Kevin Cook, Union Carpenter

Oral History Interview of Kevin Cook

Interviewers: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: August 13th, 2021
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: October 2022 by Adrian Kien

Jaap: It's August 13th, 2021.

Cook: It's Friday the 13th.

Jaap: It's Friday, the 13th, 2021. Yeah. We're here with Kevin Cook. Kevin, I would first like you to gimme some background about your grandparents and parents, kind of a little bit of your family history, as much as you know it.

Cook: As much as I know it. Well, my grandparents were southerners, Texas and Louisiana. I'm talking about both of them, my paternal and maternal. My maternal grandparents were from Louisiana. I know of at least the mid 18 hundreds, they were there in Louisiana. Always lived in Louisiana, they did. My grandfather on my father's side was from Texas and he farmed most all his life. He was a farmer. My maternal grandmother or grandfather worked in oil fields. He was always a rig hand. He worked as a merchant Marine for a while too, but he traveled the world doing that.

Jaap: Perfect. Tell me about your parents. What are their names and a little bit about them?

Cook: My father is Burl Cook and my mother was Joanne Marty, and obviously it was Cook later on. They got married very young, 18. I guess that's pretty young. Actually my dad was 17 at the time. My mom was 18 and she married my dad. She said, because he had a car.

Jaap: Hey, that works.

Cook: And my dad, that was the way my dad met her was because he had a car and he knew my uncle or one of my uncles. And I guess they got introduced. And soon as she graduated high school, they got married. And I was born the next year.

Jaap: Wow. Yeah. What year were you born, Kevin?

Cook: 1955 in Louisiana. Yep. Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Jaap: How long did you live in Louisiana?

Cook: Off and on, total? Because my dad was, my mother called him a gypsy, but he wasn't. He's apparently pretty Irish. I didn't find that out until later, much later in life, actually. They were all dead before I found out how much Irish he really was. I should have known because his name is Burl. B U R L. Yeah. It's kind of a odd name to pick out of the, and his mom's name was Metis. So I should have known. But I didn't. I was always, I was always told and my, my daughter did the little 1, 2, 3, and me, or what, everything, you know? And she found out that, well, now her mother, we knew was completely Finnish. She's a Finlander, a hundred percent. Both her parents came from Finland and names end in doubled vowels. That kinda stuff. And when my daughter found out that she was 25% Irish, I'm like, if you do to math, that means I'm pretty much 50% Irish, which was incredible to me. We were never told that we were Irish. So yeah, maybe that's why my dad found Butte though. And decided this was home. I don't know. I don't know if he even knew, I dunno.

Jaap: Yeah. Interesting. When did your family make their way to Montana?

Cook: 1963 is when we first moved to Butte.

Jaap: I'm guessing because what you said, you don't know why your family came.

Cook: I don't know why. Yeah, we can't. I suspect, I don't know. I was never told exactly why other than my father liked to travel. I learned that all through my life. I'd come home from school some days and there'd be a trailer out in front of the house. U-Haul loading it up.

Jaap: Really? So he traveled for like a long time then? Would you all travel or would he just travel?

Cook: Oh yeah, there were three boys, a dog and mom and dad in the car and no seat belts and traveling down the road, peeing in pop bottles. That's what we did. Three boys. Didn't stop very often. They got to pee-pee in a pop bottle.

Jaap: Your poor mom.

Cook: Poor Mom. She got to stop, but it was just alongside. Open the doors up and alongside the road. Poor mom. Yeah. And that's what happened finally. After about the fifth time we moved to and from Butte, my mother decided no, I'm not moving anymore.

Jaap: So you came back and forth five times?

Cook: Yeah, we traveled back and forth usually between Houston and Butte, but there was one year that I went to four different schools in three different states. That was fourth grade. It's kind of like a blur to me.

Jaap: Yeah. Was that difficult?

Cook: Not really. Not particularly. No. I was used to moving and meeting new people and it was easy. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't difficult.

Jaap: What'd your dad do for work?

Cook: He was a printer. He worked right there at the Montana Standard. We used to pick him up at midnight, down there. Walk out the back door.

Jaap: Interesting.

Cook: Yeah. I spent a lot of time down in that parking lot down there.

Jaap: So when did your family finally stay here then? What year was that?

Cook: What year did we finally stay here? Now that one's a little more difficult. I believe I was like in high school. It was about 70, I think. Yeah. 1970. We finally, my mother decided she wasn't moving anymore. So that's when they got a divorce.

Jaap: Really? Your dad didn't wanna stay or is that why?

Cook: Yeah, he did wanna stay. He wanted to move again and she wasn't moving anymore.

Jaap: Did you stay with your mom then?

Cook: Yeah, he stayed too, but for a little while, but yeah. You know, only because we stayed.

Jaap: That must have been difficult, I think.

Cook: Yeah. Yeah. It was difficult. Yeah. It created some resentments. Yeah. Yeah.

Jaap: Tell me about Butte in the sixties, seventies.

Cook: Butte in the sixties and seventies. Well, they had a grocery store on every corner and they're all now apartments most of them, but kids walked to the store. They could walk anywhere. You could do anything. It was great. I mean, really, I mean, we had the whole Butte to play around on, you know? One of the times that we moved here, we were fortunate enough to live up in the Gardens.

Jaap: Did you? What was that like?

Cook: It was a little community up there of about 20 houses, maybe. I think it was 20 roughly. And yeah, it was great. It was a great time. Great place to be a kid. Tell you that. Yeah, I can't remember the guy's name, it was Ed Something, I think. He was the head of the, he was like the guard for the Gardens up there. And we always had, we'd play games. I don't know if he was kidding around. No, but you know, because we lived up there. We'd go and get in when you weren't supposed to be in there. Yeah. In the winter and stuff and we'd play on things. He'd see us and we'd see him and then we'd run and he'd try to cut us off.

Jaap: I don't think Ed was playing.

Cook: I don't think he really was. Knowing now as an adult, I'm pretty sure he was pissed at the kids, but you know, it wasn't like, he didn't know where we lived. So it couldn't have been that big a deal.

Jaap: Where else did you live here?

Cook: I lived in right up on the M there with the Columbia Gardens, I mean, with the green apartments they were, then they were called then the Green Apartments. That was when I first found out I was a rebel. That was our first place that we stayed when we first moved to Butte, was up on the M there. And I went to Kennedy school. I was in first grade and I remember it. It was kinda winter. I don't believe it was the beginning of the year. I don't know that I started school there that year, but maybe second grade. Anyways, I found out I was a rebel. I didn't know what that was growing up down south. At that time, there was a lot of West Virginians up here working in the mines. They were from West Virginia and they spoke pretty southernly. And I had a little Southern accent too, I guess. And so I sat there and I can't believe this, but I had been quiet all day. And I guess I came, my mother told me this story, but she said that I came home and told her that or asked, "Mom, am I rebel?" And she says, "Yes, son, I guess you are." I said, "I thought so. So I kept my mouth shut because they was beating up rebels today." That was Butte. So I learned how to talk Northern, real fast. I know that. I could turn it on and off. Because you go down to Louisiana and you don't talk right. And you're in trouble too. So you got to know how to do both.

