Jim Driscoll

Oral History Transcript of Jim Driscoll

Interviewers: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: March 16th, 2018
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: June 2020 by Adrian Kien

[00:05:33]

Driscoll: Are you going to start, my dear? Or do I start?

Jaap: Well, if you have something you'd like to start with, then by all means, start, Jim.

Driscoll: Well, I think I'd like to talk a little bit about where I came from. And because when Ellen was talking with me about theater that day, she said, "Oh, how did you get into this so much?" And I immediately said, "Brother Jack Fellows in high school." But of course, the answer was I was into it way, way before that. And I think one of the things that, two of the things is really important, that my parents were both kind of world travels, not world, but Western travelers. By that time, my mother was born and raised in Helena and went to work as a telephone operator. And there was a young California guy who came from great money who was just looking around Montana, and he worked for the phone company, too. She didn't tell me this until years later. And they fell in love and they were married and went down to California to be around his parents. And he died within six months. And the parents just kind of said, "Oh, you were his wife, right? See you."

And fortunately, she had an Anaconda girlfriend that was married and living in Los Angeles at this time. And so she took her in. And I guess my mom actually got a telephone related job down there and stayed for a couple of years. One of her famous stories was about being invited for Thanksgiving dinner to this friend's house, who was Italian, and her family lived down there and they had a great Italian feast. And my mom was saying some of the stuff I never tasted in my life, it's even more than Teddy Traparish at the Rocky Mountain. This is so unusual and so neat. What a great way to spend Thanksgiving. And they had about 10 minutes of sitting around and all of a sudden, in comes the American Thanksgiving meal, the entire turkey and twenty five courses and stuffing and everything.

That was after two hours worth of Italian food. So she was down there for a few years and in the process learned a lot about food, I guess. You know, this was a big city. It was a city, but it wasn't a big city. And so she was kind of known at her card parties then afterwards in Butte as being the person who has avocados and exotic stuff like that. My oldest daughter, I told her this a while ago and she couldn't believe people actually went, "Wow. She's the one who serves avocados." And that was true at that time.

And my father was named head of the family at age 16, when his father died of the flu. And he had an older brother, but he was already on his career as a union organizer in Great Falls. And so here was a 16-year-old kid that was named the head of the family with one boy and a ton of girls and it was a real responsibility. And he took it very seriously, apparently. One of the reasons why he was kind of stern and demanding, I always thought when I was a kid and my mother always said, "Let me tell you about that."

He'd started off getting a few jobs in the grocery stores for delivery and things when they were delivering by horse. And he'd come up Birch Hill and have his little siblings come out and hang onto the back of the sled in the winter. The horse was pulling and Jim was a big hero because he had so many interests in things like that. But at the same time then as he got a little bit older, he started to work at the smelter. And apparently everybody in my family, including our physician, brother-in-law, worked at the smelter at some point. And the good thing about that was that you were then an ACM employee and you got the transfer rights. And so my dad was taking bookkeeping lessons from a lady in her home at night while he was slaving away as a smelter boy. And as soon as he could, he made the push from blue to white collar. And the first job that they gave him took him to Butte.

And he was the bookkeeper for the Silver Bow Club when it was the last ditch of its being a private club before they gave up on it because it was too expensive. So he had about a year or so at the Silver Bow Club. And famously on the night they were shutting down, it was kind of like a gentlemen's barbershop, you know, every man had his beer stein and there was like 300 beer steins all around that inglenook bar on the third floor.

And he says to his boss, "Well, it's getting to be about time to shut up, huh?" And the boss said, "Yeah, you said it, kid." "What about all these beer steins?" He said, "They had plenty of time to know about that. They didn't pick him up then. I guess whoever else takes over this building is going to get them. I don't care." So Dad said, "Could I take a couple?" "You take 50 of them if you want to." So he ended up taking about four and dragging them back to his house in Anaconda. "Hey, Gram, hey Mother, look what I've got at my." "Oh, that's very nice. I'll put them somewhere." So then it being as a transfer guy like that, he became a traveling auditor. And it was amazing the number of places that the ACM had holdings.

And one of the great things that happened to him, I think, from that was that he became really good friends with the guy that ran the Interstate Lumber Company in Bonner, which was an Anaconda Company holding. And it used to just be to supply the company. And then they decided, why not make a retail, sell stuff to the public, too? So we had one in Butte. He became great friends with this guy at Bonner. And this guy had just decided to strike out for himself and had bought a 10 acre cherry orchard up in the Flathead Lake.

And so I'm thinking retrospectively, just as I was mulling this over last night, you know, before I was five, I was living in Salt Lake for a while. I was living in Los Angeles for a while. I was fortunate enough to be a four season visitor to Flathead Lake for many years. Just incredible. And at the same time, I was a Butte kid. And so I knew the city and I also knew the rest of the world. And I also knew the country. I got to ride horseback. Learned how to pick cherries. All this stuff, you know. And afterwards, I thought, well, yeah, that's really important because when I was a teacher and kids would be having problems. "Well, let's test them." And one of the things that they would come up with in a test is not just IQ, but also acquired knowledge. And so if you don't know anything, you know, if you're pig ignorant, which my students thought was insulting. And I always say, "It's OK to be ignorant. It's just not okay to be stupid." If you're ignorant that means nobody told you yet. But at that time, it had a slang connotation that was negative. And so I just couldn't persuade them of that. But I thought that was really pretty important when I thought about it later on. I knew what grapefruits were like. I knew what living in big apartment buildings in Salt Lake was like. I knew what picking cherries was like. I knew what riding a horse was like. All before I was five.

And my college roommate, when we got on the train to go to Gonzaga, as we pulled out of Garrison Junction, he said, "Well, this is virgin territory to me, kid." And his father was a foreman of one of the mines and his aunt was the superintendent of schools and very well-connected, you would think, you know, and their family vacations were never spent anywhere but at the hot springs halfway to Whitehall. And he'd said, "Well, except for what I did with the Brothers." So like we went to a speech meet at Missoula one time, went to a speech meet at Helena one time. But other than that, he said he had never been further than Garrison Junction in his life until he went to Spokane. And I was there, "Wow."

So I guess my blessing and my penalty was that I was bright and I skipped first grade and probably had a high IQ. Maybe I still have some of it. But at the same time, I had this great store of general knowledge and I was an only child, and so my mother was always teaching me stuff. I learned to read off of signboards in California when I was two and a half, I think. So that makes a big difference. So where did it all start? It all started practically when I was one year old, you know, and the fact that I had two parents that had a lot more experience with the world than a lot of other parents and also wanted it that way. My father and my mother were both really, really curious and very carpe diem. "What about? Let's go see this. Maybe if I drive up this dirt road..." That sort of thing. I think my dad wrecked two oil pans in his career by saying, "Maybe we should drive up this dirt road." And I think I wrecked a couple more for him later on. So that's the end of that topic.

Jaap: All right. So, Jim, what are your parents' names?

Driscoll: I'm Junior. James Anthony Driscoll and Eva Rose Rummell-Driscoll. So according to what we ever knew about how to figure this out, you know, my wife, Mary Kay and I both have one solidly German grandparent and three pure Irish grandparents. So we thought, "Oh, we're exactly the same." And then we took the spit test from Ancestry[.com] and found that we were wildly different. So they're talking about, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years, not just the couple people that you remember, but it was really interesting. I was like 89 or 90 percent Irish from my Iberia peninsula connections. And Kay's forebears were from the north of Ireland and she was only like 74 or something. Kind of miffed that I beat her by that many points.

Jaap: Was she?

Driscoll: Well, nothing you can do about it. You know, the fight is over.

Jaap: So, Jim, what year were you born?

Driscoll: '37. Two - Twenty-two. George Washington's birthday, when they used to celebrate that as the holiday, regardless of what day it fell on and didn't have to be a Sunday. And there was a nice little article in the paper that my mother saved that said, "Butte welcomes three Georges." Three new Georges. Three babies born on that day. One of which was a girl. And she was not Georgene or anything. I guess it was just a big deal, you know. And my birthday was always themed around George Washington, flags on my cake and all that good stuff.

Jaap: So?

Driscoll: So my parents were living at the Mueller Apartments, according to my birthday certificate. But they must have taken off quite soon after that. I really don't have a good calendar. I know that the typical bare bottomed cute baby picture was taken at 1003 West Woolman where they had the first floor, one whole, full-floor apartment. And my dad's friend, Bill Forwarder that also worked for the ACM offices, took the second floor. And just a couple of months ago we happened upon a Smither's photo with 1003 West Woolman. A Halloween party in the early thirties. And it was obviously the basement apartment because it had a stove sitting out in the middle of it. And I thought, boy, I'm sure that there was never any visible heat source, that things were a little classier by then.

So maybe they just put some money into it by 1937 and had floor furnaces or something that didn't show. That was kind of striking for me to see this big honking stove because all of my pictures from that time were of this clean, nice modern looking apartment. But then apparently within that time then (and it's wonderful as a parent to have those five years before you have to seed your kids over to the system). I can see why homeschoolers do what they do, because it really is great to have the freedom to go and do whatever you want to do. You know, most people end up with children pretty early and don't have the freedom to be a couple for terribly long and they get that extra five years of freedom with your kid before you have to settle down is really nice.

