No City for Old Men

Most of Butte Montana looks like a Walker Evans photograph. The buildings, and many of the people, look as if they had been preserved by a time warp. In the middle of an average business day, the streets are virtually empty. The normal hustle and bustle of a thriving metropolis is absent. Coffee huts and cottage industries of one sort or another dot the landscape. But ultimately, Butte is embroiled in a desperate struggle to survive; to create an identity for itself as a living museum for what was once the greatest mining city in the world.As of this writing, the only active mine in Butte is the Continental Pit. In a city which boasted Morgan Earp as a policemen and where the writer Dashiell Hammett worked as an operative for the Pinkertons in 1917.  He would resign from the Pinkertons when he became disillusioned with their union busting tactics, probably after the murder of IWW organizer Frank Little that same year by six masked men.  No surprise that the crime was never solved.  The preservation of Butte's once thriving mining history, with its glorious intrigues, labor disputes and violence, has become the predominant industry in Butte.

Today, the primary inhabitants of Butte seem to be poverty stricken men who wander the streets aimlessly in search of something to do. I suspect that a lot of disabled men and women end up in Butte because of the cheap housing.  I observed this fellow poking his head into various shops and then proceeding as if he were in a great hurry, but seemingly, with nothing actually to do. The only places where business seemed to be booming were the local taverns, where I could hear loud boisterous conversations and raucous laughter. During the bust year of 1893, the year that silver crashed and many banks closed, there were 212 saloons in operation in Butte, proving once again that during times of economic hardship, the entertainment and

hospitality industries thrive.

Approximately 40 abandoned mining rigs dot the landscape of Butte. Each night they are lit up in red. To the east of town, Our Lady of the Rockies, a ninety foot statue can also be lit up at night for a small fee to honor a departed loved. The installation of the lady, a cross denominational effort, is purportedly in honor of all mothers.

Perhaps she is a reflection of the city's diversity. Irish, Italian, Finnish, Chinese, Eastern

European, Jewish, Black and who knows how many other ethnicity's worked in and around the

mines.

Today the artifacts of these various cultures can be found strewn all over the city. A kind of "Italian" coffee shop on S Montana street called the Palace serves mostly generic American food while subjecting the eater to the sounds of Al Martino, Perry Como, Jerry Vale. All of a

sudden the lyrics from theMichael Maltese song Attsa Matta for You, from the old Bugs Bunny cartoon A Hound forTrouble wafted across the room:

Attsa matter, attsa matter??

Hey!!

At'sa matter for you?

You eata my raviola

And my pasta fagiole too

I'mma give you caccitore

and a pizza that's good to chew

Attsa matter you no like??

Hey!!

Attsa matter for you??

The skewed angularities and planes of many of the images I am showing you are in part caused by the limitations of the lens on my camera, but many of them also reflect the nature of the age and infirmity of many of the buildings in Butte. I think that some of them are so old and neglected, not to mention that they have been built on steep hills, that they are literally sinking into the ground.

Maybe it's just my imagination.

The miners union organized their first strike when the "Copper Kings" decided to cut wages from $3.50 to $3.00 a day. No doubt these trust magnates would still be paying us three dollars a day if it wasn't for the heroic efforts of the Wobblies and other unionists. The worst mining fire in American history occurred in Butte on Nov. 16, 1917. 168 miners were killed. The "Copper Kings" finally consolidated their interests and formed the monolithic Anaconda Copper Company. It's ironic that they named themselves after a snake that kills its victims by strangling the life out of them.