Jaap: So why were you a rebel? What did you do?

Cook: Oh, don't you know, they're still fighting the Confederate war down south. Don't you know, don't you know that?

Jaap: Sorry. I forgot that.

Cook: You live down in, down in Louisiana or Texas for a little while. You're either a rebel or a Yankee and that's the way they still think. I'm pretty much a Yankee.

Jaap: What other memories do you have growing up, Kevin?

Cook: Memories growing up.  Oh, the fun we used to have. Frolicking in the fields. Yeah. I don't know. Memories of Butte, especially, is that where we're really focused on?

Jaap: We're not focused on anything.

Cook: Because I don't know. Memories. Yeah. Hunting, camping. Fishing. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of that stuff. Yeah. We did a lot of that. We used to go to Miner's Lake a lot out by Jackson. After they got divorced, he bought the Jackson Mercantile out there in Jackson, Montana. And he owned that for a while and that was pretty good. Yeah.

Jaap: So then did you go to Butte High?

Cook: I did go to Butte High. Yes. Yeah.

Jaap: You graduated from Butte High?

Cook: I did graduate from Butte High.

Jaap: What'd you do after you graduated?

Cook: I graduated in 1974.

Jaap: Well then what'd you do?

Cook: What did I do?

Jaap: Yeah.

Cook: What do you mean?

Jaap: We're just walking through your life?

Cook: So what did I do after graduating from school?

Jaap: Did you stay here? Did you go somewhere?

Cook: I can't really remember all that that was in the sixties, you know?

Jaap: Fair. Fair enough.

Cook: No, we partied. We did lots of kegs. That was a big thing. Keggers. Out at Nine Mile. Back then cops would just follow you home. If you were drunk and you're too drunk, I better follow you home. They don't do that anymore.

Jaap: No, they don't.

Cook: 'I better not see you out the rest of the night.' That was pretty much about it. We played hide and seek from the cops. They knew all of our drinking spots. We knew how to park a car with somebody with a CB and they'd call and say, "Hey, they're coming."

[00:16:37]

Jaap: So where were your spots?

Cook: Oh, there was Eagles Nest out there. Right where that folf course is there. Oh yeah, that was big, big drinking spot. It was a little harder to get in there then. The Gardens, before it burned. We'd drink up in there a lot. Homestake, behind Tech, all sorts of places. Anywhere, usually down at the baseball field though. It was usually. Yeah. Put a keg in the dugout and pretend like we're playing softball.

Jaap: Sorry, we didn't bring any bats.

Cook: We'd have all this stuff. It looked legit.

Jaap: Well, that's funny.

Cook: Did a lot of motorcycles. Did a lot of racing. I loved Butte-ana out there.

Jaap: Oh yeah. Tell me about that.

Cook: About Butte-ana Speedway?

Jaap: Yeah.

Cook: It was great. Part of it still out there. You can see where it was if you knew what it was. Evel Knievel, of course. He'd ride around it. Yeah. It was fun. Lots of noise. Yeah. Lots of burning oil and stuff. Yeah. People screaming, getting hauled away in ambulances. It was fun. Good times. Good times had by all. You keep taking notes.

Jaap: It's okay. I didn't write down your drinking spots or anything. Don't worry.

Cook: So yeah, that was about it. High school was pretty good. Butte High wasn't bad. We had a big class though. I think there was like 600 something like that. It wasn't, it wasn't small. A lot of people back then.

Jaap: Yeah. It's different. I'd love to see because now there's just not that many people.

Cook: No, so no. Yeah. Yeah. I also lived over in McQueen. Oh yeah. Yeah. And there was a lot of people when all that stuff, I don't know where they all went, but they didn't stay in Butte, most of them.

Jaap: Is that difficult? I guess I'd like you to talk about that a little, just the pit kind of, I mean, you were here, the pit was already started when you came, but you were really here when all those changes happened.

Cook: When I started taking out the road and McQueen wasn't there anymore and stuff. Yeah. That was devastating. Really. Because, like I said, I mean, they were tearing it all up. There's no, for what? So a hundred people could work? I didn't get that. There was 200 left town because of it. How did that figure? Hmm. But whatever. It is what it is.

Jaap: Yeah. So you don't think it was worth it.

Cook: You know? I think it was. What do you mean?

Jaap: I don't know. Do you think it was worth removing those neighborhoods and displacing those people?

Cook: I don't know. Maybe on some other realm, because at least Butte started realizing that there - that wasn't the be all end all mm-hmm that, that was maybe that's what started Butte, but that isn't what's gonna keep Butte alive. Yeah. It's still that way. I don't really think of Butte as mining town. I know those miners do, but, I dunno what I think of Butte as actually what kind of town. It's a working class town, whatever that is. It certainly isn't the mines.

Jaap: Interesting. Yeah. Not many people say that, but you're not wrong.

Cook: I don't think I am. Because that was one thing about, I thought about Butte because, I mean, seriously growing up, all my friends had never left Butte. I had been in metropolis, Houston and yeah, I lived in neighborhoods that had more people than Butte had, you know? And so I didn't - they were a little narrow minded that way. This was their world. And that was biting all, what are you gonna be? I'm gonna be a miner. [raspberry noise] Maybe.

Jaap: Yeah. But you're right. People didn't have a plan, not even a plan, but like, that was just it. I think they assumed that's just how it was.

Cook: They assumed. That's what it would be. Everybody I went to school with, they went to the trade classes and stuff like that, learned mechanics and learned all the stuff that they'd be able to use working for the company. And then when they graduated, they're like, what do we do now? They'd been planning all their lives. Their dads worked in the original garage. Their grandpas maybe worked in the mines and that's just what they're gonna do. Well, now, all of a sudden they didn't. And that was a big, that was a big thing there. Like I said, most of those guys just had no clue other than working in mines, what they were gonna do.

Jaap: Did you know what you were gonna do?

Cook: Yeah. I still haven't done it, but yeah. I knew what I was gonna do.

Jaap: Are you searching for what it was?

Cook: I was gonna be a musician.

Jaap: Were you?

Cook: Yeah.

Jaap: You play music?

Cook: Yes, I do.

Jaap: What do you play?

Cook: I play guitar.

Jaap: What? Why are you giggling?

Cook: Because I'm getting ready to slap him.

Clark Grant: Kevin and I are in a band together.

Cook: You can edit that. Because it may not be forever.

Grant: Restrict that. I'll restrict it.

Jaap: Do you guys like playing music together?

Cook: Yeah. He only does it because he ain't got nothing else to do on Thursday nights.

Grant: That's right. Let's not get into it.

Jaap: No we can. I think it's just fine. So you are still a musician. You're still playing music.

Cook: Oh yeah. You can't quit that. I can't quit that. I injured myself once on my shoulder and the doctor told me I may not ever be able to lift it up again. So I built myself a lap steel guitar to learn how to play that. In case I couldn't lift my arm again, which I can, but I just can't walk very good. Yeah. Yeah. But then see, being a musician did lead me to the, to the fact that, especially at that time, musicians don't make money. So you have to have something else to do. And so I learned to be a carpenter. Yeah. I became a carpenter that was down in Houston. Because you couldn't get a job around Butte. There were no jobs. So I left. After high school, I stuck around for about a year and partied and decided that I needed to get a trade. So I went down to Houston and learned how to be a carpenter.