So I guess it was around that time then that we were traveling everyplace, you know, California and Utah and everything. But then at some point in my early grade school years, my father, I always thought this was really gutsy. And my mother didn't tell me about it until years later when I was saying, "He's so mean and he's he doesn't think anything I do is right." And then she said, "Well, let me tell you, you remember when you had to write all those letters to him when he was a traveling auditor?" "Yes." And I still have the packet of them. And I have some letters from my grandmother to him when he was on the road. She said, "Well, his boss didn't really like him and he didn't like his boss, but he finally came down. So after trying sweet talking, he finally came down to his boss and said, "OK. Put me in this Main Street office or fire me. I'm not going on the road anymore. I have a son who's growing up without me. I'm gone for two or three months at a time. Don't want to do that anymore." And so after much, they said, "Ok," grudgingly, you know, "Ok. You can work on at the office right down from here." The one that's up from the Hennessy building.

[00:21:38]

Driscoll: School topic? Maybe you want to go to.

Jaap: Yeah, tell me about growing up.

Driscoll: So one thing Ellen said was, "So when did you first get into theater?" As I told her, high school and, of course, it was way earlier. I kind of think that Catholic boys are born into theater. Because at least in those days, because of the mass and the call-response and it being in Latin. It was all rather mysterious. And those great stories that the priests, brothers, tell on the extras on Butte America about how they used to fight about who got to be the priest, who got to be the acolyte. But I think there's that aspect there. And in fact, I've used that in class at times about the poetry of religion and how that call and response is so...It really gets you. That's the store front churches and the southern black churches are so important in that regard. He says something and the congregation replies. And that one man has a great, powerful central thing. You know, I say this and they all come back with that. Highly dramatic.

But then, for some reason or other, I was really caught up by puppets. I think this happened in early St. Patrick's Times and we talked about this with my high school classmates. And we all said, I think that at that time, St. Patrick's Grade School was kind of like an arts academy. Because people who went to other ones, a girl who went to St. John's says, "I'll tell you, the St. John's sure wasn't any art academy...math, math, math, math." I don't know if it was the fact that Monsignor English was a pretty potent guy in the church. If that was his personal desire, because he kind of was pro arts, or if it was the nuns who weren't supposed to be powerful, but, you know, a lot of women in families aren't supposed to be powerful and they are.

But St. Patrick's had a full orchestra and a band, had a rhythm band, a kindergarten rhythm band with costumes made out of crepe paper. And they put on several plays here. Most of them with some sort of music. They had Sister Rose Cecilia as a private music teacher over in the convent. If you wanted to take lessons from her, which I did. I was given piano lessons from kindergarten age five on. And here's this enormous orchestra with maybe 70 kids in it, practically the size of the Philharmonic, maybe 50. Dunno, but it's big and it keeps on going. I have like four years’ worth of Velas photo group photos of the St. Patrick's Orchestra with which I joined it when I was five because I knew how to play a piano keyboard and therefore I could play a xylophone. And many of my older heroes were in there.

The mayor of Butte, Mario Marcone was the conductor for a while. Two of Tom Schumacher's, the concert pianist, older siblings were in there as well as other instruments. So it was really a big deal. And I'm sure that had a major part to do with it. But Catholic schools got to go to the public schools occasionally. Like we would get to go to a cooking class if you were a girl or shop class if you were a boy. Occasionally, not very scheduled, I don't believe. And you could go to gym class at public school facilities sometimes. So I don't know if that's what it was or not.

But I know that at some point several Catholic grade schools at once were taken down to Butte High to see Inez Haskins' Marionette Theater. And she's worth some research all by herself. I really think I should do this because there's no trace of her anymore. And when I first started to teach at Butte High in 1967, Inez Haskins' little marionette theater, that was about the size of this room and had a built-in stage with the same architecture as the school - the curves and the art deco and everything. This little built-in stage. And that whole thing was being wasted as paper and book storage. Always locked. Right off of the main theater. Maybe they used the main theater. I don't know. But anyway. We went to see Inez Haskins' Marionette Theater, and it was just like jaw dropping to me. I thought it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. She had several skeletons that disembodied. They were double-strung so they could dance a while as together skeletons and then an arm would fly off and a leg would fly off and the head would fly off. And she had all kinds of trick types like that. An alligator puppet for Peter Pan. Wondrous, wondrous things. And I think that was like really early grades. And at that point, I told my mother what I wanted for Christmas was some puppets. I said, "No, no, I'm sorry. I want some marionettes because puppets, you just stick your hand in there like a glove. Marionettes have strings." And that's what Inez Haskins had. And my mother said, "Well, I didn't know you were so excited about that. Why don't you go down and talk to her? She's just two blocks down from us on Silver Street. She's just in the 800 block." Wow.

So I don't believe that my mother phoned ahead or anything like that. Maybe she did on the sly. But that was supposed to be taking responsibility - "You go down there and ring the bell and talk to Miss Haskins, and maybe she'll be happy to know that you're really interested in marionettes." And so I did. And Inez was just as sweet as sugar. And I heard from many people that she was sort of a stern-city. But she was so sweet. Told me all about all kinds of things. Explained how the skill of a puppet worked and everything. "Now you come back, if there's anything you want." So then that was my Christmas order. Now my dad was on the road and he was in Salt Lake City. And so my mother said, "Okay, here's what we got for Christmas."

He bought this kit with three complete body parts unfinished and he sculpted faces for them because a couple years before, out of boredom, he took a sculpture class in adult education in Salt Lake so he didn't go stir crazy and brought a nude sculpture home in clay that hadn't been fired yet. And my mother says, "Oh my God, that's my face." And he says, "See, dear, that just means that I'm thinking about you all the time." And he took that to be fired by one of his friends down at the brickyard in Anaconda. My mother was not fond of it, so it kind of got relegated to the basement. But he kind of knew how to do things that way then because of that. And so he sculpted the faces of the three puppets and put them all together and brought them home at some point in the fall. And my mother dressed them. Big surprise. I was the recipient of three marionettes that Christmas.

That really started the whole deal, I think, I started to put on shows. And it didn't have to involve me. Kind of the shy child that was a little bit pudgy and the only kid, you know, I didn't have brothers and sisters to fight with. So maybe that was even better to be able to put on a show and not be there.

[00:30:13]

Jaap: So did you do these shows for people? Did people watch your shows?

Driscoll: Yeah. Yeah, I did. Built a stage. I had two younger cousins who had a walk away father and my mother and dad kind of adopted them and they just lived over on Washington Street. So I basically sort of fell into a couple of siblings by having these two younger cousins, five years and six years or seven years younger than me. Yeah. So I put on puppet shows for a while, not too long. I don't remember exactly what. I always used them. I always used them. And my mother was friends with Clarice Richardson, who directed Campfire. And later by like mid-grades, I went over and helped the Campfire Girls put on a puppet show and taught them how to build their own puppets. And they put on Wizard of Oz.

Jaap: Really?

Driscoll: Yeah. Very hot stuff. And I think I wrote the script for Wizard of Oz because that was another one that was just like, "Kapow!" I went to Wizard of Oz at the Crystal Drive-in theater, which was a brand new deal at that time in Butte. One of only two, I think. That was the first one, anyway. Right in the center of the flat, you know, where the Crest Nursing Home is now. Got to see Wizard of Oz. And I was just flabbergasted by it. And I was taken by my first cousin. The mother of those two kids, who was 17 years older than me only. So she was kind of almost like a grown-up big sister, or a really young parent, and quite different from my rather aged parents in my mind who were in their 40s.

So we were all drawing breath and after it was all over, I said, "Geez, Mary Lou. Could we maybe stay and see it the second time?" I was almost certain that people my parents' age would say, "Are you out of your mind? You only see movies once." And she yells back to her kids, "What do you think, Pat and Tom? You want to see it again?" "Sure." "OK, we can." You know, there was no such thing as reruns or DVD's or anything like that. If you didn't see it then, you didn't see it for another 15 years. And so, yeah, we got to sit and see it all through again. And I think I had it etched in my mind by the second time around. So I was able to write the script for the Campfire Girls.

And then came the multitudinous plays at St. Patrick's, which happened in probably like fifth and sixth and seventh grades, where you were getting a little bit older and a little bit more reliable, you know, instead of just a cute little kid anymore. And at that time, then I became aware of the Boys' Central Farces in which all roles were played by boys. I thought by the time I got to high school and was not just a gape-jawed fan of this insanity that it was invented by Brother Jack Fellows. But instead it was invented by another brother. And Jack was in these things back when he was in high school. And we have some photos that I'm persuading Irene to see if we can work up. You know, here's my high school drama teacher being a French maid and an old aunt in various roles.

It packed the Fox then, now Motherlode, absolute to the ceiling. Twelve hundred seats for at least two performances, sometimes three. And just beyond belief. He had a friend, a lady friend who wore (I shouldn't say that phrase because that has connotations). He had a very good female friend who was probably one of his high school friends. She was probably the same age. Meaderville Italian girl who worked for the windows in Hennessey's. And she was always able to provide, to steal the wigs off of the mannequins, you know, bring him down to the Boys' Central for the girls' parts. They looked lacquered. But that was part of the funniness, I guess. This boy comes in as this really peppy girl wanting to play tennis and has this clump of blond hair on her with nothing out of place.

Anyway, it was massively, massively popular and the entire city was there. And so that was something to strive for if you didn't want to strive for playing football. And I strove mightily. I did publicity and all kinds of stuff until I finally was given a small part in one play. And it was all over after that. I was just like, you're standing on that stage in front of twelve hundred people in three different tiers laughing at you. Ye gods!

Jaap: So what play was it? Do you remember?

Driscoll: Yeah, it was called "The Arrival of Kitty."

