Already Spoken For

Despite rumors of outside investors, Virginia City’s 150-year-old gypsy fortuneteller will remain in the hands of the people of Montana

IIn August 2011, a headline in the London Daily Mail read, “World’s Only Talking Gypsy Fortune Teller Machine Set to Sell for Millions of Dollars: David Copperfield Bids $2 Million for 100-Year-Old Machine in Montana; Experts Believe the Gypsy Could Sell for $10 Million.” Other media including the Los Angeles Times and USA Today also reported the story, describing a bidding war between celebrity magician Copperfield and other collectors and Montana’s refusal to sell, despite the state’s need for money.

From Kilns to Clay

“The scene isn’t commonplace. ‘It’s like an Islamic village,’ says Frank Matero, contemplating the view. Clay domes huddle in a sleepy golden valley. A tall tower seems to await a muezzin and the call to prayer. But this is the Prickly Pear Valley and Helena, Montana. The domes, made of brick, aren’t dwellings, they’re beehive kilns that fired industrial and decorative brick, tile, sewer pipe, flowerpots and more.”

Sweet 100

The quiet and sometimes shy owners of Wilcoxson’s Ice Cream celebrate a century of business in Livingston

The name Wilcoxson’s can inspire rhapsody any time, but this year, fans are even more appreciative: 2012 marks the 100th birthday of the small ice cream manufacturing company headquartered in Livingston. Jerri Urbaska Balsam, a Billings native, grew up with Wilcoxson’s. “My dad and mom bought the divine fudge bars by the box and filled our freezer—they still do when family visits.”

Local Farm to Neighbor’s Table

“In 2008, Courtney Lowery and Jacob Cowgill married in their late 20s, moved back to the area they were from, near Conrad, and started farming. A lot was riding on the move. Jacob, raised near Sand Coulee, didn’t grow up farming but became fascinated with it in graduate school at The University of Montana. He had worked on several farms and was eager to start his own. Courtney’s story is a bit more complicated. She did grow up on a wheat and barley farm in nearby Dutton—and during her last year of college, in 2002, it failed. Her parents split in the process.”

Carving Out a Place in Nature

Inspired by the land, veteran-turned-mountain man makes a living as an antler artist

It’s not hard to believe that Pat Stevens, who is over six feet tall and wide-shouldered, was a sailor, first in the Navy, then the Merchant Marine. “I was a climber,” he remembers. “I climbed all over those ships.” But he was born in Missoula, and after seeing the world—India, the Soviet Union, South America, the Philippines—Pat returned to the mountains and his longtime girlfriend, Betty Lou.

From Tinkering to a Trade

Airplane restorer turned his love for aviation into a thriving business

A small “elephant’s graveyard” outside Paul Gordon’s business at the Helena airport is a clue to his work. Skeletons and bones resting there once flew—they belonged to airplanes. Inside his small blue hangar, as in a dinosaur museum, they rise again, acquire wings, skin, instruments and ultimately fly away thanks to Gordon’s skills and passion. Gordon, now 60, had no idea even by age 30 that he’d one day restore antique airplanes.

Protecting a Predator

Recent study creates growing concern for the elusive wolverine

AAbout five years ago, Rus Willis of Noxon was in the Cabinet Mountains at the end of hunting season. The snow was deep. Most animals had moved on. Willis made a last visit to a favorite lake and happened on wolverine tracks. Curious, he followed them. The tracks turned and vanished straight up a nearby peak. Willis peered after them through fog. “Dude,” he wondered, “where are you going?!”

Natural Born Leader

Native son proves to be a good fit as Missoula’s mayor

"When comedy writer David Sedaris appeared in Missoula in 2009, Mayor John Engen introduced him—and confidently stole many laughs of his own. In 2008, to over 7,000 onlookers, Engen introduced then-Senator Barack Obama and did an equally fine and funny job. Last Halloween, at an evening of ghost stories during the Montana Festival of the Book entitled 'A Shiver Runs Through It,' Engen recited Poe’s The Raven, saying first, 'I was going to read something REALLY scary'—Missoula City Council minutes—but he changed his mind.

