Distinctly Montana Magazine

52 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 4 A S A WRITER, THERE ARE ASSIGNMENTS YOU ENJOY AND SOME YOU DON'T. Luckily, this was a good one. I was told to go to Anaconda and report back on what I've been told are a growing crop of cool businesses. Well okay, I said. I think I can handle that, especially since my girlfriend and I already love going to Anaconda whenever we can. If you approach Anaconda via I-90, then the first thing you see of her is the enormous smokestack, towering over town protec- tively. Still upright in defiance of the Anaconda Mining Compa- ny's collapse some 40 years ago, the stack has gone from a black- ened piece of industrial machinery to an objet d'art. This huge piece of masonry juts into the sky like a gargantuan ionic col- umn, something out of an art museum for giants, and announces: "Here is Anaconda, the place you've been looking for." Anaconda, Montana (not pronounced AnDaconda, as some are tempted to call it) is very hometown. Not my hometown, alas; I was born somewhere not as nice as Anaconda. My home- town isn't snuggled between mountains, with street lights that glow like rows of brilliant lightning bugs. Mine doesn't have a spectacularly grand courthouse. My hometown, let's face it, looks like a pile of garbage when compared to Anaconda. But then, most towns aren't as pretty as Anaconda. When I say Anaconda feels like a hometown, I mean it in the kindest, most enviable way possible. It feels like the sort of place where scenes from Norman Rockwell play out behind every closed door. There's street after street of adorable homes nested in beautifully maintained yards, watched over by lovely old neighborhood churches. If you go out on an afternoon walk, you're likely to hear children laughing in a school playground or the happy quacks of well-fed ducks down by the park, but it's almost always wonderfully, even miraculously quiet. But just because it seems idyllic doesn't mean that Anaconda isn't a happening place. In fact, it's a place of unexpected superlatives. Superlatives as unexpected as "best biscuits and gravy." It doesn't sound possible, but it is true. I ate the best biscuits and gravy I've ever had at a Mexican restaurant in Anaconda, Montana. They were served up hot, the biscuits just a little crunchy on the outside but warm and fluffy on the inside, and all smothered by, I kid you not, hatch green chili country gravy. Reader, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. How is it possible that Jordi's Cantina has produced such a triumphant A N A C O N D A ettiest Little Town in Southwest Montana by SHERMAN CAHILL

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