Jaap: Nice. When did you come back here?

Cook: See there again, see, that was a pattern of my life. Yeah. I've been back and forth probably, I know it was probably maybe six, seven years that I stayed down south and then I came back. I was a journeyman when I got back here. It was 78, 79, somewhere around there. When I came back.

Jaap: And then you decided to stay then, or was it back and forth?

Cook: No, it was back and forth to different places. I moved back down there and I moved between Houston and Louisiana a lot. I went where the work was, because as a carpenter that's what you do.

Jaap: Because you've moved so much, why did you decide to stay here?

Cook: Why did I decide to stay in Butte? I sobered up. That was when I was 35. I don't know how many years ago. That was 30 years ago. 32, something like that. 30 years ago. I sobered up. I didn't really stay in Butte then either, but I had to go like to Washington for a year or something like that working and following work whenever there wasn't work here. I worked union. I need to add that in. Yeah. So wherever the work was, that's where I went. But I finally okay to finish answering your question. After I got hurt, I injured my shoulder. Then I decided I was gonna stick around in Butte for a while. That's where I'm at now.

Jaap: Clark mentioned to me, you've been sober for 30 some years. Congratulations.

Cook: Thank you.

Jaap: It's a big deal.

Cook: Thank you. It's not a big deal. It's only one day at a time.

Jaap: Well, it adds up to a big deal. I think.

Cook: I don't know. I guess if you live through today, you'll be fine. It's Friday, the 13th, you know?

Jaap: Are you superstitious?

Cook: Am I superstitious? Nah, no. I know them all though. You know, don't step on a crack. Break your mom's back.

Jaap: So you're not superstitious. You just follow.

Cook: Yeah. I don't need a crack in the floor to fall on it. No.

Jaap: So you're a big union guy, correct?

Cook: Yeah. Was. See once you retire, they don't care about you because you're not paying in anymore. So I mean, that's one thing.

Jaap: They don't got your dues anymore.

Cook: Yeah. They don't have your dues coming in anymore. You're a cost to them. So they, you don't get invited to the meetings and stuff.

Jaap: Why have you been always been such a big union guy? What do you find?

Cook: Well, my father was a union man. And I just grew up in Butte for God's sake. Back then, you didn't work unless you were a union and it didn't matter what it was. I mean, everything bartenders, everybody was union. Butte was up until the nineties actually was huge metropolis of unionism. So I don't know. I just never even thought about it. Really. You joined a union. Don't you wanna make the most amount of money? Because rats don't make no money.

Jaap: You're right. Yeah. okay. Clark, you have some questions.

[00:29:39]

Grant: Okay. Kevin, I was hoping you could tell us, I know you've worked on a lot of places in Butte. Like when you got injured, you were working on Three Bears, they were building that. Yeah. So you've worked on a lot of buildings here. Are there any notable projects?

Cook: Notable? I got my name all over Montana Tech up there. Every time we'd build a wall, we'd sign pieces of sheetrock and stick them into the voids of the walls and stuff. Leave little notes. I can't really remember all of them.

Grant: I know you worked a lot with Mike Boysza, who we also interviewed. Who were some other folks you worked with?

Cook: Some other folks that I worked with? Oh, I can't even think of their names. [pause]

Grant: Okay. Welcome back. Welcome back.

Cook: Notable projects. Oh yeah. It's weird. Not listening to myself in the headphones. No, that's all right. My problem. Why are you sorry?

Jaap: He just needs to get the right equipment for the job.

Cook: That's right. Yeah, notable projects. I worked on Butte High. I worked on the hospital, all the remodels on the hospital. Most of them. Pre-release.

Grant: Tell us about that. Like at Butte High. What were you doing at Butte High? When you guys were remodeling? Like what would you do on a job? Tell me, just tell us about being on the job and the work you did.

Cook: It's a carpenter, duh. If it needed to be built, I did.

Grant: But were you like a foreman or shift boss? All that kind of stuff. Who'd you work for? Tommy Walsh or who?

Cook: Yeah, I worked for Tommy Walsh. I worked for, I worked for Wayne Paffhausen. I worked for, I worked for, geez. I wish I could remember his name. He was a math teacher. I was like the only guy that could work with him. I can't remember his name, but I worked for a lot of older guys that just aren't around anymore. I've worked for just about everybody in town really to tell you the truth. Yeah. D Sullivan was the last guy I was working for when I got hurt. Yeah.

Grant: Do you like the being on a job site and being around the guys?

Cook: Sure. Yeah. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah. Work has to be fun. Hmm. Just because you're doing crappy work don't mean you got to, you got to have a bad time.

Grant: How do you make it fun?

Cook: How do you make it fun? Picking on people.

Grant: So it's fun for you.

Cook: Making the apprentices go get stuff that ain't real, you know.

Grant: Like what?

Cook: Well, like a stud stretcher? There ain't such a thing. I told one guy one time that all I had was ceilings nails. I needed some wall nails. Yeah. It happens. Stuff like that.

Grant: Would you care to elaborate? You know, you can elaborate. It makes it easier for us if you just elaborate.  I mean, 40 years of work and all you have to say is it was fun to pick on people?

Cook: It was fun. You know?

[00:34:14]

Grant:  You told me a story once about five gallon buckets. There's like a guy that went around collecting them or something.

Cook: Oh, good God. That was down in Louisiana.

Grant: You ought to share that one with Aubrey. It's fascinating.

Cook: All right. Well, the sheetrock mud comes in five gallon buckets, right. We're working and we got these big ugly ladders. They're built by piss poor carpenters down there that you have to climb up the wooden ladders. And it's really difficult to get off the second and third floor on these wooden ladders to go to the bathroom. So the buckets have lids on them. So naturally we'd use the buckets. We not me. I trained myself to go to the bathroom before on my own time. I don't, I wouldn't do it on company time. So these guys are crapping in these buckets and they're throwing them out the window.  Now a lot of them don't have any crap in them. The ones with lids on them I'd stay away from those. So there's this guy come onto the job and he's picking up empty buckets, five gallon buckets, and we're watching. He got to them and there's one little heavy, got a lid on it. He picks it up. Oh, he goes, oh, oh, on closes the lid, throws it back in his truck. He was going to go ahead and take it home. So a couple weeks later he shows back up on the job. He's got all these little coolers that he had made. He'd double up the plastic buckets. So there's a little lining in between them. Yeah. And he has got them camouflaged. He calls them duck hunting buckets. He's got a little pad on top of the seat and you can put your beer inside them. Ain't nobody bought one on our job anyways. I'm just saying. Something for everything.

Grant: Since I can tell, I have to prompt you here. [laughter] Your life has been very interesting and you've done a lot of meaningful work, you know? And I think it's fun to reflect on it. Yeah. But what about the time you were up on a lift and they lowered the lift. You were like attached to the building. "I'm stuck on the ceiling." What about that one?

Cook: What about it?

Grant: You tell us that one. I can't quite remember the whole thing.

