****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Just came across this interesting new book on prostitution and political scandal in Butte, Montana, by a former Montana news colleague and 1960s friend, John Kuglin. Foreword is by a former Democratic Montana congressman, Pat Williams, who I also used to know in the old days. I bought the Kindle edition today on Amazon and it was such an interesting read that I finished it in one sitting. It's an excellent book, very well written and full of historical photos; a page turner. Montana is an interesting state, and was even more so when I grew up there in the 1950s and 1960s. Gambling, prostitution and scandalous politics are a big part of Montana's history. Author Kuglin takes on the 1960s prostitution, police payoffs and corrupt police and politicians in Butte in his book, which is a based on a series of newspaper stories he wrote when he was a reporter for the Great Falls Tribune; later he was Associated Press bureau chief in Helena for many years. We met when we both worked for The Missoulian newspaper in Missoula in the mid-60s. In those days prostitution and illegal gambling were wide open in much of Montana, not only Butte, but also Helena, Great Falls, my Eastern Montana hometown of MIles City and other towns. Miles City had three illegal houses of prostitution and there was illegal gambling in many of the bars in town. The prostitutes in Miles City worked until early hours in the morning and then went to get their hair done at a local salon where the mother of a friend of mine worked. They didn't want to be seen on the streets during business hours by the town-folk, most of whom thought prostitution kept down rapes by cowboys and sheepherders who would come into town after being isolated on the prairie. The gals used to get checked for diseases regularly by local doctors at the request of law enforcement. Law enforcement also allowed illegal gambling to go on in Miles City. I don't know if there were payoffs to any authorities there; it might not have been necessary because many residents looked upon the brothels, in a very weird way, as a public service. Eventually, the Catholic Church recruited a parishioner lawyer to run for county attorney in Miles City; he got elected and closed down the houses, although some people say it was on orders of state officials. Many local people were upset, including many mothers who thought rapes would increase, but that didn't happen. Something similar happened in Kuglin's book about Butte prostitution. The madam there found religion and told Kuglin in an interview in a priest's office about having to pay off the cops to stay open. When she tried to stop paying she was severely beaten and the wall of one her houses dynamited and another house was partially burned. The dimple knees in the book title refers to a married, crooked Butte politician the madam, Beverly Snodgrass, fell in love with and who she says stole much of her money. Kuglin wrote a series for the Great Falls Tribune about all this at the time. His life was threatened then and he slept with a shotgun in his bed for a while, the book says. This was in the heyday for Montana journalism. It was when the Tribune was a very good paper and owned by the Minneapolis Star and Tribune's parent company. In that era, the Lee newspapers had just recently bought the old Anaconda copper company chain of papers, which included papers in Billings, Butte, Missoula and Helena. The Anaconda chain used to suppress coverage of mining accidents in Butte, but once Lee took over coverage improved, although some of the old editors had trouble adjusting to real journalism. In Missoula, where I worked on the paper during and after college, I covered the police beat and city hall. Another reporter and I told the mayor at the time about illegal gambling in bars in town and he threatened to convene a grand jury, but nothing came of it. Kuglin's book mentions me. He writes that he and I observed illegal card games going on in a saloon in Missoula frequented by news people after work and suggested to the editor in chief that the paper write about it. The editor answered, "Now why would we want to do that." So that was the end of it and nothing was written at that time. As for prostitution, many politicians were said to frequent the brothel in downtown Helena which stayed open despite it being known about statewide. College students even went there from Missoula when I was a student at the University of Montana in the early '60s. Montanans also went to brothels in Wallace, Idaho, near the Montana border. The prostitutes in Helena would be lined up by the madam for customers to screen and then go off to a bedroom to have their penises washed before quick sex, which at that time didn't require condoms. Same procedure in Miles City, where the houses also had a bar that even served underage guys if they didn't look too young. In high school, I worked for a local electrical store and once made a delivery to an electrician at one of the houses and was led by one of the prostitutes to where he was making a repair. He gave me a big grin. No one exposed the houses in Miles City or others in the state in the press, as far as I know, until John Kuglin's 1968 newspaper series about the Butte scandal. Prostitution is supposedly the world's oldest profession and in itself wouldn't be news, but the book focuses largely on payoffs to the police and a judge, all set in a historical setting in unique and interesting Butte, which makes it news and of interest to taxpayers and voters. The Butte madam sounds like a nice lady in the news stories and the book; she was a former waitress who just wanted to make some money and eventually tried to get out of it and finally did. Same characterization goes for the prostitutes themselves. Some had told me decades ago they were just in it for the money and some even said they had kids out of state they were supporting. It's similar to stories from topless dancers I have heard. Prostitutes aren't in it for sex, but to make a living, albeit in a way that seems to be having gone astray and fueled by men's urges and sometimes by criminal interests. Jesus didn't judge prostitutes, tax collectors and others ostracized by society. I think that's a good way to be. They all have their stories, as Kuglin discovered for his articles and book, and it's best not to judge them. At least in the old days in Montana, many of them, as well as madams, were very personable and likeable. As for the politicians and police who accepted and demanded payoffs, that's the real scandal. Never met a prostitute I didn't like. Can't say the same for politicians. Kuglin's book is a look at this world. It also offers a good glimpse of the sometimes raw and bawdy history of Montana and of a unique and interesting city often affectionately referred to as Butte, America, which was once dubbed "the richest hill on earth" with its copper mine. The book brings up to date all the characters in it. Both the madam and her corrupt boyfriend judge, whose name isn't revealed until the end of the book, are dead now. Today the houses are gone and Montana has legalized a lot of types of gambling. Butte's economy drastically declined with with the closing of the copper underground mines. But the colorful, optimistic and warm people of Butte remain. As Pat Williams writes in the book's foreword, quoting the last four lines of Berton Braley's century-old poem "Butte,"Her faults and her sins are many,To injure her fair repute,But her heart and her soul are cleanlyAnd she’s beautiful dear old Butte.
