Jim McCarthy, Historian
Photo Credit: Montana Standard
Oral History Transcript of Jim McCarthy
Interviewer: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: March 30th, 2018
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Archives
Transcribed: September 2020, by Adrian Kien
Jaap: This is Jim McCarthy. And it's March 30th, 2018.
McCarthy: Good Friday.
Jaap: Good Friday. Yes. So, Jim, tell me about when were you born?
McCarthy: I was born, I think it was on a Sunday, October 22nd, 1950. My parents were Tim McCarthy and Irene O'Keefe-McCarthy. I was born at the old St. James on Silver and Idaho. Don't remember much.
Jaap: And you have brothers.
McCarthy: I've got an older brother, Tim, who was born in '46. A brother, Dan, who passed away in 2014. He was born in '47. I've got a sister that's lives in Helena. She was born in '55.
Jaap: OK.
McCarthy: Her name is Mary-Jo. My mother had a twin that was born with my brother Tim that was stillborn, a baby girl. And between my brother Dan and I, in 49 we had a brother that was stillborn. His name would've been Charles. So. Now you know.
Jaap: Where did you grow up at?
McCarthy: We lived at 615 North Excelsior. It's a four-plex, still there. It has a historical marker on the front. And it explains the historical nature of the building. And that's where we grew up. Then in 58, we moved down to 307 West Broadway, which is the house where Donald Duncan, the doctor for Hinze, built his first house. And we lived there until after my mother passed away in 1987. Of course, as the kids married and moved out, then she was by herself with my sister.
Jaap: So tell me a little bit about your parents. What did your mom and dad do?
McCarthy: My dad was a retailer. Pretty much. He was born in 1905. November 5th, 1905. I guess I could probably go back a little bit. His dad and his mother were from Ireland. His dad's name was Daniel J. McCarthy. He was born in 1872 in Eyeries Parish, County Cork, Ireland. And his wife to be, her name was Johanna Cumba Sullivan, and she was born in Allihies Parish by Gortaheke in Cork County as well. And they didn't meet each other until they met here in Butte. They came at different times. My dad's dad, my grandfather came here with his brother Tim. And a few years later, his brother John and his sister Maggie came here. So there were four of them here and they left three others back in Ireland. And their parents outlived all of them. So that was pretty strange.
So I was pretty fortunate this last September I got to go back to Ireland and I got to visit both my grandparents' houses and where they lived. My grandfather's house is gone. You can see the remnants of the stone that were part of the residence. But my grandmother's house was still there and I met several second cousins that still lived there. So that was pretty unique.
Anyway, my dad was one of eight children, six boys and two girls. He was the third oldest. They all stayed in Butte. You ask me. This could go anywhere. So you ask me. What do you want to know?
Well, on my mother's side. My mother's grandmother was born in Houghton County, Calumet, Michigan. Her dad was from Tipperary. His name was Timothy Shea. And he came here as a miner. My grandmother had a sister named Margaret and two stepsisters, and they were Julia and Anne. It was pretty hard. I did the lineage of my family. On my mother's side it was a little harder because her dad had married twice. His first wife had passed away. So they had two families together there. And while doing this research, I came to find out my grandmother had twins. My grandmother was a twin. So that's, I think, in the relativity thing, that's where my brother Tim had the connection for a twin, which we weren't quite sure how that happened. But my grandmother was a twin and her sister died just shortly after she was born. So how strange. My mother never told me that. Maybe she didn't know. I don't know. Anyway.
Jaap: OK. Jim.
McCarthy: And she died in 1935 and her dad passed away in 1927. My grandmother died in 1955. My dad's mom died in 1955. April of 55. I was only four. I remember the funeral. I remember where she was buried out at St. Pat's. But I don't remember a lot about my grandmother. She was kind of an old crank. I don't think she cared for little kids very much. Maybe it's because we were noisy. I don't know. And both my grandfathers, my mom's dad and my dad's dad were both miners and they both died young. My mom's dad died at 43 in 1913. And my dad's dad died in 1914. And he was 41.
And my dad's dad, Dan, when he came, he came with his brother Tim, and they first went to work at the smelter in Anaconda. And my dad's mom, my grandma, my grandfather's mom was a Dwyer. And her uncle was the mayor of Anaconda. Dwyer that was mayor of Anaconda, who was a friend of Marcus Daly. And the family story is that they came to work at the smelter at the request of Daly to have the Irish miners from Cork come to Anaconda. So that's when he came and he started in Anaconda, and then he moved to Butte. And my grandfather's brother Tim married a lady named Johanna Flanagan from Anaconda. And then they moved here.
Jaap: So do you want to tell me a little bit about growing up? Where did you go to school?
McCarthy: We grew up on Excelsior Street. And it was pretty busy. And we went to I.C. first, Immaculate Conception. We are your typical Irish Catholic, Democratic Butte people. So we went through the I.C. We had the nuns, they were the sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And they had a different habit than the nuns from St. Pat's, which he went to later. Those were Sisters of the Charity. They wore different habits. We can do that another time. That's a whole different thing. But anyway, we lived on Excelsior Street and my uncle Neal, who was a doctor, Neil O'Keefe, he lived at 601 Excelsior, which is right down the street. And the house was painted green and yellow a few years back. They call it the Packer house. Really odd colors. It's white now. Matter of fact, Kesly Wilcox, Kenny Wilcox, my friend, his daughter just purchased that house with Matt Stouten. So, yeah. So they live in my mom's house where she grew up. Anyway, he lived down the street and my mom's brother, Ray O'Keefe, lived up on Lewisohn which was pretty close.
We did a lot of things in the neighborhood. We had a big lot behind our house that we used to play baseball in. And as we got older and the kids got a little stronger, in this field that we played in, as they could hit the ball further. There's a big bay window in this house on Antimony Street. A family by the name of Wigginstein lived there and they had a big bay window, an east facing bay window. And as we got older, like I said, the kids got stronger and there was a cement wall that was probably 50 feet from this window. And the home run was after you hit the wall, hit it over the wall from home. And as we got older, some of the kids realized that they had to switch and bat opposite handed so they wouldn't get all these home runs all the time. And I remember playing on this team with this fellow, Bill Pollich and I was on third base and he came to bat and we were getting really thumped. And he said, "I'm not going to bat left-handed; I'm going to bat right-handed." And everybody was yelling and screaming because you couldn't do that because you'd hit a home run. Well, he did. And he put it right through the middle of that bay window. And he just dropped to the ground. And I remember running from third base all the way down the lot, down onto Woolman street and down Excelsior and anywhere I could go and be a long ways away. Because I didn't want to get blamed for breaking a window. So, you know, we were always told not to do that.
Jaap: Who got in trouble for that?
McCarthy: He did. And he owned up to it. And he was in trouble.
Jaap: He did?
McCarthy: Yeah, he did. Yeah, he got into trouble. But he was at least three years older than me. But that was a memory. The same lot, we used to sleigh ride in. It was a sleigh ride from Antimony Street down through the alley, down to Woolman Street. So it was pretty unique.We used to have rock fights. Oh, my God, yeah.
Jaap: Rock fights?
McCarthy: We used to have them in this lot . . . There was like a neighborhood boundary on Antimony Street. And the kids that lived up on Antimony and above were like in a different group. So we used to have rock fights with real rocks. Yeah. God, it was awful. We should've never done that.
Jaap: Why rocks? They were there?
McCarthy: Well, because they were there. Yeah. Like, what else is there to throw? I don't know. I don't know.
Jaap: No one broke a window in a rock fight?
McCarthy: Car windows. Cars were hit. I remember that. I never did that, though. No, I think I was always too afraid of getting into trouble. My dad was pretty strict, so I'd made sure we didn't do that kind of stuff. We towed the line pretty well. And if you broke something, you had to pay for it. That was really nasty. That. You know, money was pretty hard to come by. But we did have a store that was right up the street called Peddlers Store. And then it became Gulls' Grocery. There was a guy named Wilbur Peddler that owned the store. And they had penny candy. You know, you could buy all this penny candy. So we used to walk up there all the time. We had to cross the street and go into this other neighborhood. But my cousin Ray or my uncle Ray and his kids that were my cousins, the O'Keeffe's that lived up on Lewisohn. And so they were in this other territory. So it was kind of OK, we could pass through there when went to the store. So long as we didn't hang around up there.
Jaap: On their turf.