Weaving Traditions

Basketmaker keeps Salish technique alive as tribal college folk art instructor

"At the foot of Eva Boyd’s armchair in her cozy living room in Ronan on the Flathead Reservation lies a pile of white string. There are also circles, orange and burgundy, the size of small plates. Boyd scoops one of these up, a spider with a colored body and many white legs. Grabbing its edge, her strong tapered fingers tug, weave, firm and move on. Slowly, white sides rise from the colored bottom. A basket takes shape.”

Nightclub Royalty

Norrine Linderman is still the ‘Outlaw Queen’ at 80 years old

“Howdy howdy cowboys, come right in this house, I’m going to sing some songs for you.” It’s Norrine, the Outlaw Queen—Norrine Linderman of Billings—on the band stand in Trixi’s Saloon in Ovando. The Framus guitar in her arms is almost as big as she is, though it takes a while to realize that she is tiny.

The Mining City’s Treasure Trove

“To the casual eye, the red brick building at the corner of Quartz and Main in downtown Butte is old. It’s small and simple with a few ornamental details.

“But look again. The building is two halves, twins—fraternal, not identical—connected in the middle. The side on the left was built in 1900. The right side was not. The right echoes the left in dimensions and feel, but lacks its slight ornamentation. Broad gray panels on the right stand in for the left side’s big ground level doors. The panels are granite etched with essential Butte quotes like this one: ‘Butte people measure their wealth in the richness of their culture, their value as workers, their strength in family and friends—a valuable and lasting prosperity,’ attributed simply to ‘A Butte Woman.’”

Encore Performance

Performance Community effort is bringing the Rialto Theatre in Deer Lodge back to life

Twenty-year-old Brian Thompson remembers it was hunting season when the Rialto burned. On the evening of Saturday, November 4, 2006, at his family’s hunting camp, he climbed a hill for cell reception and called a friend—who turned out to be on Main Street with the rest of Deer Lodge, watching the town’s historic theater burn. Soon, a photo arrived on Brian’s phone, or his family wouldn’t have believed him.

Glacier’s Gateway Garden

Norma Sangray’s yard is a favorite stop on Glacier National Park’s famous red bus tours

The historic Glacier touring bus stops on its way out of the town of East Glacier toward Looking Glass Pass. The driver announces, “This is Norma’s garden.” The first impression is profusion. The garden boasts about 100 different perennials, the driver continues. It’s an “alpine” garden, until recently covered with five feet of snow. They’re welcome to go back and visit, he says, if Norma’s there.

Sweet Swan Song

Flathead Valley man finds calling in simple, wooden casket making

"Willy von Bracht knows where he’s going to be buried, what he will be wearing, and who will dig the grave. About his casket, which stands in a room in his house and holds tools for now, von Bracht quips, 'I wouldn’t be caught dead without it.' Von Bracht is the owner of Sweet Earth Caskets and Cradles in Kalispell and he practices what he preaches.”

A New Shade of Gray

Philipsburg residents use poem as inspiration for revitalization

Poetry has many effects. Revitalizing towns isn’t usually one of them. But a poem brought about the revitalization of Philipsburg. In the early 1970s, Missoula poet Richard Hugo visited Philipsburg, 30 miles south of Interstate 90 between Drummond and Anaconda. The next morning he wrote Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg. It’s bleak.

Early-Day Mementos

East Glacier gallery retains the spirit and the art of its founding sculptor

"In the 1960s, when Montanan Betsy Griffing was 8, her grandparents took her to Glacier National Park. In the town of East Glacier, they wandered into an art studio, a log cabin on the main street of town. For not much, her grandparents bought two small wooden carvings, a buffalo and the bust of an Indian man in full headdress. On the front porch, the sculptor, a lean, elderly but still handsome man with cloudy eyes, kindly reached down and shook Griffing’s hand. John Clarke was well known to East Glacier visitors, and many bought his quick-carve, affordable souvenirs."

