Bob Lazzari, Bartender & Public Servant

Photo Credit: Montana Standard

Oral History Transcript of Bob Lazzari

Interviewers: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: October 30th, 2020
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: May 2021 by Adrian Kien

Aubrey Jaap: It's October 30th, 2020. We're here with Bob Lazzari. Bob I'd first like you to start out and just tell me a little bit about your grandparents, parents, how they came here, who they were?

Bob Lazzari: Sure. So my dad is Italian. His grandmother, she came from Northern Italy. Her maiden name was Pesanti. Of course his dad's name was Lazzari. My grandfather died. Geez. I don't know. Probably, I don't know, 20 years before I was born or whatever. And she married a guy from Butte named John Conan, who was our grandfather growing up pretty much. My grandma, she was a pretty interesting cat. I came up here to the archives and kind of looked to get some information on. I found the manifest of the boat that she came across on. And so her and your three sisters and her mom and dad came over, but for some reason they all used men's or boy's names. So her name was Josephine. She was Joseph on the manifest. Her sister Pauline was Paulo. I'm trying to think of my dad's other ones. Isabel had a funny name - Izzy or something, but it was a man's name.

And then there's one more, but we never figured out why they used those men's names to come across on the boat. When they came here, her parents had a ranch and farm down, now it's Melrose. But actually south of Melrose. That's where they kind of took a spot down there. It's pretty interesting. Her sister got married, they came to town to visit her. They got home, her dad was missing and they found him years later, dead in a well down on the property with his head cut off. I found that up here at the Archives. Where that is, that's actually Madison County. So, the trial took place in Virginia City. They thought the caretaker did it. But as years went by, they weren't quite sure. So it was pretty interesting.

And then it seemed like they moved to Butte. She married my dad's dad. His name was Sam Lazzari. But she was interesting. She was a hard worker and that's all they ever knew, I think, but pretty successful. They had a restaurant / bar down in Coyote, California, and I don't know why they picked that spot, but I think that's down in the Valley somewhere. I'm not exactly sure. My older brother was born down there. They had that and they also bought some land up on Flathead Lake. And so they ran a cherry orchard and they also had their own company. They were contractors. They'd spray trees for some of the other orchards up there. So, we spent a lot of summers on the Flathead growing up.

So that was good, but the other part, this is kind of a funny story about her. She was a great cook. My favorite thing she made was chicken cacciatore with polenta. And so one time up, we went up to the Lake and she said, What do you want for dinner?" And I said, "Well, I'd like to have some chicken cacciatore." She gave me a knife. She said, "Go grab a chicken." And I didn't know what she's talking about. And so she went out and grabbed a chicken and cut its head off. And we were, you know, me and my brothers, sisters were kind of mortified because, but then, you know, that's how they grew up. And she used every part of that chicken too, you know? And so she's pretty interesting, you know, hard working people. She probably died in the seventies, probably. I was in high school, just out of high school.

And then my mom's mom, she's pretty interesting too. So she, her maiden name, it was some Norwegian name. She was from . . . She always said that she was Irish. We could never prove that, but she grew up in Minnesota and she met my grandfather. His name is Leo Butler. And he was in Butte. He was an accountant. They met one time and she hopped on a bus when she was 16 years old, Minnesota came to Butte and married him. She was funny. She had a great sense of humor. She had four daughters. So my mom had three sisters. My dad, he had two brothers too, so, you know, and then my dad had three girls. I think he was kind of flabbergasted raising girls after being around boys all the time.

But yeah, so my grandmother, she was pretty interesting. Real smart. Her favorite thing, I remember growing up, is they were on a party line with a phone. And her favorite pastime was listening to the neighbors talk and the neighbors knew it. "Be careful what you say because Helen Butler's probably listening." She'd giggle, she got a big kick out of that.

So I grew up over on West Granite Street. Over by Montana Tech, on the 1,000 block. There were eight kids in my family growing up. I sit in the middle, kind of the dumb kid in the smart row, I guess, in my family. We started our education up at the IC church. So I went there from first grade to third grade. Then I went to McKinley grade school because that was the year that the diocese closed down the grade schools in Butte for sure. So that's where I ended up. And then I never went back. There was some kids afterwards, the seventh grade, they went back to North Central and/or some of the Catholic schools. But we finished our educations at Butte High.

Jaap: Was it different going to public school than it was being in the Catholic School?

Lazzari: I don't know if I noticed the difference. Prayer was a lot different. So, everyday when you're up at IC, the first thing, the class got together, you'd stand up, we'd say the, "Our father," a couple of other prayers. And then we'd say the "Pledge of Allegiance." We didn't know what we were doing. And I know this because I remember one time a priest had died . . . no the priest's mother had died. And our nun, the teacher said, "I'm going to go up and see Father Brown. I want you to pray for his mom." So we said the "Our Father" and the second prayer we said was the "Pledge of Allegiance." At that time the church was kind of lost on us.

I guess the biggest difference, when we went to McKinley, it seemed, of course, there were more classes in each grade and it seemed like they were more crowded at that time too. But at that time, there were a lot of schools around. McKinley was the closest to our block. But there were some kids on our block that ended up at different grade schools at that time, too.

The interesting part was when you grew up in such a strong Catholic community, they're huge families, which we're all aware of still, you know. So like in our block, we had eight kids and across the street were the Salazar's, they had 16 kids, 15 or 17. Yeah. But there were always 10 at home. There were always 10 Salazar's. And their house was maybe 600 square feet. It was small. There was a basement, you know, it was a typical Butte basement. It wasn't really tall in the basement. They had two barracks set up. One for the girls. One for the boys. And there was one room for the oldest, and it was basically the size of a closet. And then mom and dad slept upstairs.

I don't know if you guys know Virginia Salazar, she ran that house. It was so clean, you know, they were great neighbors. She had a quick wit. She was fun. It was a fun place to grow up for sure. So in our neighborhood, just in our block, if you start at one end, you had the Ortegas, there's probably five or six of the Ortega's. Probably, the Haggerty's, I think they had four or five kids. And then throughout the years different families kind of moved in and moved out, always had kids. And the Salazar's of course. The Maloney's had five or six kids, the Rooney's five or six kids. So, and then if you went a block either way, the same thing. So, I mean, there was kids all over the place. That was kind of a pretty interesting place. It seemed like there was a perpetual football game going on in the street.

Jaap: It wouldn't be very hard to round up a team.

Lazzari: Right. I mean, when you were young, you'd get called and go play. And that was any sport too at that time.

Jaap: What else did you do growing up as a kid around the neighborhood then?

Lazzari: So at that time, the BA&P, which is now the trail, went right through our neighborhood and trains were going by all the time. And there was always pieces of rock and ore falling off the train. So every kid had their own rock collection. You know, when you're a little kid, you thought it was gold, of course, it was pyrite. But you know, that was a big deal. It seemed like you could hear the train all the time during the day. And a lot of times it would stop wherever and we'd hop on and take a ride out to back behind Tech and hop off. Because we had no idea how far Anaconda was. We were too small. That was a big deal. The train was. Of course, the mines were operating. But as a kid, we didn't pay attention that much to the mines because it was just part of the background noise. And we didn't realize that once the Anselmo was closed, that was kind of the place to hang out, growing up.

There was a firm that did security. I think it was called Burn's Security. And at that time we called it the Burnsies and we'd have them chase us around. That's kind of fun. We'd hang around at Montana Tech quite a bit. Watched a lot of football games up there. I remember, uh, just kinda hanging out. Because it was a beautiful spot there, even back then. It was kind of a neat place to hang out. I remember in our neighborhood the Columbia Gardens was a big deal. They had a bus that went around on Thursdays, Children's Day. And so during the summer, I mean, you lived from Thursday to Thursday. And we didn't have much money. We had eight kids in my family. My dad was a teamster. I mean, you know, we didn't know we were poor at that time, but everyone was in the same boat. We weren't poor. There were people that were less off than us. And there were people that had more than we did, but I guess at that time kids are so self-absorbed, they don't realize any of that. So, yeah, it was kind of fun, but I remember going out there. I think rides were a nickel back when I was up at the Columbia Gardens.

[00:13:08]

And so we each had like a dime, so it was two rides, but so you pick and choose which rides you're going to do. And there are other things to do out there of course, too. But that was a big deal. And we'd sneak and ride our bikes out. We were told not to, but we always did. We did eight kids back then in summer, basically told to get up, get out of the house. You're not sitting around here. So it was kind of fun. And every family was the same way growing up. It was, you were outside, you know, all the time.

Jaap: Can you tell me a little bit more about your parents?

Lazzari: Sure. So my dad, he went to school at Butte High, graduated. And in 1946, I think he joined the army. So right after World War Two had ended. His older brother, Bernie, Bernie had a pharmacy here in town called Bernie's Pharmacy. He joined during World War Two. There's a great story about him. He flew 50 missions over Germany and he was a belly gunner. There was an article in the Montana Standard this year about him. Yeah. So, he never talked about it. And if you saw the guy, he's such an unassuming guy, very nice man. Still is. He's still alive. My dad was more gregarious, really liked. He had a great personality. So when he came back, he went to school, graduated from the University of Montana, in English. Ended up going with his mom and dad. He got married to my mom. They moved to Coyote, California, to work at the store. My older brother was born there.

Then when they moved back, he was going to be a teacher, but he found out what they paid. So he chose to be a teamster instead because it made more money. He had eight kids. So when I was a little kid, I can remember he drove, I think it was called Farmer's Brother's Coffee. He drove a truck for them. But then he went to Eddie's Bakery, drove a bread truck, and that's where he retired. And so his route, most of the time, he did the restaurants. So with the restaurants, he would leave home about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, go to the restaurants, pick up all the day old bread, and it's supposed to go back to the bakery. Then they would sell that in the store as the day olds. But I remember he'd picked up the stuff, because a couple times I went with him.

So we'd pick up the stuff. And instead of doing that, we'd drive around the neighborhood, dropping off loaves of bread and donuts to all the neighborhoods on the porch. And it was funny because back then it was a pretty busy time because there were milkmen driving around too. But then he'd go back and load up his bread to sell, you know, and they always laughed, you know, he never came back with anything on his truck. "I guess there's no day-old stuff out at the thing."

