishment’s success as it has passed through the different owners: don t change anything!

Kelly is asked, Is this a sports bar?

Nope, he says. This is a bar that appreciates sports.

He tells of Joe Dugal possessing a football that had been signed by every winner of the Heisman Trophy from 1902 up and into the 1990 s. Reportedly, Dugal was offered big money for the ball, but instead donated it to the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind.

Asked about the hundreds of framed sports pictures, Kelly says, It seems like they change daily. New ones go up and old ones come down. He notes he has been fielding requests for duplicates and copies of the pictures from distant relatives in distant places.

He carefully unveils what is perhaps the establishment s most prized photograph: a 1926 shot of Jim Thorpe suited up with the Shelby (Mont.) Seals baseball team. Hmmm. There’s got to be a great story behind that, and Kelly speculates Thorpe’s presence was part of the promotional effort put into the famed Dempsey-Gibbons championship prize fight that almost financially finished the town.

He escorts the listener to other photographic high points: Wild Bill Kelly; Milt The Butte Bullet Popovich; famed Butte coach Bob O’Billovich, past coach of the B.C. Lions football team, now director of player personnel; a shot of the first women’s high school basketball team in the state the 1924 Frenchtown squad.

Kelly points out a picture of Paul Harvey who began his broadcasting career in a small studio across the alley and above another Missoula landmark tavern, the Top Hat; and Trails End, the most famous World Champion bucking horse; the Three G’s George Cote (brother of the former owner Will) pictured with Guy Rogers, a famous Notre Dame track and field star, and Greg Rice, a renowned World War II bomber pilot and war hero. [The author has Guy Rogers & Greg Rice backwards here – Rice was the track star – Rogers the W.W. II pilot. DG]

This photographic tour could take hours.

Kelly directs our attention to the classic neon and tin outdoor sign hanging above the sidewalk which, he says, people occasionally try to purchase. It is the most photographed sign in Missoula, Kelly states.

He also notes the Highlander Beer sign near the entrance (Highlander was once brewed in Missoula decades ago); a classy, functioning electric clock, probably from the 1950s, trimmed in neon advertising Wolford Electric, a well known old Missoula firm. Kelly says the clock’s intricate glass was blown in Deer Lodge.

Kelly indicates the Kelvinator-badged beer coolers built of what appears to be cherrywood. He says they were once conventional ice-boxes that had refrigeration works added later. There is an 1889 picture taken of these coolers in the original location.

The Kelvinator company once proposed trading the antiques for modern equipment, Kelly says, presumably to put these into a company museum of some sort maybe some Kelvin heir’s private residence. It was, of course, a no-go. This place apparently values and hangs on to its heritage.

However, it can’t dodge all that is modern. Because of the Clean Indoor Air Act passed in 2005, it has gone smoke free.

The impact of that move?

We don’t know yet, Kelly says. Maybe we’ll feel it after football season.

Are they doing any special promoting to mitigate the possible effects?

We never promote, Kelly says matter-of-factly. People find their way here. They’ve been finding their way here for 115 years with no promotion.

We get people from all over the country who stop here. They say, Wow! A real burger! Kelly says. You’d be surprised at how many people meet up here when they come back to town. We have a lot of couples who celebrate their wedding anniversaries here because this is where they met.

Once in awhile, private planes will land at the airport. They call here and ask if we can run out a bunch of hamburgers. We do it. They take their delivery and take off again. The tip for that is pretty good.

We’re a Missoula icon, Kelly says, but we’re a dinosaur of the bar business.

A pretty damned healthy dinosaur if you ask me, and one far from extinct.

Source: The Montana Tavern Times, Dec., 2005, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.