McCarthy: Yeah. Exactly. It's strange. But they did have turf areas and that extended in different ways too, both east and west, north and south. You know, we had to walk everywhere. If we went to the movies on Saturday, we had to walk downtown and we had to walk to school and walk to church and walk to the store. In front of the Anselmo mine yard at the corner of Excelsior and Caledonia. The portion of the fenced-in area there had a big grassy area where we used to play football, tackle football all the time. Then the Excelsior Meat Market was right across the street, so we would go there all the time. Joe and Mary Malovac owned that. They were pretty good friends. We knew most of the neighbors up and down the street. You could probably go through and name all these people that lived in there. There are a ton of people that we knew. So whatever we did, people knew who we were as well. So if we did things that weren't on the up and up, we'd always get squealed on. So you could ever do anything without getting caught. So. My mom used to always say when we got caught doing something, she'd say, "A little bird told me." Yeah. She always knew somehow. So there were squealers all over.
Jaap: Kept you in line.
McCarthy: Of course. Yeah.
Jaap: So what kind of jobs did you do to get your money?
McCarthy: Well, when we were up on Excelsior Street, we moved in 1958, so I was only eight years old, seven. And we moved down to Broadway Street. When we moved down to Broadway, my brothers had a paper route. And I remember shining shoes, you know, just like Stevie Faulkner. Everybody laughs. That was a big thing. I remember for my birthday one year, I wanted a shoeshine box, which I still got. And if you got over by Park and Main and you got the guys to come out of the bank, the bankers would come out and you could make some money shining shoes. It was pretty cool. You know, I was only 7 or 8 years old. But I don't know if I would let my seven or eight year old go over town and shine shoes, but . . .
Jaap: I don't think I would.
McCarthy: But we did that. I remember when we lived on Excelsior, we used to walk up to the Big M all the time. And really if you think back my oldest time when I could've done that, when we lived there, I would've been seven. I don't think I'd let my seven year old walk up there, but we did it all the time. I remember when we lived on Broadway, we used to ride our bikes everywhere.
[00:17:26]
As we got older, I mean, that's how you got around. I mean, walking was one thing, but when you could ride a bike that just made it really . . .
Jaap: You could go places.
McCarthy: You could really go. That's where we really learned a lot about the flat and the hill. If you stay on the hill it's pretty good. But if you go on the flat and then you've got to peddle home, that's all uphill. And there was no three speed or 10 speed then; it was just one speed.
Jaap: Yeah, I know. Pushing that bike up the hill, I think.
McCarthy: I remember the big thing was you always took the fenders off your bikes because they always seemed to get bent. So everybody always took their fenders off, and it looked pretty cool, I think, except when you went through the puddles or if it was raining because all that mud would come back up and fly up on your back. So that was silly. But I think we made up for it. Because we used to always buy baseball cards and we used to attach them to the back of the axle with clothespins. Clothespins were pretty big then, too. Not a lot of dryer's around. So people hung their clothes out to dry. So there were clothespins everywhere. If you ever needed clothespins, you could always borrow them from the neighbors' because they always had a bag out there with their clothespins in it. So they could always get clothespins. And I remember using baseball cards, but you always used the baseball cards that you didn't like because you had to bend them and get them in so they'd flap and make noise. So you didn't want to use your good baseball cards because, you know, they're a little more valuable. So you took the teams that you didn't like. Those were the cards that ended up being for your bike to make noise. It was pretty crazy.
What else? What else did we do to make money? We shoveled sidewalks. I remember around Christmas, we used to Christmas carol. It was really awful because, God, I hate to sing, but it sure was nice if you could make some dough. But there was always a group so you could kind of fake it and somebody always carried the tune. If you just kind of lip-synced, kind of. But we used to do that. That was pretty silly. What else did we do?
Jaap: Was this an organized group that caroled?
McCarthy: No, it was just some guys who wanted to make some money to go to the store, you know, to make a couple bucks. Well, it wasn't a couple bucks. It would make like 75 cents or 80 cents or something was pretty big. You know, that's big money, then.
I remember going to the show. I think the show cost a quarter. So the Montana, Rialto and the Fox. Most of the ones I remember. The last show that I think I saw at the Rialto was 101 Dalmatians. I think after that they tore it down. In the 60s, yeah. And I remember when they tore the Montana down. I don't remember the last show that was there. There was a barbershop on the corner there by the Montana Theater. The guy's name was John Allen that ran it. And we used to go there every two weeks to get a haircut, always. And I remember my dad always gave me money to go there and it cost 50 cents to get a haircut. And if we didn't go there, we went to George Sorofield or Frank Latimer at the Fashion Barbershop in the middle of Broadway. Next to the Miner, newspaper publisher. And my brother Tim used to get his afternoon papers there, the Daily Post. They used to get their papers, too, down where the Muddy Creek is now, the Irish Times. That used to be the Standard Building, that's where they used to get their papers in the back.
Jaap: You never sold papers?
McCarthy: No, I never sold papers. My brothers did, but I didn't. We didn't do much. We mowed grass. Shoveled sidewalks. Ran errands. We had several stores by us when we grew up on Broadway. We used to go to the Courthouse Grocery, which is Lee's Office Products. It was Courthouse Grocery. And we used to go to Safeway, which was [inaudible] photography over by the Vu Villa. I distinctly remember going to the Safeway for my mom. And you could get a half gallon of milk for 50 cents and a loaf of bread for 28 cents. And if my mom gave me a dollar, then I could have the change. I always thought that was pretty neat. And then the prices started to go up. So that kind of infringed on your spending capacity. But that was pretty neat.
Jaap: So high school. You went to Boy's Central?
McCarthy: I went to Boys' Central, Butte Central. It was separated then. The girls went to Girls' Central. Boys went to Butte Central. It was two or three years after we graduated that they changed that and made it coed. So I was with mostly, they mostly had brothers when I was there. They had a few other male faculty on staff. But there were quite a few brothers then. And it seemed like the next couple of years that really dwindled down. And there weren't so many brothers. Vocations to the brotherhood kind of dwindled through the years as well.
I was an altar boy, too. Not at the I.C., but I was at St. Patrick's. Probably sixth, seventh and eighth grade. So I served a lot of services.
Jaap: And was your uncle a priest?
McCarthy: Oh, yeah. My dad's oldest brother, John, and his wife, Ann, she was a Harington, he had three children, the oldest was John Junior, and he's still alive. He lives in Dubuque, Iowa, and he's a monsignor. And he was in Italy for a long time at the Vatican. And now he's back in Dubuque. I think he's in a rest home, but he's retired. And he had a brother, Jim that was a priest. And he passed away a few years ago. As a matter of fact, his house exploded down on Maryland Street, had a gas explosion when he was in the tub.
Jaap: When he was in the tub?
McCarthy: He was in the tub and they had a gas explosion and he made it out. But it eventually killed him. I think he had a lot of smoke damage. And he was in the hospital ever since that. And he survived probably about a year or so. But it burnt his house down. It was a fourplex. And he lived on the top floor. The power company had a gas leak in their gas line. It blew up one Sunday morning, so that was pretty bad. And they had a sister, Sister Mary, sister Anita Francis, and she was a nun. So they had two priests and a nun came out of that family. I guess for the Irish Catholics that's a real blessing to have three in your family have a religious vocation. So for them, they thought they were pretty blessed. I thought it was really too bad. But . . .My uncle, Father Charles, he thought I was going to be the priest in the family. He thought my mom and dad were going to have a priest out of their family. They thought I was gonna be the priest, but it never worked out.
Jaap: Was he disappointed about that?
McCarthy: Well, yeah and no, I think. Because I was the last boy left, you know. But, no, because he knew I wasn't going to be a priest. But, yeah, it was interesting. But I do remember - I don't know if it's sacrilege or if it was just things of the time - I remember my mom and dad had a bedroom dresser with the mirror and the drawers. A bureau with a big mirror. And every once in a while when we were young, we used to pretend we were going to say Mass, you know, so you take a towel and put that around your back. That would be like the stole for the priest, you know. We used to take bread and take like a shot glass. And put a shot glass on the piece of bread and turn it around in a circle and make these little wafers that look like a host, then kind of flatten them out. So then we used to serve communion and stuff. Pretty crazy, but we were little kids. That's something you learn. You learn in church that everybody takes communion, so we did that.
Jaap: It's part of your life.
