Day 58, Thursday, April 25: Miles City, Montana to Bismarck, North Dakota

Carnegie libraries visited: Dickinson, North Dakota

Professor Lambeth’s “Architecture Lecture” class at the University of Arkansas changed my life. My political science major was in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, which required students to take six “fine arts” credits to graduate (three cheers for liberal arts education!). I choose lectures in art, music, and architecture. I have vague memories of the arts course – each course was taught in large lecture halls and consisted largely of looking at slides or listening to music – regarding paintings from the classical to modern period. I remember two things from the music course: the musical term “vamp” and the fact that the bored and arrogant instructor belittled his students “what you listen to is crap”.

Nearly 50 years later, I remember many specific details from the architecture class. I remember the buildings we saw (from the pyramids and the Parthenon to the DFW and Dulles airports). I remember the architects we studied, especially the more recent Americans such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, and Edward Durrell Stone. The life changing impact is that, since the time I took that course, I have been an architecture fan and have paid close attention to buildings wherever I travel.

Which leads me to say: I hate the Miles City library design. The original building may have been a garden variety Carnegie; it was expanded and renovated in the 1960s. The expansion involved adding a low dark brick (the Carnegie was built with red bricks) wrapper with a mansard roof. Only the top floor of the original is visible, and barely. The library now looks like a dental office, and not an architecturally distinct one at that. It looks as if a pair of cargo shorts had been slipped over the legs of a gentleman wearing a fine suit.

Miles City Carnegie Library

I shouldn’t be so critical of the building because, of all the libraries I have visited over the nearly 15,000 miles I have traveled, it has by far the best records of the woman responsible for its existence: Mrs. Laura Zook. 

Ashley, wearing a hoodie labeled Cat Body Squad and blue Crocs, took my questions at the circulation desk and referred me to Zach, the library’s director. He looked exactly like a library director: tattoos covering his arms and neck, nose ring, butch haircut and beard, and black t-shirt (Extremely Ready for Bed). That is: library directors can look like anyone. Zach gave me a thick folder with information about Mrs. Zook, including a type-written manuscript “Early Recollections of Mrs. Laura Zook.” Goal!

Laura was born on November 25, 1868, the daughter of Charles Brown, one of Montana’s “early sterling pioneers,” according to the Miles City Star’s announcement of her death in 1944. Her father had arrived in the area of what was to become Miles City in 1876 as part of General Armstrong Custer’s wagon train. When Laura and the rest of her family left Minnesota in 1878 to join him, she acknowledged trepidation because of 

the various reports of Indian outbreaks, scalpings, etc…but by the time the train left we were so tired, so full of lemonade, cookies and popcorn there was no crying when we got on board…

It took us nine days there to old Milestown [which was then] about 150 people on the banks of the Yellowstone just about ready to move up to the present site of Miles City…That is why I always claim we were the first family in Miles City, Montana.

Growing up in the hard conditions of frontier Montana was not without its childhood pleasure. As a child, Laura had many animal friends, of all sorts:

You know we children of Miles City...had very few amusements except those we made for ourselves. Consequently, we made pets of all the animals and birds we possibly could find...winged pets...a crow who got too noisy and who never learned to talk...newly hatched sage chickens that broke our hearts by not living over 24 hours...one mother cat... plucky fighter for she whipped her weight in a Mountain Rat in a fair fight, though the rat was almost as large as she...colts... we trained them like the men folks did the grown up horses. We had a real racetrack in our backyard, tiny saddles made by ourselves of cloth or leather. Just straps served for reins and bridles, but we washed and curried and groomed the colts as though they were worth a million dollars...a fine big elk who could be driven like you would a horse and who was far more of a nuisance to my father around the barn as he could lift up the grain bin cover and help himself to oats at any time and often invited his horse friends to come and share with him...buffalo...We had three kept in the back yard...such clumsy animals... but we were more than half afraid of them...the next and best pet of all was the bear, only a tiny two weeks old cub when the Indian who captured him sold him to us - a silver tip (belonging to the grizzly family) - the cunningest thing you ever saw...we held him in our laps while he ate... [later] drank with the kittens and puppies--always having a special saucer of sugar of which he never grew tired...his particular delight was to wallow in a barrel of apples (decayed or otherwise) or scoop out the contents of an ice cream freezer and shiver all the while he ate it...he would first eat the sugar out of the dish, then polish it until it shone, then lie down and suck his fingers until they were clean--no child keeps better hands and nails than he did...on the way home [from the river] he always made it a point to climb a tree – you know a grizzly cannot climb very far – this one could go up just far enough so the dog could get hold of his 4 inch tail and hang on to him and pretend to hold him back. Then it was a race home for the bear, the dog and we children. He grew to be over six feet when sitting down...it was a white man who shot him down in cold blood, and I really think the whole town missed him and was sorry for us and angry at the man..." 

