Distinctly Montana Magazine

56 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 4 "P ACK YOUR BAGS," I snarled at my children through grit- ted teeth. "We need a trip to Dillon." To my significant other, I framed it differently. "Honey, let's go to the Andrus Hotel in Dillon. I think we de- serve a little getaway, don't you think?" You see, the kids had been bouncing off the walls and shout- ing nonsense for weeks. They are the best kids in the world, ab- solutely adorable. But after so many weeks of summer vacation, they were nearly feral. Their requests for popsicles and Lego sets were hastening troublingly. Incipient madness was beginning to creep in, evident in the wild look in their eyes. Time to get out of the house before this turned into a Lord of the Flies situation. Suddenly, it seemed exigent that we should go there, right now, immediately. So I herded the kids into the car along with their sainted moth- er, sped the car down the driveway, and tore hell for leather for the freeway. Why Dillon? Well, I'd never been there except in passing, and I had always meant to check it out. My only hope was that it would be a kid-friendly town because my kids were coming with a vengeance. I was worried, for one, that the Andrus Hotel, Dillon's swank- iest hotel for over 100 years and a Finalist for Best Luxury Ho- tel, Best Historic Hotel and Best Rural Hotel in this year's Best of Montana competition, would be too classy for my little heathens. This fear became acute once we arrived and found a handsomely elegant lobby, complete with a selection of snacks, beer and wine, and other accoutrements. This is exactly the kind of place, I thought, that my kids could absolutely wreck. My suspicion was almost confirmed when, within three minutes of entering the lobby, my six-year-old son managed to get one of those executive desk toys that goes "click click click" on a table in the lobby hopelessly tangled. But then Ari, the extremely gracious evening clerk, welcomed us, checked us in, gave us the tour, and, later, I assume, careful- ly unsnared the wires and balls of the desk toy. All through our stay, Ari was kind and patient with our little monsters. Our room was the Carnegie Suite, which, in addition to a handsome kitchen, living room, and two full bathrooms (one featuring a luxurious walk-in shower), also featured two bed- rooms, each with its own television. That night, we watched Shark Tank in the suite's master bedroom while the kids watched Shark Week in their bedroom. We heard only occasional hoot- ing, and due to the Andrus's sturdy construction, just barely. While we celebrated that the Andrus had mostly pacified and defanged our children, I opened a couple of books that I had brought along. Being sort of a pasty indoor guy, I find that the best thing to do when I am interested in a place is read about it, and it just so happens that Thomas Savage, one of Montana's most lauded 20th-century novelists (and author of the novel Power of the Dog, which was adapted into the Oscar-winning film of the same name), wrote quite a bit about the Andrus. Savage's novels, like Power of the Dog and Midnight Line, fre- quently employ the Andrus Hotel in their narratives, sometimes calling it the Andrews Hotel, or the Herndon House, but always clearly referencing the iconic Dillon landmark. Savage's biographer Alan Weltzien notes how, in the author's semi-fictional world, the Andrus emerged as an important, even emblematic location, which "symbolizes a whole category of hotels article and photos by JOSEPH SHELTON

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