McCarthy: Yeah. And I think my parents must have told Father Charles about that. And they thought, "Oh yeah, he's going to be the priest guy. This is going to be the guy." It didn't work. But it's a memory, though. It was pretty strange. That didn't last long. But it was fun. Maybe that's why my brother, Tim, likes those Necco wafers. I don't know. They're pretty similar, pretty similar. Of course, I don't think he likes the white ones, you know.
Jaap: So what year did you graduate?
McCarthy: I graduated from Central in 1968. It's our fiftieth anniversary this summer.
Jaap: That's a big deal.
McCarthy: Yeah, it is a pretty big deal. I don't know if I want to go or not, but probably.
Jaap: You'll go.
McCarthy: I'll probably go. Yeah. I'll probably go. I was always a class officer when I was in high school. I was on student council. The student council treasurer, when I was a senior. Wasn't a prom king or any of that kind of stuff. It wasn't down my lane. It just wasn't in my stead, but. High school was fun. It was pretty good. I did OK. I wasn't the smartest. I wasn't the dumbest. But I competed. I did OK. My spelling was pretty good. My spelling was pretty good. Even in grade school my spelling was pretty good. If we picked teams, it seemed like they always wanted me to be on the team.
Jaap: Did you play sports in high school?
McCarthy: Oh, God, no. Oh, God, I was awful. Well, I don't know how awful I was, but I needed glasses since I was in the first grade. So for me to play football or anything without glasses would be awful. It's really hard to see, to be a defender and try and block a pass or something if you don't have your glasses on. And it's really hard to see where you're supposed to run if you don't have your glasses on and see who is going to tackle you or to catch a pass or all that stuff. And it was in the days where I'd tend to break my glasses a lot. I was one of those guys that had the black electrician's tape on the corner of your glasses all the time. Right here because they'd get broken. I'd always get in trouble because those glasses are expensive. "You know how much it's going to cost to get those fixed?" So I tended not to try and break my glasses. So there was no way I could play sports without glasses. I did try and wrestle in high school, which was really silly, and I couldn't see there either. So at the very beginning, when you stand up and wrestle, you know, you could see and you could see a form coming at you. But you couldn't really tell until you got in position and he grabbed you, then you could deal with it because you were so close. I didn't care for that too much either. You still need glasses if you're going to do that. So I didn't do very good at that. Football wouldn't work, you know, with a helmet and all that. That didn't work. And basketball, doing rebound. And that always seemed to be a problem. So I wasn't really a stellar athlete. But when I was a freshman, I was only 125 pounds and only 5'3". When I graduated, I was 5'5" and I weighed 158.
But when I came back at my freshman year - I went to Gonzaga my first year in college. And when I came back at Christmas, I was 6 foot and weighed 185.
Jaap: How did that happen?
[00:29:55]
McCarthy: Well, during that summer between when I graduated and when I came back. I'd grown quite a bit. And I lifted weights when I was at school. So I had grown quite a bit. So what I was then, it wasn't the same as when I was in high school. That's when I grew up. Everybody said, "God, you should've played sports." I said, "No, I was just a little shrimp."
Yeah. I wasn't that big. Yeah. So that's pretty different.
Jaap: Did you just go to Gonzaga for your first year?
McCarthy: I went to Gonzaga for a year.
McCarthy: My brother, Dan, graduated from there. He went there for four years. So I kind of followed in his footsteps. I loved it. It was great. I liked to go there. But it was really spendy. I didn't have a scholarship, so I had to work and I saved my money and I was lucky enough to go there for a year. I met a lot of friends. Still in contact with a few of them. One of them was the mayor of Spokane. My roommate was mayor of Spokane. He's an attorney. He was going to be a doctor. I was going to be a doctor, which was silly.
Jaap: Is that what you wanted to be? A doctor?
McCarthy: Well, when I was little, you know, even when I was going to go to school, I thought I might be a doctor. There is no way I was going to be a doctor, ever. I'm no science guy. I hate math. I liked anatomy and biology and stuff. I did really good there. But math and physics and stuff weren't my bag. Science wasn't my thing. So that changed.
Anyway, I went to Gonzaga for a year and then I switched to Missoula and I finished Missoula and I finished in December of '72, but I didn't have my paperwork in time, so I didn't graduate until spring of '73. So I was done in December and I didn't graduate until '73. But I was working and I got my diploma in the mail and the postman gave me my diploma. So I didn't walk the stage or anything. I didn't want that.
I graduated. It was pretty cool. I think one of my favorite teachers was probably K. Ross Toole. He taught Montana history. Oh God, he was awesome. It was really neat when he started talking about Butte and Butte history. That was really. That was pretty stellar. And some of the kids that I went to school with and I lived with were Butte guys and we all had this Montana history class at the same time. That was pretty unique. And there were several times that K. Ross Toole noticed that we were the Butte guys. That we're taking this class. So he always kind of looked at us when he talked about Butte and the copper kings. So that was pretty unique. Pretty cool.
Jaap: Is that where you found your interest in history was from him?
McCarthy: Yeah. Well, I always liked history - growing up in Butte. You know, Butte has a real connection with history and past and cultures and I think my family was really integral in that. Not so much pushing history, but just as you grow up, it never failed that whenever we'd bring people home or that my dad would always ask these kids who they were and who their parents were and where they lived. And it always seemed like he'd always make a connection between who their parents were or where they worked or some kind of connection. And then once you make that connection, then things are a little closer and they're more personal. And I never realized it for, oh, God, a long time how this is how Butte works. And not only my dad, but at least all the Irish that I know. That's always how they make their connections and conversations when they meet people, you know, who are your parents and where do you live, where did you go to school? And they ask all these questions and it's almost like third degree, you know, like, why are you doing this? Why do you keep asking all these questions? But they want to get this connection. And once they establish this connection and then the friendship begins. And that just seems like how Butte and Irish people tend to make those relationships. And you don't see that a lot elsewhere. At least I don't. But in Butte, that's how it works. And to me, those that are really Butte Irish and Butte folk, that's what they do. And that's how they make their connections even these days. It's interesting to see because I watch it all the time. I'm a people watcher and analyzer, I guess, as well as a history nerd. But that seems to be how relationships and all that interpersonal connectivity in Butte goes on.
Jaap: Yeah, it is.
McCarthy: And that's how it works. So I think that's what makes Butte people the way they are. It's the difference between other people, I think. That's just me. Uh, what else?
Jaap: Do you have more stories from your college or would you talk about what you did after?
McCarthy: Well, I lived on campus. I lived on campus at Gonzaga for a year. I lived in the dumpy dorm that was there called the DeSmet. Our floor was called the zoo. I was our floor representative to our dorm council. I had a lot of friends. I am still in contact with a few of them. In Missoula, I lived in the dorm. I lived in Aber for a year. That was a little different. Not as close. A different relationship. And the next two years, I lived with other Butte guys. We lived off campus. That was pretty good.
During the summers between school. After grade school and going into high school, I worked at St. Pat's school, was kinda like a janitor with some other guys and we cleaned the school during the summer and we got paid sixty three and a half cents an hour, five bucks a day. That's what we got paid for, God, we washed walls and mopped floors and waxed floors and we did everything to get the school ready for the next year. That was pretty wild. I learned a lot. Phil Tellings dad was my boss, Buzz Telling was his name. He taught me a lot. He was quite an old guy. Then the next couple years, I worked at St. Pat's and Holy Cross Cemetery. Monsignor English was kind of the overseer of the Catholic cemeteries and being from Saint Pat's, where he was the pastor, a lot of St. Pat's kids worked out there. My brother Dan worked out there. My brother Tim worked for a fella named Steve Davidson, who put in vaults, the cement vaults in the ground. So he worked for him. I worked at St. Pat's and Holy Cross. Buried a lot of people. Mowed a lot of graves. Remembered a lot of places where people were buried. A lot of the things were significant.
Jaap: That's handy for you now.
McCarthy: Oh, God, yeah. I know my way around cemeteries really well. I knew some guys that worked next door at Mount Moriah. So I'm familiar with Mount Moriah. And now I am really familiar with all of them. I know all the Sextons and the owners of Mount Moriah and Mountain View. And we tend to go out there a lot to visit. I help Chris Fisk with his history club. And they do a lot of cemetery searches for historic Butte people and stuff, so. That's really helpful, that background's pretty helpful.