Cook: Well, it was a big job site. Huge. There was, it was the ASME plant out there. We were building that chip plant out there, and this was the largest building on the job and it was pretty wide open. There was a huge area. It was about 40 feet high and we were doing sheet rock on the ceilings and to be in those lifts, you have to be tied off. And I can't remember the name of it. Now. It's a self-rappelling rope kind of cable thing. If you pull it too fast, it stops. If you, if you jerk on it, it'll come out slowly. The rope will come out slowly and you're supposed to wear it until you get to the ground. So as we were working. It's lunch. They all holler lunch. There's about a hundred guys standing around and as we go to drop the lift down, there was a problem with the lift and the guy that was running the lift would have to kneel down and reach under the basket to release this valve, to drop us down, to let out the pressure so that we would go down. So the lift isn't running, but it's going down. And for some reason, my line snapped and it stopped me from going down. But the lift didn't. So I was like 30 feet off the ground and the lift is on the ground and the guy can't figure out how to get back up. I got a hundred electricians laughing at me. I was spinning around on the cable. So everything's cool with those things as long as the safety guy don't find out. Yeah. But when I got to the ground, the safety guy was standing there. "Hey, what did I do?" So we had lunch together. I came out with a new job.

Grant: How's that? What do you mean a new job?

Cook: I didn't have to hang the ceiling anymore, working on the lift.

Grant: You liked being up there a little too much.

Cook: They decided the lift was unsafe.

Grant: Yeah. Sounds like it. Why did they call you bag lady?

Cook: They called me bag lady, because of a guy named Billy Gilbert. Billy was a carpenter. He is a fun guy. We worked together a long time. I had this overcoat and it was an overcoat kind of day. It was one of those long trench coat kind of things. Right. And I had my hair, which is long and flowing. And at the job, we were doing Butte High School, remodeling, the first part of Butte High School. And the guy walked up or I walked up early, had my bag. I always brought my lunch in a paper bag. I'm a paper bag guy. I don't have a Stanley lunch box. I have a paper bag. So I'm standing out there. I got my bag hanging down and they just throwing a bunch of good stuff away there in the dumpster. So I'm going through the dumpster seeing what's good. And I got my paper bag hanging out there and I got the long hair and coat and of course all the guys showed up. Billy Gilbert gets out, "Hey, is that a bag lady?" And that was it. That's how you get nicknames. They decided that it would stick. And it stuck.  That's right. I was the bag lady. There were guys didn't even know I was. I've met guys in Oregon, working on a mall in Oregon and I said something to somebody. I yelled and laughed and I hear from the other aisle, two aisles away. "Is that the bag lady?" I mean, in Oregon, holy crap. Is that infamy? That's infamy isn't it?

Grant: I think so. What about your injuries? Can you tell us about the injuries over the years?

Cook: Now you only had a couple hours. Oh injuries. Yeah. What about it? It's part of the work.

Grant: What do you mean?

Cook: That's just part of the job.

Grant: To be expected?

Cook: If you work with unsafe people, it is.

Grant: So you got injured because of other people?

Cook: Generally speaking.

Grant: Well, do tell.

Cook: Well, like?

Grant: Like the shoulder deal at Three Bears, what happened there? You slipped on ice or something?

Cook: I slipped on ice that shouldn't have been there. The ice should have been removed. The owner of the building, the project, people who were paying for the project, they hadn't bid it for winter work. So all this extra work getting rid of ice and snow and stuff like that. They hadn't bid on that. So there was an argument between contractor and the owners. Meanwhile, the work had to get done while they fought over who was gonna remove the snow and the ice. Then people get hurt. So once somebody got hurt, then they fixed it. But you know.

Grant: But it was a career ending injury for you, right?

Cook: Yeah.

Grant: And remind me, were you carrying a sheet through the front door or something?

Cook: No, no. Hadn't even started the day yet. We were trying to open the front door. I was trying to get to the front door of the building and stepped on a sheet of ice. Went down, fell forward, landed on my shoulder on the concrete. Yeah. Yeah. So you like reliving that?

[00:44:33]

He likes seeing me in pain. He watched me do this the other day, too.

Jaap: What happened there?

Cook: Laughed.

Grant: He fell.

Cook: I fell. Yeah. Concrete, gravel.

Grant: He fell in the gravel.

Cook: Once again, should I blame somebody?  No, I did it. I'm old. I don't watch where I'm going. You know, that's one thing I'm gonna share a bit of wisdom with you that I've learned. One thing in life, there are two kinds of people, the people that walk around and look around and the people that walk around and look where they're going. I'm the guy that looks around, I don't look where I'm going. It's better off to be one of the guys that looks where they're going. I learned that a long time ago, even though I really didn't learn the lesson. I noticed that me and my partner, he was always finding things on the ground, $20 bills and shit. I'm like, how do you do that? You know, well, because he is watching where he is going.

Grant: And what are you looking at?

Cook: I was looking at other things what's coming at me. I don't know. I can't explain it, but I know there's only those two people. You either walk with your eyes up or down. Guys that walk with their eyes down, never fall.

Grant: Well, I know you've had a hip replaced and a knee replaced.

Cook: Unless they're pushed by somebody that wasn't looking around. Mm Hmm. Oh, what about the knee?

Grant: And your hip? Were those the results of injuries or just wear and tear?

Cook: Injuries.

Grant: Really? Well, share if you would, about those, what happened?

Cook: Motorcycle wreck, most of them. Yeah, just getting up and going. I'm okay. I'm alright. Yeah. That's what you do. And then 30 years later, then they start cutting out the parts you can't use anymore. Putting new ones in.

Jaap: Do you still ride a motorcycle?

Cook: Nope. Nope. I haven't rode a motorcycle in a long time. It made me feel funny the last time I rode it. I rode a guy's motorcycle about five years ago. He goes, he bought a new Harley. He goes, "Take it for a ride." Okay. I got on it, rode around block and says, "Yeah, that's enough. I don't need that." I could see a three wheeler maybe. I had a three wheeler once, ran over myself with it.

Jaap: How does that happen?

Cook: Yeah, well, the ignition had gone on it, so you had to push it to start it. And it's a three wheeler and it had big wheels, so I'm pushing it. It caught my foot run over me. And the great thing was that it started and went all the way down. All the way down the parking lot. It hit a car. I'm hobbling along behind it. So I probably won't get a three wheeler either.

Grant: Did you have a partner, like a steady partner working over the years or were you were always changing?

Cook: Now in the union, from job to job, I mean, me and Boysza worked as partners for a while, but really not all that long. I mean, on the big picture, three years, four years - of course kind of a long time ago - and we'd work on jobs together, all through that. But yeah, I think there was only like a hundred guys in our union at the time, which is probably more than what they have now. But you worked with everybody, you never knew who was gonna be the boss on the job. You knew who wasn't gonna be the boss, but you didn't know who was.

Grant: Well, my next question actually is about the unions. Just more about that. I mean, I'm only acquainted with like Larry Mayo from documents and stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't really have a sense of what the 112 was like, kind of towards the end there. Was it a good union?

Cook: I wasn't in 112 at the end there either. I didn't even know about the 112's demise until I came back from Washington one year.

Grant: But that's the union you were in, right?

Cook: That is the local I was in. Yeah.

