Day 10 - Butte to Missoula
No Best Western delights - to Great Harvest Bread store, a chain based in Montana - no ciabattas or baguettes - American bread, dense and good…if not great. Maybe the thing I liked best is that they offer tastes of several varieties next to a big ole hunk of butter, positioned to be slathered on as desired. We did the toast test – white, Dakota wheat/seeds, sourdough and jalapeno . And the butter, real butter – a portion in a plastic cup, but no lid to dislodge. They had lattes and espressos – and I’m not sure how I feel about that. That’s not what you drink with all-American bread.
And before we could get into town we passed a pastie shop – a meat pie brought here by the Cornish. Lunch – snack? A just in case. Oh…and we also bought a donut as they were bronzed from deep-frying.
Butte was a very rich town in the heyday of mining – they went thru gold, silver then copper phases. And a stream of immigrants came into town – much as they had in Calumet, Michigan. It was a rough and wild place . Most of the old buildings, many of brick, still remain in various states of disrepair. And the little Victorian houses, tho very sad and in need of care, are charming. They need a savior.
We spent most of the morning in a bookstore and in the town archives department. There I bought a map of the nationalities in town – by neighborhood – and also a cookbook of all the ethnic specialities. Irish were the most numerous – as one of the copper barons was named Daly – but also Cornish, Finnish, Croat, Czech, Serbian, Greek, Italian, Chinese, Black and more. I think someone guessed that there were 40 languages spoken in the town at one point – no doubt some of them dialects.
We were about to leave town when we saw John’s Pork Sandwich window – with a crowd around it. I remembered that it was a Roadfood recommendation. Fried round of pork with everything toppings. I’m not sure you could tell what the meat was - but it was good – or maybe I just like the mishmash of flavors in the condiments.
And now we are in Missoula, not very far up the road - a laid-back mountain town of 60,000 with university - a bit too big for our tastes – we prefer towns between 6,000 and 30,000.
I think it is a salad night….those pasties a hardy snack – bland beef, gravy (Campbell’s) and potatoes in a nice pastry – needed something.
TAKING AMERICA’S PULSE
Fox News 5 of 7
Mozz stix 5 of 7
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