But I remember digging graves. They had a backhoe to dig graves. But I remember our backhoe was broke down and we dug several graves by hand, which was pretty strange. Yeah. Saint Pat's is a lot harder because it's clay. Holy Cross was a little easier because it's sand. That makes a big difference when you dig a six foot grave. That's pretty crazy. I remember at Holy Cross, I moved a guy named Poytress. We moved him from St. Pat's to Holy Cross so he could be with his wife. And it was kind of sacrilegious when we did it, to me, I thought. We dug this grave up, dug it up with a backhoe. And when they got down to the cement vault, he scratched along the top of the vault with the fingers on the backhoe. And you just hear it grate along the top of the cement. And when he got that cleaned off, we had to get down and dig that part out by hand. Clean all the dirt off of it and get underneath it and hook a chain to it. Take the top of the vault off. And then we had a crawl down into the gravesite and hook a chain around the casket. And then hook it up. Then they picked it up with a backhoe and put it on the back of a dump truck and we brought it over to the other cemetery. Then they laid him down next to his wife. I thought that was really kind of - It was really kind of sacrilegious. I mean, they go to all that ceremony to put him in the ground and then we move him and, you know, there's nobody, you know, no pallbearers and there's no hearse or anything, you know, your ride is in the back of a dump truck. I thought that was kind of sacrilegious. But we did that two or three times. I remember where we took these people from. So that was kind of significant.
Jaap: I never thought about that side of it. You see in the records all the time that they moved people.
McCarthy: That's how they do it.
Jaap: You don't think of that.
McCarthy: Pretty crazy. Yeah. Pretty crazy. A lot of different stuff. Yeah. We buried a lot of people. Filled the graves in. It was pretty sad.
Jaap: So are you helping out with the St. Pat's restoration project, Jim?
McCarthy: Yeah, no. I told Pat Mohan we'd help. That the history club would help do something with that, but we've never done anything as far as the cleanup or the restoration that they've done already. They've done a lot of work out there. There's no watering system in St Pat's. So it's really not very good. But this last year was really good. There was a lot of rain and it looked really good. And they had it cut and clean, really good. Cut down a lot of trees and a lot of stumps. Straightened out a lot of vaults. And copings and a lot of the granite blocks that were out there. So they've done a lot and it looks really good. But what we wanted to do was help identify some of these grave sites and put a new numbering system out there for them. And I've done a lot of work on helping do that. I understand the different methods that they had for numbering the grave sites. The D.A.R. did a project years ago. The lady that did that just passed away recently. Mrs. Miller. And what she had done was set these blocks up in a different - A through U sections and then numbered them in rows from one to ten in these blocks and I understand how that works. It's not really very good, but it's OK. And once you understand how it works, it's manageable. It's not very precise. And the only downfall is she did it according to the headstones that you could read at the time she did this. Some of those are either less legible than they were then and some have disappeared and some may have been moved or broken or damaged or whatever. So some of the markers she had aren't there anymore. And a lot of them that are buried there that don't have a marker aren't recorded. So hers are really . . . it's factual, but it's not complete.
And a lot of the records at Holy Cross are similar to that. And they're numbered better. And their number system is kind of based on the construction and the growth of the cemetery from the beginning to the end. So it kind of goes like in a circle and then it's hodgepodge here and jump over here and jump back over here. And once you understand how that works, it makes it easier. And the dating is easier, but it's still kind of complex. So I told Pat we could try and do something with that, but somebody is going to have to determine what numbering system they want to work and it has to be something that's already established. You can't start a new numbering system for stuff that is that old. So you have to work within the confines of the numbering systems that you have. So the records would probably indicate that the stuff at Holy Cross that they keep with the Catholic cemetery should be the actual data to make this work from. But we'd still have to make up some design where this is workable. And you could see it on site as well as up here where people look for things. So it would be a workable database as well as a mapping system where you could, you know, configure both things together and find things easier. And once we get that done, then we can mark some of these graves that are out there with some kind of a numbering system that would work. But until that's on the page where everybody wants to do it the same way, then you shouldn't go mark any of these things out there and change the numbering. As a matter of fact, last time I looked out there, it looks like somebody sandblasted all the headstones that did have markings on them. So a lot of those are missing now. So those numbers that were there, a lot of them are gone. So it makes it even harder to find them.
Jaap: That's good to know. So I can quit telling people to look for the number.
McCarthy: Yeah, well, I went looking and a lot of them are gone and they look nice. You know, the numbers are gone. Some of the numbers weren't printed very well. And like I said to Pat, we've got some kids that are pretty talented. And when we go to number it, we will number it so they're done well. But some of the ones that were out there, you could read them. Now they're gone.
Jaap: Oh, that's too bad.
McCarthy: So that makes it even harder. So if you don't know your way around there, it'd be really hard to find things. So it's difficult. And also out at Saint Pat's there were some that were buried too deep. Some were buried nine feet deep. So there's one on top of another. That's common for younger kids, you know, little kids and stillborns and that, that were buried with their moms or grandmothers and stuff like that. They were buried on top of each other which is pretty common. But some of these other ones were two to a grave. That makes it even harder.
Jaap: Anyway. OK.
McCarthy: So back to where we're at. Sorry. I digress a little bit sometimes.
Jaap: You're perfect. So after college, what did you do? Did you come back to Butte after?
McCarthy: You know what? I graduated in December, well I finished in December of 72. And I started to work full time in May of 73. And Mike Micone was the mayor and he hired me. And Don Peoples was my first, I guess, public works boss. So I started at the public works on May 2nd, 1973. And it was really sad because that whole year before that two of my friends and I had talked about going to Europe. We wanted to tour Europe. And a friend of mine was in the Air Force. And he was getting out that summer. So the four of us were going to travel Europe and spend some time and see all this stuff. And I really pushed because I really wanted to do that. So I got this job in May. And the first part of June, these guys said, we're going Europe, are you coming with us? And I said, "God, no, I just got a job. I can't leave for three months. I can't do that. I won't have a job when I come back. I have bills to pay." So they went to Europe. And my friend got out of the Air Force and they toured Europe and I worked.
Jaap: So what did you do for public works?
McCarthy: When I first started during the summers, I'd worked for the city of Butte in the park department. So when I started full time, I worked in the park department. And I started in 73, I was a lead man during the summer of the summer kids that worked. And in 75 I was the foreman. I worked as the foreman until 91. Then I became the road foreman. And I was a road foreman until 2008.
Jaap: That's a long career with public works.
McCarthy: Yeah. Thirty six years, something like that. When I first started we did all this park stuff. When I started, it was the old city. There was a city and the county. And the county didn't have a park department or recreation system. So the city of Butte kind of sponsored all of that for the whole county. In May of 76, the voters approved the consolidation, whatever you want to call it, reunification or approved the charter and City of Butte became Butte Silver Bow City County. Butte and Anaconda are the only two city counties in the state that are city county.
So I think that's where my political years probably started. Then, you know, being in any kind of politics or seeing how politics and history and things work a lot. So that was pretty in-depth. God, we saw probably the influx of all the park systems in Butte, model cities that built a lot of parks in the 1970s. So we took care of all those. We started changing the sprinkler systems around from manual to automatic. We increased the park system. Stodden Park had just opened in 1975. I remember when the swimming pool broke down in 76. God, swimming pools were a real big issue. A really big issue. It's built on a dump, you know. It's like a big sponge. Yeah. And when you lose the quantity of water that they did out of that swimming pool and it goes into that sponge, that ground is going to move. Especially in the winter when it freezes and thaws. So there's natural dynamics. The location of that pool makes it really difficult for me sometimes to think we should build a new pool in the same place under the same conditions.
Jaap: Yeah. What do you think about that?
McCarthy: I don't know. I haven't read any engineering studies. I don't know. They said they sampled it and tested everything. But to me, building something of that magnitude in the same place with the same conditions that haven't changed. I'm a little leery of it, although the old swimming pool held 385,000 gallons of water, at eight pounds a gallon. That's a lot of weight on the sponge. So it's going to move. This one that they've built now, I don't think it is as heavy. And the shape is a little different. So it might be spread differently. And engineering design may have changed. When they built this, they may have engineered it and dug it down deep enough to remove the problems. And I didn't want to get involved. It's not my baby. So I hope it's a good thing. And the kids need it. The swimming pool is a big thing. It would be neat if they named it after Georgia Burns. Did you know Georgia Burns?
Jaap: Tell me about Georgia Burns.