Grant: And you met over here at the hall?

Cook: Yeah. Well, no, when I first started.

Grant: Where'd you meet then?

Cook: Wait a minute, oh yeah, we did meet in the basement at the hall. And then it was for a while it was Malone's. When it was closed, when that was closed, we didn't really have much. Yeah.

Grant: I mean, I think a lot of people have an understanding of unions in theory, and maybe have never been inside a union. You know what I mean, to understand how it really works.

Cook: I think a lot of people have an opinion of what the union is and it's either good or bad. And people who have bad opinion about the union have never been in it. So they don't know.  Although there's plenty of people that are in the union that don't, it's changed from when I was, when I was in the, it used to be that the unions worked for the people, but now the unions serve the companies that they work for. It's a whole different attitude.  Whoever's signing their contracts, that's who they please. And they tell the guys, see, the guys used to rule, no, we're working eight hours today. We're not working 12 hours. You know, stuff like that. We had a guy once, even though they had signed a contract, it was down at Butte High School and he says, I can only get the forklift during lunch. And we're like, "Great, we don't mind making double time." And he laughed. Well, that's the contract, buddy. You better go read it. Because if we don't get lunch, we get paid double time until we do get lunch. So if this is your schedule, that's what you're paying. He decided he wasn't gonna do that. So we went ahead and put pickets up and teachers stood out and everybody said, yeah, that's what you're gonna do. So that's what happened. Non-union guys would've been doing it for nothing, probably working on their own time. So I don't know. My opinion of the union is that they would talk up, they would speak up for the men because most people won't. Most people do what the boss tells them to do.

Grant: Why is that, you think?

Cook: Because that's where you're trained, aren't you? Do what the doctor says, do what the boss says, do what your mom says. Listen to your dad.

Grant: We've worked together a little bit, you know, on the Carpenters Hall and all that. Yeah. And other projects. I mean, it's hard work, sheet rocking and finishing and especially on the ceilings. And I mean, both of us have been drenched in sweat in the Carpenters' Hall. And so I'm just trying to imagine doing that day in and day out for decades and also being sober. Yeah. How how'd you do it?

Cook: Well, yeah, go to bed early. Eat your vitamins. Drink plenty of coffee. You better take this down. This is gonna be words of wisdom, Lloyd. This is gonna change your life. What, what else do you do? What are you gonna do? If you take day off? What are you gonna watch soap operas? I don't know. You know, especially if you're married, you're going to work. What are you gonna sit around the house? Really? I mean, if you want things, you got to have money. And to have money, you got to work. That's all. I don't know what, what got - what gets you up every day? Well, nevermind. Besides your phone.

Grant: Yeah, my phone. What about your family, Kevin? You were married. You have a daughter.

Cook: I do.

Grant: Tell us about that, if you would.

Cook: Tell you about what? My daughter?

Grant: And your wife, former wife.

Cook: My former wife, she was a Finnlander, grew up in Walkerville. Cora Terrace. I think there's still a piece of it up there where they used to live. And I went to high school with her twin sisters. We met at an AA meeting. Right. Her name was Kathy, Kathy Marjamaa.

Grant: Okay. And you met at an AA meeting. Was it love at first sight?

Cook: No. I just knew her. That's all. I knew her because I went to school with her sisters. I knew who she was. I went to school with her sisters and I knew her brother-in-law who, I knew him really well. We had gone to school. He was a cousin of a friend of mine. Typical Butte. You don't really meet, you just kinda get married.

Grant: Was it a happy marriage?

Cook: No. No.

Grant: Why not?

Cook: I mean, I'd rather not get into that.

Grant: Well, what about your daughter?

Cook: My daughter? What about her?

Jaap: What's her name?

Cook: Her name is Kylie Ray Cook.

Grant: And you're Kevin Ray Cook.

Cook: And I'm Kevin Ray Cook. And she's a political activist over in Missoula. She's got a master's degree in political science. She's into human resources, HR. She works for an ad agency. Should I give them a plug here? Lumen-ad.

Grant: Do they know they have a communist working for them?

Cook: Oh yeah. That's why they hired her. They're very progressive. They understand. They let her take her dog to work anytime she wants.

Grant: That's cool.

Cook: Yeah, she's a wonderful kid.

Grant: I hope to meet her one day.

Cook: She just likes Missoula.

Grant: More than Butte.

Cook: More than Butte. She hates Butte.

Grant: Why?

Cook: Because there's guys in Butte that she hates. She hates Butte guys. She gets it.

Jaap: I get it. They're not all bad.

Cook: They're not all bad. No, just the ones that seems like, well. Don't let them tell you that those fake knees don't hurt no more. It's not true. Okay.

Grant: What about the process of sobriety for you, Kevin?

Cook: The process of sobriety? Yeah, like I said, it was really easy once I decided that I had the problem. It wasn't everybody else. What about it? The process of sobering up?

Grant: Why is every question I ask, met with, "What about it?" I know you were involved with AA for some time and I don't wanna break your anonymity but I'm curious about your, you had told me once that you worked the crisis hotline for them.

Cook: Yeah. Yeah, I did. I answered the hotline.

Grant: I think you've helped a lot of guys, right, get sober too.

Cook: Well, I don't know that I have, but you know, if I did, I hope so. That's what I was trying to do. I wasn't doing it. That's kind of a selfish thing about it that people don't really understand is, is that I wasn't really doing it for them. I was doing it for me, because I'd stay sober by helping them. So personally the outcome for them, it mattered. But the outcome for me mattered more. Does that make sense? I mean, there was nothing I could do for that person. Either he stayed sober and it was because of something I said, or he didn't, and it wouldn't have been because of something I said. Yeah. So the only one that had anything to win really, I mean, like I said, it's kinda selfish, but it's not. Hmm.

Grant: When did you first go to a meeting?

Cook: 1989 is when I sobered up.

Grant: Was there some catalyst that made you sober up?

Cook: Some catalyst? Yeah, I guess. Drugs was the catalyst. In 1989, I realized that alcohol was my drug of choice that I wouldn't do all the other drugs if I wasn't drunk. And that was, it's different now, because back then, older people were the ones 60, 70 years old were going to AA because it would take them that long. Drinking alcohol, it can take you a long time before you figure out that it's a problem. Some people - lifetimes - and they never figure it out. But once you figure out that it's a drug too, and that it was actually my drug of choice and I probably wouldn't choose to do any of the other drugs as long as I wasn't drunk. So what do you do? Quit drinking. At least that's what I did.

Grant: How'd you get that enough for you in those early days?

Cook: AA. I went to two, three meetings a day sometimes. And that's why I don't go to any now.

Grant: You made up for plenty there.

Cook: I did them all.

Grant: You feel that you don't really need it anymore, the organization.

Cook: Well, the premise of the whole thing is that you're supposed to be able to get your life back. And I believe I got my life back, so I don't think that I do. I'm fine with it. Did I need it? Yeah, I needed it. Do I need it? I don't, I don't need to go there to stay sober. No.

Grant: What things do you do 30 years on to stick with it?

Cook: Oh, I don't know. Pick on people. Yeah. Point at their character defects rather than my own. I try to live life simple, man. That's all. Do what I say I'm gonna do. And that's it.

