Anaconda and Me

Walt Hansen

Description

Anaconda and Me is a collection of poems, short stories and photographs that emphasizes the author’s connection to Anaconda, Montana and the surrounding area, and how it has guided his life for the past 78 years. It includes his community environment, family, friends, and heroes. It is the author’s wish that the book be used as a model for others to evaluate their lives in a literary fashion as opposed to a historical narrative.

Sujets

• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781669842767
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Anaconda And Me
WALT HANSEN

 
Copyright © 2022 by Walt Hansen. 842837
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
 
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-4277-4

Hardcover
978-1-6698-4278-1

EBook
978-1-6698-4276-7
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 10/19/2022
Contents
Introduction
Verse for the Gophers?
Georgetown Lake
The Sound
Cedar Waxwings
The Yellow Bench
The Iowa
The Deer
The Hike
Déjà Vu
Chaplin
The Tree
I, Mimic
Lasting Support
Arlington for Two
The Terraplane
Coffee
Sadat (A Final Vision)
Trapped
Clank
The Washington School First Grade Circus
Watergate
Carlye
Transition at 37
Repair
A Childhood Vision
Shopping Mall
In My Viewfinder
For His Sake
Shawn D.
Seconds Rolling by on the Old Wittnauer
Apollo XVII
Desert Storm
Desert Shield
Clank Revisited
The Preserver
Mom
Bud
An Old Cold Stack
In Conclusion
About the Book
Verse For The Gophers?
About the Author