McCarthy: Georgia Burns was a pretty neat lady. She was a swim instructor at the YMCA. For most of the kids a few years older than me and a lot of years younger than me. Georgia Burns probably had some involvement in their learning to swim and their appreciation of water. She looked like a fish in the water, although she was a big woman. She could swim like a fish and she could jump in the water. You wouldn't even see a splash. And the way she moved her arms and her feet, you'd never hear her. She just had stealth. She was really good. That always surprised me. And it was really funny because I didn't learn to swim until my kids learned to swim. And Georgia Burns taught me and my boys at the same time. But it was pretty strange.
And I'd known Georgia for a long time and I worked with her closely when I was in the Parks Department because she ran the pool at Stodden Park. And I remember we had just opened the ballpark at Stodden Park in 1975. And the Deluxe Tournament, the Deluxe Bar had a softball tournament, which was the opener of the park. And it was a pretty big deal. It was like five o'clock in the afternoon on that Friday. At about 4:30 I went over to use the telephone at the pool.
We didn't have telephones then. We didn't have cell phones. As a matter of fact, the county, I think in 75, I think we only had three trucks that had radios and the parks department didn't have a radio. Now they all have radios. So I went over to use the telephone. And Georgia said to me, "Can you come out on the deck and look at this? We got a problem out here." And I said, "God, I can't right now with this pool that's going to open, I'm really busy. And she said, "Oh, come on, it willI just take a minute." So I said, "OK." So I went out with her and she said, "Well, here, look at this." And I went over to the edge of the pool and I looked at it and these kids shoved me in the pool and I can't swim.
Jaap: Did she know you couldn't swim?
McCarthy: No. And it's about 4:30. This thing is going to open at 5:00. I got all these things to do and she and her friends pushed me into the pool. And I was really mad, really angry. And when I got out, I said, "Don't you ever do that to me." And she laughs, "Oh, it's just for fun. It's just a joke." And I said, "You're going to pay. I'll get even." And she said, "Oh no, it's just a joke. Don't worry about it." So that summer was pretty good, nothing went on. Well, Georgia always got her hair done on Friday afternoon. So like about two o'clock in the afternoon, she got her hair done. So one Friday, it was towards the end of the season, she was going to dinner. She was getting an award for something. And I said, this is when we're going to do it. So I got all these kids. I said, "I need Georgia to have another hair appointment around 4:00." Because she got her hair done at 2:00. So she was all dolled up and came to the pool and we came in and I said, "Georgia, come over here." So she came in and we were walking by the deck. We walked up by the end where she shoved me in and I just gave her a shove. And into the pool she went and she came out and her hair was down on her face. And she said, she swore at me.
Jaap: I'm sure she did. She just got her hair done.
McCarthy: "I'm going to a dinner and I just got my hair done." She came out and I let her rant rave for a long time. And I said, "Do you remember when you did that to me?" She said, "No." "You don't remember?" And I said, "Let me refresh your memory." And I told her. She said, "Yeah, but I got to go to this awards thing." And said, "I know. And they're waiting for you to get your hair done right now. That's better than you did for me." So she was really mad. But after that, she said, "Truce. We will never do that again." I said, "You're on."
Jaap: At least you got her the hair appointment after.
McCarthy: I did. That was really important. After that we were really good friends. She was a nice lady. That was pretty funny. That's pretty significant. So I think they should name the pool after her. She taught a lot of kids in Butte how to swim.
Jaap: That's a really nice story. So tell me a little bit about consolidation. How did that affect the dynamic of . . .
McCarthy: That was a really, you know, Butte is a really [inaudible] town. Butte is really resistant to change. A lot of times change is good, but for Butte and for a lot of Butte people, change is hard. It's really hard. And to get people to change is really hard. I think Mike Micone was a really big influence on the change in Butte. A lot of things were good. A lot of things were bad. He changed a lot of things. I was just young and I was learning a lot of stuff. So I saw a lot of stuff that made me think about things a lot differently. And a lot of things he did, I thought were really good. At the time they were talking about that Butte Forward, you know, moving uptown Butte elsewhere. And he was in the midst of that debacle. It was a real mess.
Jaap: How did you feel about the Butte Forward program?
McCarthy: Well, I'm a Butte guy. So I was really resistant to any kind of change like that. That was pretty major.
Jaap: How did the community act? I mean, was there a split?
McCarthy: They were really against it. And Butte really has feelings about that stuff. And the rumor mill is awful in Butte anyway. So you can imagine what it was like then. All these nasty things going on and all the kickbacks and all these things people said were going to happen. And all these things are going to change. And all these developments were not going to be good. And Butte is going to be bad. So there were good things and bad things. But as it turned out, it didn't happen. And for the benefit of Butte, I'm glad it didn't because uptown would be gone. And the company wouldn't be here anyway. So we would've really lost. It was a lose-lose thing. But at the time, you don't know that. And if they say we're gonna shut the company down. And, you know, all these people are going to lose their work and Butte is going to shut down anyway because we don't have any place to mine because we can't mine here anymore.
So, I mean, it was going both ways. So it was a really tough, sentimental time in Butte because a lot of people had to make decisions and choices that were really hard. But they did vote for consolidation. And in a lot of respects, that was good because the city of Butte was going broke. And the county was pretty flush with money. They had a lot bigger area, but infrastructure wise and aesthetic wise, the county wasn't very good. I mean, if you look around Butte, I'm pretty observant, I always look at things and I analyze way over my capability and I analyze everything. But if you look at Butte, even now when you go down, like if you went down to Clark Park and you went east from Clark Park. And you drove down the street. You can see where the city and the county ended, like right in the middle of the block because you'd have curb and gutter and sewer and sidewalks to the middle of the block. And then it stops. And where it stops is where the county line was. And I remember when I worked for public works, when I first started, I was in the park department, but guys do everything. I was on the garbage truck. I was on the pickup truck. I was on a patch truck. I was out on the sweeper. Animal control. Help with traffic control. All these things, you know, so you get a mix of everything. So you see all those things. I am off on a tangent.
Where was I going? But anyway, you can see where the city and county lines ended. And there was no park systems in the county. Fire protection was volunteer fire departments in the county and the city was to these boundaries. That's where fire protection went. A lot of places didn't have fire hydrants because they were in the county.
You know, even mining. The Original mine, the Kelly, the Emma, the Belmont, although they were in the city, the mines were in the county. You know, even mining. The Original mine, the Kelly, the Emma, the Belmont, although they were in the city, the mines were in the county. So if there is a fire in a mine yard, the city didn't respond. You have to have a volunteer group respond and they had their own fire department. Crazy things, but that's just how things were. And they got taxed at a county rate rather than the city rate. But I guess it's no different than when the city of Walkerville was going to tax the mine up in Walkerville, the Lexington, instead of bringing the mine ore up through the Lexington, they went out through the Syndicate tunnel and they got taxed at the Syndicate rather than up at the Lexington. So Walkerville lost out on all that tax revenue. But it just kind of points out how the city and the county were different. So the county paid less tax than the city did. But they derive a lot of the benefits that the city provided, like park and recreation and lights and infrastructure and sewer. So like storm drainage, because like I say out by Clark Park and out by McDonalds, up Gilman Street and all those areas of town where the city services ended, so did the storm sewer and the street construction and curb and gutter and sidewalk. There was no zoning or enforcement. The city had it, but the county didn't. They didn't have zoning rules and laws. You could build wherever you wanted and however you wanted. If you built a house in the county and you didn't want the water run off by your place, you could build your house a little higher and you could shed your runoff to your neighbor because that's how things were. I mean, that's just what you did. You didn't have curbs and gutters.
So I guess that's why I was one of the proponents of consolidation, because all those things have changed. Now we have rules for everybody. Everybody could share and everybody would benefit and infrastructure would be better. And then everybody could share in the same thing and there would be lower prices for everybody. Rather, the county prices would be higher because you had to pay more, but your services would increase. So, I mean, you already use park and recreation services anyway and you didn't pay for it. So there was a lot of ambiguity and a lot of changes that were, you know, being recognized by the citizens of the community. And I think overall they felt that it would be better for consolidation. So at the time, they voted for. So that was in May of 76. And then I think it was September . . . they voted for it in 76 and it took effect in 77. Because I remember when we first came to work, I was a city guy and all these other guys that were going to come together were the county guys.
Jaap: How did that happen?
McCarthy: It was really hard because the police department did the same. City police and county sheriffs became one group. The fire departments did as well. Well, they didn't become the same, but they had to work together. And that was a real struggle between the volunteer departments and the pay department. That was a real, real battle. And the volunteer fire department were probably one of the biggest proponents or opponents, I should say, of consolidation, because all their separate little fiefdoms that they had all had to now be part of this one major group. But the end result is a lot better. They all got better equipment and better facilities and shared a bigger pool, you know, money pools. But there were a lot of changes.
