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 • W I N T E R 2 0 2 3 - 2 4 Summer does pump up the numbers. "We put on extra servers seasonally, mostly college or high school kids. We always have several returners eager for summer money," says Jennifer as she casts her robin's-egg blue eyes across the dining room. She and her husband, Jay, are co-owners and managers in the family-driven operation. In the best tradition of essential service, the server staff ban- ter heartily with each other and their guests in equal measures. They seem to know a little bit about all the regulars: their careers, kids, sports scores from the weekend's games, latest health ail- ments, relatives coming to visit. It's all good chatter. If someone seems lonely or despairing, they offer comforting words and a hearty cheer up. After a rousing win by the Columbia Falls Wild- cats teams, the Owl might fill up with fans and parents digesting plays, players, and scores. By anybody's business calculus it is a success in a commercial world that seldom favors restaurants. The Nite Owl's origin story follows a traditional community growth pattern: following the construction of Hungry Horse Dam in 1955, industrialists capitalized on cheap nearby electric- ity generated by the dam and formed the Columbia Falls Alumi- num Company, CFAC, and constructed the sprawling aluminum plant on the north edge of town. Upon completion, the plant covered over forty acres and was the largest building in Mon- tana. They hired skilled, well-paid workers. Lots of them. Then they helped fund a new high school and filled it up with plant workers' kids. Meanwhile, across town, Plum Creek and Stoltze Lumber Company added deeply to an already en- trenched wood products labor base. This inexorable growth led to the creation of a town deeply rooted in lunch-pail, blue-collar demographics. The Nite Owl Restaurant catered neatly to this clientele and got its name from being open generous hours to accommodate the changing shifts at those industrial sites. The aluminum plant is gone now, an EPA cleanup site. Though Weyerhauser supplanted Plum Creek, logs are still being processed and shift workers still seek out the local restau- rant. In the turn from industrial town to tourist town at the gate- way to Glacier Park, other town eateries have sprung up, each one in a kind of symbiotic complement to each other. Shari, twenty-seven-year veteran, is directing new customers to open tables as she scurries to fill water glasses. Behind her at the crowded counter and carrying precariously balanced plates of eggs, biscuits and gravy is Amber, who started as a teenager fifteen years ago. Meanwhile, Yvonne, who has been with the Owl thirteen years, snags another coffee pot from the warming burner as she whisks by in a move she has done thousands of times. The servers, even if blindfolded, know just where the ketchup bottles are, the location of the tea bags and the bussing bins in a hard-wired choreography. By heart and by memory they know just where the mugs and menus are without even having to glance to retrieve them. No move is wasted. Servers also operate the lone cash register with equal aplomb. Then there is Jana. She started at the Owl when she was eighteen, when Steve Marquesen was desperate for a dishwasher. That was forty-four They seem to know a little bit ABOUT ALL THE REGULARS... IF SOMEONE SEEMS LONELY OR DESPAIRING, THEY OFFER COMFORTING WORDS AND A HEARTY CHEER UP.

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