Distinctly Montana Magazine

50 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 T here are certain people that shape your life. Dave is one of them. I grew up with him providing our family with milk, as- paragus, and honey throughout the years. My mother would often describe Dave as a character. You needed to be tough to live on his farm. My dad would be called almost on a weekly basis to help him fix one of his aging piec- es of farm equipment that he had previously repaired with random wire and tape. The colorful descriptions of Dave's childhood full of mystery, not to mention his near misses with machinery, garage doors, and fires were just begging to be written about. His life is Montana to the core and needs to be written about before it, and the last of the old-timers like him, are lost. I wasn't sure Dave would even agree to a sit-down interview, so I asked my mother to ask him. I thought he would say no, but he said yes, and we came up with a time to meet over at my parents' house outside Whitehall. Dave pulled up in an old car with his two dogs that go everywhere with him, Amigo and Freckles, in the back seat. They know my par- ents' place well and are used to my mom doling out treats, for which they wait patiently at the door. Dave enters the house wearing an old leather vest, and within minutes of walking into the kitchen starts talking about his weekend spent in Billings, dancing. At first glance he wouldn't make for a Fred Astaire, but he's better than a lot of men half his age, and he likes to show it. He says the old ladies he dances with have knee issues, and can't twirl because if you spin them around they get dizzy. Luckily for them both, he found a spry 70-year-old who came from North Dakota just to dance at the polka festival. Dave says he is more active than most of the guys at the dance and can still pretzel. I must ask what a pretzel is because he sounds quite proud of that. In his words, it is where the guy stands in place and "throws the gal around. You look like you're doing a lot but you're not really doing anything," he explains with a laugh. I ask him about the underground dance hall that was run like a speakeasy a few years back out in the middle of nowhere. He is vague with the description of where it is and will only say, "You go parallel the railroad track, turn up a hill, go past the rail- road tracks again and park in a field by a barn," so I leave the enig- ma hanging with an air of mystery. Dave has been dancing for 23 years, but he never danced in high school or even had a girlfriend, he says, because he was too busy cowboying and hunting. Dave grew up in Butte just behind the Mint Bar. I ask what he means by too busy cowboying, and his answer is, "That's my life sto- ry right there." He begins by telling how his grandmother had a homestead up in the highlands just outside Butte, property that his great-grandfather bought from a Native American who homesteaded it with one cabin. Dave remembers a range rider who worked for the stock association he rode with every summer. They would take care of around 3,000 head of cattle at the cow camp up in the highlands for the association from Melrose and Twin Bridges. Dave tells me LaMarche Creek in Duct Wire Tape Barbed photos & article by HALLIE ZOLYNSKI The Story of Dave Brown and

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