At one gathering, Laura described an early Christmas, apologizing that “I’m sorry to tell that there was nothing interesting to tell of this Christmas in Miles City, but that is the way I remember it.” Not so! 

We were given a thrilling sleigh ride along the Tongue River behind a pair of driving elks. 

My gifts were one white string of bone beads, one set of watercolor paints, two books, and a Kriss Kringle of noble size made of cookie dough by my mother, with currants for eyes.

Next was dinner. We had beavertail soup, buffalo hump roast, mashed potatoes, cranberry pie with lattice top, and fruit cake of course but not the rich kind as the fruit cake makings were not to be had because of poor transportation.

The recipe for the beavertail soup that was served follows: Lay the tail on hot coals, blister each side, skin, cut into small pieces, and proceed as with turtle soup –  a rich and rare treat!”

She had health problems as a child, and her schooling was hit and miss, until her parents sent her to the Mary Baldwin Academy for Girls in Staunton, Virginia at age 17. Although too young to receive a teaching certificate, she was given special permission to receive one and in 1886 was sent to teach at the remote town of Lame Deer, in the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. She was paid $65 a month, plus $12 living expenses which included provision of a pack horse. She lived with a family at the mouth of Muddy Creek near Miles City. The town was newly established to serve the local fort of the U.S. Army, and by serve I mean provide liquor. The sutlers who had sold hootch to the soldiers had been evicted by General Nelson Miles, the fort’s commander, who claimed that “whiskey caused him more trouble than the Indians” and evicted them. These merchants moved two miles away, and the town was born.

Laura taught some twenty students during her first session, some older than she. The school term was four months long and, during her first winter teaching, it was exceptionally cold. It was not the only harsh winter: 

Our school houses were usually one room buildings, leaky of roof, and as cold as Greenland. During the sessions we all huddled around the stove to keep warm, and as they burned wood we were always roasting or freezing.

Wanting to further her education, Laura enrolled in a convent school in Bismarck from 1880 to 1981. There, she contracted mumps and inflammatory rheumatism, from which she developed a lifetime limp. After recuperating, she and her mother returned to Miles City. While on the journey, they passed five or six boats ferrying some 3000 Native Americans to their new Sandy Rock Reservation: “It was a sight perhaps never seen but one time in western history, and a sad one. As the squaws were wailing, no cheers came from our boat, only a salute in turn from each boat as it passed on the river.”

[An account from General Nelson Miles in his personal papers gives further details about the events leading up to this encounter.

[M]ore than 2000 surrendered Indians were gathered at Fort Keogh. They remained peaceable, contented and industrious, fulfilling all requirements made upon them until, in 1881, when orders were received to move them…to the Indian Agency on the Lower Missouri. This was regarded by them as a serious disaster, as their crops were then well nigh half grown and in prosperous condition. They were contented and happy and anxious to stay. They went about from one officer to another with tears in their eyes, begging and praying that they may be allowed to remain under the control of the military where they had been kindly and justly treated by a country agreeable to them. In that way they excited the sympathy of all who saw them…but, as the order was imperative, they were placed upon a fleet of steamboats and shipped down the river, and never were allowed to return again to that country, where many of them had spent their lives from childhood, as well as had their ancestors before them.

During the winter of 1886-1887, Laura wrote:

Snow began the 3rd day of Oct. and was cold from the start...snow was so deep we used a hand made bobsled, but even then five miles each way was a hard pull for a horse. Some came from seven miles and none less than 1 ½ miles…there was a full attendance almost every day. We went through storms of blizzard proportion, but no one of us was either frozen or lost.

While she was boarding with the Young family in 1886, she had a most unusual experience.