There were a lot of hard things that have to be resolved. But in general, for the whole public, I think, consolidation was pretty good. But it was different. But back to the city guys and the county guys getting together. It was pretty difficult. Quite a few guys quit and a lot of guys had to have an attitude adjustment because their style was different than our style of work. But for the most part, we got along and we shared the same goals that got to be the thing. The goals had to be the same. So work procedures and stuff had to change a little bit. County was a little more lax than the city was. The city was a little more rules, a little more stern. The counties weren't. And that changed over time, it got better. So things were good.
Jaap: So pay rates and things like that.
McCarthy: That was a whole issue too. The county had some things that were better and the city had some that were better. So those things had to be merged as well. So generally what they did, they took the best of both, which was pretty good. I remember working at the city when I first started, they didn't have unemployment. But they had sick leave which was kind of strange. And now they have both, you know. But we also had more holidays. We had Miners' Union Day off. We had the day after Easter off, Easter Monday. Extra days off. Government holidays. Always had all the good things. All those days off. Those are always good. But again, like I say, you paid for that because you didn't have unemployment. So if you were laid off, you were done.
Back in those days before consolidation, I remember hearing stories of the city used to be really, what would you call it? Patronizing? You know, if you supported this guy or this guy, then you could get a job and stuff and that's like payback for support and stuff. And I remember the foreman at the corral at public works. Whenever the mayor changed, so did the foreman. So that was just, you know, it was just a job that always changed. So every election, you know you're going to have a new boss. So all those things changed.
Jaap: And since they didn't pay, that was fine to do.
McCarthy: Yeah. That's how it works. Your guy lost. You're out, you know. And a lot of guys who worked there, if they weren't there so long, whatever, they'd get canned and they'd get replaced with a lot of other different guys. So the sentiment was a lot of times that you'd be working, but you might only work for four years and you'd be gone. So when they first had that, the mayor was only elected for two years in the old city. So that could change a lot faster in mayoral departments, you know, and it seemed like Alderman always had people that came to work. You know, a lot of those things still happen.
I will remember when I was working, before when I was in the Parks Department. They wanted to institute this fairness thing for employees because people had said too many people were getting hired because they were friends of the commissioners or the commissioners kids and stuff like that and they were working. And I remember talking to the personnel office. I said, "Yeah, this is how it's always worked and that's really how it's always going to work. This is politics. This is Butte. And this is how things work." They said, well, we want you to take these kids and give them like a review or recommendation. Each one. Go through each one of them and how they worked and their performance, what they do. So we can do that. So when they hire next year, they can do this. I said, "Oh, well, that's really a neat thing. Is that going to hold any water?" And they say, "Well, of course it's going to be good." OK. This is gonna take me a lot of time. We got 20, 30 kids that work all summer. Some work for a week. Some work for two weeks. Some work all summer. Again, politics. So I went through all this work to go analyze all these different people and give recommendations and rate them and number them and just by the protocol that they developed for this form. And I did all that and I turned all this stuff in. They said, great. I said, "I can't wait for next year to see how this works. These should be the guys and gals that should be hired first. And these are the ones that should work all summer because these are the ones that really do a good job there, you know. Their performance is really good." And it was really funny the next spring I went up and they said, okay, we're ready. This is what we need.
According to the info that I turned in to you, these should be the ones we should have back. And, we should be starting them pretty quick, you know, because we're ready. The grass is growing. We need to water and things, you know. They said, "We're not going to do that." I said, "Oh, how come?" "Well, that's going to be your first batch of kids that are coming." I looked at them and I said, "I don't want this one. I don't want this one. I don't want this one. We had them and they're on my list. And this is where they're at. They're awful." "They're the first ones you get." So I wasted all my time. They said, "No. We learned a lot." I said, "No, you didn't learn anything." So things aren't going to change. Don't ever ask me to do that again. You wasted all my time. I didn't think it was going to work anyway. And I told you that right at the beginning, too. It's not gonna work.
Jaap: Did that ever change throughout your years there? What do you think?
McCarthy: No. This is Butte.
Jaap: It is. It's still the same.
McCarthy: This is politics in action. You learn a lot in Butte.
Jaap: You do.
McCarthy: Butte is a great town. Butte is a great town.
Jaap: But those relationships are important.
McCarthy: Life is a game. And it's just how you play the game. You know, some things are fair, some things aren't so fair. And it's like playing football without eyeglasses, you know? Sometimes it's fair. Sometimes it's not so fair. Sometimes it really sucks. Yeah.
Jaap: Do you think that ever hurts Butte for new people trying to come in?
McCarthy: They say it does. Like I said, a lot of those things are changing. You see that with the fire department. The way they hire police and fire? You know, they take a test and they take a statewide test for physical and they take a mental test. They take an intellectual test, you know. They get all these different factors and then they rate them and then they're numbered. So when they go to choose them, you know, they have different categories to go through, but they've got a system to go through. And these guys are rated. And that's how they select them. And that's really good because you get the best candidates out of that. But I still think even though a lot of the H.R. policies rules have changed through the years, mostly for the better. I still think there's a lot of politics that's involved in selection in Butte. And again, that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where you're at. I don't care what town you're in. There's always going to be politics when there are elections and voters because that's politics and that's life. And in Butte, that's part of the game. And people know that. And if they don't know that, then they're a step behind.
Jaap: They'll figure it out.
McCarthy: They'll figure it out. They should.
Jaap: So after the mines closed. How did that affect public works? The city was not in a good place at that point.
[01:10:45]
McCarthy: You know the mining thing in Butte . . . mining in Butte is probably one of the most important things of all in the history of all of Butte. It's what brought people here to begin with. It's what fed their families. You know, in the early days when the mines were here, some of the things they did weren't very aesthetic. I mean, they pumped all that smoke and bad stuff in the air when they had smelters and stuff here. And then when they took the bad rock out of the ground that was worth much, it was just worthless waste rock with a lot of arsenic and other bad stuff in it that they just pile on the surface. They made a lot of nice areas look really bad, you know. But as a kid, I remember growing up in these places and we played on mine dumps and stuff and I still don't glow at night, you know. And I drank Butte water since I was a little kid and it hasn't affected me. Except maybe that's when they got that growth spurt after I got out of high school. I don't know. Yeah, but mining has been so relevant in Butte, everybody thought that mining in Butte would never, ever end. Which it hasn't really. But if you wanted to work, you'd always work for the company. If your dad worked for the company or your uncles work for the company, then you always had a job here. And that was the sentiment for a longtime. Although my dad told us he didn't want us ever to mine.
Jaap: Did you ever do any mining at all?
McCarthy: I never did at all. The only time I've been underground is at the Mining Museum in the Orphan Girl. The only mine I'd been in was the one on the East Ridge that we went into as part of public works. We went in and took all the marijuana out of the mine that they were growing underneath the East Ridge up there on the road to the lady of the Rockies. That was only mine I had ever been in. My dad, his dad died young in the Con. You know, he died pretty young. And he'd had his share. He worked a little bit in the mines when he was really young and he didn't care for it. And he didn't want us kids working in there. I didn't want my kids to mine either. So the sentiment was either you worked with the company and that was going to be your life goal or you were going to do something different. And that's how it always was in Butte. The mine will never close. The Anaconda Company will never leave. You know, although they threatened that many times, it never really happened until it happened. Then they said, it's done and we're gone. When the Anaconda Company sold to ARCO, people got a little jittery. Then when they closed it down, I remember those days, Don Peoples was the mayor, and they closed things down and it was really tough. You know, everybody thought we would lose our jobs because things were going to be really minimal because everything's based on tax revenue. And if you're not bringing any taxes in, you don't have a payroll.
You can't supply any kind of services because you can't pay for it. And you can't pay for anything on warrants and stuff because that's not how governments operate. So things were pretty tough then. And, you know, I think the guys at work knew that. At least I know in public works they did. There are many years we didn't even ask for a raise. We just wanted to make sure we could work. If we got to keep our jobs, we thought that was pretty good. So there was a long time that the public thought within the working force was pretty prevalent and wanted to make sure that we at least had a job so they didn't have to move.
Jaap: So within the government were there layoffs?
