Day 7 - Butte, Montana

Earthship Le Van Gogh Diary

Day 7 - Butte, Montana

I’m in Butte today, where the slogan is “a mile high, a mile deep and everyone’s on the level.” Interesting. A collection of local pronunciations includes the following:

Howshegoin? A term used as a salutation.
Jeetyet? A term used to ask the question, “Did you eat yet?”
Jou? In answer to jeetyet?,“Did you?”
Gweet. To “go eat” if you haven’t.
Howzyermomandthem? Exactly what you think it says.
Ya’s Plural of ya. Most likely a contraction of “all of you” as in “How youse guys doin’?”

All good to know information, I’m sure. There is another tradition with a long history here of everyone having a nickname. This supposedly came from the early miners who were immigrants from all over the place and nicknames were easier to pronounce then their actual names. In face most folks didn’t usually know a person’s real name until his/her obituary was published. Examples include:

Dutch McCrea, Ears Holland, Hula Kalafatich, Moose Pavlovich, Nichel Annie, Chicken Liz, Blonde Patrick and Booba Powers. Some of these obviously give a hint as to their ethnic background and how they got their nickname, but some just make you wonder where the heck that came from. Like Booba Powers. Wha…?

Anyway, mining is the game around here and there’s a huge, and I mean HUGE population of Irish in Butte. I haven’t seen so many Irish bars since I last visited Boston. And there’s an annual festival here which I will unfortunately miss called An Ri Ra with international Irish music performers and other Irish cultural activities celebrated for the next two days. I’m not happy that I will miss it but I will be back to this area in the future and will definitely stay for the festival. Being part Irish and all that I love to hear the music and traditions of the Old Home.

I wandered through a shop filled with more Irish stuff than I’ve seen in a long time. I spoke with the owner, who, like me, was a mutt of Gaelic extraction. She was Welsh, Irish and Scotch and I’m all that and a wee bit of English and French, to boot. She had black hair and fair skin and I have red hair with fair skin and freckles and we laughed about family histories with such a United Kingdom mishmash. Not unusual, of course, though combining English with anything Scottish and Irish must have been an interesting get-together.

You know, whether I use the last name of Cox (Irish), Tenn (Welsh), Clunie (Scotch), or Welborn (likewise Welsh), I’d be covered in this town. These are all last names I’ve had before for those who don’t know. I’m still using Cox, obviously.

Another local phenomenon was a colossal 90 ft statue of Mary, Jesus’ mum, high above Butte on the mountain marking the Continental Divide. Named “Our Lady of the Rockies,” the project to build it began in 1979 and both men and women of all walks of life and almost every religion worked to pave the way for the statue. It was dedicated to women everywhere, especially to mothers. (I’m relating this from a pamphlet in case you didn’t pick up on that.) Volunteers worked every day to blast a path for a road to the top of the Rockies. Must have seemed like it would take forever to get up there because sometimes they only got 10 feet in a day. Lordy!

The information I had didn’t name the person or persons who actually designed and forged the statue, amazingly, but it was the Nevada Air National Guard who lifted the four sections to the site with a Ch-54 Sikorsky Sky Crane. The Montana National Guard, the U.S. Army Reserve from Butte and lots and lots of civilians helped placed the final head-section atop the statue on December 20, 1985. Man, I sure would liked to have seen that! And I’ll bet they cleared the area below the mountain for miles while they were lifting these sections. Woe be unto the poor helicopter pilot who dropped that puppy!

The statue is lit at night and was beautiful to see in the twilight. It was visible from my little campground and I took a picture of it but again, without a zoom lens all I could get was this tiny white and glowing thing off in the distance. I took another picture at night but it just looked like a large star very close to the ground. Very pretty, actually, but it doesn’t give you the scale of this monolith.

I leave Butte with regret because there is so much to see here but I’ll be back - oh, yes, I’ll be back…

Lessons Learned:

That I can’t use my heating pad and Chopper’s heating pad at the same time on a 12V system.

That Chopper is much older than me, at least in kitty years.

That I respect my elders so her needs trump mine.

Which is why I like campgrounds with electrical hook-ups.

That I finally figured out how to join the sewage hose on the van and the extension I bought so it will extend to the sewer hook-up.

That I did this all by myself without the help of, indeed, in spite of the advice from several folks from the RV stores.

That it’s good to know that I can figure out these little problems.

As long as I don’t have to do this too often.

Observations:

A friend of mine kindly reminded me that Debussy did not write "Pavane for a Dead Princess." Ravel did. Dang. I knew that and brain cramped, but I sure sounded impressive there for a bit, huh?

A sign at a local restaurant advertising the future “Testicle Festival.” Not too unhappy I’ll miss that.

I’ve found my ‘tiger balm’ and have been rubbing it on my cracked thumb cuticles with tremendous relief. How am I going to get used to a different weather when I’m traveling so often between different kinds? I guess I’ll lay in lots of lotion, sun screen, light clothes, heavy clothes (both of which I already have), drink lots of water and hope for the best.

Since I entered Idaho and throughout Montana I’ve seen Clark Fords, Clark Rivers, Clark Forks, Clark Streams, Clark Lakes - Clark! Clark! Clark! Just who is this Clark guy, anyway?

Oh, wait. This is Lewis and Clark territory.

Duh.

So what does that make Lewis?

Chopped liver?

Fluffbutt was doing her squirm of joy on the passenger seat up front when I got up this morning, her signal that she’s happy and wants a belly rub. I was delighted to see that she was getting used to her new environment so I rubbed and played with her for a bit. She was feeling rambunctious and I had to pull out a cloth for her to snag and chew and kick instead of my hand and arm. I’ve been hit before with her “let’s see how many scars I can leave on you" mood and have learned to substitute something other than me.

I’ve seen three mountain silhouettes that look like Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona. Is this some kind of basic template for a range design?

T-shirt on motorcycle rider passing me on the left: “Fighting Solves Everything.” (???)

A Sinclair gas station with bright, colorful and obviously fake and how-did-they-get-here palms surrounding it. Besides buying gas you can apparently play at a casino inside. In fact, just about every local town has its own casino and liquor store. I forget I’m no longer in Washington where only the state sells anything beyond wine and beer. Now you can get anything anywhere. Weird.