Monte

By Pat McManus
June, 2011

Bun’s blog this month is about her dad, one of my most favorite people in the entire world. His name was Monte but everyone called him Mont. He started working on the Northern Pacific Railroad when he was still in his teens and worked there almost until the end of his life. His last job was as head of the signal repair shop in Tacoma, WA.

I don’t think Mont ever understood me. He was a man who could do about anything. Once he built us this elaborate little machine where you would pull a lever and various pistons would move this way and that, and finally the end result would be achieved — a nut would be cracked! He could weld anything, wire anything, build anything. And here his oldest daughter had married a writer and college professor who knew how to build next to nothing. So Mont built it for us. Once he rewired our old house and I helped him. I touched a wire and it almost knocked me to the ground with the shock. Mont said, “Don’t touch that wire.” I know that Mont viewed me as next to useless, but he always acted as if I knew something, even if he wasn’t sure what.

Mont was a political theorist. One of his theories about politicians was “they all outta be taken out and shot!” I thought this a bit extreme, because I knew several politicians I liked. It was mostly the word “all” I disagreed with.

One of the great ironies of his life was that he was truly a man’s man, and he and his wife, Dorothy, had three daughters, Darlene (Bun), Shirley, and Norma. It’s hard to imagine what kind of man a son would have been, raised by Mont, but he would have been something major. As it turned out, all the girls were off the charts when it comes to intelligence — the top end of the charts — I just want to be clear about that! Shirley was a medical technician, Norma a nurse, and Darlene was married to me. Among many other things, she edited my manuscripts before they were sent off to the publishers. She never hesitated to put in an extra flourish whenever she thought it was needed.

Darlene and I often camped with her parents in the early years, our baby Kelly snug and out of the rain in our tent, while we sat around the fire telling yarns. After a while Bun and her mother would retreat to the tent, and Mont and I would get to the really good stuff, sometimes sipping my backpacking rum (“backpacking” because it was so powerful you needed to carry only a tiny amount—a whole bottle would have inebriated an army. From those fireside chats I learned his family has quite a distinguished background. I believe it was either his father or one of his uncles who had studied to be a priest. Because the church intended to send him to China as a missionary, he was taught Chinese and became fluent in the language. After completing his studies, the uncle (or maybe his father) decided to go out on his own and became the chief negotiator between the Tongs, who furnished the Chinese laborers in the construction of the U.S. railroads, and the railroad executives. When I mentioned this in later years to Dorothy, my mother-in-law, she said, “I never knew that!” I said, “There’s nothing like 150-proof rum to loosen a man’s tongue.” And here she had thought we were just tippling out there in the rain while sitting around the campfire.

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Maybe they were just tippling out there in the rain. Read Bun's take on that camping trip in "Fathers".

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