Grant: You know, we've interviewed several people who spent a lot of years at the M&M and then since then people who've reflected on memorable times they've had there.  Do you have any memorable times in the M&M?

Cook: I played up in the loft of that place. You know, people don't realize there was a little place there in between the card room and the bar, and there was a loft up in there and I don't know what the hell happened, how I wound up playing guitar with a guy up in there. I don't know, but that's where we were. We were up in that little loft up there and that was a memorable time. Yeah. I can remember it. Memorable times. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We used to go in all the time in high school, after hours, we couldn't, the M&M was a bar that you couldn't drink in underage unless it was after two o'clock and after two o'clock, then you'd go in and hand the bartender $10 bill or whatever to get how much booze you wanted. And then you'd walk out the front and they had like a little ticket booth out the front window. And they'd hand you your beer outside there. So it was like no, we're just giving this to this guy. So, we're not selling it to him.

Grant: "We're just giving this kid beer."

Cook: The M&M that was quite the place. And back then, they gave you food stamps, an actual book of stamps rather than the cards and stuff now, and people would always take food stamps up there and there'd always be guys up there would buy them pay cash for it, whatever 50 cents on the dollar or whatever it was. The M&M was kinda like the headquarters for semi-illegal shit. Punch boards. They had punch boards. They were all illegal, but they had them.

[01:05:46]

Grant: I had heard once that a guy fenced a lot of stolen tools out of there and stuff too.

Cook: Well, the Bunnies were involved in a lot of.

Grant: Such as?

Cook: Theft. Like I said, the food stamps that wasn't the only thing, the gambling, the cigars, the illegal booze.

Grant: Quite the enterprise.

Cook: Yeah. That's why it's so revered in Butte. That's why people still walk by it and look in there. A little black hole in there.

Grant: How do you feel now that it's burned? Do you have any feelings on that event?

Cook: Yeah, it was kinda weird really. I mean because I mean, Butte, the M&M, there's people come from all over the world, go to the M&M, apparently, that's what I hear.

Grant: Were you sad to see it burn?

Cook: No, I wasn't sad to see it burn. I don't drink there. So I never drank there much. Two o'clock in the morning to go get breakfast and then a six pack of beer. That would be about it.

Grant: There was that one time.

Cook: There was that one time.

Grant: Care to share?

Cook: What, what one time? At the M&M?

Grant: Yeah.

Cook: That wasn't the M&M.

Grant: Oh, I thought it was.

Cook: Yeah, no, no, I don't care to share that. No, it's the Party Palace now. It was called the Downstairs Disco back then.

Grant: Really?

Cook: Yeah. And it was just downstairs. There was nothing upstairs at all. Well, there was a building, but it wasn't that.

Grant: But you don't care to share. We can move on.

Cook: Although, I guess it does kind of tie together. Well, so I'm hanging out in the bar and I'm really close to a blackout. And I was right on the verge of it, because I didn't remember what I did, but I did wake up in the middle of it because the girl bartender, she got her finger in my eyeball and her thumb in my ear, like I'm a bowling ball and they're hauling me up the stairs. And they get me up to the top of the stairs. "What the hell? What the hell's wrong here?" "You're out. You're out." I didn't know what I had done, but they threw me out the door. And so I'm standing out on the front, on the corner of Park and Maine at midnight. And I'm ready to fight now. I'm pissed. You know what the hell's going on? You woke me up, throw me out the door, locked the damn door. What the hell? So, apparently I wanted to fight and I asked this guy if he wanted to fight and he goes, "Yeah." I didn't know who he was. I looked at him. I says, "Okay." So I hauled off and I punched him and he didn't go down. I was a little scared. So I says, "Okay." He turns, he just gets this glazed, look over his face. He turns and walks away. He walks up to the M&M. So I'm standing there. Okay. Who's next? Nobody wanted anymore. So, I said, "Okay." So I turned around and go to walk home. I'm only four blocks away from home. So I turn to walk home. And as I get to the alley there between Gamers and the M&M, he comes out of out of the back door with a beer bottle and I heard it smash and I heard him say, "Hey, you motherfucker." And he turns and I turned around just in time to see him coming at me with the glass, with the broken end of the bottle. And I held it barely. He's got me on the ground and he is leaning all on it. And he got me around the eye. You can't see it because there was a good doctor on call at the time. I had 54 stitches around my eye. You can see a little part of it once in a while, but anyways, he got my eye pretty good. So I really didn't know who he was or nothing. The next day they took me to the hospital. The next day, the cops wanna talk to me because apparently he had just walked back into the M&M and sat down. So they had arrested him. And the next day I got to make a photo ID and they'd show me these bunch of these pictures, right. There was like nine pictures. And I said, that's the guy. He had a big black eye. He was the only guy with a black eye and I knew I had nailed him hard. So that's him. Yep. That's him. Okay. So I found out the guy's name and everything and he was, this was like his third time conviction. He was gonna go and do time, pretty bad for this kind of thing. So I'm not gonna give him an ad, but my attorney was that kind of an attorney. He went and told him, "Yeah, well, we won't file charges if he give us $10,000." So he gave me some money and he didn't go to jail. So about a year later, I'm sitting in an AA meeting and I look, this new guy looks a little familiar. And then he says his name. It was him. It was that guy that I had the big fight with while we were both on our last drunks. It was kinda . . . He sobered up after that. And so did I.

Grant: That was it for you? You were done drinking.

Cook: Oh no, that night. No, no, there was still another month to go before I finished it off. But that was part of the build up of the end. Yeah. That was when I knew things weren't good.  Although, I got money out of the deal.

Grant: Lucky, that you have both your eyes. Thanks for sharing that, Kevin.

Cook: That's what they say in AA meetings.

Grant: Thank you for sharing.

Cook: Yeah, you don't want this to be a drunk log.

Grant: Did you guys become friends or at least acquaintances?

Cook: Oh yeah, we talked. Yeah. Acquaintances. Yeah.

Jaap: Friends would be pretty difficult.

Cook: Friend, I wouldn't go that way. You know, I'd see him in AA meetings. I'd go, "Hey, Mark." He'd go, "Hey, Kevin." Yeah, that was it. yeah.

Grant: Can we hear more about your high school years? What kind of student were you?

Cook: I was a great student. Yeah. I got picked to go, I think it was 72, they did the state constitution thing. The bicentennial. The constitutional convention. Yeah, I was the Butte delegate for the juniors.

Grant: What was that like?

Cook: Pretty boring. Yeah. Ended up Helena and stuff. I guess at the time it was all right. Got a picture with Mayor Mike Micone. Right in front of the flag. And it was yeah. Official handshake thing. Yeah.

Grant: So you were kind of an up and coming youth before you went astray.

Cook: Yeah. Yeah, I was, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Before the hippie movement. Yeah.

Grant: Did you get sucked into that?

Cook: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Nobody missed that. Didn't want to know anybody that did miss that.

Grant: What about Vietnam? I mean, if you were born in 55.

Cook: Vietnam, I did not have to serve.

Grant: You were a little too young, I guess.

