Why Is Missoula Special by Peter Stark
Why is Missoula special?
Residents say it’s the mountains, the people, the . . .
By Peter Stark
Of the Missoulian
“While it is true that we have our share of pollution, potholes and pandemonium, on the balance I have yet to run across a more suitable place to raise my children and enjoy myself.”
Those are the comments of Denis P. Thane, a Missoula teacher and a respondent to a letter received by about 80 Missoula residents, asking what they think of our town.
Thane’s comments are typical. “Missoula has its problems,” was the consensus, “but Missoula is a great place to live.”
That probably doesn’t come as much news to local residents. But the letters, which are reprinted in this Centennial publication, do offer insights into Missoula and the people who live here.
The letters range from John Toole’s thoughtful yet haunting reflections, to Evelyn King’s poetry, to Louie Nordbye’s amusing essay on Missoula bars.
Many letters shared common themes. Respondents wrote about the cosmopolitan flavor of Missoula, about its tolerance for divergent views, about its wide range of cultural offerings and professional and trade services.
Many wrote of their fondness for the people, and almost everyone mentioned the mountains at our doorstep. A surprising number wrote of the need to preserve more open space and some offered criticisms of the Missoulian.
Air pollution, of course, was a big topic, as was turmoil on the local political scene. No one dared say that Missoula is a boring town.
Some letters were edited to avoid repetition.
One letter that did not repeat any others is by Julie Radtke, clerk at the University of Montana Law School Library.
Radtke lists some of the moments she has treasured during her nine years in Missoula. Among them is this:
“Climbing up the back of Mount Jumbo, with its windswept view, chilly at the end of a summer day where the children we brought along could feel what it meant to have the world at their feet.”
That image says a lot about Missoula.
Up on Mount Jumbo, you can indeed see the world at your feet, for in many ways, Missoula is a world by itself.
Our town is a rich and sometimes bizarre mix of people, and our town offers experiences as rich and diverse as a city of much greater size.
For many, this is Missoula’s strength. For some, it is Missoula’s weakness – too often we are not compelled to look beyond the mountains that rim these five valleys.
Missoula is a self-centered place, and the separate world that is Missoula, to borrow an image from a local writer, sometimes wobbles cockeyed on its axis.
But, no matter how it wobbles, no matter what the view from above, Missoula offers moments like that on Mount Jumbo.
The is much here to touch the wonder in a child; much to touch the wonder in us all.
Below are comments (and a poem) from 4 people mentioned by Peter Stark above:
John Toole
Evelyn King
Louie Nordbye
Julie Radtke
Comment by John Toole:
I can’t be objective about Missoula because my great-grandfather came here in 1859 before the town existed.
For example, I can’t relate to the current uproar about air pollution. I was raised at a time when 3,000 homes and businesses burned coal and wood and 21 coal-burning locomotives passed through here every day. Few paid any attention to the smoke. They were too busy making a living.
Missoula has not had an aggressive business community for 50 years, and the economic future of the town is in danger. Its major businesses are controlled by out-of-town interests who care little for our community. The outstanding exceptions to this are the Lambros brothers and John Hayden’s Glacier General Assurance.
They are creative, imaginative and not afraid to invest large sums of their own money in their community. There are no other businessmen in Missoula like them.
Alertness will be required to keep the university flourishing, to retain Region 1 of the U.S. Forest Service, to continue our burgeoning medical community and to foster the continued operation of Champion Industries. The loss of any of these could be ruinous.
We have already seen how fast this can happen in the loss of Burlington Northern employees, Mountain Bell employees and the demise of the Milwaukee.
The Chamber of Commerce is in a key position. Their slogan of “Who else will do it?” is pungent indeed. However, the chamber should now be capitalizing on the city’s natural beauty. A beautiful city is a prosperous city. Businessmen should not howl about the city’s groping efforts to do something about this in the Design Review Board and the sign ordinance.
Missoula has been harmed by the loud voices of certain liberal intellectuals. In the present situation, it is to be hoped that these people will moderate their activities and their voices, and the Missoulian, for its own sake, should be cautious about overemphasizing the space it gives them in their news columns and about giving them inflammatory headlines and undue space on the editorial page.
This type of newspaper treatment is looked at with a jaundiced eye by potential investors and can do nothing but hurt everyone in town.
Local government now obtrudes on the lives of citizens more powerfully than ever. Citizens have learned to make more and more demands for services on these governments without at the same time realizing that as these governments expand to provide services, they also expand their powers to regulate and obstruct. And, as a concomitant, property taxes rise, consumer’s disposable income diminishes, businesses close.
Local government has a tendency to grant largess to the weak while thwarting and obstructing the strong and self-reliant, yet it is these latter who are the producers, the creators of jobs, indeed the mainspring of a vital, strong, prosperous community.
Missoula is a fine town and it’s my town. It has been the town of my family for 134 years. Four generations have tried to do their best by this town and I’m saddened that we could not have done more.