So, but he would work until probably noon. Then he had his own little side business. He sold light bulbs and batteries. He had a truck and he'd drive around and service people. He had a lot of contacts. He was a pretty good bar guy, too. He had a bar seat that he hit quite a bit. His favorite bars at that time growing up were the Speedway Tavern down on Front Street.

[00:16:51]

A shirttail relative owned the Deluxe. So he liked the Deluxe. And plus they were close to work. He stopped at the Vu-Villa because that was in our neighborhood. I can remember going with him on the bread truck growing up. If we got in trouble, a lot of times my mom would say, "You're going with your dad in the bread truck." And we'd go and it was funner than it was punishment for sure. We bounced around and we'd always have lunch at either Matt's Drive-In or Pork Chop John's. That was kind of the treat of the day. I remember when we stopped at John's Porkchop one time, 'cause that was one of his customers and they'd raised the pork chops from, I don't know if it was 10 cents, 15 cents or 25 to 35 cents. I remember my dad and he was pissed. He goes, "Man, they're gonna be out of business pretty soon if they keep raising prices like that." That's probably 1970 or 68 or something. Yeah. That's pretty funny.

But so there was Eddie's Bread and there was a Sweetheart Bakery in town too. So they were huge competitors. But the other part was my dad was friends with all of them because, you know, and so I remember any place we'd stop the guy from Sweetheart Bread would be there. We'd help him unload and load and vice versa. Maybe it was common practice. It wasn't the cutthroat, you know, that you see now with the other businesses. I can remember a couple of times he'd have to go to Dillon for a route. So you'd grab some bread from Sweetheart that goes down too. Then you go down and you get a phone call from the beer guy. We'd been carrying cases of beer down, cases of pop. And that was common practice too, vice versa, a lot of times. Bread would go down. So, you know, that service industry was pretty close, you know, back in those days.

So my mom, when she graduated from Butte High, I don't have these dates, I should, but I don't, you know. They were both born in the late twenties. So she probably graduated, you know, I guess in 46, 47. Uh, she graduated, she went to the Butte Business School and she ended up working for, uh, before they got married for, uh, I think Mountain Bell. And then of course, when she had kids, she was at home all the time. She just stayed at home once we were all born.

Jaap: When did you graduate from high school, Laz?

Lazzari: 1978.

Jaap: What'd you do then?

Lazzari: I went to Montana Tech for a year and then I went to Montana State University. Then I came back for the summer and I was going to take off a semester and I started bartending. So that's probably 1982, I'm guessing, 81 somewhere in there. I started bartending and the place was called the Black Angus. So now [unintelligible] owns it and it's the Richest Hill Casino. So the Black Angus, it was the old Currie Chevrolet, but they had turned it into the Black Angus and it was beautiful. It was new. It was a nice place. And so I bartended and DJ'ed down there. They had a DJ booth set up. So I was young and dumb and didn't realize, you know, the mines had already closed. There weren't many jobs around, you know? So you were lucky to have a job and I started bartending there.

And then I remember the next semester was starting up and my mom was on me, "School is starting up. What are you going to do?" "I'm going to take the semester off and bartend." She said, "Don't do that." She goes, "You'll never go back to school." She couldn't have been more right. And so I bartended there and it was a fun job. I really liked it. And then I worked out at the Copper King Inn at that time. It had just opened up for a couple of years. And then my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife, her parents, they're really interesting people. So they owned a bar in East Butte called the 156. And the address was 156 Cherry Street. And so Carl, my father-in-law, his brother, Tom, and his mom, they had, it was called Gingerich Meats and Grocery store. Tom and Carl, when World War II started, one joined the air force and one joined the army. And so the mother closed up the store and then when they came back, they turned it into a bar. They thought there was more chance to make money. And they had that bar till 1972. The last night that the 156 was open was the last night that the Columbia Gardens was open also. And so even as a little kid, I can remember being in that bar because my dad, when he'd take us up there, he dropped us off at the Columbia Gardens. Then he'd go down to the 156. It was right there at the bottom of the hill where you turned off to go up Continental. It sat at 156 Cherry Street.

And so I remember being there as a little kid. Well, when that place closed and the pit was expanding, of course all those houses got moved out. And so Marsha's mom, she was born at the Five Mile. And so her family always had that piece of property out there. And so they didn't know what to do. Carl Louise, that was my in-laws. They decided to move the 156 out onto Harrison Avenue on the same land as the Five Mile. And so it was there for 10 years. It was called Willy's Bar.

[00:23:20]

Willie had retired or that he was sick or something. So Carl was getting the bar back, because at least at that time. So I helped him clean it up and get it going. And again, this was, you know, 1983 or four, you know, we tore everything down and redid it and he was looking for someone to lease it. And so one day he said, "Are you interested in leasing this bar?" Because I had bartended and I was probably 24 at the time that he said that. And so "Sure, give me the keys." So, I opened the bar in 85. It was called the Last Call. This was kind of a play on my nickname which is Laz. And so it was spelled "Laz't." And I had that for 20 years.

Jaap: Is the bar still there?

Lazzari: Nope. It's gone now.

Jaap: Where was it at on Harrison?

Lazzari: So it just set south of the Five Mile, same side of the street.

Jaap: What did you like about bartending?

Lazzari: At first, just the social part of it. I was kind of a night owl so at that time it kind of fit my hours. Plus, back then it was easier to make money on a bar. I'll put it that way. DUIs were near as prevalent. Yeah. I mean, understand what happened. People weren't health conscious like they are now. So even when I opened up an 85, my best clientele were UPS drivers. Federal Express. A lot of guys that now, if you had that license, you can't risk it. You know? So, I mean, it was different. It was easier to make money. At that time, there were poker and Keno machines. They weren't legal, and they weren't illegal either.

Jaap: It was a gray area.

Lazzari: Yeah, it was a real gray area. The state didn't have much control over them. So it was hard to determine what your payout was going to be, because once the state took over, they said your payout would be so much like 80%. And, so that was a great generator to make money. A couple years I was there. They changed it. The state took over, they approved gambling. They took over control of the poker machines. And then no one really knew what was going on or they did, but in order to have a full gambling license. You needed to have a full beverage license. That was the only way you could have a gambling license. The legislature passed a law that said, any person with a beer and wine license could get a gambling license.

So at that time to get a beer and wine license, any person with $150 could apply to the state and get a beer and wine license, which in effect would let you purchase a gambling license. So it helped some people that brought those up - casinos, but it devalued the price of a liquor license, because that's where the value was. It was tough and bars started closing up at that time. And plus the mine, of course, was closed up too, you know? So, but that was a pretty interesting time. I mean, I look back on my books, you know, within a year and a half, my cut of those machines probably went down 60%, you know? So it was a big deal. So you had to get pretty cagey on how you were going to raise money to make up for that? Bars were busy at that time, even around Butte. It was just a different time.

Almost 40 years ago, uh, bars were busy. Uptown, the bars were busy. I was the last one out there. I mean, it was middle of nowhere. I had a real good business. I was lucky. There are a lot of bars that are closed down now. They had good businesses. So for 20 years it was good for me. The reason I sold is there was a developer from California who had bought a bunch of property in Bozeman and developed it. He started coming to Butte to buy up property. And it was kind of a cold call that came in and said he wanted the property because there was acreage attached to it at that time. It was the right number at the right time. I was pretty fortunate.

Jaap: Were you hesitant to start a business in 85 when the mines had just closed a couple of years prior? Did that cross your mind at all?

Lazzari: It kind of did, but the other part was I also wanted to stay in Butte and there weren't many options. There weren't a lot of jobs available, you know, and I didn't have any money. I didn't have any credit, you know, so I went and talked to a bunch of banks. And they said, "Really? You?" So I borrowed $5,000 from my sister and my brother-in-law to start. That seemed like a ton of money at the time, you know, but it allowed me to pay for my license, uh, get an inventory going, things like that. And I bartended for so many years, my clientele was good right off the bat. So I was pretty fortunate at that time. I had a lot of people. It was a small bar. Actually the bar and backbar are over at the Thornton building. Have you been in that downstairs?

Jaap: I haven't been downstairs in the Thornton building, I don't think.

Lazzari: So at the Thornton building, they have their meeting room and back bar was out of my bar. It was built back in like 1946 by the Butte Sash and Door Company. I'm kind of all over the board here. Sorry about that.

Jaap: No, this is really fine. Yeah, no, you're not all over the board. So how'd you meet Marsha?

Lazzari: I don't remember how I met her, but I've always known her family.

Jaap: So, not very memorable.

Lazzari: There were no sparks flying. So my mom's sister, Millie Wing, it's Dave Wing's mom, they grew up down on Grand Avenue. And so my cousins were friends with Marsha and her sisters because they lived half a block away. And so I've kind of always known them, but yeah, so it wasn't a big meeting. And then when I was bartending at Black Angus, her and her mom came in for dinner a couple of times. Just kind of talking and, you know, and we just, I don't know, because she was three years younger than me. So in high school that was just . . . I really didn't know her at that time. I always knew of her.

Jaap: And then sparks.

Clark Grant: She was just there.

Lazzari: Yeah. So then we started dating and then I don't know the progression of that. So, we got married. When was it? December 16th, 1989. D-Day, I face the enemy. [Laughter]

She has a pretty good sense of humor about all that and she's pretty witty herself.

Jaap: Yeah, I imagine dealing with you all the time. So you sold the bar in 2005. What were you up to then?

Lazzari: Yeah, 2005, so I was 45 years old and I didn't have a plan.

[00:31:40]

Marsha said, "Well, why don't you retire?" I thought about it. I said, "Well, I'll take a summer off. I lasted about two weeks and I was bored to death. I couldn't do it. And so I had a friend who worked for a construction company and they were digging a waterline over by Manhattan. So I went over and worked with him for the summer and I was a laborer. And I liked it. So I did that for like three or four months. And then a friend of mine, I don't know if you guys know Keith Johnston, BG, he has Rocky Mount Traffic Control. So anyway, back when I had the bar, he had just started his business and he had no money either. And so I remember, one thing I did in my bar which helped business, I cashed paychecks. I had a bunch of money in hand to cash paychecks. So that was a great way to generate money.