Cook: The year I turned 18 was the year they started with the lottery thing and my number, they were taking up to like 70 or something like that. I can't remember. They'd changed the numbers all the time, but my number was like 289. I was never gonna go. So I didn't sign up if that's what you mean. Yeah, that was one thing I learned. Never volunteer.

Jaap: Never volunteer.

Cook: Period.

[01:16:03]

Grant: Back to my high school question though. I mean, do you remember getting a good education at Butte High?

Cook: Yeah, sure. I thought it was, I thought it was okay. You know, back then we still had teachers that would smack you. Oh yeah. All the teachers had paddles. Dude. You'd get paddled. That's what the Dean of Boys was all about. That guy. If you got called into the Dean's office, you was getting smacked. That's all there was to it.

Grant: Did you get paddled?

Cook: Oh, hell yeah.

Grant: For what?

Cook: All sorts of things. If they felt like hitting you, how many times have I felt like hitting you just today? They could do it. They could do it.

Grant: And your parents wouldn't say anything?

Cook: You know what? I remember one time, because I went to all sorts of schools. Like I said, four, four schools in three different states one year. And I remember my mother walking me into, I don't remember where, I just remember, she walked in and she goes, "This is Kevin." She had a Southern accent. That's my mother, says, "This is Kevin, if you got any problems with him, give him a beating, send him home with a note and we'll beat him too." That was the way things happened. Teachers. Yeah, I did get in a fight with one over it. One time. I didn't mind getting paddled because they never really hit you that hard. But I had one teacher who liked to pull hair. I was fed up. I was in ninth grade at the time. I was bigger than him. And I grabbed his hand when he went to pull my hair and I stood up out of the desk and I says, "You ain't fucking pulling my hair one more time." So we took it out into the hall and I was just getting ready to punch him when the Dean of Goys walked up and he goes, "What's going on here?" And I showed him my science book with all the hair in it that he had been pulling outta my head for the last week . And I brought that home and showed it to my mother. And she went down and I was in a different class. This never happened back then. It never, ever, ever happened. Usually, the teacher won in these deals like that. We didn't get him fired, but I was in a different class. So that was a victory for back then.

Grant: Pulling hair.

Cook: Oh yeah. He was horrible. He was a terrible guy. He was a mean, bitter man. Bruce Little was his name. Yeah, he was taller than me, but I was bigger. I got one good on him. These days you'd been fired, but you know, oh yeah. Back then they had tenure. I don't know if they can do it now either, but you know, back then you get him in trouble. He's just gonna become the principal or something. And then you're . . .

Grant: Did you have good friends in high school?

Cook: I did. Still got some of them.

Grant: Who is that?

Cook: Dan Gelic, Ed Schultz. Yeah. Tim Todd. I went to school with all of them. What? You want me calling them all out? Half of them, most of them are dead. So those guys I just mentioned, well, two of them live here in Butte still, but they're guys that haven't been any further than maybe Salt Lake City to see Blue Oyster Cult back in the seventies. That would be about it.

Grant: And like never left?

Cook: Yeah. yeah.

Grant: When you go other places and you get that outside perspective, then you come back to Butte, how does it affect how you think of this place?

Cook: I go, my God, what the hell do I see in Butte to stay here? Why? What? What is it? I don't get it. I mean, even to this day, I don't get it other than the fact that it's cheap. It's easy to live in.  I used to get really pissed at friends in the bar and I would say, "Well, I'm not taking you home. You live all the way across town." How far is that? Takes five minutes to drive across town and back. What the hell is your problem? You've never lived in a town where it takes . . . In Houston. I lived on the busiest street, it was Westheimer and it would take three hours to go three blocks. That's how much traffic there was. It was five lanes of traffic going one way. You're never getting outta there. I don't get it. The lines at the stores. There aren't lines here. You got two people in line. Oh, where's another cashier? You've never been anywhere, have you? You don't get it, do you? Yeah.

Grant: So other than being kind of like cheap and deserted, do you think Butte doesn't have a lot to offer?

Cook: Not for young people. I don't. I think that's why they all leave town. Of course, that's most smaller towns are that way. If they don't have anything, their people are leaving. Just saw that thing the other day, we were talking about it the other day. Where the place in the Ozarks is advertising paying $20,000 for young people to move there, to work remote. Yeah. Yeah. I see your eyes. Yeah.

Grant: How long do you have to stay?

Cook: There's probably a catch there. Huh?

Jaap: I'm not going anywhere.

Cook: We own your third child. I've never researched that kind of thing. Everywhere I went I just hoped they'd have jobs.

Grant: Do you think you'll remain in Butte?

Cook: That's not fair.

Jaap: It's a fair question.

Cook: Do I think I'll remain in Butte? Unfortunately, yeah. It's not the same as it was. I don't have to struggle for work. I'm retired. This is a great place to retire. Are you kidding? I figure I'll probably be here.

Grant: This is from an earlier thing you shared about living up at the Gardens, you know? You kind of had a special connection to it having lived there. So when it burned, were you sad about that one?

Cook: No, I was angry.

Grant: Oh, why?

Cook: Because the Anaconda Company did it. Everybody knew it. Everybody knew they took it out. I was angry. I wasn't sad. Because it was closed already. It had already been closed for a while. So it wasn't like, I think I was more sad when they started digging up there. Because at least when it just burned it's like, okay, well the park is still there and stuff and you can still get in the woods and you know, it was nice. It wasn't just the rides and things that, but when they started actually digging up there for. Even then I knew it was a futile effort. It's like, you didn't find anything in that hole. Why are you building another hole?  I guess that's because I didn't grow up a miner.

Grant: When you say the Anaconda Company did it and everybody knew it, is there evidence?

Cook: Sure, sure. There was. It wasn't being used. They wanted to put a mine up there. They figured if it was out of the way, who's gonna complain. So they did it. Everything was burning back then. Everything burned. Even if they didn't do it, they were gonna get blamed for it. Penney's burned. They got blamed. Everything, everything that burned, they got blamed for it. The company. The company. Yeah, because it was a funny thing they owned all the land, six inches below the dirt. That's the hilarious part of it. You get rid of the top six inches. Well, now, who owns it now? You get rid of that building, who owns that now? The Anaconda Company.

Grant: Were you coming and going from Butte when all the fires, big fires of town were happening?

Cook: I was usually in Butte when the big fires, I watched [JC] Penney’s. Yeah. There was always big scenes. I mean, it was all, it was like huge crowd. It was like selling popcorn or something. It was ridiculous. The people would come all over. The Big Butte burned up there. That was lots of people. It was like a party. I don't know. It was weird, I guess.

Grant: But you watched Penney's burn?

Cook: Yeah. I don't know too many people that didn't.

Grant: Any sadness associated with any of those fires or does it just make me sad?

Cook: It only affects you and you weren't even here. I don't get it. No, I don't remember any emotions at all, really. I mean, other than shock and it's like really it burned? Emotions. I ain't got no emotions. Got no feelings.

Grant: You've mentioned earlier. You have brothers.

Cook: I do.

Grant: Tell us about them.

Cook: One, I talk to and one, I don't. They're brothers. They were younger brothers. I played tricks on them. I was that kind of guy.

Grant: Like what?