To Nancy June Platt Hansen, a loving wife, mother, and grandmother
Introduction
In 1965, I was an undergraduate student at Western Montana College in Dillon, Montana. I graduated from Anaconda High School in Anaconda, Montana, in 1962, and prior to my being a student at Western, I was a student at Montana State University in Missoula. That university is now the University of Montana. The major universities in Montana changed their names.
My enrollment in Montana State could only be defined as an academic disaster, and for the next two years, I couldn’t have accomplished less as a student, and I also discovered alcohol and partying. I managed to flunk out not only once but twice. I really didn’t mind other than the absolute horror of facing my father, who was bound and determined that one of his three sons was going to graduate from college.
In the spring of 1964, after a stint working for the Union Pacific Railroad, I enrolled at Western Montana College in Dillon, Montana, and met a man who was to become my mentor and who turned my life around. His name was Edward Cebull who was an associate professor of English. Mr. Cebull would meet with me on a weekly schedule to keep track of my progress for the next several years. He also taught American literature, and for the first time in many years, I began to enjoy what learning was all about. The unique attribute that Mr. Cebull had was that he would read to us out loud and make literature come alive. He had this big, booming voice and oral interpretation skills that made every word of the English language beautiful. I was also fortunate that along with Mr. Cebull was a college faculty that really cared about each and every student, and if we needed help, they would go out of their way to help us. As a side note, I gave up alcohol and was able to join other students from Anaconda and other communities in study groups.
In the spring of 1967, I graduated from Western with a bachelor of science degree in English and business. I would return to Western in 1968 while I was teaching, and in 1972, I earned a master of science degree in education.
My time at the university was not a complete waste of time. I had chosen to major in English. I had two professors who did encourage my interest in English. One was Leslie Fiedler, who I had for humanities. He was rather famous at the time, and he was the most scholarly instructor I ever had as an educator. He assigned us to read the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. I did not have any mythology that I could recall in the Anaconda school system. His approach at the time was to remind us that mythology is a word that infers that, at one time, it was a religion that faded away, but that the stories that came from those religions were fascinating and explain how ancient peoples explained scientific occurrences that they could not understand and that also applied to human relationships. He then assigned us to read the major books of the Bible. If nothing else, it caused me to think about the Christian religion and whether or not someday it might disappear and become a part of future mythology. I learned more about religion from him than I learned in eight long years of Sunday school and confirmation. The other was Mr. Mclean. I apologize that I cannot remember his first name, but he encouraged me to consider English as a major and told me that I was a fairly good writer.
When I graduated from Western, my first teaching assignment was in Geraldine High School, home of the Geraldine Tigers. The small town of Geraldine, Montana, was located in the winter wheat farming country east of Fort Benton. It was a big change from what I was used to in Anaconda. The land was flat but strangely beautiful, and I can’t say I didn’t like the environment. It was open and free, and the acres and acres of wheat were breathtaking. Nancy June Platt and I were married during the Christmas vacation of 1967. My daughter, Carlye, was born during the two years that we lived there, and if I live long enough, I would like to write a book about my experiences there, because it was interesting.
Nancy, Carlye, and I moved to Livingston, Montana, in 1969. I taught at Livingston Junior High School. I really liked Livingston, but Buddy Blume, a familiar Anaconda figure, was serving on the school board in Anaconda and asked me to apply in Anaconda. I did so. I was working on my master’s degree at Western in the summer of ’71, and I received a call from Mike O’Leary, who was the principal when I was attending Anaconda High, and he had just been made superintendent, and he told me that I had been hired by the board. I bowed out of Livingston, and the three of us then moved to Anaconda where I would spend the next thirty-six years as a teacher, dean of students, and eventually, principal of Anaconda High School.
Anaconda is old and was formed by the copper industry in Butte. The two most famous characters in the formation of what was called the Anaconda Company were Marcus Daly and William Clark, who are figures in a tale of intrigue themselves. That story has been told by a number of local and national authors who are more interested in Montana history than I am. To make a long history short, the Anaconda Company sold its interests in Butte and Anaconda to Arco, and Arco closed its purchase in 1981. The good thing, if there is a good thing, is that the government forced Arco to clean up the whole damned area, and that has been one of the largest cleanup efforts in the United States. I can report that the countryside looks very inviting now, and the nakedness, which once was very unsightly due to years of the pouring of arsenic and other chemicals into the air from the big stack, has been replaced by green trees and grasses, and the hills are beautiful and animal life has reappeared. Our town is now populated by a large herd of whitetail deer, which are in our yards almost daily, and if you walk the trails east of Anaconda, you will see cranes and eagles.
The closing of the smelter did injure our economy, but the people of Anaconda are a hearty lot. We are still here, and brave souls begin businesses; and the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, the Anaconda Job Corps and Warm Springs State Hospital, our own Anaconda Community Hospital, the Anaconda school system, and employment in other communities—such as Butte, Deer Lodge, Helena, and Philipsburg—keep us afloat.
I was born on August 18, 1944. My mother blamed the war because her last child was born fourteen years before me. I was what they called an “Oops.” My father, Henry Martin Hansen, was a Norwegian immigrant who came to this country with his father and mother and brother. He eventually became a boilermaker in the Anaconda Company Foundry, and with a sixth-grade education became the foundry superintendent. My mother, Sadie Florence Wilkinson Hansen, was the daughter of English immigrants from Manchester. Mom was born in Livingston. I had two brothers, now both deceased, who were born while my parents were living in Opportunity, four miles east of Anaconda.
As a child, I grew up in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood on Walnut Street. I was raised a Lutheran, but because of my association with Catholic playmates, I learned more about their religion than I did from my own church. I loved being a kid. There was fun to be had every day. Most of that fun was all imagination. There were no electronic games or cell phones, tablets, or computers. Television came to Montana in 1953, and so many of my younger years were spent listening to the radio. I still remember The Lone Ranger and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon . I remember other shows as well. The beauty of radio was the use of imagination.
The southern hillsides of Anaconda were one block away from my house, and when we all played there, many an imaginary Indian or outlaw died from cap pistols. We built cabins and roasted marshmallows and baked potatoes. We skied and rode sleds in the winter. We skied cars and skated on the rink at the city commons. In the summer, we played and fished at Washoe Park, and we rode the rafts at Hefner’s Dam. We floated in tubes down Warm Springs Creek.
We played baseball and football in the stre