And so I remember his first job that he had was up on Homestake. Him and Shane Murray, they were partners at the time and their wives, and they were doing most of it by themselves. But he didn't have time to do any banking or anything. So I would, you know, always have money because I would cash paychecks. And anyway, so we became pretty good friends. Well, after I closed the bar and I started working for Smith construction over in Manhattan, Keith's business, by this time, had really taken off. So he asked me one day, he goes, "Why don't you come work for me, be a laborer." I said, "Sure. I don't know anything about the traffic control business." So I went to him and worked for him for three years and it was a great job, except those guys work a ton of hours over the summer.

So by Thursday morning, I already had 60 hours or by Friday morning, 60 hours in. Because in that job, if you only work half a day, that was 12 hours. And it's the same way today. But great job. I learned a lot. I learned a lot of respect for laborers in general. Because they aren't just having a shovel. There's a lot of thought went into it. And I liked that. It was the best shape I've ever been in. I mean, there's a lot of positives to it, but I just hated the hours. It ruined my summers.

So at that time I had a friend, well I still do, Paul Riley. He was the president of the Country Club. And he said, "Come work for us. Come run the bar." Then the catering and all that of that. I said I'd see. I don't think that's going to be, those people aren't my cup of tea. But he goes, "Just come down." I went down there. Well, it turned out over the years everyone that I ever bartended for, or with, were members of the Country Club. So I went there for a few years, worked the Country Club, bartended again. Really liked it. Nice people down there. People thought that this crowd is more snobby. I found out it was the same percentage of jerks at any bar I've ever worked at. There were no more, no less. It was about the same. And they really treat me well as an employee down there. It was a good job. Interesting place to work.

A guy that bartended for me was Bob Pavlovich. And so I remember growing up and Bob so much, you know, he was in his eighties and nineties now, but I remember going into the Met Tavern when I was younger and he was there and he was, he was one of the all-time great bartenders in Butte. Still is. And you know, when I started there, he was working there and he was still, and then this guy was something else, you know? And so it was kind of a great. It's kind of great working around those people. Wherever you went, I mean, great contacts. To this day, I know a lot of people in Butte and everyone does. But I've spent a lot of time, I mean, just being behind the bar, you were part lot of celebrations in people's lives. You know, it might be a wedding, a birthday, a funeral. I mean, you just make a lot of contacts. So I think that's why I liked it so much.

Jaap: How long were you at the country club? And then what'd you?

Lazzari: So I was at the country club until probably six years ago. I was just kind of tired of bartending, like drunks just drive me crazy. And it's probably my fault, not theirs. And I was talking to Ed Randall one day. He said, "Why don't you come to work for us for community enrichment." And I said, "Well, I don't even know what you guys really do." He goes, "Well here." And so, I went and looked and said, "I'll give it a shot." So I went to work for Butte Silver Bow six years ago for Community Enrichment. They treated me great down there. It was a good job. The hard part about that job is every day is a fight. Everyday a complaint comes in. A pretty stressful job. But I didn't mind it.

And then at that time, SARTA had paid for the festival organizer or manager position. There was a position paid by SARTA. Butte Silver bow was going to adopt that position, so it would be funded by SARTA called festival manager. And they put it into the parks and recreation department. So the idea was you'd be a recreation director and the festival organizer for the city. And so when that job came open, a couple of guys said, "Boy, you'd be perfect for that job." JP Gallagher just took over as parks and rec director. And JP, I've known JP forever. He goes, "You should apply for this job and you'll be perfect for it." And so I applied for the job and I got it. And then it's a great job. I mean, it's pretty interesting. I do a lot of different things, a lot of different hats with festivals. And this year, of course, with festivals, you realize what you lose. You look at the Folk Festival, 4th of July, the parade.

Those are for all of us going back years, those are big parts of the summer. And, you know, everyone goes from celebration to celebration with your life. Boy, you really realize what you're missing on those ones. It still kind of bugs me that we didn't have . . . all kids grew up with the 4th of July. Not having that celebration alone. And look what they've done with the Folk Festival and how that has turned into such a big summer event. So that was tough.

Jaap: Yeah. July was really weird this year. Because usually July is so filled with stuff that you don't have any time to do anything because it's all . . . Yeah.

Lazzari: Like in my position now, so with the Folk Festival, we start preparation on my end, the organizers, they start early, but we start probably the 1st of June. I have a couple of summer kids that work for me. We do events for kids. A lot of things. They're great. But every day we're doing something, might be filling sandbags, or moving equipment for the Folk Festival. So usually from the 1st of June, till the end of July, I work almost every day. There are so many events we help with, small events just because we have equipment that was bought and paid for by SARTA, you know? So it's a pretty good job. It's a little tense during the summer, but still it's pretty fun.

Jaap: And then what's your involvement with the trails?

Lazzari: Well, so the trails are part of parks and recreation. So every time a trail is finished, for example, it goes to parks and recreation and we help maintain it. We also apply for grants to expand them. A couple of years ago when we started the "Hike Through History," I was trying to think of a way to get people on the trails because people don't know about this trail system. I was just trying to think of a way of how can we get people on them. So, I ran into the girls from the health department. They were doing their "Walks With Ease" and I was talking to them. I said, "We should do this on other trails."

Because at that time we were doing just around Father Sheehan. I said, we should do something on the other trails. I said, people need to understand our trails, you know? And so we talked and talked and then, I said, most of these trails are built around history. I said, I think we should do these "Hikes Through History." And it took off. Well, you know, how people like them. And so that's how that got started. But to this day, I can't believe how people don't realize the trails we have. And we don't know how to market it or let people know in Butte. And we don't have the funds or the know-how to come up with a better way to get that out there. I mean, that's such a big part of this town is our trail system and recreation, you know?

Well, you know, every time we have one of these "Walks Through History", we ask people, "Have you ever been on this trail before?" 60% don't even know it was there. You know, might've been up at the Mountain Con or might've been at Whiskey Gulch.

Jaap: It was really interesting to run into those guys from Bozeman up at Thompson Park, and then they were like, "This is great." And I was actually walking there with my husband a few weeks after and saw those same people again.

Lazzari: Oh, is that right?

Jaap: But you are doing a great job. I think it's so wonderful because they are such an asset. And I think even people in our community need to know. I think it's good, you're reaching out in different ways to have people know about them.

Lazzari: Right. So Joe Willauer and his group, they have a big push for that too. We do. I think we need, and we've tried, to get on the same page. I know that the chamber does a great job. We are trying to get more of a concerted effort so we're all on the same page to get that word out. And with COVID, we see what's happened to house prices in town. People are starting to see the value in living in smaller communities. But our trail system rivals anything that Bozeman or Missoula has. I think they're better just maybe because I live here, but it just seems like we have a bigger spot.

Jaap: What is it like being on these trails now? I have heard you say a million times, "Oh, when I was growing up . . ." Can you just talk about the difference today versus when you were growing up?

Lazzari: So, you know what people don't realize when you walk past these mine yards now, how clean they are. I'm telling you when you grew up, they were just big piles of shit and broken down machinery, piles of dirt. It wasn't what you are seeing now. And so growing up, I guess that's why we didn't have much appreciation. Because it looked like . . . walking past it, it looked like they didn't care about the property. Because, well, their goal is digging the hole, basically. Now you walk past these trails and everything is beautiful. There's trees. There were no trees. When I grew up there, there were no trees on the Big M. And we were up there a bunch. All the way back to Rocker. I mean, we spent our summers playing back there. There were no trees. There was hardly any vegetation, you know?

So when you and I were walking and I have a memory of what we did here. Because it looked totally different back when we grew up. I mean, I remember walking through the Anselmo. I remember climbing the headframe of the Anselmo. And I was alone. And you talked to any guy my age that was common practice. Go up there to smoke dope or whatever it was. But you didn't realize what those were, because I was never in a mine. Even years later, I didn't realize what they did. I know my dad, he worked for the mine for one summer and he said, "That's it. That's not for me." Maybe he realized it at that time. So it's interesting to hear him say that. But then, he had friends that loved working in the mines. They were sad when the mines closed. They went to work at the Berkeley pit. They hated driving trucks because they were skilled employees. And it was kind of taken away from them.

So Matt Salazar, he lived across the street from us. He's the old man. So they had 16, 17 kids. He lived and worked in Helena. And my dad always teased him. 'How did you manage to come up with 17 kids? You're never even home." So he was a state mine inspector at the time. And, Matt, he's quite a character. I remembered they were building at their house, either a garage or a patio. And I tell you what, it was shameless. The truck pulled up from the Anaconda Company. They were unloading two by fours, two by sixes, concrete, nails, everything. You know, this guy is the state mine inspector. Well, what better wheel to grease than this guy?

[00:46:07]

Growing up, you had to laugh because the only place you could buy two by fours or something in town, building materials was UBC. And we laughed because, in our book, UBC and ACM, which is Anaconda Company, they were the same company. If you need something done . . . I remember Max bought this truck. It was an old rusty bucket. It was going to be a garbage truck. There was no floorboards that I remember. He marched that thing up to the Kelley mineyard and they had three or four guys that were about a day and a half putting in floorboards, welding because, you know, those guys, they were handy.

So it was a different time. And even my dad, he built a garage and I was in high school and I had a brother-in-law. He was an electrician for the mine. I remember he came and he showed up with all the wiring, all the wire nuts, the boxes. I think when he dropped it off, his boss was with him. So it was pretty common practice. I don't know, if at that time, if they were starting to hate the company, but it wasn't frowned upon. It didn't seem to bother anybody at the time.

Jaap: Yeah. Oh, that's really funny. Clark, do you have a few questions?

Grant: Sure. I usually make notes as you talk. So go from where we are back to the beginning. You know the mine yards, they used to be so full of shit and run down and, you know. My big thing nowadays is I'd like to see the fences removed so that we can, as the public interact with the mine yards, what do you think about that? Are you in favor of that or not?

Lazzari: I never thought about it, but I know JP during his campaign was asked kind of that same thing. Was it you that asked him?

Grant: Probably Daniel.

