Monday, September 05, 2005

The Other Man in the Bookstore: Scotty Zion

On another expedition to that Starbucks outpost in the wilderness, I was dumping my espresso remains in the trash. At a nearby table was a tall lank cowboy with a few years on him. He looked vaguely familiar -- I thought maybe he was even a movie star. A little like Randolph Scott -- you know, heroic but humorous. He was intently scribbling in a notebook. “Are you writing a book?”

“Yup. This is my second.”

“What was the first?”

“’Been Any Bigger I’d Have Said So!’” and he whipped out a copy. “Want to buy one?” I got out my checkbook.

It was Scotty Zion, housemover, and on the front of the book was an amazing photo of an entire grain elevator tilting along a Montana road. “We can move anything,” said Scotty, and I believed him. In fact, Bob Scriver had approached him once about moving the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife over to the West side of the Rockies. Scotty had already measured the overpasses and calculated the costs before the idea ran out of gas. He’d even approached the railroad about permission to travel on the tracks in one place. Never got reimbursed for all that either. But no matter. He generally managed to get by and have a lot of fun in the process. He enjoyed visiting Bob to see what critter would be hanging around this time. Bobcat? Eagle? Badger?

One little chore was moving the old Conrad Catholic Church up to Babb. I wondered who put it up there on top of a hill. In those days they didn’t worry about crossing bridges -- they just bull-dozed a ford in the stream. No environmental impact statements. The Zion patriarch immigrated to Montana in 1909 but the whole shebang feels as though they’ve been here even longer: old as Indians. Hell, old as boulders.

The reason he looked familiar is that the Kippsters had made a movie that I’d seen -- that was the only one he’s ever starred in. Well, so far. Scotty and his brother Bob are well-respected amateur historians around Choteau and experts on the Blackfeet Agency that was once there before the government once again shrank the reservation. A local ranching woman had decided that the history was too precious to lose and took the idea of a movie to Piegan Institute. The gimmick was that school bus loads of kids from both Piegan and Bynum schools would come down there one fine day and the Zion brothers would walk through through the site, pointing out the smallpox graves and the faint traces of agency buildings. The resulting film was placed in all the local small town libraries. Now that’s social action!

The Zions are East Front specials, out on horseback when not housemoving. They’ve been everywhere and done everything and I only wish I’d met them a whole lot sooner. Scotty tells wilder tales than Charlie Russell. After all, it was Nancy who wrote out Charlie’s tales and she took out the four essentials of cowboy stories: birth, death, shit and sex. Scotty doesn’t hold back on any of them. He reports that when his daughter, Sherry, was born and he was put in charge of the diapers, he just took ‘em out in the back and hosed them off good. I believe it. The second girl, Candy, drew the illustrations that are interspersed with photographic records of family, structures and animals.

He tells about a cowboy who sets out for town with a team and wagon and for various reasons doesn’t get anything to eat all day. Towards evening he loses his way on the braided prairie trails and late, in the dark, spots the lamplight of a little claim shack. The young couple are so starved for company that they say, “Wal, shore he can stay.” There’s only one bed but they shove over and the cowboy gets in on the husband’s side.

Now, the wife had whipped up a big batch of flapjack batter and the cowboy could see it across the room, fermenting its sour dough nicely on a shelf over the stove. But he was too shy to ask for food and the young wife never thought to ask whether he was hungry, so he just lay there obssessing over that bowl of batter.

Pretty soon, there was a ruckus out with the horses and the husband ran out in his longjohns to see what was going on. The young wife was left next to the cowboy. Not the nicest girl in the world, she poked the cowboy in the ribs. “Now’s your chance!” she whispered.

So the cowboy leapt out of bed and scarfed down that batter!

Scottie himself, when he married Claire, took his vows very seriously and why wouldn’t he, with a woman like that! Bob was the soldier because Scottie was deaf. Bob’s war trophies are proudly displayed in their house, even though Scottie accidentally shot a hole in Bob’s uniform once. And Darrell wondered, “Do I dare video these old guys with Hitler’s flag in the background? Will people think they’re Nazis?” Hardly. Not to worry.

Scotty took his stories down to a local printing outfit, explained what he wanted, and was pleased with the results. There’s not a bar code on the book and no ISBN number, which means that Barnes & Noble won’t carry it. This is self-publishing on the most basic level -- a just-do-it approach. It’s the best way to get things done around here.

Candy says in her “Editor’s Note” that their 1950’s house moving slogan was “We Like ‘Em Tough.” Me, too! But what’s even better is an outfit that isn’t puffed up or made smug by taking on the tough jobs and being tough and ingenious enough to get them done. Instead, Scotty and company are inclined by their success to be a little more tender and protective of the underdog. The proceeds of the book sales go to the Zion Scholarship Fund.

You’ll have to read the book to find out where he got the title, but I don’t know how you can get a copy except to call up Scotty and ask. The problem is that I don’t dare print his phone number. He lives in Great Falls. He’s pretty deaf, so you’ll have to shout real loud. He’s been on the board of the C.M. Russell Museum (moved Charlie’s house over one lot and did some repair on the studio), so if you call them up, maybe they’ve got some copies in their gift shop. If they don’t, they sure ought to.

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