In the Spring of 1970 I was in the Navy on sea duty, getting ready to deploy on a 4 month cruise on USS Wasp. Grandma Fritz had never seen Eric, who was then eleven months old. Carmen and I made a trip to Butte to see her, show off our son and have some time together before I left for several months.
We flew there on Frontier Airlines, in what Uncle Bill Fritz called a “Fat Albert”, one of the then-new Boeing 737s. In those days they were not the stretch versions we fly in today. They were short and small. The one we flew in left Salt Lake City, where we stayed overnight with Bill, Gerry and family, and had a great family dinner. Then we flew on towards Butte. The weather was so bumpy that lunch (remember when the airlines fed you?) was sandwiches passed over the passengers’ heads from the front of the plane. As we approached Butte, the captain came on the intercom ans said, “Folks, the Butte weather isn’t great, we probably won’t make it in. We’ll try one approach and if we don’t get in, we’ll take you to our next stop in Helena.” I guess they would have sent us to Butte by bus.
In we went and, in the end, we made it. Butte, you see, is in a valley and the airplanes only need to get safely below the ridge before they can descend. They managed to see the runway so they could land safely. The weather was snowing, with high overcast clouds that obscured the mountaintops.
Welcome to Spring in Butte. When we left Kansas City flowering trees were in bloom and the weather was very mild. I had only been to Butte (at least when I was old enough to remember), in August. How was I to know that Summer in Butte was the first three weeks of August?
We were met by Grandma and Aunt Nan, who took us home to Grandma’s house on John St. It was a nice, cozy 1-bedroom house. Grandma had us sleep in her bedroom while she slept on the couch. Eric slept in a sleeping bag on the floor next to our bed, between it and the wall. It was great accomodations for most of a week.
We had a great time! Aunt Nan invited us to her house, which was on on Carolina, same house as when I visited as a kid. She took us on a tour of Butte and showed us the sights:
the Berkeley pit, which among other things displaced Columbia Gardens, the former amusement park in Butte,
the only house in the city with a new coat of paint (I exaggerate, but not a lot), which was paid for by money received for its role in an episode of Route 66, a then-current TV show,
and last but certainly not least, the Montana Mining Museum, on the site of the former Orphan Girl copper mine.
The Orphan Girl mine,you will recall from an earlier post, was the mine we visited when I was a boy. The old wooden fence was torn down and replaced by the gate shown above. The old gallus frame that supported the elevator for the miners to go down into the mine is still there, along with a small gift shop. I thought at the time that the gift shop was in Grandma and Grandpa’s former cottage home at the mine, but someone told me it wasn’t. Can anyone shed light on this? Carmen bought a copper necklace from the gift shop, which she still has.
One night Nan and Jack took us to a bar called Luigi’s in Butte. There were a bunch of puppets decorating the wall, as I recall, which I found a little weird. Then, as we sat drinking a beer, the bartender hit a switch and all the puppets started to move. They were all connected via strings to a motor that made them move. It was really fun, not weird at all.
We truly enjoyed our visit, even though it snowed 5-6 inches in the middle of the week. I walked a couple of blocks to the grocery store during the storm and, when I came back, Grandma told me that as I opened the door bringing in groceries, I reminded her of my Dad doing the same thing.
While we were there Aunt Nan bought Eric his first pair of jeans. She told me it was high time he had some jeans, being eleven months old! We were sorry to go when the time came, despite the weather. We received the warmest welcome we could have imagined.
The image above shows Eric with his new jeans and the quilt that Grandma made him, She made one for each of our children. Eric so loved his that they were inseparable. When Carmen just had to wash it, he would wait by the dryer until it was done. Today all that remains is a single square, which we cherish.