CHARLOTTE THISTLE ...
A GIRL WITH A GUITAR

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Charlotte Thistle's Tales from Montana

These are stories of some of my adventures in the wild state of Montana. Montana is a great place to play live music and I still go there on tour once or twice a year if I can. Montana is frontier country. It is a place where folks live a little outside the law, where nothing is certain and anything is possible. DISCLAIMER: The language and material in these stories may be offensive to some readers. If you are not prepared for this, please read no further.

Final Ascent (from "A Girl With A Guitar" 2005)
Featuring Russ Johnson on harmonica

Trucker Humor

I met a really nice man, a trucker named John. He told me that he regularly used to meet another trucker friend for lunch at an intersecting point of their two routes. He said his friend would always arrive first, and take a nap while he was waiting. The friend had no sleeping cab in his truck, so he would often just nap in his seat with his head resting on the steering wheel.

As a practical joke, one day, John pulled his truck right up nose to nose with his friend's truck as he was sleeping on the wheel, then turned his brights on and laid into the horn. His friend awoke suddenly, thinking he had fallen asleep while driving and was about to have a head-on collision. He cannonballed out the side of the cab where he landed smack on the pavement in the parking lot to find John and a bunch of other friends laughing at the joke. Not amused, the man chased John around the parking lot "for about twenty minutes". John says his friend never quite forgave him for it.

Racism, Domestic Abuse & The Power of Pussy

The town of Hathaway, Montana is between Forsyth and Miles City on I-94.The town consists of a post office that is closed, a broken gas pump, a pay phone, a couple of trailers and its chief landmark, the Hathaway Bar. The bar and everything else in the town are owned by a woman named "Star", who is still a stunning redhead at the age of 47. The train rolls right past Hathaway several times a day, and whenever it does, Star runs out of the bar, rain or shine, cold or warm, and lifts her top to expose her breasts to the passing train. Star is called "Ma" by everyone who works for her.

On one particular night, Star is behind the bar, and I am perched on a barstool sipping a glass of some kind of pink wine.Also at the bar are three of her

The town of Hathaway, MT.

female employees: Mindy, Roadrunner and Robyn, as well as a middle aged couple we do not know. He sports a fancy cowboy hat, with spurs on his boots and rings on almost every finger. She is nicely dressed and wears two diamond rings. He's drunk and begins shooting his mouth off in a racist diatribe against Mexican people. Roadrunner, on pain medication and gripping her seventh vodka screwdriver in one hand, leans across the bar with wild hair and red eyes, and points a long finger at him.

"It's about RESPECT!" she bellows. "The only race I'm prejudiced against is our own because we're the ones who go around dissing everybody else!"

He mumbles something.

"Be a gentleman" someone says.

My fan club in Montana

"I ain't never been a gentleman and I don't see no reason to start now!" he responds.

"This is my bar" says Star with authority, "and when you are in my bar you will behave like a gentleman. Because around here, it's women who run the show. The power of pussy rules!!"

(We all chime in, raising our glasses. "Yeah!!! The Power of Pussy rules!!!")

"Then I just won't come here no more" he cusses.

"That'll be your loss" Star replies.

"No, it'll be my gain!"

He loses his temper and Star tells him to get out. He obliges, rising to the door with his beer in hand, and staggers off into the night cussing all the way. Star follows him out, and the door swings shut behind the two of them, leaving the rest of us wondering what to do next.

"Get the rifle! Get the rifle!" Mindy shouts in a panic.

"Jesus Christ, calm down girl, we don't need the rifle" says Roadrunner.

"He could be hurting her!" says Mindy.

I am the first one to push open the swinging door and look outside, to see that Star has the situation well in hand, no guns necessary, and our villain is walking away.

"Fuck You!" he shouts back, from the darkness he is becoming lost in.

"No, fuck yourself, you're a man, you know how!" Star yells after him.

His wife remains behind.

"Lock up the car! Lock up the car!" shouts Mindy. "Don't let him have the keys to the car!"

Now we all sit down and talk to the wife.

"That man has violent tendencies!" says Star.

"Does he beat you, honey" Roadrunner asks.

"Oh, yeah" she replies matter-of-factly. "How many times has he beaten you?"

She shakes her head. "Oh, I can't begin to remember."

"How long have you been with him?" Everyone is firing questions at this poor woman.

"Thirty Six years."

This prompts a chorus of "Honey, you are such a beautiful woman, you know there is no reason you have to put up with that" and "Why do you stay!" and then the stories come spilling out. Story after story goes around the bar.

"I was married to a man who beat me and threatened me with knives and guns. I was scared to leave." (Roadrunner)

"My husband used to beat me, but after he pushed me down the stairs once, the army made him go to anger management training and he hasn't touched me in two years. " (Mindy)

"When I was a kid I used to hide my little brother in the bathroom to protect him from my dad" (Robyn).

"He'll never change. You just have to get up the courage to leave."

"You shouldn't say that. It's her choice. He COULD change!"

"Honey, if he hasn't changed in thirty six years, he ain't gonna!"

"Yeah but it's still her choice. You can't tell her how to live her life."

"You know, you're welcome to stay here."

"I'm driving right through Billings tomorrow, I'd be more than happy to take you if you need a ride."

. . . and so on. The woman laughed at our "Power of Pussy" chant and we drank a few more toasts to "The Power of Pussy Rules". But after a while, the moment grew stale, and finally the woman decided to take her own car and go home.

"Don't pick him up! " a few people cautioned. "Don't pick him up on the road!"

The woman smiled and nodded and headed out the door, thanking us.

Roadkill

I met a girl at one of my shows, who told me she once struck a deer in her car and "figgered it was good and dead, so why bother stopping to check" so drove all the way home only to discover that the dead deer was trapped under her car and she had "drug it all the way home."