Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 4

THOMPSON FALLS, MONTANA
By I.V. Anderson

In the early '20's Sinclair Lewis could have found material in Thompson Falls, Montana for a sequel to his best seller - Main Street. The setting was different, but the characters were there even to the last of the remittance men, plus philandering males and females; if you accepted the people of this small (population 600) and scenic mountain village they took you to their bosom. I arrived there September 1920, to accept an appointment as Ranger-at-large, pending certification of eligibles at the magnificent salary of $1220 per year. I left a job with a tree surgery company in Wheeling, W. Va., where I was making over twice that salary. I never regretted the move— Thompson Falls was the beginning of the culmination of dreams I had as a 12-year-old boy. I roamed the Cabinet Mountains on mapping assignments, timber surveys, and range appraisal. The hunting and fishing I found answered my fondest dreams. I was free as the wind. If there was ever a place in the world where peace and tranquility reined it was Thompson Falls in the early '20's. I arrived there in the late evening, about the middle of September. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy train #41 was a bit late, it was dark, and the whole valley seemed lighted up. What a big town, I thought. But I was disappointed when I checked in at the Ward Hotel and found out that the lights were from the big dam and hydroelectric plant completed in 1914. I registered and the hotel clerk took my dollar-and-a-half. He said, "Up the stairs, left four doors, room 210." Half way up the stairs I thought, oh, oh - no key, so I started back to the desk saying I forgot my key, but he turned me right around when he said, "Hell, we don't have keys here."

The next 5 years I lived in Thompson Falls, I don't remember of any petty thievery. We never locked the doors on our house. In fact, Jack Bowen and I had 3 rooms in the Ward Hotel. One for sleeping, one for sitting, one for catch-alls. We used to be gone for weeks at a time and leave the door unlocked. One time they had a fire in the hotel and most of the rooms were emptied of their belongings. When Jack and I came back we found all of our belongings about 3 or 4 doors down the street in storage. They had been heaved out the window and gathered up. Not a thing was missing.

The fall of 1921 I took the ranger examination, passed it the second highest in the region. No credit to my skill, however, as technically trained foresters were scarce and the Civil Service Commission gave you a lot of points for your technical training. I was pretty busy the first couple of months getting acquainted and especially studying for the upcoming ranger exam. So I had a little time to frequent the small town meeting places such as the local poolroom, which seemed to be the headquarters. They had a bar reminiscent of pre-Volstead days where you could buy pop, near beer, and moonshine for 25-1, a shot. You could also get into a "panqingy" game or a solo game with anybody ranging from the local banker on down. That winter I participated in the home talent show. I had the stage all by myself in which I displayed such non-forestry talents as singing some of the folk songs, which the university boys were singing during that era, accompanying myself on the ukulele. I must have made quite an impression. The following week the Sanders County Independent Ledger included the following news item: "The Bowery Kid (Anderson) could make a good living on the vaudeville stage, he is a real fellow and some who took him for a sissy will admit now they are poor judges of human nature." And so I was accepted at Thompson Falls. I always figured that Judge Nippert was the author of this item. It seems as though everybody had to have a special name in those days. I became just one of the many characters around Thompson Falls, by getting accepted as the Bowery Kid. Amongst these characters was Red Sheridan, Pop Adams, Danny Mack, Swift Water Bill, Nigger Bill, "River Pig" Jack Prouty, Kelly Davidson and Dave Snyder. There were still a few remittance men in the west in the early '20s. Judge Nippert, or Nip, as his friends called him, was one. It was rumored that someone in the Gamble family from the soap firm of Procter & Gamble back in Ohio was paying Nippert to stay away. But it didn't seem to bother Nip. When he first arrived from the east he took up a homestead on Bull River, then came to Thompson Falls and was appointed a U.S. Commissioner; also, Justice of the Peace. Hence the title Judge.

Sinclair Lewis would have devoted a full chapter to any of the characters I found when I arrived at Thompson Falls, but in the interest of brevity I am going to confine my stories to Nigger Bill and Judge Nippert. I don't think any of the people of Thompson Falls felt that Nigger was a derogatory term when they referred to Nigger Bill. I always thought the term was used to identify or separate Nigger Bill from Swift Water Bill who was constantly in the limelight around the village with his unusual tales. He often boasted about being the biggest liar in Sanders County. Years before I came to Sanders County Nigger Bill had squatted on a piece of Anaconda Copper Mining Company land about 12 miles west of Thompson Falls at what is known as the Blue Slide, a beautiful spot overlooking the entire Clark Fork river valley. I remember Nigger Bill as I infrequently saw him on a corner on the main street in Thompson Falls giving his usual religious discourse. He frequently talked about Armageddon. Sometimes his audience was confined to a single straggler. I stopped to talk with him or listen one day and he gave a talk on Armageddon that would make Billy Graham look like a piker. There he stood, tall and stately. I think he was over 6 feet tall, must have been between 50 and 60 years of age might have been older than that, kind of hard to tell the age of some of these blacks; they are pretty well preserved. I think Bill was in that situation. His hair was white and gray. He always let it grow long enough to come down over his ears and it didn't kink up too much. He presented quite a prophetic appearance. I used to think of John the Baptist when I saw him. I don't know why he talked so much about Armageddon. Anyway, he should have been more interested in or given his version of heaven because his Blue Slide home was certainly located in a bit of paradise.

We left Thompson Falls, and after an assignment in California, and another at Newport, Washington, we finally transferred to Missoula. One day I saw a notice in the Missoulian that Judge Nippert was in the Thornton Hospital, later known as Community Hospital. So my wife and I went down to see him. Nip was overjoyed to see us. When we got in there, the room was all topsy turvy, the typical hospital bureau and set of drawers was down at the foot of the bed with the mirror tipped up so old Nip could lay there on his pillow and see himself in the mirror. It was winter and bitter cold. Nip had fallen off the sidewalk down at Thompson Falls when he was pretty drunk and didn't have enough in him to keep from getting badly frozen. When he arrived in Missoula they didn't know if he was going to make it or not. Nip said, "You know, the other day they didn't know whether I was going to make it or not, so I thought I better preach my funeral service. Because I never used one of these Gideon Bibles I thought I better make use of one. So one of the nice gals around here shook the dust off 'Ol Gideon,' put the good book in my hands, and propped me up like I am now. After she had rounded up the rest of the gals I proceeded to preach my funeral service. That made me feel better and now I'm going back to Thompson Falls and be there for a long time yet."