Cook: Like tell them that red hot chili peppers were candy. Here, eat this. You'll love it. And then they'd cry and go and tell mom, and then I get my ass beat and I do it again. My youngest brother, he's like eight years younger. We didn't really hang or nothing, but then I got two other sisters, younger, from a different father. They weren't afflicted with having to grow up with my brothers. So they're pretty okay. They never moved around like we did. They had a whole different life. Yeah. Yeah. They're Serbian.

Grant: Is that the Tomich connection?

Cook: That's the Tomich yeah.

Grant: Did your dad drink?

Cook: Yeah, he did. Yeah. Yeah. That's where I had my first drinks. I mean, as soon as I was six years old and could open them new fancy twist-top bottles that they came out with. "Go get us a beer, Kevin." Once I learned that trick, I learned that if you drink a little bit out of it first, then it won't spill all over. Yeah. So I was drunk first time when I was like six or seven years old, probably.

Grant: What do you remember of that? Enjoying it?

Cook: Yeah, I enjoyed it. Yeah. I understood why adults were doing it. They didn't understand that I was doing it. And being as that was Texas, I mean, it makes all the sense in the world that at six years old, I could field strip an M-1 carbine and put it back together and tell you all the parts and open beers. So that tells you what Texas does for you. I was the highlight of the crowd. "Hey Kev, come and show them how you can field strip an M-1. Go get him a beer."

Grant: I don't think you mentioned earlier how your dad died.

Cook: My dad died of, he had clotting problems or something like that. Lungs. He had a bad infection. He died. He was, I don't know, in a hospital.

Grant: Was that in Montana?

Cook: No, it was in South Dakota.

Grant: So he had moved again.

Cook: Oh yeah. He moved again. Yeah. Oh, hell. He had moved all over by then. He finally, they moved out there because his wife was from there.

Grant: What do you think compelled him to travel so much?

Cook: That I don't know. Because his father never moved. His father lived in the same general area forever around Mount Vernon, Texas. Yeah. I don't know what it was, because my mother didn't like it. I don't know what compelled him. I think the first time when we moved to Butte though, I believe that because that was during the race riots in Houston at the time, and he was working down in, he was working downtown Houston and I think it scared him a lot, having a young family and living in Houston, Texas at the time and Kennedy had just died and everything. They were having quite a problem down there. And I think, I know for a fact that he got an Ameri-pass on the train and that's like you got 30 days, you can go anywhere or something like that. At the time you pay one price in 30 days, you can travel wherever. And he got on the train and was looking for a new town. I do remember that. And he got on the train. And I think when he showed up down there on Front Street, right across from the Deluxe Bar, he walked across the street to the Deluxe and says, "Well, I guess we're moving here. Doesn't seem like they have any race problems here." I hate to put it that way, but I think that's what it was. The race thing. Butte was pretty white back then.

Grant: Still is.

Cook: It still is. It was even whiter back then. Believe it or not.

Grant: For my final question, I wanted to just ask about your mom more. We didn't really hear a lot about her, I guess. Yeah. Her temperament. What was she like? I mean, I guess she would beat you. We've heard that, but.

Cook: Okay. So that's how you want me to start with her. She was beating on me. I say that there were different times. If you didn't spank your children, then you weren't paying attention. I mean it wasn't against the law.  My mother was more the authoritarian than, than I used to laugh on the TV shows. They go, ‘wait till your dad gets home.’ And I'm like, I wish my dad would get home. He'd take the belt off and give you a pop and go, "Oh, this hurts me more than it hurts you." Not my mom. She was out for blood. When she got after you, it was the spatula, the coat hangers, and they made coat hangers out of wire then.  You were gonna be wishing for Dad, but yeah, I don't know that it was, wasn't like she was a serial murderer. She had three boys that raised hell. You know, she needed some respect and she got it that way.

Grant: And you needed discipline, let's be honest.

Cook: No, it wasn't me. It was my brothers. I got tired of seeing her hit my brothers. Being as I was the oldest. They always did it.

Grant: Did she cook?

Cook: Oh yeah. My mother was a great cook. She grew up in Louisiana. She was a great cook. She spent lots of time cooking. When they first got married, that's the way it was supposed to be. That's the way it was. The man went to work and did the job and she stayed home and took care of 'where's my dinner.' And I grew up with that crap. Yeah. You know, I thought it was wrong then, and I didn't like it back then, but you know, that's why they got a divorce, I suppose. After 15 years. She was very hard headed. She was very political. She was well known. A lot of people knew her. She started the first daycare center in Butte for Model Cities. She was actually involved with creating that building down there on Front Street that the health department's in now. That was the daycare center at one time. It was kinda like a community center thing, how it got started.

Grant: And funded through Model Cities. So did she have a relationship with those guys?

Cook: Yeah. Don Peoples. He gave her her first job running the daycare center. It was up there at Mountain View Methodist Church in the basement. And that was the first daycare center as far as I know in Montana.

Grant: Did she change after the divorce, you think? Was she liberated?

Cook: Oh yeah. She was one of the first women in the National Organization for Women (NOW). I don't think much of them now, but back then they were really radical. Yeah. I remember going to conventions for them and stuff. She wore mini skirts if that's what you mean.

Grant: She was a Democrat?

Cook: She was a Democrat. Yep. My dad was a Democrat, lifelong, lifelong Democrats. I remember when Texas was Democrat. It is Republican now. It's beyond me. It had to be gerrymandering, but whatever.

Grant: That and television.

Cook: That and television. Yeah. Fox News.

Grant: Do you have any hopes for this town, Kevin? Do you think it can improve?

Cook: I just hope it lasts as long as I live. After that I couldn't care less. Okay. Once I die, I don't care if Butte falls in that hole over there or not. Okay. This is a little random, but that's one of the funniest things about that hole over there. This is one of the funniest things that happened to me on Butte job. Okay. And they used to listen to Bill Thomas was his name. And he had a show called Party Line on the radio. I think it's still on. Yeah, but this guy was the driest guy. You ever, I mean, he was horrible, a radio personality? Why? Because he owned the radio or something. I don't know. But he's got to caller on and the guy calls up and goes, "Well, Bill, I'm not from around here, but seems y'all got a problem with that hole over there." And this was right as it was beginning to fill up with water, right after they had turned the pumps off and shit. And they're like, "Seems to me, y'all got a problem." He says, "Now I ain't from around here and I don't know everything," he says, "but it seems to me that y'all got problems with them piles of dirt over there. And then you got that hole over there. Seems to me, I'd take them piles of dirt and put them back in that hole over there." That was the topic of the conversation for the rest of the week on that job. Why don't we just put the dirt back in the hole? Why not? Why not? It still makes sense to me. But whatever. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Random thought. You'll have to edit that.

Grant: Okay. I'll edit all that.

Cook: Put it in the right spots where it makes more sense.

Grant: I will. Yeah. I'll rearrange the whole thing.

Cook: Yeah. I'm sure you will. Yeah.

Grant: Well, any other thoughts you'd like to share, Kevin? Or questions that you have, Aubrey?

Jaap: Closing thoughts?

Cook: Closing thoughts? What the hell did you have me in here for? That's my closing thought.

Grant: Okay. Thank you for that.

[END OF RECORDING]