Jaap: Do you know what year it was, Jim? I'm not going to look for pictures of it.

Driscoll: It was '53. And I played blackface for the second time in my life. I was also Jim, not because of my name, but probably because of my nice round Charlie Brown face as one of my daughters has described it. So I was Jim in the St. Patrick's production of "Huckleberry Finn" and I got to put on blackface again to be Ting the hotel gopher. It was a very small part. It was just sort of throwing a dog a bone. And the star parts were quite incredible. It was one of these crazy, convoluted farces that I think probably people actually did professionally in those days. Brother Jack may have seen it perhaps in New York at sometime. It involved a famous movie star coming back to visit her hometown.

And through confusion the guy that's kind of in love with her finds it necessary to impersonate her. So you have two guys dressed in practically twin "vava voom" red dresses and blond hair outfits. It's great fun. Always, always popular. So after that I was decidedly hooked. And as I said in a brown bag talk one time and many other times, I guess, Jack Fellows was a great English teacher and a real inspiration. He practically excommunicated those of us who laughed when we were listening to John Gielgud and doing Macbeth. And Dame Judith Anderson says, "I of infirm of purpose ...[quotes Macbeth...unintelligible]." "Screech!" Takes the arm off of the LP record, which was the only reason we were, the brand new LP record that ran for 20 minutes instead of three. So we could actually listen to Shakespeare on records. And he very sternly said, in his Butte accent, which was almost more like Walkerville, "I would advise these young birds to recall who yeez are listening to. This is John Gielgud. The greatest actor on the British stage. This is Dame Judith Anderson. Beyond that, this is William Shakespeare, the greatest voice in the English language. Pay attention to them." "Sit down and shut up," is how another brother put it, but this was more elegant.

So I guess I want to talk about Butte and what it did for my cohorts. I bought a brick up at the mining memorial a few years ago with seven of my guy friends on there. And at one point we sat around. I think they were all alive when I bought it. Now, there's none left but myself and the pianist. And we were looking at the contributions that were made sometimes monetarily by Stevie Frankeno, who became the dean of the law school in Washington, D.C., and Schumacher, who was internationally touring pianist for community concerts for years and years, but then also just in human goodness, you know, a couple of priests, Ellen's uncle, Rod Shannon. And we all liked Butte. We're proud to be Butte kids. And we found we all sincerely believe that Butte was the only city in Montana.

There are other towns. But this was the only city. And there was always something innately corny or lacking about Helena or even Missoula, which was nothing like what it is today. Bozeman, God, Cow College? And Billings flat, unattractive. Great Falls flat, windy. I went to a lot of those places because I was in the accordion band for the Butte Central Tumblers and we went all over the state. But we were proud of being from Butte and we were driven to do something else. It's funny, one of my early writing students in 1968, when I first came back here and started teaching at Butte High, was Ed Dobb who ended up writing Butte America. And he told me that he only went to his graduation for his parents, and then he immediately hopped the train and went to New York and that he probably would have dropped out of school if he didn't have writing rather than English that year. And I don't recall any of my friends being like, “Get me out of here,” which was a common theme in that time.

And now, you know, a lot of plays at that time written about "Oh, if only I could only get out of this town." I don't believe any of us felt like that. But we all were looking towards something bigger. And sometimes it was a specific person, like Brother Jack Fellows, who would spin tales about how wonderful this is and how wonderful that is. And you really should look for this. Look to the stars. Try to think about what you can do with your lives. Don't be afraid of anything. "Being from Butte is pretty fine I think you'll find when you go out into the world," he would say. Although, he painted such a picture of France that I swore that he must have been there for years. And just last year, I got a copy of the death biography that was written by brother Patrick McCormick, who's still alive at 92 and was a close friend of Jack's. And it doesn't sound like he ever even went to France. It was all in the mind.

He did his masters in French literature at Gonzaga, which is where I went to school. He never said a word about that, but he made so many of us think that, "Oh, this would be what it would be like to be in Paris. This is what it would be like to be in London. And country France and Italy and New York City particularly." And a lot of us just decided, "Ok, let's go there." At that time, being a brother frequently meant traveling someplace on the East Coast because there were no close by seminaries like there were for priests. And also being a nun probably meant going to Kansas. But being a nun, of course, meant that you were in a community and kind of locked up from that point on. Being a brother, there was always more of a sense of freedom with being a brother. And so several of my guy friends took off, sometimes under the guise of going to be a brother, going to be a priest. But in fact, they changed their mind after a couple of years. And what they were was somebody that wanted to go to Washington, D.C. or somebody that wanted to go to New York.

So then I had the great, great, good fortune of having no bites as I went for my fifth year to get certified as a teacher after I graduated from Gonzaga. I went for a half year back to Columbia, got in easily. I hated that. It was totally inhuman, totally impersonal. I only stayed for the half semester, came back home, got my plans for getting married. We sent a wedding invitation to Jack Fellows, who was now in California, or he was in Power Memorial at New York City and he said, "Well, there's a job opening here next year. The money stinks, but it's New York City." Decades later, playing songs from Annie and says "Tonight the why? Why not? It's NYC." Same thing. And so I came to Power to work. And Kate had just been certified as a med-tech. And we set off to New York City. And I say to this day that it's because we were Butte kids, that we did this. That's my drive especially. My family was not the least bit happy about this. But her mentors were. They said, "Now be sure to tell them your board certified. Don't take anything with lousy hours. You're a board certified tech. Don't just let them treat you like somebody that's only had a few courses in this."

So I was teaching at Power Memorial High School for three years on the corner of what became Lincoln Center. That whole neighborhood was known partly as Little Italy or as Hell's Kitchen, not Little Italy. Sorry, Hell's Kitchen. It was a wonderful thing because we had no children. We had no responsibilities. We were 22 years old, living a half a block off of Central Park West. And in a building that is sorely gentrified now. And at the time we were there, I was paying 10 dollars more than half of my net for the month. I netted $295 and I was paying $155 for rent. And everybody in Butte said, "Oh, my God, get them back here right away. What is that insanity or what?" No, it wasn't insanity. It was sheer heaven standing at the Metropolitan Opera night on end. And going to plays on Broadway for two dollars was wonderful.

And so then we came back here because I was also on Long Island for five years after that, our first daughter began to develop a Long Island accent. Both of our parents were "Oh, but we never get to see her grandchildren." So we came back. And I tried very hard to make Butte High kids understand that they really aren't any different than Lindberg kids, even if they don't have people that know somebody at Brown University or even if their father doesn't own the biggest carpet business in New York City or whatever, that you can do it.

Jaap: How long did you live in New York then?

Driscoll: We were in Manhattan for three years. And Long Island for five. And then you had your oldest daughter? We had two by that time. We have one genuine Manhattanite who was born at Women's Hospital up on the North End of Central Park. And then we had a preemie at the time who was born in Long Island, at a great hospital, and who is alive because of that. One of the lead nurses in the preemie department, which they didn't call it neonatal or anything fancy like that, she was a great traveler and she loved South America. And she'd been to Peru a bunch and she decided that what the Peruvian mothers do to their children is what all mothers should do to their children. They should take them with them when they go shopping and they should let them feel. And even when they're pregnant, go out shopping, go out. Do things a lot. Let the fetus/child know that they're doing something with another person. And so she ended up inventing that. What's the brand name for that front's sack?

Jaap: Oh, that I know.

Driscoll: I hope she's filthy rich now because it was wonderful. She was featured in Newsweek magazine about a year after we got back to Butte. But she's probably one of the reasons why we had our second kid, because they were so into that. They had a couple of things that chickens are hatched in. And they call the same thing for a baby?

Jaap: An incubator?

Driscoll: Yeah. The incubators were mounted on these elaborate Gimbel thing where they move back and forth side to side and everything all hours. Then they'd shut off for a while and they turn on for another half hour and mimic the fact that they're being carried by a parent, instead of just lying there inert. It is quite important. So then our final two are Butte kids. They were born after we got back here in the early 70s.

I think there should be more about Butte, but I don't know exactly where we're going. Do you have any leads?

Jaap: We can go wherever you want. So then you came back to Butte and then you started teaching at Butte High.

Driscoll: Yeah, Kind of like the same thing when I finished at Gonzaga eight years earlier, there were no jobs to be had, it seemed, anywhere around Spokane except on the Indian reservations out in the middle of some little tiny island. And so I got on at Butte High as a substitute and kept looking for quite a few years. And finally decided to get all the guns out and try to get on here, and so I did. I was still looking for quite a few years afterwards. I tried very hard to get on here pretty immediately and I got on and was contracted by the end of the year. So I was here for 25 years before cashing it in. At various times we went out and looked around San Francisco and in the burbs of San Francisco, on Whitefish and various other places in Montana. And most of the time we finally just decided, if you want to live in the city, live in THE city, not some other kind of city. You either live in Butte or you live in New York.

Now, of course, we couldn't afford to live in New York. The place we paid 155 bucks for one twelfth of that old brownstone that used to be someone's private home, always nice to remember. We were paying 155 bucks for one twelfth of that. My son was back there a few years ago and fortunately the place across the way was for sale and the realtor's name was on it and we looked it up online and then it had been gut remodel over a period of two years, which explained how every time I Google mapped it, there was this big chunk of black in the middle of my block. But it took that long to gut remodel it into two apartments. And those apartments were on offer for seven million dollars each. Your choice? Nine thousand dollars a month in taxes and fees for the cooperative association [inaudible] two people, for the doormen, for all that other good stuff, you know. So it was really a wonderful window of opportunity there. It was a little ratty after World War Two. Everything in New York was kind of rundown. Everything was not too much more expensive than Butte. Just a little bit, 10 percent or so. But it didn't stay that way long. It's like so many other places in the world now.

