Distinctly Montana Magazine

19 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m I N THE EARLY 1960S, CHARLEY PRIDE WORKED IN THE RED-HOT GLOW OF THE EAST HELENA SMELTER, where slag was melted and refined into lead, among hellish edifices that burned at 2,400 de- grees, hotter than the temperature of volcanic lava. Furious eddies and swirls of molten metal spun in the oven, but sometimes there was a snag and someone would have to grab a steel bar and dislodge a stub- born piece of coal. While Charley was working there, he reported, a man named Oscar Jones had been "jabbing and poking around the mouth of the furnace" when the flow caught his steel bar. Not fast enough to resist, Jones followed it into the fire. Charley didn't see the man's death, but heard about it from other smelter workers. Told and retold, the man's gruesome de- mise became a cautionary tale for the other workers, a bedtime fable for the unwary. Charley must have thought he'd traded one heat for another. When he moved to Montana from the sweltering summer heat of the deep South, he'd dis- covered that little Montana towns could be brutally cold in winter. One day, he reported in his autobiog- raphy, there was a wind chill of 74 below. Perhaps em- boldened by the bitterly frigid temperature, someone made a miscalculation, sending a 12- to 15-foot pot of molten slag off of the rail. Charley and his crew were sent to get it back on track. While working, he was warmed by the conflagration in the pot, but he remembered that the 70-meter trudge through snow and wind back to the plant was "brutal. The wind blew directly into our faces, and when we reached the shed, I touched my nose and thought it was going to break off my face... Respect for nature is one of the first things I learned in Montana." Why did this young Southern man weather such nightmarish conditions? Well, he wanted to be—was destined to be—a superstar. He came to the Treasure State to stake his claim in his chosen path, but he found his true calling. Or it found him. Either way, his time in Helena would solidify his future as surely as molten metal cools in a mold. Or, in other words, he arrived a wannabe ball play- er and left a country-western icon in the making. To begin with, Charley wanted to play baseball, not sing. And in fact, an African-American man stood a much better chance securing a career in the big leagues than singing country-western music. Pri- or to Pride, there had only been a handful of black country singers, and like Deford Bailey, who played spoons and harmonica at the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s, they were often viewed as novelty acts, unable to break through into the mainstream. Jackie Rob- inson, by contrast, had already broken through the "color line" of professional sports in 1947, though progress had been slow and intermittent. In 1960, the year Pride arrived in Montana, African-Ameri- can players comprised only 8.9% of the MLB. By that time, he had several promising but unsuc- cessful attempts at playing baseball, including stints in the Memphis Red Sox and the Birmingham Black Barons, and in the All Army champion team during his service. The so-called Negro Leagues were in decline as the best players were drafted into the major leagues. Pride, reading a press release writ- ten by Montana's Nick Marianas, himself a legend- ary figure in Montana history, decided to try play- ing with the Missoula Lumberjacks in the Pioneer League. After he was let go from that team, he heard from Marianas about the Montana State League, which Pride records "was made up of amateur teams sponsored by various smelting companies in places like Helena, Anaconda, Butte, and Billings." After all, baseball was still the once and future "na- tional pastime" in the 1930s. The Helena branch of the American Smelter & Refining Company consid- ered their team a point of pride and held 18 plant jobs open for ball players. Pride settled in well on the team, batting .444 in his first season. "Maybe if I had bombed in that league," he wrote later, "I would have put aside my baseball fantasies then and there." Sometimes before a game, Charley would get on the PA system and sing the national anthem. Sometimes, he remembered, "if time permitted," he "tacked on a country tune or two." Often, after games, the vic- torious (or, occasionally, defeated) team would go out to a bar. Sometimes, "if there were an idle guitar by SHERMAN CAHILL

• Cover