Lazzari: Yeah. I think it was Dan and we never thought about it that way. We're not saying it's right or wrong. Like up at the Original, the fence is there to kind of protect the asset up there. Between the bathrooms . . . they still get broke into, but the fence does deter people. I think that the other side, when you look at the Mountain Con, you can walk through that mine yard pretty much the whole thing. And there's just a fence just around the headframe but you go up on top where the engine room is. There's no fence around it. Of course, we've had people break in there too. So I can't ever see the Original Mine Yard being open that same way.

But with that, you know, we talked about it after, you know, they asked JP that same question. I said, "What's the difference of us opening up during the day and locking up at night?" Like we do some more other stuff. That might be an answer. We've had trouble though, even like setting up and tearing down the festivals. Guys from out of town, they start climbing the headframe. Yeah. So I don't know how you deter that. They could put more fences inside that area. But with that in mind, there's a lot of times when that thing's open, you know, you've been past there when it's open and we haven't had trouble.

So I think that's a pretty good point that maybe it's just during the day that [it's open]. And I don't have the final say. But we talked about it after Daniel asked JP that. Well, what do you think? Do you think that's kind of a solution?

Grant: I guess I would like to see no fences, but I understand that it comes with liability. I want to be able to walk from this building to, you know, the walking trail uninterrupted. And not have to go out on the street or whatever. So anyway, but it doesn't matter as far as this conversation is concerned.

Lazzari: But I do think going forward the Original Mine Yard is gonna be more of a venue than it is now. And so I can't really see, myself, those fences coming down. There might be more security sometime, you know, like any other venue would be.

Grant: Now I wanted to ask too about the rails to trails. Do you think it's a good trade off, you know, the rail system for walking trails.

Lazzari: Oh, I do. It's a great program. The problem on my end with that is, we don't have the time to do it, to write the grants and we always talk about it. Our department is basically me and JP, except for our guys working. So that's the problem. But boy, it's a great program where you go out and take a look at Stodden Park. The route of the Hiawatha. I mean, look at that. So, I like it.

Grant: I was curious too, about community enrichment. You had said when you were offered the job there, they encouraged you to apply. You didn't know what they did. I'm in that position. I don't really know what community enrichment does.

Lazzari: Right. So that department. They enforce all code as far as . . . I'm trying to think what the code is called. For people to clean up their property, junk, motor vehicles. So trying to encourage people to bring their house up to a standard that helps the community financially, helps them. It's hard, and I didn't realize how people live in this town, how poor people were until I got in that job. We get complaints on a house that this place is a mess. Well, you go there, they have five oxygen tanks that are parked out front. A couple of wheelchairs. And they're living in squalor. And you think, man, the last thing they want to do is clean up the front porch or their property.

Jaap: They physically can't.

Lazzari: They physically can't. A lot of mental health, drug issues. And I was pretty unaware of how that is in Butte right now until I got that job. I mean, you are dealing with the same families. It's generational. How do you make these people do something? Give them a ticket with money to pay, doesn't answer the question. They struggle, that department. I know people aren't happy with what they do or how it gets done. But man, you need a buy-in from a bunch of different people. I used to write tickets and the judges would bring the people in and the judge would say, "I'm not going to fine this guy anything." Well, it's kind of hard to go tell the people that complained about that property. You can't say, "Well, fuck the judge." Because that's not . . . that doesn't serve anybody well. We just say, "Well, we are trying to get them up to the standards." But after you do that job for a while, your standard changes too, your own.

[00:53:22]

Because you think, "Oh man, if you just do that . . ." Plus, you know, people have a right to what they do with their personal property too. To a degree you do, you know? So, it's a hard position.

Grant: So would you say it made you more empathetic?

Lazzari: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I was never a hard ass anyway. But when you go there and you see these kids, they have nothing and it breaks your heart. You see the moms got, you know, she's 45 years old. She has three kids in their twenties that are, you know, a handful. She's the person on the property and/or [unintelligible]. A lot of people don't own these properties. They rent it. There are absentee landowners, property owners. That's a big deal. They play hide the shell. They put different names on it. You're chasing property owners. It's a hard job. Butte's economics play a big part. If we had stronger economics and a lot of this would be taken care of. But with that in mind, I've been in Bozeman.

They got some neighborhoods like ours. Missoula does. Helena does. Every city does. I think per capita, ours is higher just because the average age of our population, uh, you know, what people make. I mean, when you're working for the city, you learn the haves and haves nots, that kind of tells you the shape of the economics in Butte.

Jaap: What would your solution be instead of tickets? Do you think there's a solution, a better solution?

Lazzari: I don't know. There's a lot of groups that help. I don't know. Those guys struggle all the time. Meeting after meeting. Tough job. I'm just glad I'm out of it, if I am being honest with you.

Grant: Where does community enrichment fit in with, uh, you know, demolition of buildings?

Lazzari: Hmm. So when I was there, it was hard to get something demolished. I had problems with some stuff that got held up for demolishing. It couldn't be demolished. And I got kind of fed up sometimes with historic preservation at times, too. The perfect way is to keep everything the way it is, I understand. But we've had some properties, this is an example, I'm not gonna use names or anything. This guy had a piece of property and one of our County Commissioners complained about it. And so she contacted me and said, "Go find this guy who owns this piece of property." So I went, it turned out, I knew the guy. He's a contractor. He goes, "Man, I've been waiting for this phone call. I am pissed off with the city." Oh good. He goes, "It's not your fault. I had a plan to fix that building. I bought it with a plan." He goes, "I went in. I tore the inside out. I didn't touch the outside. I was going to fix it.

The historic preservation office said, 'You need to fix it this way.' He said, "No, I'm not gonna fix it that way. Got in a fight with them. I canceled the project and there it sits. I don't care what the city does with it. Throw me in f-ing jail, I don't care. You guys put the brakes on it, not us." So I called the County Commissioner, told her that, and she goes, "Well, that's bullshit." I said, "No, it's not." I said, "It costs more money to fix it to that standard that they want a lot of times, than someone fixing the property." I said, "So we're going to hold up a process [unintelligible] this was a big building, that would have helped that area." So I said, "I kind of agree with him." She said, "Well, you can't have that position." I said, "No, I can." But then there's other guys that buy shit, let it sit there. That was a pretty extreme example. And you know what, I know Mary, she has a hard job. She's proud of her work and she's good at it. You know, she's real dedicated, you know, I mean. And she bumps heads with people all the time. Her bosses and yeah . . .

Grant: You described community enrichment as being a fight every day. It sounds like it.

Lazzari: Yeah. So you get to work. It's funny. Your phone's beeping and someone is complaining about something. Either 'that place is a mess' or 'I can't believe you called me telling me that my place is a mess.'

Grant: Do you have any success stories that come to mind? You know, when you told someone, 'Hey, this place is a mess.' And they said, 'Do you know what? You're right. I'm going to get it cleaned up.'

Lazzari: Yeah. I don't know the addresses, but over on South Washington, I was talking to a casual buddy of mine, we were just kind of bullshitting about my job and stuff. And he goes, 'Hey, how about that building down there?' It's the fourplex down on Washington. What about it? He goes, "I'm going to buy it and fix it up." I said, "Shit, I wish you would." He bought it. He fixed it up. It's probably maybe half a block north of Platinum Street. Yeah. Mark Murphy. He did a nice job on it, you know? And so the next door to his place was a mess. I don't know if you guys know Mark. Mark used to be one of our county commissioners.

So he understood a lot of it. But his frustration was there's a guy next to him, he goes, "I want to buy his property. I'm going to tear it down, landscape it and turn it into a parking lot for my fourplex." So they found somebody who wanted it. Of course, then the value went up and never happened. And I think that happens. There are people that do want to help, you know? The other side is, Mark said, "Hey, I'm going to fix this. I'm doing my fair share, but I'm going to make some money off it too" Which there's nothing wrong with that. And that's encouragement that people need, is that they can do it and make money.

Grant: Is he on the SARTA board?

Larrazi: No.

Grant: That's a different Mark then.

Lazzari: Well, I don't know that because all of his buddies are, so maybe he is.

Grant: What impact do you think SARTA has had? I mean, you mentioned that they were funding the position you now hold. What do you think of the SARTA redevelopment effort?

[01:00:29]

Lazzari: I think it's great. I can't think of another community that has that. Just on my end, what I look at is, so for the festivals all the equipment was paid for by SARTA, and wasn't paid by Butte Silver Bow employees. It wasn't a tax. I know it's taxpayers’ money, but it wasn't tax based funds. Those things get used for everything from the smallest event you could think of to our big events. Big Brothers and Sisters for their event, they can use all of that. We let any nonprofit can use the Original Mine Yard for any fundraiser, anything they want to do. Or basically anywhere in town costs nothing, you know? So, I mean, that's all driven by SARTA. So you gonna have a festival? You can use our stuff, but you can't charge for it. So they're trying to encourage a better lifestyle here. What do you think about them?

Grant: Tremendous.

Lazzari: Yeah. Who else has that advantage?

Grant: So many conversations we've had in this room have been about this challenge of redeveloping the uptown, in particular. And how many different studies have been done and efforts over the years. And it seems to me maybe SARTA is the piece that was always missing.

Lazzari: Yeah. The guys that I know they're on the board - Mark Beaudry, Billy Joyce, Neil Bolton . . . These guys are from Butte. They're going to stay in Butte. They care about Butte. I have real fond memories of being in uptown Butte, especially. Those three. There are other people that are great board members on there too, but those are the ones I know. And I know their feelings about them.

Grant: I wanted to return to the Laz Call. What happened to the building?

Lazzari: It got torn down.

Grant: By that developer?

Lazzari: Yep. Yeah. So he bought it. When he bought it, I didn't care what he was doing with it. I was just glad to be out of it to be honest with you. He told me his plan was he was going to put in some kind of a medical storage building. I didn't quite understand what he was doing. He was from Merced, California. So when the real estate boom happened, Merced, California took the biggest hit across the United States. And he had a bunch of property down there. And so it was him, his brother, and he lost everything. Prior to that, someone breaks into his house with a pitchfork, kills one of his kids. And you can bring it up on the internet. It's called the Merced Pitchfork Murders.

Anyway, he ends up going upside down, this guy does. He has a bunch of property here, down in California. Gets divorced. Who knows what happens in your family. But changed the gun laws down in California, because I think his daughter shot the guy that killed her brother or something. And so the gun laws got changed down in California. I mean, it was a really interesting thing. And I didn't realize until he bought the property who this guy was. [unintelligible] He was a nice guy, but . . .