We have to ship for our help in. If you work at Telluride, you don't live at Telluride. You live 50 miles away and you get bused in. And that's actually myself and two guys that were childhood friends in Lynbrook were the only people that lived in Lynbrook. Everybody else lived some distance away anyway. Maybe just one more village or so. Some of them went so far as to live in Suffolk County, further out towards the point of Long Island, because that was the only way they could afford it. So I saw a crazy statistic in a rather left-leaning magazine that is the type we usually read saying that a tiny percent of people that are living on minimum wage nowadays have any hope of ever owning a house.

And that ain't America, as far as I'm concerned. If you're working hard and you don't ever have in the horizon the prospect of living in your own house, there's something seriously wrong with that. But that's all right, because we were all trained to be kind of left-wingers, union supporters, all us Butte guys. I know there's some Republicans around here, but they're in the minority. They keep hidden.

Jaap: So was it hard to come back to Butte?

Driscoll: Very, very. It had become way less of an open city than it was when I was here.

Jaap: So what year did you come back?

Driscoll: We came back in 67, 68. It was not as open-minded as it was at all. It was not as upwardly mobile. It was getting more us and them. And that made me even more definite about the fact that I did not want my kids in classes to think that they had anything that they had to be afraid of.

If somebody in Lynbrook, Long Island, can do it, then you can do it. I tell you. And had some interesting success stories, especially when I got to take over drama after just the first year, I think. Helen McGregor was a great all drama lady and she was about ready to hang it up. And I fell into her place after just a year, I think it was. And that was a good thing, because to this day, I'm friends with some of the people who were in my casts. Maybe one of the great success stories and a typical Butte story, I think, is like me staying behind the curtain when I was a puppeteer. I had a couple of girls both named Jill, who were backstage. They didn't want to be anything else. They loved being around the place, but they didn't want to do anything but be backstage. And so they were backstage for The Diary of Anne Frank, which was the first thing that I did. Previously, what had been done was Date with Judy and Henry's Big Moment and stuff, silly stuff like Brother Fellows did, except it was less engaging because you didn't have the gag of having the boys be the girls anymore. It was just kind of dumb plays about dumb teenagers. So I did Diary of Anne Frank. And it was extraordinary.

One of the things I remember forever, I was looking for furniture. I went to one of the Jewish furniture stores on East Park and told them what I wanted to do. "All. Anything you want. Anything you want. Seriously." I said, "OK, you understand this is their little hideaway, you know. I think this piece of junk here, which you probably should not have even kept, should have taken it to the dump. You have a few really ratty things in the back. I think I'd like that." "You only want that? Take this." There were beautiful cups. But, no, they wouldn't have beautiful cups. I really want your tat and your junk. He was so reluctant and so sad he couldn't do more because of the fact that I was doing this great play about significant Jewish life. All I could get from him was junk. He wanted to give me more. Wonderful.

Probably like 10 years later, I think, there was a gentleman that came to my door and we were now living on Broadway Street and his mother had just passed away at the nice apartment house down on Clark Street. Which were really big apartments made for people that lived there all their lives. She lived there all her life and she had just died. And he said, "My mother always talked about you doing Diary of Anne Frank. And so I want you to take anything that you can use in the way of clothing or jewelry or anything for your wardrobe. She wanted that to be in it." Thanks, but there wasn't really much. I took a few things to seem grateful. But the fact that he offered that and she remembered that was kind of what it's all about.

Jaap: That's pretty special.

Driscoll: But I began to talk about my backstage girls. The girl who played Margot Frank, the older sister, has only about 10 lines, but she's integral because she has to be right here to say this to the dentist. She has to be going out there to say this to her mother and the girl gets deathly sick. There was no fake. And so I came to Jill, Jill number one, who lived right down the block from us and was our babysitter, I said, "OK, Jill, you've got to do this." "Oh, I couldn't. I absolutely couldn't." And I said, "OK, well come by tonight and we'll talk about it." And I kind of pressed my wife, because she was kind of 17 years older, you know, a big sister, sort of. And so she spun the story to Jill and everything. "You really have to do this, Jill. There won't be a play. You have to. There's nothing we can do except have someone read the lines from the pit. You've got to do it." "Well, I don't think I can do it." "Yes, you can. It's only 10 lines.

Granted, it's twenty-five stage positions that you have to know, that you have to be there and ready to say that to the dentist. Ready to say that to your father, whatever. But I know you can do it." And boy, she was so scared and she was so reluctant. "Well, I don't know if Jill can run all the backstage stuff herself." "Yes, she can. She knows all the song cues and everything. It'll be fine. It'll be swell." Well, it was indeed swell. And that was fine. And she came out of there just like she had been newborn in the River Jordan. Next year, she took on the largest part ever written for a female. Dorene, the maid in Tartuffe by Molière, rhymed couplets. Thousands of lines, bigger part than Hamlet. She was Dorene. Hooray for the stand-in.

Jaap: That's really wonderful. So you've told us some funny stories when we volunteer on Fridays. I know you have some stories about your kids and getting into some car trouble one time. And you have some other stories that you tell us. Are there any stories you want to share?

Driscoll: Just because they're stories?

Jaap: Sure. Why not? Sometimes that's the best.

Driscoll: Well, that may be true. One story that really resonates to me about how important Butte was told by Pat Williams in 2006 when he and I co-emceed the Humanities Montana Book Fest. And that was when we were publishing three Butte books at once. The Butte women, Ed Lahey's poems, and a reprint of Mile High, Mile Deep. And he told about how his parents used to run the American Candy Store and they had a little apartment up above it for when things ran late. So this is on basically the topic of when did Butte die? When was Butte's heyday? Well, I always thought that it was pretty dang heyday when I was here before I went to college. And frankly, many of us thought when we went to Gonzaga and we went to Spokane, that we had gone into a slightly larger, slightly fancier cow town. The mindset in Spokane was pretty dull, we thought, compared to the mindset in Butte. And everything was, I don't know, everything was more continental, I guess, because of the immigrant thing here.

But Pat told us a fantastic story and he's like two or three years younger than me. So it was even further into our lives in college when Butte was really supposed to be falling apart. But his mother took him up to the little apartment and said, "I don't know, Dad thinks it's going to be busy tonight," when he was about four. Hours went on, went on. She came up and said, "You better get in your pajamas, Patty." He goes to bed, wakes up in what he thought was the middle of the night and says, "OK, honey, you don't have to get dressed all away. Just put on your boots and your outside coat and hat. And we're going home now. Dad's finally closing up the store." At this time, you got to remember that the night liveliness of Butte had nothing to do with stores at night. Like a dozen big cities now or even small cities. Stores are open until nine o'clock. Stores were not open here. And so if there was stuff going on in the streets, it was the product of bars, restaurants, theaters, that's all.

So he steps out with his parents as dad locks up the American Candy Store and they start down the street west heading home, walking home. They lived in the neighborhood up here. They're both holding onto his hands. They go above two storefronts and his dad picks him up and sticks him on his shoulders and says, "I don't want to lose you there, little fella." Because there were so many people pouring down the sidewalks at 3:00 in the morning, that he was afraid he was going to lose his little kid and he stuck him up on his shoulder. That's what I call a city. Even if it was on its last legs.

And my story that I I told to my students many times in terms of, I guess the moral of this was supposed to be social probity or don't think that someone's not looking out for you or looking at you, you know. Don't act like an idiot just because you're not in front of your mother. The crosswalk on Park Street was brand new and the streets were routinely packed with people after school was out on Friday. And I'm pretty sure I'm still going to look up that picture in the Butte memory book that you say you now have scanned a good copy of. And I'm pretty sure that's me and my friends in front of the Rialto Theater on a Friday in prep for a game night. It was loaded with people on the sidewalks.

So we're walking on Park Street and kind of trying out the new crosswalk by going back and forth a few times like idiots. And one of our two geniuses that ended up in big cities, this was essentially Tom Schumacher and Stephen Frankeno. And they both were snickering under their breath, "snicker, snicker, snicker." Ray, who was going to be a priest for sure by that time, said, "What are you guys snickering about?" We also had Jim, who was going to be a priest, and I said, "We just made up this song." This song about brother so-and-so that we think is a big pansy. And here's how it goes. And they sing this very innocent take off of an old song, "Fairy Larry." So you're not going to be able to use this on radio. And Ray especially said, "Shut up. There are people all over the place." "No, no, no, no. You're gonna love this, 'Fairy, Larry. Give me your answer. Do.'" "I'm telling you. Shut up." "I'm half..." "I'm telling you, shut up."

So before they got to the median, he had persuaded them that he was seriously going to punch them in the mouth if they didn't shut up. And they get over to the sidewalk and say, "Gee, what's the big deal with you?" You know, "How come you're so hoity toity?" And he said, "Look at all the people around here. If you don't think there's at least one that knows my mother and father and I have three of my sisters that are going to be nuns and we got a couple of us, including me, slated to be a priest. If anyone ever came down and told my mother or father what you guys were up to and saying that I was within 100 feet of you, I'd never get out until next Christmas, the end."So that was the patrolling of the populace by the entire city. You never knew. When I was in grade school, we had a gang of innocent kids from St. Pat's. They just like to roam around five or six blocks. And there was always some guy or some woman saying, "I know your father. I know your father."

