Paint the town red game prison riot2/16/2023 ![]() I borrowed a friend’s couch to furnish the living room, which was big enough to accommodate six or eight more couches. The man next door, an Iranian, played Middle Eastern music at night, prompting visions of belly dancers. A woman living upstairs in my building had cats, too many of them. The cavernous rooms of this old building sat in the midst of rooming houses once stocked with underground miners. Long before I thought of writing Mystery of the Purple Roses, my crime novel that takes place in Butte, I lived in a Granite Street four-plex in uptown Butte. (Notably, history shows that the Butte I knew as a boy already was in steep decline from its mining heyday.) Butte, seven or eight times larger, thundered with vitality. Deer Lodge was a small ranching, railroad and prison town (even smaller now), slow to go about its business. Other than sharing blue collar economies, Deer Lodge and Butte had little in common. I grew up in Deer Lodge, 39 miles to the northwest. Here I am outside the famous M and M bar in Butte, Montana. Our teenage imaginations probably magnified the trouble. I remember our pep squad being caught in a brawl. Teams from outside Butte drew gangs of local kids who rocked buses and sometimes attacked anybody from out of town. Third, basketball games at the Civic Center. I recall Martha’s Cafe on Front Street and Red Rooster on Harrison Avenue, specifically, and several cafes and coffee shops uptown.īuy! Mystery of the Purple Roses Being an out-of-town kid, well … Like many families in those days, we rarely went to restaurants. Whenever my parents announced that we were headed for Butte to eat, it was a big deal. I’m thankful for remembering the district when it was more complete. ![]() A later rash of fires left gaping holes in uptown. The first escalator I rode (and probably saw) was in Hennessy’s, the department store at Main and Granite. Its crowded sidewalks and tall buildings impressed me as a big city. ![]() ![]() Stay with me.įirst, the uptown shopping district. Three boyhood memories about Butte, Montana. Streetcars rumbled past ornate buildings and underground mines operated full tilt. ![]()
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