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 4 - 2 5 G r o u p , " Speed Limit. Cocktail waitresses wore black and white miniskirts with wide black belts and knee-high black boots that shined under the chandeliers. In the 1960s, the city still held more loggers, paper industry workers, railroaders, and foresters than long-haired college students. It was an industry town as much as a university town, without much radicalism in its past. Missoula's laborers clung to the same hard work ideals as other Montanans. Hippies re- jected "working for the man" altogether. Their life philosophies affronted Missoula's traditionalist, work ethic values. And not all Missoulians sympathized with the Vietnam peace movement. Trouble brewed on November 5, 1966, the Saturday the UM Griz- zlies hosted the MSU Bobcats for the Brawl of the Wild, Montana's biggest sporting event of the year. UM's Committee for Peace in Vietnam organized a protest march to loop from campus through downtown. The mayor granted them a five-car police escort. On Griz-Cat Saturday, 62 anti-war marchers turned onto Hig- gins Avenue, where they faced nearly 200 counter-protesters, gathered behind an American flag wrenched from a protestor. They hurled ripe tomatoes, apples, and eggs at the peace march- ers. Political science instructor Emilie Loring thanked the "anon- ymous donor of the free egg shampoo" in the Kaimin. Despite the police escort, peaceniks were at a loss for pro- tection when they returned to campus. Counter-protestors am- bushed them to destroy their anti-war signs and beat them. They screamed at Artman, still in town after his speaking en- gagement, to go back to California. Detractors encircled and pum- meled Artman to the ground. Philosophy professor John Lawry and political science professor Barclay Kuhn also caught blows. The Committee for Peace in Vietnam met fists and hawked produce when they crashed the ROTC's end-of-the-year com- missions and awards ceremony, too, nearly inciting a riot. In 1967, they changed their name to the Committee for Intelligent Action (CIA), just in time to picket against campus recruiters from the other CIA. From 1967 into 1968, mind-altering substances flooded Mis- soula. In '66, local studies estimated around 300 pot smokers, mostly at the university. By 1968, that number neared 2,000, ac- cording to The Missoulian. For the first time, Missoula's medical clinics saw patients suffering LSD-caused panic and anxiety. A few "acid casualties" wound up at Warm Springs state mental hospital, the paper claimed. Parents panicked. Local authorities assumed a tough-on- drugs stance. Missoula police were said to burst into smoke- filled rooms and haul weed smokers to jail. Drugs, mostly those favored by hippies, accounted for 10 percent of Missoula felony arrests in 1967. Law enforcement complained it would have been more without the obstacle of a search warrant. County attorney Jack Pinsoneault compiled a list, through local interviews, of nearly 300 alleged pot smokers, LSD users, and suspicious peo- ple to surveil. In 1968, 20-year-old Bill Stoianoff opened Missoula's first head shop, the Joint Effort. The "psychedelic boutique" adver- tised the "heaviest selection" of stereo tapes in town, "further out than ever" posters, headbands, candles, incense, peace stickers and patches, tapestries, and beads. Not long after the business opened, the undersheriff and a sheriff's detective pursued 18-year-old Carolyn Padilla, a fugi- tive charged with felony drug possession. The chase led them to the Joint Effort's door. They knocked. Neither of the live-in employees was home. So, they broke in through the window. Finding no one, they left—without replacing the window screen or locking the door. The sheriff's department declared they had probable cause for breaking in without a warrant: A jail inmate told them the Joint Effort might be a good place to look! Stoianoff and his two employees claimed they did not know Padilla beyond having seen her around. But the sheriff was con- vinced otherwise and asked a Missoulian reporter whose side he was on, anyway, the law or the long-hairs. Stoianoff had his revenge. He threw the greatest hippie party Missoula had ever seen. The Blackfoot Boogie always took place on a summer full moon night at the Red Rocks swimming hole

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