This is not a Butte story. You want me to tell them my aunt's story that I thought was so fabulous. It's an Anaconda story, but she was born in 1911 and so she was five years younger than my dad when he became head of the house. And her brother Tom was two years younger than her. And this took place in about fourth or fifth grade in Anaconda, Catholic school. And he shows up on the recess ground, all bummed out and all mad and down in the mouth, just "I'm not going back into school. I hate it." She said, "Why, Tom, what happened?" "It was just terrible. I hated it. I'm not going back in." "But you have to go back into school." "Well, I'm not going." "What are you gonna do?" "I don't know. I'll run away from home." Wise second grader. He starts heading down the street and she takes after him.

And all of a sudden they hear "Ding, ding, ding." Recess bell is over and she's stuck out there with her truant brother out on the sidewalk. And they could not go back. There'd be no explanation or excuses. And so she follows him around out to Washoe Park, staying in alleys, never being on sidewalks, keeping away from everybody for the entire day. Made it all clear. Came hiking home. My grandmother ran the house, of course by herself. She was highly arthritic. She could hardly get off her chair, but she was a powerhouse and she had plenty of Irish brogue left.

"How was school today?"

"Fine."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing."

"Agnes, what did you do in school? He never says anything."

"Not much, Ma."

"What's the matter with them? Are they sick or something?" She says, "Maybe the two of you better go to bed early tonight. I think that's something the matter with you."

"Ok."

"Well, where are your schoolbooks?"

"We didn't have any homework."

"Ok. Then go to bed."

So they go to bed. They're just getting ready to go to bed and thinking, "Oh, are we saved? Are we saved?" And the phone rings. This was an unusual thing to have a phone because money was really tight early on, but they were up to the point where they could afford a phone, I guess. And this was like 9:30 at night. And my grandmother is highly disarrayed that she has to get up out of her chair and walk painfully over to that damned phone. And so she does and picks it up and says, "Hello. Who? Tis not. There is no nun that is going to be calling a decent house at this time of night." Crash. Hang up.

I can see them both go, "Oh, are we saved? Are we saved? Or do we just have more misery to look forward to the next day?" They get to school and the nun that had made the call apparently had been so much, like she had been with a prizefighter that she wouldn't even meet their eyes. They were never punished. It was never mentioned again. It all came clean. They never told their mother who this outrageous person was. "There is no nun." Yes, it was a nun.

Jaap: Really.

Driscoll: But she was put in her place by the lady from Bantry Bay.

Jaap: So your grandfather, did he die then?

Driscoll: Yeah, he died. He died quite early.

Jaap: Flu?

Driscoll: We kind of thought, nobody said anything over there. God, it was terrible. Nobody talked about our own. Nobody talked about connections or anything. But when Ag started doing a family album, she never had children. And she started doing a family album for we, eight nieces and nephews. She really started it because she had come home after her husband died in Denver. She loved Denver. She was really happy being in a city. But she was told that her older sister who had Alzheimer's and so she came back to help her and tend her and came upon her one day ripping up a bunch of photos. "What are you doing?" "I don't know any of these people. I don't know why I should keep this junk around any longer." So she was ripping up all these photos and that got Ag going on, making this family album for us. And I forget your question.

Jaap: I was curious what year your grandfather died?

Driscoll: Oh, yeah. He died in 1917. My father was 16. And we thought it had some connection with the worldwide flu epidemic. Maybe, but that didn't really kick in big time until the next year.

Jaap: Interesting.

Driscoll: So, don't really know, I'm not quite sure. But I guess another thing that shaped me was the fact that my father's family were kind of uptight and laced curtains, which I guess I'd have to say that both of my parents were definitely upwardly mobile. And the fact that my mother was a phone operator, that was a pretty hot job, especially if you were chief operator and my father kept moving up in the company. And by the time he was diagnosed with lung cancer, he was the chief insurance auditor for the entire company. Which was a pretty good job. He never talked dollars, but I would say that he was probably making, in those days, twice the price of a new car per year, maybe something on that order.

So my mother had six siblings and my father had many more. Some of his died in childhood or youth. One, two, three, four, five, six, total of 10. So he had nine siblings. But my mother's side, don't know if it was being half-German or what, but my mother's family was largely uneducated and not at all upwardly mobile, but really, really fun to be around. A total circus over there. Visited Helena quite frequently and visited Anaconda practically every week to see Grandma. And it was way more fun going to Helena than it was to Anaconda. So I was raised with that different pull, you know. These people that say, "Yeah, whatever, man." These people say, "Please, behave. Tuck your shirt in.”

And the same thing with education. I think most of my mother's family were not big on education. My father's family were big on education. And my mother and father, I guess, they kind of tried to put it together. They were both big on improving. They wanted things to be better. They wanted things to be nicer. They definitely wanted to get ahead.

One thing that struck me, I don't know if this is off topic or not. I don't believe that the Anaconda Company had a pension plan in those days, in the 50s. I'm just trying to put it together. Because when dad was diagnosed, he tried a doctor around St. James. We were only two blocks away from St. James. Eventually, they had to take him to Galen, which was set up by the company as a pulmonary hospital, mainly for people with silicosis, but you can throw an extra cancer patient or two in there. And all of that was covered. But I really don't believe that there was such a thing as a death benefit or that there was any buildup of pension rights or anything like that.

I became pretty, I don't know, for a variety of reasons, I guess, being educated by the Jesuits and everything, I became pretty liberal. And I was talking to my youngest aunt, Ag's husband who came from Goose Town and Anaconda and was in the smelter for a long time, was kind of working uphill and he thought the company was great. And he said that when we were down there for dinner one time, he said, "Well, they treated your dad all right, didn't they?" And I said, "Yeah, they did."

But it was pretty damn paternalistic, you know, as far as I can see, they did this, this and this because they felt like doing it. But I don't see that they ever actually did anything. Three bucks on the table. They managed to find my mother a position as switchboard after my dad died and she was only 56. And so she ran the switchboard for the Anaconda Company, their private switchboard, having been a chief operator once upon a time. And that filled in for her until Social Security kicked in. But I don't recall that there was ever any money. The only thing that was ever shared with me, my dad bought an insurance policy, not whole life. Term life.

He bought term life insurance right before he was diagnosed. Thank God. He just squeaked in, when I was going to go to college. And so that amounted to a pretty nice chunk, as it turned out. It was ten thousand dollars, which was a lot of money in 1960. But he had some issues of guilt about the fact that his brother Tom was delivering his car for him back in 1936. It was in an accident, lost his eye. So Tom was supposed to get 40 percent. And my mother just wouldn't not honor his wishes. Nothing was on paper. But anyway, it was still on a fairly good amount of bucks from that time. But he had that only because he had bought an insurance policy. So I kept trying to figure out, OK, was there such a thing?

And a couple of my friends’ fathers died. Like Mr. Hurley was killed in mine gases and he was an upstanding top level guy and I really don't know the answer to that. It was a strange thing. Was there such a thing as a pension plan, at least for the white collar guys? Don't know. I don't know. I've never heard about that. The definitive answer to that one. Still working on that. The other one that I'm working on is the fact that we're a real life rich man, poor man. And I'm trying to figure that out now with the help of Ellen and the archives. When my dad became head of the family, they were penniless, virtually. Nothing like Social Security. There were no safety nets in those days. My mother just barely made it. Harry Truman, Best Truman were given the first Medicare cards by Eisenhower personally. And Bess Truman's was number one. So my mother was very much helped by Medicare when she developed illnesses of her own and kind of early on. She was known as the runt of the litter and she started to get ill and had various heart things in the 60s. And she would have been dead meat if it weren't for Social Security and particularly Medicare.

So meanwhile, my father's first cousin, via his aunt Mary Driscoll, who married Daniel Dwyer, who was formerly the mayor of Anaconda, and was a great buddy of Marcus Daley, well, eventually their son became the president of the Anaconda Company. He was an enfant terrible that was brought back to the main offices when he was 20 or less and lived in New York all his life and kept working his way up the corporate ladder. And eventually he was the president of ACM. He was probably the vice president of ACM when my dad was doing the books for the bar at the Silver Bow Club. So never any connection between. Is that because the wife was not allowed to do anything for her family, or because she didn't really care? We'll never know. She's in the obituaries of some of the early deaths. Also at the funeral was the deceased aunt Mary Dwyer. But we'll never know.

My dad never told me about any friendship with Robert Dwyer, even speaking friendship. And Robert, according to Rissa, was in Butte quite frequently and just moved up to the top of the Finlen whenever he came, you know, and he was an Uncle Rob to them. But he was nobody to me, or us. I never heard anything about it. And when Ag was prepping this family album, there was another guy in there that looks a lot like my natty grandfather. And it says, "Jerry, father's brother." OK. I knew I had an aunt, but I didn't know what her name was, but I never knew that my dad had an uncle.

And she says, "Well, a fella came through one time, was a little older than me. And he said, 'Hi, I'm Jerry's son.'" And then he chatted for two hours and left. They were terrible that way. Nobody ever said anything about anything. Both grandparents were naturalized as soon as they could be. I asked my grandmother one time about something about Ireland. She said, "I've not been Irish for many years. I'm American." My mother's mother came from Dundalk on the other side of Ireland when she was 10. She was happy to talk about it, but she didn't remember much since she came over at age 10. Ellen agreed with me, they say there's the lace curtain Irish and the bog-trotting Irish, but some of each of that group are the lip-sewn-shut Irish. That she'll never get any information out of. If you explode.

I have one final quote here. Are you ready to close?