McCarthy: Yeah, there were. Everybody felt a little bit as guys retired, they weren't replaced. Attrition, they called it then. And that lasted several years. In my thought, I can remember when we had more people working. And then through attrition and things like that, our staff shrunk a lot. Although the workload didn't decrease. Actually workload increased. And our production changed. And we had to analyze things and be more productive. But that was a good thing. So we changed a lot of things to make things work. And those are good things and that was good for Butte. So I think in essence, the mining changed like that and changing the different operations changed a lot of mindsets of the people in town. And overall for Butte, it was really good because people had a little different thought. And the company could leave and mining could leave anytime. So when Dennis Washington came, I know there was a big conflict between union and nonunion, and it was time for that discussion. And for mining to redevelop in Butte and to regrow and restart, I think what Dennis Washington did was it was a change to the whole mining structure and the mining dynamic in Butte. And it was a good thing. Because in talking to a lot of guys who worked for the company, for MRI, I should say, compared to the company, they looked at things differently. They looked at production and they looked at the cost of copper because they took away the hourly wage like they'd had through the union and they reintegrated profit sharing.
Especially the first year because MRI made some mistakes in their profit sharing. They shared a little bit much more than they anticipated they were going to have to share, which they altered through the years. But at the beginning, these guys changed from just getting paid to show up for work and dog and things and not being productive into looking at the price of copper and making sure that they produced as much as they could, because then they were making money and they were part of the whole process and they were part of the production and part of the team. So it changed that whole philosophy for mining in Butte at the time. I think that was really good. We just went on a tour two weeks ago with Lindsey for her birthday. And we went to MRI and Kelly Daily, do you know Kelly Daily?
Jaap: Oh yes.
McCarthy: Kelly Daily used to be a police officer. Now she works . . . She got an OSH degree from Tech and she gave us the tour. So she was there. And it's amazing to see the transformation of these people and the jobs and what they do in mining in Butte. It's all production. And when these guys go to work, they look at the board there and it tells them the price of copper and molly, everyday when it goes up or down, you know. So they're either making money or they could lose money. So they've got to be productive. And that whole attitude has changed for these miners. And it's not about just getting paid every week, but they're part of a team. And I think that's really good. I mean, you know, unions can be good. Unions can be bad. And in this aspect, the way they've instituted this program that they've got there, it's a win-win, I think, for the community. You know, having Denis Washington here as long as he has. I think that's good. He knows it can work and nothing but money. They've got a whole hillside full of molly over there. And I think you can't get it anywhere else. This is a good place to have it.
Jaap: Yeah. It's a pretty interesting operation over there.
McCarthy: Oh, it's neat. Yeah. It's changed a lot. And after seeing underground mining and the tours and stuff up at the mining museum, those miners worked really hard. And in those old days when they worked underground and they sucked in all that dust and all those bad conditions that they had to work with, they paid a price for doing things for the copper kings. So this is a big change and it's a good thing for Butte. I think Butte is pretty resilient. I think Butte does really well. I think it's gonna be here for a long time. And I think it's the people in Butte that make Butte what it is. It's not where we're at or what it is because it's so pretty. Because, you know, it's not pretty. It's ugly, but. I think it's because it's the people here that have made Butte what it is. I think they'll continue to make it what it is and the kids learn the same thing. Oh, by the way, I've got two kids.
Jaap: You do have kids. Yes.
McCarthy: I was married. I married a girl named Kim Hanley and we got married in August of 1978. I've got a boy, Seamus that was born in 1981. And a boy, Michael Patrick who was born in 83. And they both graduated from Montana State and they're both computer nerds in Seattle and they're both married. And we just went to, like I said, we just went to Ireland in September as a group and it was pretty fun. So things are good.
Jaap: Well, tell me about the work you're doing with the kids now. The Butte High kids.
[1:20:24]
McCarthy: I was pretty lucky; I got to retire early. I had a pretty successful career at Public Works. And one interesting story. I remember just before I retired, I talked to Ellen Crane here at the Archives and I said, "Ellen, you know, I'm going to be retiring pretty soon. And I'm kind of a history nerd and I think I'd like to spend some time at the Archives. So when I'm ready, I'll give you a holler and we'll get together and maybe we can do something." So I was retired for a while and Ellen called me and she said, "Hey, are you still thinking about helping at the Archives?" And I said, "Well sure." And she said, "Well, come on up. I want to talk to you." And I said, "OK." So I came up. She said, "You know, we moved out of the old building and here we are at the old Central." She said, "We're doing this thing here. We're going to be moving back in here pretty quick." And I said, "Yeah, I read that." And she said, "Do you want to help?" And I said, "Sure, what day?" And she said, "Well, it's going to be more than a day." I said, "OK, what days?" And she said, "Well, would you help us move?" And I said, "Well, sure. How long is it going to take?" She said, "Well, this is more like a job." And I said, "Well, you know, I didn't really plan on a job, but I'll do whatever you want to do. My heart is in this and my head is in this. So I'm ready." So, as you know, you were part of the team to move everything back here from the Kelly back into the new building here at the archives. And for me, God, that was awesome work. I loved every day. It was great coming and seeing all this stuff and moving everything back in and putting it where it belongs. And seeing how the staff had their hearts and heads in the same place to do the same thing.
Jaap: It's a long summer.
McCarthy: And to put everything where it belonged. Exactly where it was supposed to go. And everybody had a plan. It was really good. So I'm really thankful that I got to be part of that project. It was pretty neat. And it was fun. And I enjoyed it. And I still come up on Thursdays with my brother Tim and John Paul. I try and come up on Wednesday afternoon, and I'd come up more if I could, but I usually go to the Mining Museum for a day, a week.
And I also help Chris Fisk with his history class. He fortunately . . . a couple different things. He teaches an adult ed class that I was in his first adult ed class. There were eight of us in his class. And I remember he was scared to death when he started because he was a guy from Dillon. And he's teaching all these old Butte people about Butte history, which to him was kind of different. And one of them was Claudia Claig, who wrote that book. You know, the ABC's of Butte or whatever, the Butte in a Nutshell. So that was pretty interesting. And he learned a lot. And he still teaches that every fall. And I help him quite a bit because he's got really good ideas, but his organizational skills are lacking sometimes. So I help him out with that kind of stuff because his ideas get kind of overwhelming sometimes. So it's nice to put those in perspective. So we do that. But he's such a great teacher. He's a hands-on history teacher. And his method, his style of teaching is something that I really respect. And I really think it's awesome the way he does it. So I told him I'd like to help any way I can to do that because the Butte kids really deserve the best Butte history that they can get. So in the past couple of years, he approached the school district about starting a Butte history class in the history curriculum, and they approved it. And he was all on pins and needles because he was taking this load on. And if it failed, this was going to be his failure. So he asked me to help him design this thing so it would fly. And I helped him and it's been great. It's a big thing for the kids. The kids are learning a lot about Butte history, things that they don't know that they should know. And I try and help them get to the point where these are the things that kids should know and really should be part of, because this is their history. And this is how they should appreciate Butte. And a lot of them don't because they've never been told. And if they didn't read it somewhere, they would probably never learn it. I wish I had the opportunity to have that kind of a Butte history class when I was in high school because we didn't.
Jaap: Not all history classes let the kids go sleep in the Cabbage Patch.
McCarthy: No. That's one of the neat things. That's a cool thing. And to visit some of these old buildings in Butte that are part of history and see and learn about the Kenyon-Connell explosion that killed the whole fire department. You know, we don't even have a memorial. So all these things like that are really important. And kids don't get to do that unless somebody takes the time to get involved to show them and to do that. And for a Polish-Indian guy from Dillon to teach that in Butte to Butte kids, this guy needs some help. I will help with that. So I jumped in with both feet and I help every way I can. Like I said, I've got familiarity with the cemetery. So he does a project where these kids have to identify a Butte character, learn their biography, their history, and go out and get their picture taken at the headstone with them and tell their story and record that with all the new digital electronics that are out and available now. So now a lot of these things you can find just by looking these people up on YouTube and you can find a history and their grave and a story which is really awesome. And he does the same thing with Butte buildings uptown.
You know, these kids learn to read a map. I was a real nerd on maps and architectural drawings and things like that when I worked. So I enjoy that stuff. So I found out that these kids can't read maps very well. But they're going to learn and they have been learning. So we develop some charts and things about uptown Butte and layout and geography and street names and why they were named what they were and when and where and how and all these things that are important to that. So we do that. So these kids are really technically above board about all this stuff and they can do all this digital stuff. And by God, they do it. They use their phones and Google map and they can find these things and they're learning all these things. And I think it's really important because this is their town and their history. And it should be a real vital part of their whole heritage. So that's why I do it.