Same Song, Third Verse

National Folk Festival to end its three-year run in Butte this summer

"A sunny, grassy terrace overlooks rooftops and distant mountains. Sip a beverage, tap your foot to exquisite live music coming from a stage built into a monument. Something you’ve probably never seen. Look around; see toddlers toddling, parents relaxing, picnics, random couples cutting a rug. It’s Europe, right? Italy? Think again. That monument housing the stage is a head frame from mining days. You’re in Butte, Montana. It’s the National Folk Festival. "

Fit for Her

Entrepreneur embraces life in rural Montana while filling a need of working women

"You can’t put curves in squares,” asserts Sarah Calhoun. The dark-haired 30-year-old is the founder of Red Ants Pants, a shop in downtown White Sulphur Springs. Nestled in with purveyors of videos and auto parts, a cafe and two bars, the old red-brick storefront would hardly stand out but for the swarm of ants on the sign.

Writing the Cowboy Way

Dubbed ‘the Charlie Parker of cowboy poetry,’ Paul Zarzyski’s words reflect life in the West

Born into a Polish-Italian immigrant clan
of hunter-gatherers, garlic and tomato tenders,
wood-burners, preserve putter-uppers, whiskey
distillers and maker-from-scratch
curers and procurers, I have picked,
caught, shot, cut, piled, wrapped,
canned all my life and, thus, have become a writer
of poems.

So writes Paul Zarzyski in “Bringing Home the Poems.”Zarzyski “(rhymes with whiskey)” is best known as a Montana cowboy poet. He prefers “rodeo poet” since he never worked as a cowboy, but made a living for 13 seasons riding broncs.

Joy in Family

Montana’s Hutterites cherish their pastoral life of agriculture, worship and communal living

"We cross the pass into eastern Montana and a world of golden grassland opens. Photographer Jeremy Lurgio, Gertrud Lackschewitz and I are on our way to visit the Gildford Colony of Hutterian Brethren near Havre. Gertrud taught German at the University of Montana. Researching German immigration, she began visiting Gildford in the 1970s and maintains close friendships there."

Uptown Chinatown

Butte’s Mai Wah Society is working to preserve Montana’s Chinese heritage

"The crowd of several hundred on the steps of the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse is bundled in bulky layers; their breath makes icy clouds as they chat. It’s February. They quiet as an official appears and welcomes them. Then a long fabric dragon snakes out and down the stairs, propelled by many suspiciously human legs, and firecrackers explode. Butte’s annual Chinese New Year parade takes off to the east."

From Grapes to Glass

Montana wineries are becoming more than a labor of love

Winery. The word connotes France, California, perhaps Washington state. But across the United States, small independent wineries have quietly proliferated. Today no state is without one—including Montana, where approximately eight wineries hum not just with activity, but with passion.

The Garden City’s weekend bounty

Missoula Farmers Market a summertime tradition in western Montana

It’s a summer Saturday morning in Missoula, and you’re walking downtown. Soon you’re not alone, but part of a stream of people headed toward the old Northern Pacific depot. People pass you carrying backpacks brimming with giant-leaved chard and spikes of gladiola. Gently, the stream deposits you where adjacent streets come together. Instead of cars, there are lots of people–strolling, surveying, greeting, trading–and tables. Tables with rows of carrots, beans, and potatoes, tubs of garlic and zucchini, boxes of raspberries and apples, piles of mustard greens and bok choy. You smell dill. Your stomach rumbles.

Prison Break

Prison inmates revive horsehair hitching as a way to pass the time and make a better life for themselves

"For more than a century, men have practiced a craft linked to both cowboy life and western prison culture. It’s tradition. It’s art. It kills time. It’s called horsehair hitching. And it’s alive at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. Officially, horsehair hitching is classified as a hobby. That means inmates can do it during free time with materials they buy themselves."

