Distinctly Montana Magazine

a WHO REVIEW BY VALERIE HARMS 48 FAVORITE WA- TERING HOLES atering HOLES LES When Jack Kerouac found Butte’s M & M Bar in 1970, he said: What characters in there: old prospectors, gamblers, whores, miners, Indians, cowboys, tobacco-chewing busi- nessmen! ...Men played cards in an atmosphere of smoke and spittoons. It was the end of my quest for an ideal bar. Nowadays we lament that the M & M Bar is not what it used to be, although it is still open for food and drink (watch for new gam- bling facilities to open up). Yet many other classic family bars exist around Montana with the requisite details: bartenders with personality (often women), rustic charm, fun sayings on walls (“There will be a $5 charge for whining”), framed newspaper headlines (the deaths of Charlie Russell or John F. Kennedy), taxidermy, card and pool playing, a jukebox, maybe some slot machines and occasional dancing. You may find children or dogs playing at the feet of bar stools. In Montana Watering Holes, published by Globe Pequot Press, Joan Melcher describes her experiences visiting the bars in the book. One outstanding quality we can all recognize is the ease with which we get engaged in con- versations with others at a bar. She writes: I contemplated my good fortune. Having stopped along the road at an unknown tav- ern, I had found laughter; wine to warm my insides and relax my stiffened limbs, com- panionship from people I couldn’t call by name, and even a bit of country philosophy from an old Irishman who had worked the mines in Butte. I had found the Montana bar—the social sanctuary of the West. In the early days bartenders encouraged preachers to hold services and wed- dings in their establishments, because customers’ enthusiasm would carry over to the bottle. Minorities and women could not be kept out for long. Independent Montanans found ways around Prohibition. Fighting and kill- ing took place in the early saloons, as every western movie has shown, but danger lurks around every bar today. It’s that old devil alcohol and too much of it that causes the problems. DISTINCTLY MONTANA • SPRING 2011 t o i u r f v o r e

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