Distinctly Montana Magazine

23 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m Bobby had already developed a reputation by the time he was a freshman in high school. In Butte, Montana, where he was born, you had to make your own entertainment. Many of the men chose to do so by, shall we say, socializing with ladies of the evening, a vice benevolent- ly winked at, if not exactly condoned, by the Anaconda Mining Company. You see, they preferred to have their vast number of working men's violent tendencies rendered tender by the charms of the second sex—however it could be managed. This was, to be clear, still true by the early to mid-1950s, the era in which Bobby was prowling the hill on his bicycle and generally being a menace. Bobby had another, although perhaps adjacent, way to have fun. In his own words, "when I was a kid, the main activity was to go up and throw rocks at the whores, bang on the doors, and have the pimps chase us down the street." More or less abandoned by his parents, being raised by a saintly grandmother would only do so much to keep a boy on the straight and narrow in a town which was, as he would tell The New Yorker later, full of "pimps, hayseeds and cross-roaders*." Money, in Bobby's caclulation, would keep him away from the mines. And one quick and easy way to make a little pocket mon- ey was to scope out a new car in one of the neighborhoods of Butte and relieve it of its hubcaps. Doubling back later, he would chance to meet the owner outside. "Hey mister, your car hasn't got hubcaps. What happened?" He would offer help in looking for the disappearing caps. Then, inevitably, it would dawn on him that he had seen a set of hubcaps just like it at home. Maybe he'd part with them for some offered price. Most of the time, the car's owner would give him something, if not the asked price, and young Bobby would go off and return with the purloined goods. He even put the hubcaps back on himself, as a service included in the price. When he got tired of that scam, he scaled it up and did the same thing with whole sets of tires. He also discovered that the trick was easier to pull on out-of-town marks since Buttians were more likely to recognize the con. But then Marsh's Jewelry over on Broadway, a sturdy commu- nity pillar for years, was burgled. No one knew by whom, and the mystery had the students at the high school all riled up. Bobby, moreover, intimated to those around him that he knew something more about the burglary than the cops, and not just through the grapevine. Those around him began to wonder: had Bobby stepped up his criminal game? Bobby began to fish around. "Hey, if you want to buy some jewelry cheap, I've got some I need to sell fast." Marsh's Jewelry, as all jewelry stores do in a poor town, occu- pied a complicated place in Butte's psyche. It was both a symbol of everything you wanted in life—an engagement ring and wed- ding band for a happy marriage, a nice watch to show your long and successful career, maybe some cuff links and a suit from Wein's to go with. But on the other hand, if you weren't someone by NICK MITCHELL illustration by ROBERT RATH H OW DOES SOMEONE BE- COME A LEGEND? Buddy, if I knew, I'd be one. How did Pecos Bill learn to rope cyclones? What possessed Robert Johnson to seek the devil at the crossroads? Why did Paul Bunyan first test the heft of an ax in his grip? These are mysteries not given to man to un- derstand. But, for young Bobby Knievel, petty crime was worth a shot. *Itinerant gamblers who probably had a trick up their sleeves.

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