Fruitful Labor

For generations, Bitterroot family farm has produced a bounty of apples

The road to Mountain View Orchards, northeast of Corvallis in the Bitterroot Valley, narrows as it winds east into the foothills of the Sapphire Mountains. At 15 acres, the orchard is the largest in the valley. One “block” or section of it produces more apples than any orchard in the state—a thousand bushels per acre. Yet it doesn’t look as big as you’d expect.

Riverside Revival

A work in progress, the Daly Mansion has a steep financial hill to climb

“Turning off the Eastside Highway onto the grounds of the Daly Mansion near Hamilton is like entering another world. Slowing to pass between pillars, you move toward white columns at the end of a long row of graceful trees. More lofty trees—many more—shelter an expanse of lawn and keep the mansion secret till the last moment. There it is, with the Bitterroot Mountains for a backdrop: ‘Riverside,’ once the summer home of Butte copper king Marcus Daly and his family. ”

Moving on in Milltown

Dam removal lets rivers flow, but will life change in this tiny Montana town?

"The painting tricks you, like art by M. C. Escher or Bev Doolittle. At first glance, Monte Dolack’s Witness to Change depicts a river slipping tranquil and free past river stones, scrub and mountains. Then you see it. In the middle distance, a building spanning the river, shimmering and ghostly, there and not there.

"The Clark Fork Coalition, a Missoula-based conservation group, commissioned the painting to commemorate a historic event: removal of the 100-year-old Milltown Dam, its graceful brick powerhouse, and the reservoir behind the two.”

Bales of Beauty

Bigfork couple say their straw-bale house is healthy for them and easy on the environment

Darin and Kristen Fredericks are used to jokes about the Three Little Pigs. You remember the story: One of the pigs builds his house from straw, and the big, bad wolf blows it down. Darin shakes his head. “Not these walls. A cannon couldn’t penetrate them.” In 1998, the couple bought an older home on the banks of the Swan River in Bigfork. Darin is a builder, and the couple was excited about replacing the structure with their dream home.

Cashing in on Morels

Wildfires bring tasty mushrooms and spark a scramble to find them

In the late 1970s, Paul Lynn was fishing Rock Creek, east of Missoula. High water forced him to walk up stream in the brush. “I discovered a whole bunch of mushrooms. I didn’t know what they were.” He took some home and showed them to Kim Williams, an expert on wild food who talked about them sometimes on the radio. They were morels. That night, he ate them with his trout and a salad. Ever since, when the lilacs bloom each May, the now-retired letter carrier heads to “his” spot—no longer Rock Creek—to search for morels. Shaking a finger, he warns, “You can’t write where.”

Fine Dining in the Mining City

After 23 years, the Uptown Café is still bringing new flavors and creativity to its famous Butte home

In Butte, from the corner of Broadway and South Wyoming, at least three headframes—towering structures left over from mining days—are visible, ultimate icons of this city. Behind you on Broadway, another Butte icon stands. Less dramatic physically and only 23 years old, it has won the hearts of residents while impressing reviewers from Bon Appétit and Gourmet magazines. It’s the Uptown Café, owned by Guy Graham, chef, and Barb Kornet, business manager.

The Weekly Grind

The love of food sends toy store owner to the butcher shop once a week to make a wide variety of sausages

If it happens to be Tuesday and you phone Missoula’s alternative toy store, The Joint Effort, looking for proprietor Bill Stoianoff (pronounced “Stein-off”), you’ll invariably be told, “He’s making sausage.” Tuesday’s the day Stoianoff disappears into a local certified meat market to work magic with up to 300 pounds of mostly pork—“80/20 (80 percent meat, 20 percent fat) boned-out shoulder trim,” he proclaims. In one long day he grinds meat for any number of his 22 lines—from classics like brats, kielbasa and Italian to more exotic offerings like French Apple, Tuscan (with sun-dried tomatoes) and Jamaican Jerk.