Jaap: I wish we had a film of your face right now.

Lazzari: Oh yeah, I told Marsha, "Check out this." But yeah, I got some stories in my bar. They're pretty funny. So when I started out there, business was good. I had to change my business plan. I noticed DUI was changing and everything. So I put on a deck and started a volleyball league and it was received real well. I had live music out there. And there was no landscaping. My patrons called it the shit hole. I said, "Well, I can raise prices, make it nicer." They said, "Naw, keep it the way it is." It's up to you guys. I said, I don't care. Okay. So, uh, so I started that and it turned out I hated my volleyball players. And I had a bunch of them. I had 40 teams. I mean, it was a good business plan, but all my buddies said, "Hey, I want to tell you something. We don't come out." "Why?" "We hate your volleyball players." I said, "Shit, so do I." That's when Jim's bar put in theirs. McQueen Club, the Scoop. I said, "Hey man, you guys got places to play. You don't need this place." So I canceled and people said, you're crazy, but it endeared me to my customers. They were drinkers, spenders. These were the days that you walked in and said, "Give him a drink." Another guy walked in, "Give him a drink." "Give him a drink." Three deep. "Give them all a drink." That's how those bars operated.

Everyone that came into my bar, they were all walks of life, but they all made pretty good money. It seemed like they all had pretty good disposable income. So I tailor made it. So my wife one day said, "I'm sick and tired of your lifestyle." Shit, I'm having a ball. What, are you nuts? She goes, "No, you're working seven days a week. Even when you're not working, you're always attached to it somehow." This is back before cell phones, but so my phone would ring at my house all the time. "Hey, we're down at the bar, come have a drink." Alright. Yeah. It drove her crazy. She made me close on Sundays. Then she said, "My dad has his bar in East Butte and they are closed every Tuesday." So I said, "So, I'm closed on Tuesday?" She said, "No, you're closed on Sunday and Tuesday." I said, "Well, it's a business too." She said, "Well, figure it out." So I tailored made my hours to the hours when I was busy. Along those lines. I also kept cash on hand. At that time most bars weren't cashing paychecks.

I would go to the bank on Friday morning, get maybe $50 - $80,000 cash to cash paychecks for the weekend. And guys would cash a check and say, "Get them all a drink." If there's a project going on in town, I'd go find one of the guys working on it. I would say, "Who do you bank at?" A lot of these guys work part-time because these guys get off work late on Fridays and I cash paychecks. So I did it. And there was a bar over on South Excelsior. Joe Bennett. Over by the trailer courts on South Excelsior. He cashed paychecks too. And the M&M. People forget. I had friends that wanted to buy the M&M. It was a good bar.

But people forget, there were no pawn shops in town. The M&M was Butte's pawn shop for years. I said, that's a big part of their business. You guys are missing the point. It's not selling beers. It's not the burgers. I said, where else can you go to cash a check, sell your car? Where can you bring your watch? I mean, you just go into the back room. They have watches stacked up. It was Butte's only pawn shop for years. Every bar tried to figure out a new way. Because DUIs. For me it was cashing paychecks.

[1:08:33]

And so for me, it was cashing paychecks, but along with that came the danger. I couldn't leave money out there. I've been broken into a few times. So I'd go borrow the money, then you had to bring it back on Monday. So I had to take it back and forth. [Unintelligible] "I thought you closed at midnight." Well, the last person left at 11:30. I'm not gonna sit out there with $50,000 in cash in the middle of nowhere, you know? And so a lot of times, I had some friends who were on the police force. I'd say "Hey, when you get ready to roll, let me know." Well, it was a double-edged sword, you don't want drunks trying to leave the place with cops hanging around. But you also need . . . Yeah. And so as it turned out, I kind of streamlined my hours back. So I had bartenders that bartended for me nine years.

But you know, pretty soon at the end it was just me. I'd worked from 2:00 to 11 o'clock, four or five days a week. So I just kind of streamlined it. Those are my busy times and it worked and I was fortunate. I had loyal employees.

Grant: What about when you're tending bar? Do you have some philosophy or like a code of ethic or something?

Lazzari: Clark, I have no ethics. You know what it was, it's pretty simple. Just entertaining, empathetic. For me, it was just listening. I don't have to be the smartest guy in the bar. You hear the same story over and over again. Once in a while, you'll bark at a guy, "Really, your wife's pissed off at you? You're in this bar every damn night. And now she is calling you, wants you to come home?" And this is back before cell phones.

Jaap: Yeah, you were dealing with the wife.

Lazzari: Do you guys remember going in bars and seeing a sign that they all had a version of it. It would say something like,

Grant: "$1 he's not here. $2 . . ."

Lazzari: "He just left . . ." "I haven't seen him in here." That kind of stuff. And so I can remember that phone. On Friday nights, guys would get off work, cash their paychecks. And buying drinks. "Hup, get Clark one." Then you're stuck. And the next guy'd come in . . .It was a great business plan, but then all of a sudden my phone started ringing and it would just drive me crazy. So Okay, you look down the bar and they're all going [facial expression], "Nope, he's not here. Nope, haven't seen him."

Well, man, I did. Pretty soon the front door would open up. A gal would walk in with three kids, throw the kids in. "Oh, those are mine." They'd go home. And "I called three times" and the wife is bitching at me. I said, "Hey." But it was pretty funny, you know, she's on the road, I'd get called. Sometimes I'd say, "Hey, Pat, first time she's at home, but now it sounds like she's at a bar, called in from somewhere else." Because people didn't have cell phones. They couldn't track you that way, you know, and having cell phones came out, it ruined that whole theory.

Jaap: I think on Clark's question too. So we talked to Bob Pavlovich a year or two ago and he was pretty pissed that bars no more did like, you know, buy two, the bartender will buy your third. And it was really funny talking about the Met, you know. He was like, they're just not running a bar like it should be run. Like that's not how you run a bar. And so do you have any thoughts about that?

Lazzari: So, I can't tell you how many times he said to me, "Hey, let's buy the Met." Let me see, you're 80, I'm 50, but really we're the guys that should be jumping on this? He goes, "We can make it go again." I said, "You know what, Bob? The bars have changed." The reason the country club does good at the bar is there are 400 members. They live in that area. That's kind of a neighborhood bar. They can walk home. I said, "Things have changed Bob. I saw it in my business. You were out of the business when I saw the decline of it. I was lucky to get out, how I got out of it." I realized that it was more of a struggle. He said, "Tell you what, I think we can get it back going again." I said, "Bob, the other part is that people don't day drink like they used to." Because if I'm gonna go in the Met, you go at noon, it was full. In high school we drank at a place called 80's Buffet. Have you heard of 80's Buffet?

Jaap: No.

Lazzari: Okay. It was, you know where the sandwich shop over here, the four Oh six, it sat right next door. There was a little bar that sat south of it. And it was half as narrow as this. The whole building was, and it went back. And so in high school, we drank there. When I was in high school, the drinking age was 18, but no one really cared. We stop in and drink beers. I think beers were a dime and twenty-five cents or twenty-five cents. And we'd go in and it was packed. I mean, we'd go in there at lunchtime, buy some beers. Charlie's New Deal. Stockman's Bar back then. I mean, those bars, they all said they made their money by six o'clock at night. And then after that, the rest is gravy.

Things have changed and Bob couldn't understand that. And I see it. I remember in my bar, I'd be open at 10 in the morning and they'd arrive. And pretty soon by about 2:00 that was early enough. Because there weren't those day drinkers. People's lifestyles changed. People say, "Well, you will die in an office." The same ratio of people living, but it's just. People that choose not to hang around bars all day has changed, you know, for whatever reason.

Grant: The Butte you described in your childhood and especially with so many kids on Granite Street, it just sounds so vital. And nowadays streets are just empty in Butte a lot of the time, you know, I just want to know what it's like to see that kind of change.

Lazzari: I've never really embraced technology. Okay. But, you know, I hear people say these kids are on their phone all day. They watch TV all day, so well who buys them the shit? I don't think the streets are any more dangerous as far as molestation or kidnapping than they ever were. There's a couple of neighborhoods in this town, I drive around, there's a ton of kids still out there. One on the West side, the very lower West side down there on Britannia and that. A couple years ago, there were mobs of kids down there playing all the time, which is pretty neat. And now that new area I think is, what's it called? There kind of behind the Serbian church. They're a little bit south.

Jaap: By the dog park there. Columbia Gardens that new development.

Lazzari: Go drive through there and see all the kids playing. There are a lot of kids. It's changed, but, so I remember growing up, all those blocks were that way. Uptown Butte. So Clark, are you from Butte?

Grant: No, I'm from Arkansas.

Lazzari: So when I grew up, everything was Uptown Butte shopping-wise. There was no Plaza mall. There wasn't much on Harrison Avenue. You come uptown Butte, it was thriving. It was busy. It couldn't be any more busy, you know? And so I remember that part, and I remember when the Plaza opened up. In high school we used to cruise the drag, we called it, you know, but back then, it wasn't just Harrison Avenue. We'd start it there and we'd come uptown Butte, go across Granite, Park, Broadway, back down Arizona. That was cruising the drag. Because there was stuff going on in uptown Butte. You forget the smells of uptown Butte back in the day. There was so many restaurants. It was like being in a city, you know, it was neat. So we had on Park Street, you had Woolworth's and Ben Franklin's and they were attached to each other. You could walk through them. And, they were neat because they both had lunch counters. But the smells of it were, you know, still to this day I'll get a whiff of the smell and just like that. You know, it's a shame you don't have that. But then a lot of smaller restaurants. The Hennessy building was busy. My cousin, she was the elevator operator. That was a job. She'd say, "What floor?" I remember Christmas. So part of Christmas, you know, what people are missing now was you come uptown Butte. It was festive for two weeks before. It's a month long now, but two weeks before, until Christmas, it was festive uptown.

