Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 43 By VALERIE HARMS Ivan Doig's Gab Lab F ANS OF IVAN DOIG'S BOOKS LOVE HIS EXPRESSIONS. Pleasure comes too from the subliminal effect of the rhythm of his sentences. Having started as a poet, he worked hard on making sentences read well, not necessarily correctly. As a journalist, he learned to describe and document events. His note- taking was famous and scrupulous. He taught us more about Montana then we ever knew and he entertained us, often bringing tears to our eyes whether through humor or tugs at our heart. After Ivan Doig died (April 2015), his papers were donated to Montana State University's Special Collec- tions department, where they are in the process of being archived. Some of the papers are available (even online) now. I delved into notes relating to e Bartender's Tale, published in 2012. Just as his final book, Last Bus to Wisdom, is narrated by a young lad (12 years old), so is e Bartender's Tale, in this case Rusty. To write from the point of view of a kid, Doig collected kid slang. Here are some examples of the expressions he heard and wrote on index cards. Swuft (meaning smart and cool). Too much. Wowie Sheesh. Out of sight! Great. Don't flip, but, Fine / Yay! Boo. Aw, crud. Crazy shnook groovy Right on. How about that. Later, gator. I flipped over that./ Don't flip (, but...) Can't win them all. Tom Harry is Rusty's father and the owner of the Medicine Lodge, a legend- ary bar located in the small town of Gros Ventre. e story takes place mostly in the Lodge or fishing holes nearby. We can picture Ivan Doig enjoying bars and filing away notes on the atmosphere, many details of which find their way into the book. [e punctuation below is his.] Med Lodge as sanctuary: it sounds like a (wild- life refuge) or (place for monks), but look it up … To step in, you never would have known that the Medicine Lodge hadn't been in business every day of the past few hundred years. e laboring whir of the ceiling fan above the bar in summertime a glass that would soothe both your thirst and your worries Whatever kind of drinker, light or heavy off the bar stool every second beer to visit the toilet ere is nothing like watching alcohol change a person before your eyes to learn about shades of character e Medicine Lodge wasn't changeless. Noth- ing is. But it held a sense of (being changeless). You could riffle them together like playing cards Tom never hesitated to throw out a pest. No Keno, punchboards, etc ice machine makes a fortune from tourists roughouse kidding (changed w/ generations, but always went on) a male preserve but not entirely. Velma Simms, somebody's wife — still a looker, though thin as some women get as they age; comes in certain night(s) of the week, has 2 Manhattans. 00 headed for the toilet (walking) like a sailor on a rolling deck. Herb asks Tom how old the Med Lodge is. Tom shrugs, "Way to hell and gone back." customers who drink until their eyeballs were floating Barfly was a cruel term, but right in its image of hovering within smell and touch of booze. patron/ patronage/patronize paying customer Photos Courtesy of the Merrill G. Burlingame's Special Collections & Archives of the Montana State University Library "To me, language — the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose — is the ultimate "region," the true home, for a writer." D E PA R T M E N T L I T E R A R Y L O D E

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