Jaap: Sure.

Driscoll: I just came upon this in the quotes the other day. The day in history. It's wonderful. I've always liked Joseph Campbell. And my kids get told about every two seconds of their lives, "Carpe diem." That's one of my absolute favorites. I think of my dad looking for that road. And my mother wanted to be upwardly mobile is part of that. You know, don't let anything go by.

That was one of the great positives I remember about teaching, when I was able to ask how many of you guys, we were doing poetry, and how many of you think poetry is important? Nobody, of course. Maybe two out of 30. Did any of you just see Dead Poets Society, which was a brand new movie at that time? Really, not very many a couple had. I said, OK. Well, there's a great scene in there and you gotta see it sometime. And here's the thing. Just in case you don't. Robin Williams walks his students down this long line like we have at Butte High School, like every college has. And there's all these pictures of athletes looking funny in gear that you've never seen like anything like that in your life. Pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures. And he says, look at those guys long and hard. Get up really close. You can hear them. If you get up close enough and you look at their lips and their eyes, you can hear them. And amazingly enough, they're all saying the exact same thing. They're all speaking to you over the years and they're all saying the exact same thing. And that same thing is "Carpe Diem!" And I have to admit. Well, I actually got some kids going, "ha!" for a change instead of [raspberry noise]. Seize the day.

So besides seize today, Joseph Campbell always said, "Follow your bliss." And he was the great studier of multiple religions. And he almost came to the conclusion that we create our own religions instead of the other way around and we create our gods in our likeness. The Bible says we're created in the image and likeness of God. Joseph Campbell says maybe we create god in our image and likeness because we know that that's what we really want. Maybe we have heroes who give up their lives for the rest of us because we know that's what we want and that's what we need as a society.

But anyway, Joseph Campbell always said, "Follow your bliss." And I thought, boy, if my bliss was easier to follow back in those days, I, for sure, would have. If there was such a thing as film studies at either one of our universities, I probably would have done it. If anybody ever gave me the least idea that you could maybe make a living doing acting or if you couldn't make it in acting because you're the wrong height or you're the wrong something or other you could do voiceover. Or you could be a director. If anyone had ever told me that I probably would have jumped at it immediately.

But the second part of his that they reprinted in "This Day in History", which is even better, I think. This really needs to be said with the "Pledge of Allegiance" every morning at schools, to kids who think that their pieces of garbage and that there's no hope for them. Nobody loves them. And God knows many, many kids don't have any input from their parents at all anymore as drugs sweep us. Parents aren't even talking to their children. Perhaps they're talking to their pipes. But the second half of this quote is, "Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where you were certain there were only walls."

I done it. It's been good for me. It's worked for this boy. So many people that I have run into, you know, I split a bus with the choral teacher at Butte high, one time. We went down to see a play at UM. And we were giving a little talk by Raleigh Meinholtz who had been on drama faculty for many years. One of the kids says, "Can you ever make money being an actor? I love being an actor. But can you ever make money?" He says, "Well, maybe not being on TV. But the two people who brought you here today both consider themselves to be performers anyway, if not actors. I'm an actor and none of us are starving." You know, if you're not an actor, then go teach the damn stuff. Do something as long as you're having fun.

Jaap: That's true. Yeah.

Driscoll: You hear that so much anymore, some version of it, you know, I never heard that when I was a kid. I wish I did. So many people are saying, "Why would I want to even hardly get paid for this job? I love it so much." Or the definition of happiness is to be doing something where you go home at night and say, "Jeez, that was fun."

Jaap: Yeah. I don't think that a lot people do, though.

Driscoll: I don't think a lot of people do. I think we work too damn hard, for one thing. Americans work harder than the Europeans by far.

Jaap: Nate and I were just talking about it. We listen to this podcast and the guy was talking about that saying, European people take two-week vacations, but around here, you know, you're seen as slacking or, you know.

Driscoll: It's terrible.

Jaap: You can't realize what makes you happy until you're able to, like, take that time for yourself.

Driscoll: I swear to God that you've been brainwashed by big business. I really do think that the plutocracy has got us all under their thumb. And they're all turning us into nice little things that do their will. I know damn well that's right with social media. But, like with the ACM company, it started out with no (this is white collar, I don't know what the deal is with miners) no vacation. But after the first year, you had a half a week. After the first two years, you had a week. Then it took you quite a while to get two weeks and it took you quite a quite a while to get three. And my dad had gone from two to three in the last five years of his life. But the fact that that was there, you know. And it was considered, yeah, you know.

Otherwise, I would never have been able to see four seasons up at Flathead Lake. And that did so much for me. And to this day, I think about all of the things I learned outside of school, all the pickers at Flathead Lake were white in those days. They were all local people, they weren't migrants that come in and do it and leave. We would routinely pick up people from St. Ignatius and would become friends with them. We'd be driving through to go up there for cherry season and we'd stop at St. Ignatius and pick them up and give them a ride up. Being there for cherry blossoms season. Being there for salmon-snagging season. Geez, it was almost like you owned the place on the lake yourself, and all because of the ability to take time out. And I find that my own kids, there's no commodity more precious than time. And they have none of it.

We're being visited today by my son and his wife for the first time since we had Thanksgiving dinner at their house in Missoula. Not Florida or Paris. Missoula. And granted, these last two years have been just terrible road-wise. And there's been many times and we'd say, OK, come over this weekend and then have to say, no, don't come over, you'll kill yourselves. Roads are all iced and everything like that. So it's been two really snotty years. Meanwhile, we're sitting here saying, thank God I'm here and not in Ohio. Or not in Boston. Oh, my God. But nevertheless, it's been damn tough to get to and from Missoula. But still, I think the main thing is the time.

I guess that's why I really had a love for teaching and not to bitch and moan about that low money because nothing like having two and a half months of free time. And I actually never had to work in the summer. I'm not too sure too many people had to work unless they decided they wanted a boat or something like that. And a lot of teachers were carpenters for the summer or some trade like that. But, boy, having that time, it's just the gift, as is early retirement. That's another dandy. I don't know how many of you guys are ever gonna be able to pop out of there like I did, because we had such a great pension plan with the school district. I left at age 56.

Well, my oldest daughter just turned 56 this year. I had to remind her of that fact. And it was a little tough going until Social Security kicked in at 62. We had to watch it. It really was quite, quite possible with a solid pension plan. And those many, many unions that had something really similar. It sure as hell hurt during the time. Boy it was so hard to put those payments in. You're only making that much money in the first place. And you have to put. You're only making. I think when I came back to Butte, I forsook, $10,000 was my next step at Lynbrook. I was $9300 my last year. But this is when a new Chrysler cost three, four thousand dollars. And so I turned down $10,000 to come here and work for $7200. 35 percent whack to come home and let everybody see their grandchildren. So it was a little bit disappointing. I'm sorry we didn't get into that a little bit more about the closeness of Butte versus the openness.

Jaap: Sure.

Driscoll: That was a real factor. I could manipulate the kids and I could inspire the kids, but I couldn't do much for their parents.

Jaap: No, that must be challenging as a teacher. I would imagine.

Driscoll: Well, you know, it should be like today. You would kind of like be doing it through the fact that you're doing something like drama with their children. There's all kinds of parents that are gung-ho about the Orphan Girl program. They don't care if the Mother Lode burns down, but they really are religious about the Orphan Girl program. But I probably only met 10, somewhere from five to 10 parents out of maybe 85 to 100 kids that I cast in plays over a period of seven years. They basically really didn't give a hoot or they would come and they didn't feel any need to talk to the teacher and say thanks or the hell with you, or why didn't you give my kid a bigger part? They kept stone. There was no parental input to my thinking.

If you were, can I happen to be back here for our fifth reunion? I think it was or maybe they didn't do it till 10th. And we were wrongly sniffed at because of the fact that we had been gone from Butte so long. And we were dressed up instead of wearing, thank God, not quite as undressed as people are now, wearing a necktie and a summer suit. Powder blue sport coat. "What is he, a fag or something?" That's one of my cherished quotes.

My wife got into junior league. Many people got into junior leagues so that their daughters could get into it, you know, because this was really unusual for a dump like Butte to have a junior league. But of course, it was founded back when Butte was THE city between Minneapolis and San Francisco. And so many ladies wanted to get their daughters in a junior league here where they can get in easily and then they can go marry the guy in San Francisco and they'll be in junior league in San Francisco. How about that?

So Kate joined Junior League and so did her old friend, Jody Corbin. We're still pals today. And one of the realtors, I believe, had a party and it was this new idea. It's a wine tasting party. And at this point, Lera, Corbin [?] and I were making our own wine for about four years with Napa Valley grapes. And this party was so deadly, it was just like I'd met some rich people in New York that were seriously rich people and especially through Schumacher had been invited out to some Long Island and suburban houses for holidays. And I always thought that they were almost like British upper class. They had a sense of...It's a privilege that we have the share of people being wealthy.

But here it was just kind of like snotty rich and the hostess at this event said "So I hear you guys are just back from New York. How long?" "Eight years." "Wow." "And what is it you do again?" I said, "I'm an English teacher." And she said, "Oh, well, I'm sure gonna have to watch my pronouns then aren't I?"

We got together afterwards. I said, “Oh, I'm sure glad that my wife told me to keep my lips zipped now and again." Lera and I sat there and talked about appropriate answers to that for about a half an hour. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn whether you know your pronouns or not."