Just as dawn was breaking something roused me – I awoke with all my faculties and as I was opening my eyes, I was looking directly at the bedroom door. In it stood an Indian buck in full regalia – wonderful headpiece, beaded moccasins, elk tooth shirt, gun in hand – a typical Indian on the warpath. I thought he was there to murder us all in our beds. Petrified in big letters won’t express how I felt. We eyed each other for an eternity – do not know what he was thinking but my mind was a blank. When he turned or faded away I think I must have fainted for it was strong daylight when I roused to make sure Mrs. Young was all right…and they laughed at me. I…described him as best I could, but still they insisted that I must have been dreaming...It was no consolation for me that when I came home that night to be told I was right – A Sioux runner had been sent up from the reservation and was looking for the agent [who was staying at the Young’s place]. I have hated the smell of dawn ever since. 

She married John Zook in 1889 and gave birth to a son, Fritz, in 1895. Zook, a bondsman in the County Treasurer’s Bank, lost everything in the Panic of 1893, and died in 1896 of scarlet fever. Women, who could not yet vote in Montana (they didn’t receive that right until 1914) except in school board elections, elected Laura  County School Superintendent the fall that her husband had died. She was the first woman to be elected to office in Custer County and she became the superintendent of what was called the largest school district in the world, giving her a steady source of income. A single mother, she nonetheless traveled through the county on horse and buggy, including one 400 mile journey to visit five schools. During 48 hours of this trip, she saw a single house. “Not only courage but physical endurance was required to do such work, but this was faithfully accomplished by one who deserved the title of ‘brave lady,” according to a memorial manuscript in the archives of the Lusk library.

Laura started a small lending library, on a small bookshelf, in a local store in Miles City. As a leader of the Ladies Library Auxiliary, she helped secure funding for a Carnegie library (as far as I could ascertain, she was not involved in the correspondence regarding Carnegie funding). She became the first librarian when it opened in 1902, and she remained in that position for forty-one years. On her 40th anniversary at the library, Miles City celebrated “Laura Zook Day.” At one point she served as the president of the State Library Association. She retired in 1943 and passed away the next year.

Unfortunately, Laura only wrote about the early years of her life, and there was really nothing in the Zook folder about her years in library service. As her early stories contain vivid detail, I wish she had continued memorializing her life throughout her career.

I attended an AA meeting that evening in Bismarck. Each AA meeting group gets to choose its name, and the name chosen by the meeting I attended was “Straight Pepper Diet”. The phrase was coined by AA’s founder Bill Wilson, and it appears on p. 69 of The Big Book: “One school would allow man no flavor for his fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet.” Like any religious text, careful interpretation is often required to ascertain the meaning in context. The context here is sex. “No flavor for his fare” implies abstinence from sex during early recovery, and “straight pepper diet” refers to a voracious sexual appetite and overactive sex life (it’s also the title of Joseph Naus’s memoir of addiction and recovery). The group was all male, and the meeting room was packed with some 50 men appearing mainly to be in their 30s and 40s – younger than most meetings I have attended. 

The meeting was a ‘traditions’ meeting. AA is inordinately fond of the number 12, so in addition to the 12 Steps there are the 12 Traditions, the 12 Promises, the 12 Concepts for World Service. Informally, there is also the “13th Step," which refers to an experienced AA member inappropriately seeking to pick up new members with sexual intent. This step is strongly discouraged, as those new to recover can be especially vulnerable. The filmmaker Monica Richardson has made a documentary film on this, The 13th Step. One benefit of all these 12s is that they accord with the calendar year, so some groups focus on one of the 12s each month every year.

Traditions meetings are not enjoyed by everyone, but what is? The way it has been explained to me is that the Steps are for individual recovery, while the Traditions are for the group. Yesterday we focused on the 4th Tradition: “Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.” Although this literally means that each group is independent and self-directed, that the group can do what it wants, in practice groups are highly constrained by their own traditions. Alcoholics, I have often heard, don’t like change, and this is surely true for the way that meetings are run. It seems that any proposed change in the format of a group’s meeting is as hotly contested as a proposed change in a church’s order of worship. The arguments against change? We’ve always done it this way. Which traditions are best? From what I can tell, most members believe that the AA meetings they first attended do it best, and that any others they attend do it wrong.