Years ago I wanted a city of glass and steel skyscrapers. I don’t want that any more. Now I would just like people to say: “Missoula is the most beautiful town in Montana, with the finest shops, the finest recreational facilities, the finest schools, and a nationally known university. And it’s a forward-looking town, a lively town, and its people pull together.”
But what I see is a town that endangers itself with the sour clashes between intransigent environmentalists and determined developers and in the constant clamor for more and more money from government.
John Toole
Local historian and city councilman
Born in Missoula, 1918
[John was the older brother of Historian K. Ross Toole.]
Following is a poem by Evelyn King:
Missoula – crossroads melting pot of the Northwest,
contrast of culture and crudeness.
Presidents, paupers, actors and artists pass through.
Missoula – a place of plenty, with pockets of poverty,
city of sin, sophistication and sophomores.
Radicals, religious, rednecks, rub elbows.
Missoula – sprawling bedroom community,
tied together with tangles of traffic.
Where town and gown mingle, but seldom meld.
Missoula – young, vigorous, going, growing,
forever changeable and iridescent,
as the capricious skies, endless smoke,
and eternal waters.
Missoula – home.
Evelyn King
Missoulian columnist
Comment by Louie Nordbye:
You know what Missoula’s got? Missoula’s got bars.
Hard drinking, hard talking . . . the sleaziest, most gentle bars in America.
I know people who have left Missoula after a lifetime only to return regularly for nothing more than a Missoula Club burger and accompanying libation. I’ve met people in my travels who know Missoula only by its bars. “Missoula? Oh, yah . . . What’s the name of that bar, the East something where all the writers hang out and fall down?”
. . . Missoula’s historical founts provided me all the historical background I needed when I lived there. Personal accounts of Clark’s expedition and the gold strike up Nine Mile. First-hand memories of Teddy Roosevelt’s visit to Higgins Avenue and recollections of Barrymore at the present-day Wilma.
Just walk into the Oxford for war and remembrances. The hand that held the Springfield rifle now grasps bourbon and water, no ice. Further down the bar Bobby pays minimum attention to a younger hand leaving a contrail against the tin ceiling as it enters a supersonic dive on a Black Jack neat with Michelob chaser.
Fifty years in but a few beers. How Missoulians fought the great wars. Women were welcomed into the Ox in the ‘50s. I’ll bet they wonder why they bothered.
I understand fern bars are breeding all over Missoula now. McBars we call ‘em out here. That’s all right. They will take on the character of Eddies, Charlie’s, Harry’s and Curley’s.
The Flame will burn in the Clark Fork Station because the law students who discussed precedent on Main Street now set it in the semi-tropics overlooking the river. Back in the Oxford the clientele wishes the lawyers would set their precedents in the middle of the Clark Fork.
The Depot Bar on Railroad provided an interesting transition. It used to be the old Northern Bar. Now, just 10 years since the macrame motif replaced rusted tin beer signs. It is known as the Old Depot Bar. Happily the Depot didn’t transition all the way to fernville and has kept the patronage of Western loyalists like Evelyn King.
Well, anyway, these are some thoughts on Missoula through the smoked windows of its ‘70s decade bars. My viewpoint now takes in freighters with Russian, Hong Kong and Columbian markings passing the windows of the Boar’s Head along the Savannah River.
There are fresh, new ideas out past those Missoula windows and mountain tops. When I get lonely for a Missoula Club burger or a wartime remembrance, however, I’ll know where to go.
Louie Nordbye
Former Missoula resident Sam Lusky Associates, Inc.
Advertising and Public Relations
Denver
Comment by Julie Radtke:
Although I admit to being homesick for the energy of the city, there are experiences I treasure Missoula for:
Sitting on freshly mowed grass behind Sentinel High School years ago, watching my husband run bases on a soft summer evening with the mountains as a huge backstop . . .
Playing soccer at the fort, looking over a field that seemed to stretch to Blue Mountain as the shadows of an early autumn evening distorted the play and I dreamed of becoming a great fullback . . .
Running the trails around Missoula at noon with my friends looking over their shoulders urging me to hurry up . . .
Climbing up the back of Mount Jumbo, with its wind-swept view, chilly at the end of a summer day where the children we brought along could feel what it meant to have the world at their feet . . .
Seeing the lone figure of my husband ambling down the Blackfoot, sun glistening off the arc of his cast.
What I like about Missoula is that there are unlimited horizons for my family to reach for: mountains to climb, streams to amble down, forests to wander through.
Missoula provides opportunities for our family to develop and savor a personal freedom that comes from having the time to move at an individual pace other than that set by organized man.
Julie Radtke
University of Montana Law Library clerk
(Radtke’s family has roots in Hamilton; she was born and raised in the East and moved to Missoula from Chicago nine years ago.)
The above article appeared in The Missoulian on March 18, 1983 (Centennial Edition) – 110 pages long with many great photos.