Jaap: You guys do good work.
McCarthy: Yeah, it's kind of fun.
Jaap: It's important to connect kids with their history. Otherwise it's just in the past. But you really help to connect them and understand where they're standing.
McCarthy: Yeah. Connection is really important. I know growing up for me, what I learned, I learned mostly from my parents. We didn't learn a lot about Butte stuff in history class or anything like that. So you learned it at home and the Irish had a tendency to hide things a lot. I think they still do. But it just seems to be the way things are. And the kids should know that too. But they should know their past and you know the past is just a prolog to the present and the future. You know, if you don't know where your past is and where you've been and you're sure as hell not going to know where you're going. You've got to know. And if there were mistakes made, then you should be aware of that moving on. So you don't make the same mistakes. So those are important and those are the things that I try and show and demonstrate when I help do these things. That's important to me. So did I bore you enough?
Jaap: No, not at all. Do you have anything else you want to add, Jim?
McCarthy: God, I don't know. I tend to be a little wordy sometimes, so I go overboard and I go off tangent a lot sometimes. But stories are always good. I never remember a good story. It seems like I always forget. Stories are good. Butte is good. So I am a Butte guy. I will always be a Butte guy. I remember when I went to school, people would say, "Well, are you going to leave now and you're never going to come back?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah, probably I'll leave and never come back." That didn't last very long.
Jaap: You made it a few years in Missoula.
McCarthy: Yeah, I was in Spokane for a year and I learned a lot about Spokane. I was in Missoula for a while, but I came back to Butte a lot. My heart's in Butte. So I'll always be here. So I've got a plot out at Holy Cross too, so I'm going to be staying here a long time. I shouldn't say it's a plot. I guess it's in the ash department. Yeah, so I'll be here. Yes, I'll be here.
Jaap: Well, thank you, Jim.
McCarthy: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for asking me. I feel honored to be asked to be an oral history person. That's really being a celebrity kind of. I don't know if anybody will listen to it. It's probably pretty boring.
Jaap: No. No one is boring.
McCarthy: Well, I don't think so either in this town. Nobody's boring. It's always good. Stories are good. My God. I don't know a lot of good stories. I wish I did.
Grant: Did the Rialto burn?
Jaap: They tore it down.
McCarthy: They tore it down to build that Metals Bank that's there now.
Grant: The US Bank?
McCarthy: That was Metals Bank when they built it. Metals Bank Number Two. Yeah, they moved out of the Metals Bank into the new Metals Bank.
Jaap: It's really sad, those pictures of it. We have a picture and it's from the back and they've torn out the back end of the building. And you can see the stage. I mean, they just tore it down.
Grant: I want to see that picture. They didn't salvage it?
McCarthy: I don't think so. I think they tore it down.
Jaap: I don't know where that came from. That one piece downstairs we have. I didn't realize that was from the Rialto.
McCarthy: I didn't know that either. I had to ask.
Jaap: I don't know where that came from.
McCarthy: I don't either.
Jaap: Someone must have saved it.
Grant: And as far as Butte Forward, do you recall, was there a vote?
McCarthy: You know, I don't know if they had a vote. I don't think they did. It was going to go to council whether they were gonna move it or not. You know to put it up to vote. I remember John Paull's dad, Phil Paull, was an alderman and the vote was like, you know, 6 to 5. And he was the vote that said, no, we're not tearing down uptown.
Grant: Holy shit.
McCarthy: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was a close vote. And it could've turned.
Grant: I can't believe it was that close.
McCarthy: Well, yeah, it was. They wanted to move. Well, you know, the Anaconda Company and the power company, they had a big investment. You know, the power company was going to move too. As a matter of fact, Jim Murphy, who was with Model City, was head of Butte Forward. And I remember seeing the drawings that they had about where Stodden Park is. That was going to be the center of uptown Butte. The center of Butte would move to Stodden Park and then uptown would be all mining. They would just mine all this over.
Jaap: It had to have been a hard decision in the moment.
McCarthy: But, you know, Butte people, like I said, change is hard. And they drag their feet and take their time, you know? And they say, You are going to tear down the Finlen? You're going to tear down the YMCA. Where are our kids going to swim? You are going to tear down our theaters, where are we going to watch all of these movies? You know, you are going to tear down the power company and city hall. So they had all of these good questions and nobody had any good answers. Who's going to pay for it? How are you going to build it? How long is it going to take.”
Jaap: What were those answers for that? Who was going to?
McCarthy: They didn't have very good answers to any of them. But "new." They always said, "New. This is going to be new. We'll get rid of the old and have new. Going to have new." You know, it was really strange for me. I remember, it's funny with public works. My brother was a fireman, firefighter and I worked for public works so. The buildings would burn and then we would tear them down. Or urban renewal or whatever. And we would just tear these old buildings down. We just tore tons of buildings down. When you walk in the door downstairs, there's that big nameplate on that building, I took those pictures because we tore that building down. And we either tore them down or they burned down, just like across from the Rialto, the medical arts building, I remember when that burned. I remember when most of these buildings uptown burned. I remember seeing the library burn in 1960. And they replaced that.
Yeah, they tore down . . . the Clark brothers owned a bank on the southwest corner of Main and Broadway, where that DA Davidson building is, that big white building, and they tore that down in 1964. And it was an older building and there was a restaurant and some other buildings right next door to it. And I remember when they tore that down, we got pictures of that. And when they started to build a new building. And I remember when they put that up. And for me, as a kid, I thought, this is really neat, we're getting a really new fancy white building uptown. Modern and fancy and new. When are we going to get rid of all this other old stuff and build these new buildings? I was only 14. We had a nice new building. Now, look at all these dumpy other old buildings that look like crap. Why don't we get a bunch of these new ones? So for a young kid thinking at the time, we're getting rid of the old. You know the library had just burned a few years ago, and they fixed that up and they made that square in green. And the power company had just done a new blue front door. Modern, that's modern and the library's modern. And this white building on the corner with the round spiral staircase and a blue carpet. This is nice new stuff. And then the Metals Bank builds a new building on the corner where the Rialto was. All these new buildings! We're getting rid of all the old stuff. We're going to be a new modern city. This is really cool. So that was some of the sentiment at the time. But then the same people were saying, we just built these new buildings uptown that are new and now we're going to tear them down and move somewhere else. Where are we going here? What's going on? So there were a lot of mixed feelings, you know, about Butte.
Grant: Your brother was a firefighter, then.
McCarthy: Yeah. From 71.
Jaap: I'd love to get Tim up here, but we'd probably have to drag him.
McCarthy: You'd probably have to get him at the KC.
Jaap: Yeah. Hide recorders in our pockets.
Grant: Does he hang out over there?
McCarthy: Yeah, he goes there.
Grant: A friend of mine bartends there.
McCarthy: Which one?
Grant: Daniel Hogan.
McCarthy: Oh, OK.
Grant: How many buildings through Public Works did you participate in tearing down? Over 100?
McCarthy: Oh yeah.
Grant: 200?
McCarthy: Well, I wasn't involved in 200. But I know I was in on a 100. And I was with the park department when . . . in the early 70s there was this Model Cities program. And part of that Model City program was a demolition program. Like urban renewal? And they got rid of 100 buildings, at least themselves. Matter of fact, they bought a brand new loader that had really extra thick tires. So you could just drive right on the stuff and not pop the tires on the loader. It was a really heavy duty loader. I liked running it. It was pretty cool. You could really crash a lot of neat stuff, but it tore down hundreds of buildings. If you drove around town, I could tell you where we tore them down. When I became the foreman, I used to take a picture of them before we tore them down. A lot of them, they just tore them down and nobody took a picture. I thought that's bad. We should have a picture of these, you know. So a lot of those I kept because I took pictures myself. So they're mine. So they'll end up here. Yeah. There's a lot of them. Some pretty interesting ones. And just like that one in the entryway there and there are a bunch of pictures I took there. I did the story on the guy that owned the building. I just researched it myself afterward about the guy that owned that building and why they built it now. So it made a lot more sense after they tore the building down. I could see what he did. It used to be a theater at one time - a paint shop and an auto body. You know where that dental place is over there on East Park next to the Craftsman's Corner, where that dental place is, this building is right in front of that, right on the street, right by the fire hydrant. A lot of them burned. A lot of them they tore down. Interesting stuff.