I actually threw that into my English class. I never liked to call it English class. I called it writing class. Reading and writing. Literature and writing. Literature and composition, whatever. I wasn't going to review what a noun was for somebody that's after 12 years still didn't know. So we were talking about how to use it instead. But I mentioned to kids sometimes what do you consider to be rich? What's your feeling about the rich people in Butte? Oh, it was just like standing on the railroad tracks, you know, the kids go, Oh they're snobby bastards." Kids are over here, “They’re trying to make a nicer town." What does it constitute? How much do you think makes...you guys have a concept of money now since you're seniors?

But what do you think is a lot of money to make a year? And they were pretty accurate. They'd come up with pretty good sums that were pretty accurate. So then what do you think it would constitute? Really rich and just too dang rich for your own good? And they'd come up with things like three times that, you know. Well, you don't know what really rich is. You don't know what being rich in New York is like. You don't know what being rich in big cities is like that's being rich. And you guys get all bent out of shape and all fighty-fighty. And, oh, I hate them because you're talking about five hundred dollars. Your dad makes less than my dad. It's totally silly. I think they actually have a course like this in Butte High, now, sort of like economics for dopes or whatever those books are called in the economics for people who are utter idiots about economics.

Jaap: I don't think it's economics for dopes.

Driscoll: I don't think it's dopes, but you know, economics for people that know nothing about economics. That was another thing that I think was really hot about Butte, you know. Butte was necessary during World War II and so we didn't get whacked by the Depression like many, many other places did. And maybe they didn't get raises. But the fact that they were working and making a few thousand was not all that bad.

And I've told Ellen this one before because John Shannon, who ran the V.A. and he knew her grandpa. My dad wanted me to get a job pretty soon after grade school. Altar boys were given two weeks at St. Patrick's Cemetery by Monsignor English at union scale, which you had to join the union. And boy, that was a chunk of money, even if it was just the General Laborers Union, to have union scale for two weeks. That was a chunk. So my father helped the [inaudible] family found the Montana Pole and Treatment plant, which is now the Superfund site, because they were using dioxins when they didn't know they shouldn't. And I was doing random jobs for Turk as they moved their house out to the site. They got a McQueen house that was on the chopping block and moved it out to the pole plant site. And I was in eighth grade. Ninth grade, I was digging trenches around to put a hedge in. Turk was always throwing some sort of little small job my way.

So I said to my dad when he said, you really need to get a job. So don't you think maybe I can get one from Turk and I work at the pole plant? He is really good to me and gives me a lot of jobs. Well, I've been working on this thing with the BA&P and I don't know John Shannon very well. But your Uncle Tom knows him really well because he works at the BA&P, runs the office. OK, whatever. So Dad comes home. OK, you are starting at the BA&P next Monday. Tom talked to John Shannon. You got a job on the BA&P. Report there. Somewhere up by the Shannon house. We were working on stuff around the Woolman street bridge.

And there was a kid on the team that I knew was from a lower grade and later on ended up at Gonzaga and I became better friends with him. And at the time that I met him at Gonzaga, again, I said I thought you were dead. I seriously thought you'd died. John Shannon. You weighed about 105 pounds and it seems like John Shannon was always tossing an entire pile that had just been dredged up and was all wet and full of creosote and crap and saying, here put this on the truck. I seriously thought that maybe you had been interred underneath the Woolman Street bridge at some point after I left. So after a week, I said to my dad, I can't do this, my God, it's just terrible. So here’s what little Shannon had us doing. And I'm coming home every night and I'm practically dead.

And all of a sudden Turk comes through. "Yeah. You could work at the pole plant." And I looked at my dad and just said, "OK. OK." "Well, I don't know what to tell Tom. He's worked so hard. I don't know what to tell your uncle. He's worked so hard to get that job from John Shannon." "I don't care, Dad. He's your brother. Tell him something. But I want to work at the pole plant." And that turned out to be a real cash cow. It was a tough job, but there was so many hours of overtime because of them needing to get those poles in, you know, within a very small summer in Butte. There were times when I worked 14 hours when there was a major order in from the Montana Pole Plant.

And even at general union wages, it turned into being a ton of money. And I had a figure in mind one time and said to my senior students. Well, I adjusted for inflation. I think the most I ever made in a summer at the pole plant was like $1300. But that was when my father was making $5000 a year. So did any of you ever make X thousand and adjusted for inflation. I get maybe one hand out of a classroom. Well, how did that happen? "My uncle runs a construction company that's doing the new highway project." And it would be something major like that. To just think we were making that kind of money and then there was a whole pile of other high school kids making that kind of money.

Charlie Canty, who created the Butte Fracture Clinic, was talking to him not too long ago and just amazed that I paid practically all my Gonzaga bills from my pole plant checks. And I only needed to go to my parents’ money for food, clothing. And he said, "Well, you know, it happened even in med school." He worked with me out at the pole plant. My freshman year I had to go talk to the financial officer, see what I needed. What kind of breaks I needed on tuition. Out of state fees, all that kind of stuff. What can they do to soften the blow? And they did some nice things and they got it down to around this. And in my mind, I finally thought, bingo. That's how much I made at the pole plant. I can put myself through med school this year. Imagine anyone doing that now.

Jaap: Yeah. I don't think you could.

Driscoll: Yeah. Very distressed at what's happening economically with our country, my children, my grandchildren. It's really unfair. Terribly, terribly, unfair. And has been for a long time. Probably back to Nixon, at least, if not before.

And now with himself in there, acting like the bad boy in the playpen. I have no doubt that that latest tariff shit is going to seriously hurt a lot of people in Montana. Just like the tax, so-called overhaul, hurt all kinds of rural people, all kinds of people with special needs. God. Not good.

But I get stuff from Jiggs Coldiron, one of my stars who made good. She informed her father that she wasn't going to be a lawyer like her father. God, that hurt him bad. She did theater instead and went to London as soon as she could. Has been there most of her adult life. Teaching and directing. She found pretty soon that acting was not the thing. Acting is a bitch of a profession, you know. It really is cruel. I mean, it's like the Miss America pageant practically. If you aren't just exactly this, or just exactly that. You're an inch too tall. Or your voice is a little bit too low, especially if you're a woman.

But anyway, we've had a lot of talks about this, and she says the inequality in Britain is just crashing anymore. They're perfectly throwing old people in walkers out in the street. Their famous health for all plan is not famous anymore.

I seriously have to wonder, you know, what the hell is that going to do to family incomes, if there was no Medicare? We've actually thought we don't deserve Medicare because of the fact that there are more things that we could afford to pay for than we ever pay for with Medicare being set up the way it is. And meanwhile, the exact same thing for one of my kids was punishing.

I think that's a disparity that really needs to be fixed. And so our number two, the preemie, you don't get anything for free, apparently, because she's had some behavioral and mental problems and emotional problems in her life. And I look at what it would cost me to do what she needs. And it's like, oh, yeah, $30 copay because I'm on Medicare, not Medicaid, just Medicare, what everybody is on. And what does it cost her? $195 for a month's supply? Oh, that sounds good. That sounds fair.

Jaap: Yeah.

Driscoll: Same thing with any number of things that are kid related, I'm sure. I don't know how. I mean, we were just stupid and Catholic, you know, we just. Here we go. We're gonna have kids. The idea of having everything planned out and everything and having to say, OK, I think maybe we can afford to have a kid now.

Jaap: Nowadays, you have to do that. Yeah, you have to plan. That's what people do.

Driscoll: You'll be bankrupt if you don't. Probably. If you didn't think it out ahead of time. Nobody thought anything out ahead of time in our time.

Jaap: I was thinking about this morning for some reason. How things change, you know. People are now having to. People planning out, like, you know, all these things before. Yeah.

Driscoll: It seems a little bit. A little bit robotic sometimes. That you have to be so exact and specific sometimes.

Jaap: People are so pressured now. Yeah. Like in a different way. Like, "Oh I have to live up to this standard before I can move on to step "B"." Almost. Maybe not.

Driscoll: Well, you know, there have always been bullies and they always operate in a highly predictable manner. But the fact that they can amplify themselves on the Goddamn social media, now, that's what's so frightening. I mean, bullies were handleable when I was a kid. All it took was a cadre.

When I was in St. Patrick's Grade School, there was, besides in our own class, there were about two guys out of our class of 25 that were pretty much bastards. I remember in fourth grade one time we had a little discussion about who was gonna be the first one in prison. And we were right. He was the one after all. But just kind of like ordinary, "Oh fatty, fatty" or "four eyes" or something like that. There was a cadre of older girls, older sisters in some cases that would just go there and clean the clock of anybody that talked that way. And that was wonderful. It was like you were being protected by some young mothers.

And very often you knew they were the sisters of your friends, and sometimes it would be guys, but not as often. It's too bad that the guys didn't step up. And I saw guys stepping up pretty well in high school. When John, I forgot his name, was football coach. His brother ran Miller Boots for years. He really did some attitude teaching with those guys. And they became mensches, as the Jews say. People that act like human beings instead of like garbage.

And my son ran into some shit from kids because he was the son of this terrible, hard bastard of a teacher that gave out F's right and left. They were gonna beat him up out at Silver Bow Pizza. And a couple of football team guys were out there and hauled off a couple of these basically little twerps with big mouths. John was just like Tom Schumacher was when I was in high school. "Don't touch my hands. Don't touch me. I'm a musician. Don't screw with my fingers. Kick my feet. OK. Don't touch my hands." And so he was released. But then there was this, "We'll get you soon. We'll get you soon." You know, from 10 feet away. "We'll see you again." Just the same old script that's been played over since time immemorial.