And there were a ton of people. I mean, it was busy, you know, it was, and then even afterwards, so that's a part you really miss. And so each neighborhood leading up here with kids all over. I told a story with Aubrey, when I grew up, we'd walk uptown, but each block you crossed there were kids, you know, they're territorial. I told Aubrey; it was like running the gauntlet to come uptown. And it's the same way with kids walking through our neighborhood. No one got beat up or anything, but, you know. I tease some friends now. The Thatchers or Dennehy's. Walking through you guys, that wasn't fun. And they were fine, you know, but that every neighborhood. It was kind of fun. But this uptown, it was rolling.

Grant: Do you think it can ever return to some level of vitality approaching that?

Lazzari: If you look at, and I don't know who else to compare it to, if you compare it to say Bozeman, you know, the size of their population, if you think about it, their Main Street, isn't near as diverse as our uptown area. It's just that five or six block long stretch. That's all it really is. I mean, now it's kind of, it's going off, you know, so we have a big area to fill up here and it's, I've been there. I just think it takes a huge population to get it to that point. And I'm not sure Butte wants that. And I don't know how you fix it. There's people that will only come uptown Butte. That's where they want to be, which is great. And I don't know how to encourage that. The URA was that part of their idea? We just need an industry to get people in here to make that more vital, I think. But I don't know how that happens either.

Grant: It's complicated. Huh?

Lazzari: Well, you guys know. I mean, I'm sure you've heard every conversation talking about it. You know, it's hard.

Grant: I'm curious, watching the expansion of the Berkeley as a young person. Were you aware of what was going on there?

Lazzari: Kind of. And so for me, you know, kids are selfish into themselves. All I knew is every time we went to the Gardens for like four years, Columbia Gardens, you had to take a different route. Because it seemed like you could go east on Park Street forever. And pretty soon that got, you know, so you go here in the pit then you go back down to Continental and all of a sudden, you were missing . . . Finntown is almost gone now. Ohio Street was almost gone. So it just got chewed up at such a slow rate. You really didn't notice it until you had a reason to go that way, I guess. I'm sure older people did, but it seemed to me just going to the Columbia Gardens, that is when I really noticed it.

[01:20:48]

Grant: That period, you graduated high school in 1978? So that period when Arco bought the Anaconda until you opened the bar, basically. That is kind of when Butte was closing down. What was the mood like around town then? What do you recall?

[01:21:11]

Lazzari: Okay, so, it's funny as you're growing up around strikes, your mind is kind of, "This is a strike. This is going to end." No one thought that the Anaconda Company was going to pull out for good. Even when they did, people thought they can't not operate in Butte. There was kind of that thought. And then you start seeing families move away. But it wasn't like a hundred families left that day. It was such a gradual thing. You're wrapped in yourself, you don't notice. One thing that kind of always bothered me until I realized what was happening later on in life. I always applied for a job at the city, a summer job, because a lot of kids worked, you know, I applied and this was probably, I dunno, right when the pit was closing and people were losing their jobs and I never got a summer job.

Looking back the city hired a lot of people that probably didn't have the budget for, to try to keep those families here. You know? So they weren't that concerned about us, because for a time they'd hired a bunch of kids, but you only worked for two weeks out of the summer. You can work and you work for two weeks. That was it. So they tried to take care of everybody, but more important, they tried to get full-time jobs, keep families here, you know. And that was with Don Peoples. He was here for a tough time when he was chief executive. That was his thing.

Grant: So at first it kind of felt like a strike, but then people began to realize that it was permanent.

Lazzari: Right. And so again, so I was looking for a job when I came back from Bozeman. Or no, before I left, I was going to Tech, I was looking for a job. And all of sudden, man there aren't many jobs. So I went to work for Kentucky Fried Chicken. And that was a union job at that time. I made $3.22. And, I remember the guys who were applying for that job after I got it, you know, like coming in, looking, that sort of struck you like, wow. Mr. So-and-so is here looking for a job. That's when it hit you. I'm lucky to have this job and people keep saying, "Boy, you're lucky to have that job." I'm cooking chicken. Yeah, I am lucky, but you're lucky to have a job, you know? Yeah.

Grant: Especially with your dad, doing deliveries, being a teamster. I wanted to ask you just about all the neighborhood grocery stores on the hill. Do you have memories of certain ones and why do you think they all went away?

Lazzari: So across the street from us, it was called Caroline's Grocery. The building's still there. You know, it's funny unless you lived with the neighborhood grocery, it was a total different operation than anywhere you shopped before. My mom every morning, "Go get me some cigarettes." Little kids. I mean, there are kids lined up. "I need some Camels. I need some Winston straights." Beer. Little kids taking empty beer bottles over and getting quarts because they had the deposit for them. That was a common practice. You'd have a note that said it was okay for Billy to pick up a six pack of beer. It was pretty funny.

Caroline's, I was really familiar with, because you were over there daily. Doing something over there. So I remember during the summer if you had no money and you wanted to go to children's day at Columbia Gardens, we would get up and we'd sneak on people's porches. And on the porches, people had their pop bottles and they were worth between 3 cents and 5 cents, 10 cents per bottle. So you could steal pop bottles and bring them to Caroline's, she'd give you money for the deposit. And then we'd sneak in and steal them back from her. Not just us. There were a bunch of people that [did that]. We didn't steal pop, but we stole deposits.

And the other part was milk delivery, that was a big deal. And it was competitive. There were a lot of different dairies in this town. And, my dad's buddy, his name was Leo Calcaterra. He worked for Elgin Dairy, and that was our milk, was Elgin Dairy. And they were good friends. And so my grandfather's name was Leo, but the only Leo we knew was Leo Calcaterra. He was my dad's buddy, the milkman. And I remember, my mom said she was mortified because she was talking to a nun up at IC and I was laughing. She said you had a little baby brother born named James Leo. And you told them that he was named after the milkman. Of course, at that age, I still didn't know what she was talking about.

Grant: Why do you think all those stores closed?

Lazzari: I'm sure it was price driven, but all of sudden there were three Safeways in uptown Butte. I think people became loyal because they were all union jobs too.

Grant: Loyal to Safeway.

Lazzari: Well, to all the stores that had a union employee. I use that for example, but there were three of those in uptown Butte. And along those lines, there were some bigger neighborhood grocery stores, like down on Platinum Street or at that time it was on Excelsior, it was called the Cottage Market. Now that's Driscoll's Pharmacy. It was bigger than your basic neighborhood one. So, I don't know why people got away from it. I think it was just all price driven, you know? Maybe if you could save some money because look at Walmart and Amazon, people have become more loyal to prices. I don't know for sure. But so we had Caroline's Grocery.

Then we had Gould's Grocery. Then over on this way on Granite, there was, I can't think of his name, but he was on the corner of Alabama and Granite and also had a butcher shop. So, these grocers were nice people. I remember you go up there, we'd stop in there once a week and they'd give us a hot dog, you know? It was a different time. And plus, if we had a nickel, we would go over and it would take us half an hour because they had so much pick candy. They were patient people.

Grant: Do you miss those stores then?

Lazzari: Yeah, they were fun. I mean, yeah. And they all had a bench in front, so you were always hanging out in front of the store. It was fun. And when you were younger, it was kind of intimidating. Because you didn't know who was gonna be sitting there when you're walking in.

Grant: I wanted to hear you comment just in general on the difference you see between Butte with underground mining and Butte without underground mining, is it even the same place?

Lazzari: So we kind of talked about this. You know what the biggest difference was is the sound. There was a sound 24 hours a day. In the middle of the night, you would hear the mine. It wasn't a roar, but it was just there's something going on all the time. It seemed like cold days travel sounded better. I don't know to me that that was the biggest difference than then. The pit even when it was busy had a certain sound to it, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't as close because everyone lived pretty much in the shadow of a mine yard, up here anyway.

Grant: How about the McKinley school? Do you have any memories from there? What's it like to see that place closed now?

Lazzari: Okay. So the McKinley school was a grade school. I mean, you had every walk of life, you would have a lot of people that had money down on the lower west side. And you had people east of Excelsior who didn't have as much money. There's a transition. I'm trying to think of what years. I was talking to Bob McCarthy. He used to be a county attorney. He said there was a big influx of West Virginians that moved here because they closed the coal mines. Have you heard that too? And so they came. And those people didn't have a lot of money, but it was a pretty good melting pot, you know?

And, I had friends from both sides, but everyone did. You didn't realize or care who had the most money, you know, at that time here. The teachers were great teachers down there. In sixth grade I had, his name was Bob Liva, great guy, smart guy. He was young. He was probably in his twenties at the time that he was teaching us. Yeah. This is back when the paddle was in full force when you misbehaved. But back if you got the paddle or got in trouble, you never went home, because shit, you might get it again. So, his theory was if you got in trouble, he never gave you the paddle right then, but after school you're going to get it.

So that alone, you had to live with that for three or four hours. You're going to get the paddle. But he also had this other trick. So he had for science, he had this old hand-crank foam generator and he used it and he'd light up a light bulb or some things about it. And I still don't know anything about electricity. So I don't know if it's the amperage, the voltage, that kills you whichever one, but it didn't have the one that really . . . And so you had your choice. You could either take the paddle or grab the ends of the generator.

Grant: Electric shock?

Lazzari: Electric shock. And so he had a switch on it. So you crank, crank, crank it. And you could hear it, because those hand-cranked generators, "zzzzzzzzzz." Up and up and up, and then he would hit the switch and give you a shock. If you jumped, then you'd get two shots. His favorite is if two or three kids got in trouble, he might, why don't you guys hold hands? Do you guys want to do it all at once?

And then he talked to you about the resistance in your body. And you know, so it sounds like it's cruel and unusual right now. You think back, but this is the same time, we used to pay good money at the Columbia Gardens, they had this Shock-A Machine. You throw a dime in and you grabbed the things and turn up the voltage to get a shock. And so what we would do, all the kids would lick their hands and grab on and you paid a dime to shock us all, you know?

Jaap: He was doing it for free.

Lazzari: If a couple kids were in trouble, we'd all be talking, "take the shock." All the guys at once, "take the shock." We'd all be watching it and he'd be chasing us off, you know? That alone. You tell stories and parents be freaking out. Any kid back then . . . there were guys that abused it. There were teachers that abused that. But I can't even remember your butt even hurting when you got paddled, when you got home. It was more the shame of it all.

