‘Are magnesium and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside?’
Richard Hugo, Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
“License and registration.” He held himself back behind her window, like no Canadian mountie would have felt the need. Even from where I sat, I could tell he was made of kevlar and brass and lead, and caution. She handed over the documents. He retreated to his black Mad Max mariah, the blackest flat black matte blackest thing I’d ever seen. The windows were tinted, like the heavy water in a nuclear reactor. A full ten minutes later, he returned the way he came. Maybe it was our BC license plate.
“Don’t worry.” He said. “I’m not going to give you a ticket.” I tried to reason with him.
“I’m sorry, officer, it was all my fault.” I said. “You see, I was getting her to hurry, so we wouldn’t be late for the Vaudeville in Philipsburg.” I could see him reconsidering.
“I get so confused between kilometres and miles per hour.” Said Robyn. “Here in Mon-taw-na.” He tried not to smile.
“Slow it down.” He said, and waved us on…the tortured try of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
We arrived down Broadway, the main street of Philipsburg, nearly the only street of Philipsburg, wide enough for a cattle drive.
“Probably why they call it Broadway.” Robyn said. Frontier buildings of orange brick, with black and white painted signs on square rooflines, GOLDEN RULE, HARDWARE GROCERIES, converged on a vanishing point, sidewalks lined with American flags and hanging baskets and lampposts and angle parking. In the centre of town was a single traffic light, suspended on wires arising from the four points of the compass. You walk these streets laid out by the insane, past hotels that didn’t last, bars that did…
“There it is.” I said. And there it was, in all it’s Georgian gingerbread glory, creams and forest greens and lichens and pinks and rusts, and spheres and squares, and angles and triangles, dentate and Dorian, rising into the big sky. The Broadway Hotel. I had written the owner, Sue, and asked her for a ‘quiet place to write.’ Her hesitant email suggested the kind of difficulty that was now taking place in the downstairs brewery. She had written something about giving us ‘the crosscut room.’ The keys were outside the back door, in an envelope. A large loud lady, from a similar utility vehicle, was storming about outside the locked entrance, something about her reservation.
“I didn’t actually cancel it.” She fumed. We offered to let her in.
“I’ll wait right here.” She said. And we crept by her, and down the hall to our room. It was small, and all the sharp implements on the wall were a bit intimidating. There was a big circular saw, and two crosscut saws, and a handsaw. A ceiling fan twirled above our heads.
“A man doesn’t want to lose his balance in the night.” I said. But it was clean and cozy, and topical, as Philipsburg had been logging as well as mining before we arrived. We had just enough time for a quick meal before the Vaudeville began, across from the crosscut, at the Silver Mill. One good restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out… and the girl who serves your food is slender and her red hair lights the wall.
The tin embossed ceiling was bottom lit by suspended lamps. The girl who served our food was slender and her red hair lit the wall. My steak was served with a slice of orange. It was big enough to take half back to the crosscut room, and saw it up for the next day. We made the Vaudeville show, and it was entertaining enough, but there were more authentic diversions outside the theatre- a dance floor built on springs. The few tourists that weren’t still in the playhouse, were checking out the sapphire and silver shop windows. Buffalo Elk Venison Jerky… Try a Bung-Hole Driver only $5. Yep, only available here!
We returned to the Broadway to meet Sue in the rich red reading room, with the big floral centrepiece, and western memorabilia, and books. English Sue, who had married Jim, and had shared his dreams and offspring and, when everything went sideways, inherited the hotel that had ruled their lives, for twenty-five years. We asked about the large loud lady.
“She cancelled her reservation.” Said Sue. “I put them up in the house, but no matter what I do, they won’t be happy. The principal supporting business now is rage.
I asked about the possibility for future companionship in Philipsburg.
“The gene pool is rather small.” She said. the best liked girls who leave each year for Butte. Like the buffalo, I thought. Say your life broke down. The last good kiss you had was years ago…Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss still burning out your eyes?
And I left her and Robyn, to whisper secret veins of quartz in foreign accents.
One last walk around the town, before I began sawing logs in the crosscut room. Two smokers sat outside the White Front Bar. It was for sale, like everything else had been for sale in Philipsburg. The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines… Hatred of the various grays the mountain sends, hatred of the mill… two stacks high above the town, two dead kilns… in collapse for fifty years that won’t fall finally down…
A mewing cat, imprisoned on the high balcony of a deserted building, cried out to me, or anyone, ghost rider in the sky.
There were big Montana muffins for breakfast next morning, and coffee with Sue. She told us to check out the jail, and the noose, still hanging from the rafters. The jail turned 70 this year. The only prisoner is always in, not knowing what he’s done… The old man, twenty when the jail was built, still laughs although his lips collapse. Someday soon, he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up. You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.
It was a sunny Sunday morning in the rest of the town, and it shone on the tipi and caboose and the log cabin with its chains-awed ogres outside. You might come here Sunday on a whim. A church bell rang. Only churches are kept up… Isn’t this defeat so accurate, the church bell simply seems a pure announcement: ring and no one comes? Don’t empty houses ring?
We said goodbye to Sue, and fired up the wagon. A-plowing through the ragged sky and up a cloudy draw. The car that brought you here still runs. The money you buy lunch with, no matter where it’s mined, is silver… all memory resolves itself in gaze…
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