Stockman's Café & Bar, Missoula

I realized tonight that I'm about 4 weeks behind with my writing, so I decided that I'd better get something done. We’ve been pretty busy the last bit, getting pasture ready, buying cows, branding calves and all of that. I guess the big news though is that we’ll be moving in less than a month, so on top of everything else, we’re getting ready for that now too. Anyway, I hope you all are doing well and enjoying the freedoms that have been coming as things slowly open back up. It’s now been over 3 months since I’ve been to a bar, which seems like an awful long time to me and it’s also been almost 6 months since I’ve been to Montana, which is too long. As I carry on with this blog, you’ll notice that Montana, especially a few towns there, will feature heavily. It’s just a place that I really like to go. Anyway, I’ll get a wiggle on.

This week we’re heading down to Missoula, just west of the corner of Higgins Avenue and West Front Street, to the Stockman’s Café & Bar. There are probably more Stockman’s bars in Montana than you can count, its like The Mint or The Palace down there, but the one in Missoula is a pretty good place. It’s got that classic old neon sign hanging out front, pink and blue against a red background, with a shiny old Hereford bull watching over everyone that comes and goes. When you get inside it’s not too terribly remarkable, there’s an alcove by the front door that was probably the ladies lounge back in the old days, and the room opens up towards the long horseshoe shaped bar in the middle of the room. The bartender will most likely be a college kid and when he finds out you’re Canadian he’ll tell you about how Dave Dickenson worked there back when he was moving the chains for the Grizzlies. The back bar is made of plain planks with a false ceiling covered in shakes. The ceiling tiles have been pulled down and drawn on and signed by patrons over the years, if you care to take the time you might find a message that the original writer thought was very profound at one time. Back past the bar is the poker table, a pool table or two and some space that can be cleared to make a dance floor if there’s ever live music in there. The walls are covered in the usual high school and college sports memorabilia as well as just enough cowboy shit and steer heads to be able to hang on to the name.

I’ve never spent a whole night in the Stockman’s due to it’s proximity to two fantastic live music venues. The Top Hat across the street and The Wilma Theatre around the corner. At those places you’ll see acts like Hayes Carll, Robert Earl Keen or Ryan Bingham and back when they were still together the Gourds were yearly regulars. Music isn’t what the story is about though, I’ll come back to that another week, this is about my experiences in the Stockman’s, although music does play a role.

Sometimes things just seem to work out and without even realizing it you can find yourself witness to something remarkable. My wife Jenn and I were in Missoula one weekend for a Hayes Carll show at the Top Hat so while we waited for our friends to show up we decided to have a few drinks at the Stockman’s. Like I mentioned earlier, the college kid bartender told us about Dave Dickenson but he also said something that caught me off guard. He said ‘you two look a little underdressed for Testicle Festival’. What? Testicle Festival, never heard of such a thing. He went on to fill us in, over in Clinton, not far down the Interstate, they have a lively weekend of drinking and partying with the star of the show being prairie oysters. While he was telling us this people started to trickle in, wanting to have a few drinks before the shuttle bus picked them up out front. There was quite a few wild outfits, lots of biker leathers and not some few neon feathers but the most eye catching, or maybe shocking is better, get up was the 50 year old woman who was wearing a short cut off t-shirt and black leather chaps over her coral pink panties. She was awfully proud of herself. I half joked with Jenn for the next few years about trying to get down there for Testicle Festival but I’ve learned that it has since been cancelled outright. Too much booze that close to the Interstate led to some bad accidents I guess. I’m sad that we never made it haha.

I’ll circle back around to the poker table that I mentioned earlier. Jenn and I were down there again, maybe for Ryan Bingham this time, I can’t remember and after the show we wound up back at the Stockman’s. A great thing about Montana is the live, low stakes poker that a lot of these little bars have. I like to play, I’m not very good at it though so I make sure to have a limit for losing as well as the idea that if I get lucky enough to win back the cost of a hotel room that I quit. Well this night I’d had lots of fun at the show, listening to good music and drinking more than my fair share of cheap Miller High Life, so I probably should have foregone the poker, but what the hell. Norman Maclean wrote about Front Street poker in A River Runs Through It and that’s the greatest collection of stories I’ve ever read so if you have a chance to play there, take it. I sat down and bought myself in and that’s when I realized that the game was Omaha Hi-Lo, not Texas Hold-em. Even right now, sober as a judge, I couldn’t explain Hi-Lo to you, it’s pretty much like Chinese gambling to me or derivative trading. I don’t know, it’s complicated. I decided to play anyway and somehow I managed to hold my own for a while, just playing the cards. After I’d been playing for a bit Jenn came over to see how I was doing and possibly bring me another beer and she told me that she’d met this really nice little Chilean guy that was visiting with her while I played cards. That was good, better than being all alone I figured. Not long after this I decided I was just about done playing cards and happened to get dealt a decent start to a Hi hand, or so I thought, so I played fairly aggressive and before long I was all in. The river came and my Hi hand had lost so I started griping and muttering, probably threw my cards across the table and started pushing my chips away to get up. That’s when I noticed that the dealer was pushing everything back my way because my low hand was the big winner. I don’t know how that stupid game works. It worked out well because I’d won enough to quit playing and still had enough energy to chase a little Chilean guy off too haha.

Well that’s my story about the Stockman’s Café & Bar. I can’t say that I’ve spent hours shining the bar with my sleeves but I’ve been there enough times to get a good feel for it. If you ever find yourself down on West Front Street you should stop in for a beer. Let the bartender know that you’re Canadian and he’ll tell you a story, I can’t remember which one though. Sit down at the end of the bar and check out the skull of a famous bucking bull that’s hanging on the wall. If you stay long enough you might get a chance to play some cards or maybe the semi-pro ball players will come in and you’ll see kids get treated like they might be stars by women that were done high school before those boys started tee ball. Who knows, maybe the Testicle Festival goers of years past might show up in all of their finery. How ever it works out, the beer is cheap and cold and the people are friendly.

Thanks again for reading through all of this

CP

#Montana #Stockmansbar #divebar