Grant: I walk the dog a lot past the McKinley school now, and I see the crumbling stonework, you know, up top. And I can't imagine having gone there and then walking past it everyday. I'm trying to get it. What it is like to see these things decline.

Lazzari: To be honest, I don't have any . . . those inanimate objects, I don't have any love or hate for them. Like Marsha said, "You're going to miss the bar." I said, "I'm not going to miss it." She said, "You've been there 20 years." I said, "I don't miss the building. That's not the memory." For me anyway. When you mentioned that it is crumbling, I didn't know that it was. I drive past there all the time. But to me it looks kind of the same. It was a beat up old school back then.

Jaap: Clark is a big thinker.

Lazzari: Clark, I'm a pretty shallow person. You'll find that out.

Grant: Well, I just had one more question. I wanted to just recap the beheading. Could we go over that again?

Lazzari: The what now?

Grant: The beheading down south of Melrose. So who was it in your family?

Lazzari: So it was my grandfather's father.

[01:34:38]

Grant: Okay. On your dad's side?

Lazzari: On my dad's side. I found out the information up here on it. Matter of fact.

Jaap: When did this happen?

Lazzari: I'm saying like 1910, 1920s somewhere in there. And I think his name was Pesanti or Invernezzi. Because they are all still buried down at Melrose. And my grandma and grandpa are buried down there too. I mean, there's a bunch of them. So my dad's aunt, Pauline, she didn't die too long ago, maybe in the 80's. My sister lives in California, she'd go visit Pauline. And she told her the story about when they came to town and went back and that their dad was missing. And plus the car was missing. So they thought he took off at first. But then they noticed that the caretaker was missing too. So they thought he did it. And it was a while before they found it. But then, and I think we found this out up here too. Down river, further, a guy turned up missing, found dead. His head cut off in a well too.

Grant: Really?

Jaap: Oh Jesus.

Lazzari: So my sister found all this from California, but talking to Pauline about it. And all these, Isabel and Pauline, these guys all had three or four husbands. I mean, they were kind of a hoot. I mean, they were a tough breed. And my grandma wasn't, she wasn't a warm fuzzy grandma. I mean, she was the oldest and, you know, after talking to her sisters, they said she took care of them. She ran it like almost military because they didn't have . . . I don't know if her mother wasn't around, but she kind of took care of them. So she was stern, but I mean, she was just kind of forced to be stern too. It was a hard time.

Grant: So it was never solved.

Lazzari: I don't think it ever was. My sister knows more. But again, I mean, she was up here one summer and she went through and dug all the stuff up. We found some stuff. Any family, you find some answers and say, that makes sense now. And I'm sure you see people all the time up here. Yeah. Now. Yeah. You know, so she found out some interesting facts about name changes. We wondered how they happened. And it was because they had the records up here. One was the public school enrollment. That's when his name got changed. Then you could kind of tie it to an event. And my dad had some aunts that were old. Stella [unintelligible], they were these old dagos. I remember, they'd take off like, this is like during the sixties, seventies, they're old, they'd hop a train.

They'd go to Seattle to see someone, but they didn't know . . . well it turned out. It was one of their sister's sons who got farmed out. Someone got sick and they brought him back to Italy. So he was here with the family and the family moved out, took him with him. They came back, the kid is gone. But he knew about it. So his daughter contacted my dad and my dad's cousin, Ed, and she showed up with a bunch of questions, you know. This is my cousin, I guess. He goes, "Shit. She knows more about our family than I do." It was a different time, you know, there was a lot of that, you know, you live with different families. My dad's grandma, her name was Annie Lazzari. She had a boarding house. I think it was in McQueen or Meaderville, one or the other. She raised a lot of kids. I think her husband was Joe. He got shot and killed down there. He was a sheriff or something. So, I mean, but everyone had the same thing.

One thing that was fun growing up that really made an impression is when East Butte and all those neighborhoods McQueen, Meaderville, the house moving were a big deal. So you would see all of a sudden, you'd be playing football, all of a sudden over at Excelsior, you'd see a house coming up, coming down the hill. And you'd have guys on the roof with poles pushing up the power lines. Yeah.

So Marsha grew up on Grand Avenue. Her parents bought Gallo Osello Senior's house in, I think it was, McQueen or Meaderville. They paid like $3,500 cash for the house and they had moved out there. But Marsha's dad was kind of a high-tech guy for back then. He recorded it all. We have it all, you know? And so they took it down Continental. And they started coming down Grand Avenue toward Harrison Avenue. And it's going slow, really slow. But the semi lost his brakes. And watching it, he was telling the story. He lost his brakes and he's going slow. And so you can see another semi pulls up behind, hooks to the house, puts it in gear, but he was going so slow. I said, "Well, it doesn't seem very dangerous." He goes, "Yeah, but it's a house." So, that house is still sitting there. It's on Grand Avenue and maybe Wilson. It's kind of Spanish. It's white and has arches in front, the red roof. Marsha's mom was so happy to buy that house because the Sello's at that time, they just redone the kitchen and the bathroom. So, I mean, you know . . .

Jaap: The important things are done.

Lazzari: But even when they died, you know, Marsha's mom died 15 years ago or something 10 years. But anyway, that kitchen, it was still beautiful. I mean the more light it had. Marsha's dad, this guy, he was the all-time bargain shopper. He said, "Okay, I'll take it. But I want everything that's in that shed." Well, so Gallo Osello sold appliances. He had a gas station. He sold appliances. GE. And so in that shed there were some old stoves. And so when Marsha and I got married, our stove shit the bed. So he goes, "I got one brand new." I go, "Alright, perfect." To get it, we had to dig through his garage. Because he was the all-time pack rat. And it was a brand new stove from 1958. It was great. It had a side heater on it.

So, Osello's, I remember shopping at Osello's here in Butte. They sold furniture, appliances, electronics, and they carried at that time Pioneer brand sound equipment. And so they had what was called the sys-com. You would put together all your different pieces, you know, your tuner, your turntable, everything. They did all the science for you. You just buy that system. And they had the one I wanted but I didn't have the money. So they would finance anybody. Called GS financing. So I went and I bought a stereo and my payments were $22 a month. And, this guy, Mr. Burns, was the head of the financing.

He would give you a scolding before, you know, "If you're late once, I know your dad." I remember my dad said, "You bought a stereo and you're making payments on it." I go, "Yeah." He goes, "You've lost your mind." I go, "It was only $22 a month." He goes, "Oh my God. What's the interest rates?" "What's an interest rate?" My first car in 1982, a newer car that I financed. The interest rate was 18% back then. Yeah. So you look back. So, that's 18%. What was a mortgage? What was the interest rate at that time? You know? So it was a big deal. I mean, yeah.

Grant: I'm bitching about 6%.

Lazzari: Exactly. Yeah. So when I was working at Black Angus, it was a pretty interesting time because this place was nice, but you still had people doing three martini lunches. Like "Mad Men." I remember bankers coming down that, you know, they'd have soup, you know, salad. "Get us a martini." Alright. And they'd stay til 2:00, go back to the shop, come back at happy hour, a couple more and head home. It was old school.

Jaap: So is that where you DJ'ed is at the Black Angus?

Lazzari: Yeah.

Jaap: Please tell more.

Lazzari: So I think it's still there. I think that DJ booth is still in the bar.

Grant: I haven't been in there.

Lazzari: It's raised up so if you walk in the bar, right-hand side, it is back in the corner. And they had the disco lights in the floor, went up the wall. It was a pretty sweet deal. And it was records. Everything was vinyl. And so you queued up and back and forth. And then different people wanted different songs. There were fist fights. "Quit playing that country shit." And the same time I was working down at, as a part-time job, Budget, Tapes and Records. And so that was down on Harrison Avenue. And so Tom Suzanne and Lynn French, they owned Budget Tapes and Records. Lynn came from Seattle. Great guy.

So once in a while, I'd work down there and I'd get paid by an album. You forget what a big deal music was back then. When there was a release of a record coming out, it was, you waited like you're waiting for a movie to come out. I remember the Eagles had their greatest hits album and it was, you know, very popular. They came out with the long run and for some reason it's supposed to come out, but it kept getting post-dated. People called every day. "Is it here yet? Is it here yet?" And when it came, it was like a fire sale for the album. But that wasn't just that album. It was a pretty neat time. Little do we know that vinyl will go by the wayside and then have a big resurgence like it is now. I don't know how many albums I had. Everybody did. It wasn't just me.

And you didn't take care of them, because it didn't matter. But Lynn French, he understood the value of vinyl even back then. So he had a collection at his house that was unreal and he always had this, uh, equipment at that time. It was super expensive. It was real high end. I remember he had that and, uh, he liked that better than his car. But he had this collection of records. So he moved to Butte and he had long hair. Uh, he had a mustache, real skinny guy, a real kind guy. He played in a band. I can't think of the name, but they were good around town. So of course all the local townies hate him, because he's from out of town. All the girls dug him, you know. All the bad shit that could happen.

You know, they didn't like Lynn. So, we teased him, "Man, someone's going to kick your ass just for being you." He goes, "What's going on? Because I don't get it." I said, "You never will." So I remember one day, me and this buddy are driving down the street. Lynn is walking to work. It was in June and it was raining, hard rain storm. And he has an umbrella. I pulled over, I said, "Are you trying to get killed?" He goes, "What are you talking about?" I go, "You can't throw an umbrella up in Butte." He goes, "What? Where are these rules?"

Grant: Poor guy. Did he stick around?

Lazzari: For a while. Actually, he made some friends here and they live in Portland. The Cernovich's. They were in that band. I can't think. This was back when live music was a big deal. Over at the Finlen, at the Copper Room, they had live music in there. It was a neat place. There was live music there. They had it at the Fifth Quarter, which was over on Continental. And originally it was all underground. There wasn't a building. Do you know that? So all they had was a little shed where the stairs came out of the basement. There was no building in the basement. So they had live music. The Ramada Inn, which is now the Butte Plaza Inn, they had live music. And it was a pretty big deal.

So disco was taking a beating, even down at the Black Angus. They started bringing live music because that's just kind of where it was going. Do you guys remember when, I think it was Cincinnati where they did the death of disco at the baseball game where they're shooting the disco albums? Did you ever hear about this?

Grant: No.

