9.18.2008

a moment with brown drink

Jim Crumley passed yesterday. Missoulians are mourning one of its finest--and most notorious--authors. I'm sure there are plans to bronze a stool at the Depot or Charlies, and the state liquor store may well be out of Macallan single malt by day's end.

Though many of the numerous writers in the now-famous Montana Mafia--centered in Missoula-- were quite accessible, Jim was, well, accessible AND easy. Easy in that you didn't have to be anything other than what you were around him. Easy in that it didn't take much to make his body shake with a laugh. Easy in that he was always glad to see you. And it was genuine.

Half the time I didn't understand what came out of his mouth, covered as it was by a full mustache and beard, and thickened with a couple scotches or Coors (in a can, original only, never light) and with me being half-deaf, I was at a double disadvantage. But no matter...hanging with Crum was always a joy. We'd watch football and yell at the screen. We'd munch on goodies brought by friends during the UnSuperbowl, or whatever Martha called the gathering of women--mostly--who weren't as into the football as those who sat glued to the TV all day on Superbowl Sunday. I loved football, but there was much more to see in that house in the South Hills...often, during long commercial interruptions, I would wander around Martha's studio, holding a piece of smooth porcelain in my hand, reading poems tacked to the walls. A sudden eruption of yelling and whistles from above--usually a signal that a team had scored--and I'd be sprinting up the stairs to rejoin the game. Some folks played with the cats; some watched the sunset from the deck. A common thread connected us: we all liked interesting, real people. We loved the heart of every person's story.

I know Jim changed a great deal in the last years of his life...his body began to break down, and in the end, after two trips to Palo Alto to see specialists, he was told to go home and enjoy the rest of his life. Some say he was unrecognizable at the end. In many ways, I am glad I didn't see him. I like to remember him in his leather vest, holding court at Charlie's, sitting on a stool underneath black and white photographs of all the people who'd warmed that seat before him. He came up to me after one of my readings once, at the Old Post, and recited back to me a line from one of my poems: "or don the cheap slicker of selective memory." He liked that line. I was honored, and humbled. I mean, he remembered that line. That kind of generosity of spirit was the James Crumley I knew.

He's probably flying above us all now, heading to the Borderlands that were such a part of his personal landscape. Peace to you, dear Crum. Eldridge and Catherine the Great and Chico...they're waiting for you at the door.








James A. Crumley
October 12, 1939-September 17, 2008

1 Comments:

At 8:01 PM MDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If anything could be said about and ordinary Wednesday afternoon it would be to say that it came as the sunset of the most beautiful summer in memory. Ordinary becomes extrordinary simply because of context. Thinking of the context of the house on Whitaker and Crum sitting at his desk slightly shaking with laughter at those cats or that game or those characters of his past and present or the 50's Western that he couldn't help but chuckle at or just the beautiful women that were so often holding his court is to think of the extrordinary. Much like the extrordinary day that he was chosen to ride out on. Before the cold and before the dark, before we lost our long, orange evenings of September. Funny thing though it will be like so many other extrordinary folks I have met in the context of unexpected home, I will still wait for him to saunter into Charlie's, I'll still look down the bar for the tall boy, I'll still wait for him to recognize me without hesitation and update me on Martha and the cats and ask if I've spoken to Maria lately. For someone as extrordinary in the context that he and others like him created here in Missoula, the creation that was what kept many of us here when that was all that was here, no work, no prospects, no cheap flights back east. His big presence, his big heart and his big love for this place that so many share but few have the courage to stick to has become the context for a continual flow of extrordinary people. So maybe it won't be in the waiting to see him again but waiting to catch a glimsp of him in the next innovative, colorful, soul alive human who stays because people like Crum stayed and helped define the extrordinary in the context of a quiet, mountain town with the history of the continent etched into everyone who sees what he saw and decided to stay.
I love what you wrote:)

 

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