So apparently they met John and said, "OK, we're not putting up with your old man anymore. You're paying for it. We're gonna meet you after school today." And he said, "OK, I'll see you there. And you don't mind if I bring some friends to you? There's going to be a bunch of you guys." And he starts reeling off some of the football players that would kick their ass out at Silver Bowl Pizza. Couple nights ago. And it was just a replay of the same thing two of the Sharks and the Jets showed up and there were a lot of bad mouthed comments made. And then the football team cadre started to advance and the other one said, "OK, well, we changed our mind. But one of these days we'll get you."

If only it could step in at that key moment and say, you know, "You're so full of it, you're such a twerp. Go home, you sissy." But now, of course, they have guns. Now they get to go home and stew in their resentment of how badly they've been treated by everybody and then come shoot them. God. I'm not sure that religion solved too much, but I guess it solved that. I don't think anybody ever thought about murdering anybody. When I was in grade school and high school. I don't think hardly anybody ever thought about suicide either. Really.

We were more...We were perhaps the last generation that were content to be like our parents. I've always tried to make that sort of replicate with my own kids. I want you guys to be aware of the friends that we have and see what cool people they are. I knew every one of my parents' friends and I addressed them by first name. I thought I was friends with most of them. Our first Christmas card list when we were first married and living in New York. I think we had like 85 people on the list. More than half of them were probably not my friends; they were my parents' friends and Butte friends. I've always tried to do that with our kids. And I think to a large degree it worked.

They used to come down and sneak down on the steps and say, "They're really going crazy in there, aren't they? They're having a lot of fun." And it was a good thing to see that we were human and capable of being crazy. And that we knew people that they would enjoy knowing themselves and treated them well and were interested in them, too.

I think of these kids that don't have, God, anybody to say hello or goodbye to because they're too busy shooting up. Lord, Lord.

Today is going to be session day, also? Are you doing session today? I think I'm going to bag. I understand that Don Plessus is coming back.

Jaap: He is coming back. Are you going to bag on us?

Driscoll: I think especially since we have company coming in a couple hours, I should just bag it.

Jaap: I don't blame you.

Driscoll: Good. I can't stand being blamed.

Grant: Thanks for your time today.

Driscoll: You're quite welcome. As I had to say at more than one of my kids' weddings, "Teachers don't really, ever really retire. They just go looking for an alternative audience."

Jaap: Is your family coming in for the parade tomorrow?

Driscoll: Yeah, they're actually coming in tonight, I think. We got two batches. We never see anybody. And now John and his wife are coming in for dinner tonight and tomorrow. And just a small visiting of the St Pat's stuff. Valerie, you're older than him. They're our two babies. She's coming in with her girlfriend who is married and is a cop in Missoula and has three kids and Val has two. So they've been doing a lot of things together as the mothers and the kids.

Jaap: Yeah, that's good.

Driscoll: So I think they're coming in and hardly seen us. They're staying in a motel where the kids can be in a pool. While the mommies go out and go crazy. Try to relive their...

Jaap: I don't know, that's dangerous.

Driscoll: What? The pool?

Jaap: No, the mothers going out.

Driscoll: Oh yeah. I think they'll be going out. But I think they'll be going out smally if there's such a word. So they're planning on doing some hopping. But I think it's about time for them to get sick of this whole thing. I'm trying to remember, all of a sudden we started to get this influx of college kids. And we always used to go to the M&M immediately after school and they used to have these crazy things like 35 cent shots of Bushmills and free beer, free green beer beginning at five o'clock. I was down there one time right at 5:00 and we had already had one shot of 35 cent Bushmills. Kay and I.

Jaap: It makes my neck hurt just thinking about it.

Driscoll: Well, this was a long time ago, Audrey. You may have even been in vitro, I don't know. The decades roll by for me anymore. But I'm walking towards the bar and all of a sudden, "Five o'clock free beer! Pass this back, pass this pack." 80 people at the bar running plastic cups of beer. And I'm trying to get up there to get another Bushmills and meet a high school classmate up there. He says, "Don't you know how this works, Driscoll? Haven't you been back in Butte long enough?" "What, Tom?" "If you try to get in the way of free beer, somebody is going to kill you." And it was basically a Butte audience in those days. You know, there were no Bozeman college kids and there were sure as hell no Butte high school kids.

Jaap: Yeah, there are high school kids that go.

Driscoll: That is just too much. It's the childization. When I was in New York and it was the St. Patrick's Day parade up Fifth Avenue. That was a serious religious thing. By various Catholic schools. Basically, we were off at Power, but the public schools were not off. And it was nothing but a boring phalanx of row after row after row of men in suits and overcoats and green, something small, green, like the entire faculties of every Catholic high school and every Catholic grade school and every Catholic college in the greater New York area and nothing else. There was never any decor. Maybe there was a bagpipe band every so often, but it was basically it was religious in your face, seriously. And here we are.

You know, that's in addition to the old line, Protestant, Dutch. You better start getting used to the Catholic Irish. And that's kind of how it was in Butte at the very beginning. It was three-piece suits and hats. KC marching. No entertainment value at all. Strictly afterwards was the entertainment value. When you went to Packy's and you went to the M&M.

But, God, my son, a couple of years ago, said, "OK, I'm officially middle aged." He had come back at Christmas and Curt, his classmate, and they'd been friends since grade school. Curtis just finished a run on Broadway and something or other and was back at the same time. So they met at the Vu. They parked in that little parking lot by the TV station. There was this lippy, 20-year-old, probably couldn't even be carded, if they carded at the Vu. And he starts mouthing off. "What are you old duffers doing in here?" Just a moron picking a fight. Curt is a very handsome young guy. So he probably got called a fag a couple times.

And that really put the icing on the cake. So as they're leaving, I guess these creeps kind of left because the girl said, "You're being a pain in the butt." They left and not too long after that, John and Curt left and they went up to the parking lot. And this jackass who said, "Hey, fuck-o," And to them in the Vu in front of 4000 people had high centered himself on the concrete coping of the parking lot and his wheels were turning in the air. And so Curt and John said, "Having some problems there, Miss?" Talking to the girlfriend. "Yeah." So they got a hold of the back of the car. Took him off of the concrete, got them on their way. Just like nice guys would do, you know? As they're driving out of the side street onto Park, Curt says, "I think I got to do it, John." "Yes." Curt says, "So we'll see you later, fuck-o!"

Jaap: Yeah, I didn't fit in the Vu Villa crowd even when I was the age of the Vu Villa crowd. I've always been kind of a grandmother on the inside, I think. I don't know. I guess I had my first daughter when I was young. And so I guess I just didn't fit in with these people, you know. I thought I just am not into this at all. I just never fit in. I thought this is obnoxious. I've always been a little older than, you know.

Driscoll: Where are you in your family? Do you have siblings?

Jaap: I have a sister.

Driscoll: Older or younger?

Jaap: I'm the older sister.

Driscoll: That always makes a difference, I think. The older sister always says, or especially if it's sister. Older brother, less so because the maternal expectation isn't there, you know. But the older sister always is running the house when mom isn't.

Jaap: Yeah, I'm kind of. Yeah, that would be me.

Driscoll: But that's true, you know. I remember this being a real shock to me. One of my really close grade school friends, we kinda lost track of each other at the beginning of high school and pretty soon he was gone. And he only had the freshman year in high school and went to join the Navy. Came back after some three years or something and came by the house. We made an appointment to meet at some joint or other. And I thought, oh my God, I don't have one word to say to Bill. And vice versa. He doesn't know what the hell to say to me. He's like "mmm" you know, and vice versa, which is kind of what I was trying to get out and too much and a drawn out thing at the beginning.

I was the other in a lot of significant ways. And I think one of them for sure was the fact that I was smart and that I knew a lot of things because my parents had been around the block a few times and they were older than most people's parents. But also they had been to all these places. And, boy, there were very few things that pissed people off worse than the fact that you know more than they do, even momentarily. Really, "Put'em up. Oh, you know that? Them's fighting words." And I guess that was a sorting out like Harry Potter in his sorting hat. The guys that I gravitated towards in high school were always the ones that were street smart, if not IQ smart. But then they were all IQ smart because we're all in the academic enclave of Central. The brothers did it for us. They told you who was in the academic level and who was in the business level. They didn't say, "Where would you like to be? What would you like to make of your lives?" No, no, you're in the business section. Maybe, that's not so bad sometimes to have people make those decisions for you.

One of my favorite cartoons is Jules Feiffer, who was really the cat's meow. When I was young and Nichols and May and all that improv comedy were new and everything. And Feiffer was at least weekly in a couple of different working magazines. And his lead character, Bernard Morgandealer, was a total Jewish, woos, failure. Nebish. Didn't know what to do with his life. And so this gentleman in a posh business hat and a three piece suit looks like he's about 50 and has a nice mustache, shows up and says, "Hello, Bernard Morgandealer. Do I have your name right?" "Yes, sir." "I'm your adult. I've been sent here to become your adult." He starts running off. "And here's the thing I can do. I will direct you to the appropriate girlfriends. I will decide what you should spend your money on, which you should not. And I will forewarn you when you're doing something potentially stupid." OK. We've decided that you really need a good adult. And so it really sounds good to those of us who've been reading about Bernard for a while. And it gets down to the last thing. And Bernard says, "Wow, what's this all going to cost me?" And the "adult" says, "I don't know, what do you think I'm worth?"

Jaap: Jim, I'm glad you came today.

Driscoll: Oh, thank you. Thank you.

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