Black Jack's Bar Outside Wolf Creek MT
Part 1
1) Fictional Story of Model Structure
By Paul Wussow
After a derailment along the Wolf Creek branch of the Great Northern Railroad a boxcar was left on the side of the tracks, the trucks, couplers and braking gear having been destroyed or removed by the railroad. After it was determined to be too old and damaged for repair the car was abandoned along the branch line. A local character from up in the woods outside of town, known as “Black Jack” took a liking to the old car and thought he could put it to use. After splitting and planning large diameter log to serve as a bar he proceeded to gather a few grocery crates as stools. Soon Black Jack opened the boxcar doors and he was in business selling local moonshine of his own making. Some of his patrons with ax and saw helped cut windows into the sides of the car. Later, as the bugs were getting healthy, Jack cut a hole for a 36" wooden screen door into the side of the car facing the road and closed the old boxcar doors. This was good for the patrons and also for the bugs, many of which have been seen in drunken flight after a visiting, and taking a bite out of one of the patrons of, the old boxcar. The rear boxcar door, when opened, still provided a convenient location to dispose of trash.
As the chill of fall turned the leaves to gold and then brown, the local bar flies started to complain about the cold drafts, not from the keg, but from the front door each time it was opened. After a few weeks of these gripes, and lots of 3-7-77 bar whiskey, Jack persuaded the regulars to construct an entryway from parts of an old house that was being ripped down back in the town of Wolf Creek. So, with saws, hammers and bottles in hand, the current entryway was constructed.
This watering hole has received very little maintenance, although, the sporting element of Great Falls does grease the bar regularly. Jack continues to supply their needs with his 3-7-77 from somewhere up Sheep Gulch and each year more fishermen gather to tell their fish stories.
The Whiskey labeled “3-7-77” was the number pinned on road agents that were hung by Vigilantes and is said to indicate the dimensions of a grave. Three feet wide, seven feet deep, and seventy seven inches long. However the only holes in the area of Black Jacks are from his outhouse that has been dumped over many times by rowdy groups of sportsmen, many times with a friend inside.
The year is 1937 as we find an old local called Long Bow, known for “ pulling the Long bow” (telling farfetched hunting and fishing stories) seated at the bar with Jack tending bar, and Old Rawhide one or two seats down the bar from Long Bow, waiting for itinerant fisherman to stop in and buy the drinks. Old Rawhide once won a local beauty contest riding bareback down the streets of Wolf Creek where “her skirts flew high and she won the contest”. She now gets along “entertaining” locals in the winter and the visiting sportsmen when they are in season. As the summer gets warmer we will see Paul and Norman Maclean fly fishing the creek while Norman's brother-in-law Neil tells tall tales to impress Old Rawhide, or at least impress himself.
The branch line still gets a little use during the spring and fall for cattle movements but passenger service is limited to riding in the caboose on the weekly “mixed” train.
The Creek runs swift and cold down the mountain side and is filled with trout for any crafty fly-fisherman to attract to his flies. The flies were most likely not “counter flies” but flies tied by a local railroad engineer named George Croonenberghs. George, the youngest of four brothers, learned to tie flies and to fish from the reverend John Maclean. But it was George who became famous for his fly fishing insight and served, with his wife, as a consultant to Robert Redford when he directed the movie A River Runs Through It.
As the sun sets into the Bitterroots we find the brothers fishing the creek in ”hopes that fish will rise”.
- Fictional Story of Model Structure
- Model Building in HO Scale
- Module for teaching Model Railroad Photography
- Fictional accounts of life in the summer of 1937
Update 12/27/14