Lazzari: Yeah. I'm sure it was Cincinnati, or maybe it was Cleveland. This guy owned the pro team, but also had different gimmicks. One time he signed a little person, a midget for lack of a better term, because the strike zone is so much smaller on a little person than it is on a regular guy standing. So that was one of his gimmicks. He had the death of disco. I was watching and the Bee Gees, they said that killed disco that night, they were shooting. They were launching disco records, like skeet. Exactly. That was the death of it. But so this guy, this is interesting. So this guy, his son ends up, him and Bill Murray, end up buying the Copper King baseball team here in town, but it was his son. And this guy was known for his gimmicks.

[01:50:33]

And so when Bill Murray showed up to town, when he bought this. He hit down like a firestorm, Bill Murray did. So, at that time, a good friend of mine, Glen Rafish. They owned the shoe store and Glen sold shoes over there. He said Bill Murray came in with his kids, bought shoes. And he goes, he was super nice. Asked a bunch of real pertinent questions, you know. Glenn said he was such a nice guy. So he goes, here's some tickets for the game tonight. Because it was their first game. Bill is in town and this other guy that owns it. And they show up for the game and there's a ton of people up there because Bill Murray is in town. He's going to show up there and stuff. And Glen and Kinsley, she was a baby, and Patty are walking in and there's a mob of people around to get autographs. And it sounds like Bill Murray was pretty approachable. And Glenn said, he's funny and he's walking through and Glen's pretty unassuming. He doesn't like much attention. He goes, Bill Murray is signing stuff like this and looks over and goes, "Oh, hi Glenn." Goes back to work.

Grant: Sounds very Bill Murray.

Lazzari: This town has seen a lot of ups and downs, a lot of changes. I remember when the Evel Knievel movie was being made here. Yeah, that was pretty interesting times too. They were racing cars and motorcycles around town without traffic control, through neighborhoods. It was nuts. My parents hated Evel Knievel. Most parents did because they knew who he was, you know, and of course we were enamored. We were probably 10, 12 years old and you know, there couldn't be a cooler guy in the world.

Grant: We usually ask people about fires. I wanted to get that in before we concluded. What do you recall when the uptown was burning?

Lazzari: So I remember when JC Penny's burned down, just kind of hearing about it. And we walked up and looked at it. Fire has such a distinct smell once it gets wet and everything. You could smell it from our house. And people were crying. I remember walking. Because at that time fires happened a lot. It seemed like. But people loved JCPenney. People loved that store for a lot of reasons, you know? That one. And then the Medical Arts Building. That one I remember. I was swimming at Stodden Park. I remember, you could see something going on. Someone said that the Medical Arts Building was on fire. It was huge. But then after a while you get, I hate to say it, you just get used to fires happening. It's like, maybe that's just kind of how every town was, you know? Yeah.

Grant: That's it for my list.

Jaap: I have one question just because Clark usually asks it and I'm surprised you didn't, what's your favorite drink, Lazz? You always ask that question.

Lazzari: You know, I don't have a favorite drink, but I love a bunch of them.

Jaap: It's more about the number.

Lazzari: So I've always liked whiskey. I drank ditches for most of my life. Uh, gin martinis, and I've never liked Scotch, but I found a Scotch that I like, and that's the only Scotch I drink, if I drink Scotch. Back when I had the bar, I drank a bunch. Everyone did. I'd go in the morning. At about 2 and half noon, I'd crack open a beer. I'd probably have 10 beers, but we'd drink small beers. Remember the little ponies? We drank those all the time. You know what people forget is for a long time, you couldn't buy beer in the stores. You got to go to a bar to buy a beer. And when I was a little kid, I can remember that. And then I was talking to the old time bar owners, they hated Safeways. Because these guys lobbied so they could sell beers in stores. Because he said more than half their business was beer to go.

And so it was kind of devastating to some of those bars. Marsha's dad, he tells a story back when he was in East Butte, they had beer on tap. I think it was a nickel a beer or something. And canned and bottled beer were just getting really big. So they had a meeting with all the bar owners and said, let's not sell canned or bottled beer in bars. We'll sell it to go, but don't let them drink it. Because he goes, we have something special. We have beer on tap. They have to come to us to get beer on tap. Let's make sure we keep it special. Plus the markup on tap beer is better. He goes pretty soon, these other bars will start selling cans and bottles of beer. He goes, it was a big deal. He goes, now we're selling half canned and bottled beer where the markup wasn't near as much.

Do you remember punch boards? Do you remember those, Clark? So Marsha's dad. This guy was fastidious. He had his books. I found his books. He counted them. His bar probably had 10 or 20 boards going at once. He would count every day how many punches. So he'd have things that said, "Board number 14, sold 42 punches at 10 cents. Missing 32." Because, guys would sit up at the bar, press to open it up, it wasn't a winner. They'd eat it.

Jaap: [unintelligible] has the funniest story that a guy was doing that. And they asked him a question and he had to talk. And all of these punch boards just flew out of his mouth.

Lazzari: And plus urinals were full. You go into there, and guys would have handfuls of tickets and toss them into the urinals. But those were moneymakers. You know, those got put down too. I still have a bunch of them and they were pretty neat. I have a bunch of memories but I don't know what the value of them are.

Grant: Well, the whiskey ditch.

Lazzari: The whiskey ditch. Did you guys ever drink whiskey ditches?

Grant: Oh yeah. Not at the Archives. Not midday.

Lazzari: What's your favorite drink? 24 beers at a time. That was kind of my favorite for a long time.

Jaap: Whatever comes with a carrying case, I don't know.

Lazzari: There were some guys, I'd just give them the keys to my bar. If I wasn't there and they wanted something, they could go and get it. That was common practice. If you have friends. Guys that do concrete, it's a pretty heavy drinking crew. So a lot of times they go pour concrete and they're finishing throughout the day. You go back and finish it. A lot of times, I'd give them the key. You can trust them.

The other part is, in my bar, this is interesting. Gambling was a big deal in Butte, [unintelligible] games. So back before the internet, local guys ran books that you bet on. And my guys that hung around my bar, they loved the action. They all bid on the games. So they came out to my bar. I had three TVs, which back then was a big deal, had a big screen and a couple other TVs. Had a satellite dish just for the games. So guys could watch the games. And so, uh, they'd all bet on the games and come watch at my place. And I remember one TV was always on headline news for one reason, because at that time there was no internet. So you're looking for scores of the game, headline news ran ticker-tape of all the college scores.

So you'd be sitting half the day looking for the score of the Arkansas State game. You had to wait for it. It was funny. And gamblers live from bet to bet. I didn't know that. And so they'd bet early mornings on college games. 1:30 game starts up, there's a 5:45 game on ESPN. And then the last game when the pack-10 went on TV. The last game of the day was always Hawaii. But that started at like 10 o'clock our time. So I remember, you know, if they got beat up, if they lost their money, or if they made the money, they'd be calling their guy at quarter to 10, trying to, you know . . . It was pretty interesting watching that. And there were a bunch of people. The Deluxe Tavern had, everyone [unintelligible] tickets at that time. Yeah. It was pretty fun.

Jaap: Yeah. Sports have changed a lot. Nate used to go out and they'd bet every Sunday. They'd go do a parlay with Bob Pavlovich. But he doesn't go anymore. He said it's not fun. It used to be fun to see Bob Pavlovich and hang out with him. It wasn't the betting.

Lazzari: Right. It was a real social aspect to it. There were different bars. The Locker Room had one over in Anaconda. And guys all showed up from Anaconda. They'd have their ticket and we'd take them over to the Deluxe. And someone else would have one and we'd compare the spreads and try to find the best value. But this is back before the internet. So I mean, there wasn't all the information out there. I used to get things delivered. It was called the Gold Sheet. I paid 60 bucks per year. Guys liked that. It had a bunch of loser math in it, you know, talk through every game. I had that, the Gold Sheet. There was Athlon Sports. And so I just had them hanging around because guys, that was their interest, you know? It was fun.

Grant: I guess I have one more question. Working at a bar, is it hard when you're dealing with people that you know are alcoholics, you know, to keep serving them this thing that might be hurting them or for that matter gambling addiction, you know, did that ever cross your mind?

Lazzari: All the time. So when I got out of the bar, I was so ready. I was tired of watching. I mean, alcohol is destructive. I hate seeing that part of it. For a while, I justified it because I thought, well, if I don't sell it, someone else is going to. But after a while I was afraid someone was going to get drunk, get hurt in a car wreck. That kept me awake at night. Thinking about that. I see how drunk people act to their loved ones. Yeah. It's ugly, man. That's what I saw. Who knows when they get home. It kind of wore on me, you know. It isn't all partying and we're having a good time.

And there were people that did that. That's probably a good time. But pretty soon, you say to young kids, "Hey, you've had enough." "No, you can't cut me off." "Come on man, you've spent all your money. Now you're tabbing." When I closed up, I had a thing of tabs. Every bar did that was just common practice. But that part didn't bother me. It's just what you just brought up, man, I get home and wonder how did this guy get home? And I had friends that got DUIs that would leave my place. I belonged to the Tavern Owner Association. We had rides home for them. They wouldn't take them. You couldn't make these guys take a ride home. So, if you can't make them, they won't let you give them a ride, but you let them drive drunk anyway. You're just as guilty as if . . . So that part drove me crazy.

And you know, the other part is, you know, you can scratch this from the record too. They would argue about, I mean, the pot was bad. I said, "I've been bartending since 1980, pot is not the enemy. Booze is. He can tell you." "Well, it's a gateway drug." No. Well, maybe it is. But I think cigarettes and booze is too. If you want to play that game. That's what is interesting about the election right now, because I think that's going to pass. Don't you?

Jaap: I've heard the same argument. Well, but then they could drive. And I think, Oh my God, I see people drive all the time after drinking. Like what's the difference? It's called being responsible.

Lazzari: I don't know how you determine if someone is a danger from smoking pot, how much they can have. I don't know if a blood test lets you know that. How does that work, Clark?

Grant: I don't know. You put a bag of chips in front of them and if they eat them . . .

Lazzari: This thing with the pot. I'm friends with some police officers and even they're like, "Man, it's time. Just make it legal. Why waste our time and energy on a pot bust?"

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