Bear Paw Meanderings
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When I was in college I had two good friends who were in college as well. One was my cousin Butch (James Lucke) and one was a high school mate by the name of Jim Dullenty.
Jim went off to Journalism School at the University of Montana and Butch and I stayed home and attended Northern.
We spent many weekends visiting Jim in Missoula. He had introduced us to the famous Montana author Dorothy Johnson (The Man who Shot Liberty Valance and The Hanging Tree). For some reason she loved having coffee with the Havre ruffians on Saturday morning. Johnson was an interesting person. She collected guns and if you had a rattlesnake in your back yard in Missoula in those days, and many did, you would call Dorothy Johnson and she would dispatch the reptile very soon.
How we got to Missoula for our visits was interesting and we learned a lot about Montana hotels along the way. We would hop on a two car train in Havre called the Galloping Goose and ride backwards all the way to Helena where we would catch the Northern Pacific and get into Missoula early in the morning. We would always stay at the Florence Hotel because our parents had taught us that there were certain hotels in each Montana town to stay at and to stay at no other. This was all before my drinking days. I remember one time my cousin Butch brought bottle of vodka and I dumped it all down the bathroom sink.
I loved the Florence because right down the block was the Wilma theatre where they had a large pipe organ and there would be pipe organ concerts before the movie of the evening.
There was one exception to going to only one hotel in each Montana town. That exception was Billings where of course most everyone stayed at the Northern Hotel. However a couple of blocks away was the General Custer that was filled with trophy heads like the Lou Lucke Company in Havre. I liked staying there.
In Butte it was the Finlin and since we were somehow related to that family, it was even a better stay.
Best of all was the Placer Hotel in Helena. One of the last times stayed there President Kennedy had stayed there just six weeks before. The lounge of the Placer, called the Cheerio, was a place where more than half of the state’s business was conducted each evening the legislature was in session.
Those were the days. I thought they would never end but they sure made for some wonderful memories!
