All Western Writers' Trails Lead to Tom McGuane

All Western Writers’ Trails Lead to Tom McGuane

My ulterior motive for hustling a newspaper reporter’s job at the Livingston Enterprise in Montana was to meet the famous, and infamous literati who lived there. Tom McGuane topped the list. In the ‘70’s, fresh out of a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, Tom picked Livingston on the Yellowstone River as a good place to have a headquarters with fishing being the main focus after writing for publication, since he had just sold his first novel, The Sporting Club, before he left Palo Alto and was looking for more but the living had to be cheap and at the time Livingston was just that.

Things were communal in the ‘70s and soon Gatz Hortsberg, who had been with McGuane at Yale School of Drama and also a Stegner Fellow; Dan Gerber, a poet and heir to the baby food fortune; and Jin Harrison, poet and novella writer all holed up with Tom and his then wife Becky Crockett, a descendant of Davey, in an apartment one block from mine in 2008 on Livingston’s East side. Gatz still looked for his elusive break into the publishing business, but McGuane submitted 40 pages of  Gatz’s work in progress to his publisher and they bought it. Subsequently Alp was published and Gatz was on his way. Harrison had a Master’s based on the Ecology of Some Poems. He’d been teaching around including SUNY in upstate New York but he hated it.

The stage was set for “Bloomsbury” in the Rockies, a new renaissance.

“It was an Edenic kind of world,” McGuane recalled, in a telephone interview did with him for a story. “There was a wonderful freedom to sit and think and make things up.”

Hjortsberg and his wife followed from Colorado, where they’d been living in a Volkswagen microbus after McGuane, Harrison and Gerber had moved to a ranch in Pray the following summer.

“We all worked in the barn that summer in 1969,” Gatz said. “We wanted to make literature. Each line had to justify itself. We were just trying to get it right.”

“Tom McGuane had a knack for real estate,” Gatz continued in my feature story for the newspaper, “and bought a small ranch house and 15 acres in Deep Creek area of the Paradise Valley, with proceeds from the movie rights to ‘The Sporting Club,’ and wintered in Key West.”

“‘Ninety-two in the Shade’ is Tom McGuane’s best known novel,” he said. “They even allowed him to direct the movie.”

Subsequent projects, such as the 1975 McGuane-penned film “Rancho Deluxe,” drew other writers, directors and actors to the area, including Peter Fonda, who starred in the movie “92 in the Shade.”

Soon, Fonda took a shining to Becky McGuane, and Tom to Margo Kidder, who had been in 92 as well and the so-called wife swap occurred. And miraculously they all remained friends! Hippies. Live and let live!

The artist Russell Chatham arrived in 1972, Gatz said.

“Russell knew of us from the Bolinas days,” he said. “He’s quite a good writer in his own right, too.” These days a Chatham painting fetches 100s of thousands of dollars, and yet a few years before his death Chatham went broke due to the housing sub prime crash of 2008, the year of my reportage. I only met him once in a bar in Livingston on Halloween. They were all heavy drinkers and druggies. Eventually McGuane quit drinking because as he recalled, “ It turned toxic on me.”

He abandoned Deep Creek for the West Boulder River in McLeod, Montana and the Raw Deal Ranch that he shared with Margo Kidder. Eventually he sold it to the actor Michael Keaton, whose real name id Michael Douglas, hence the Sag-Aftra union stage name.

In time Tom traded up to the 3500 acre ranch he lives in today with Laurie Buffett McGuane his current wife. The other partner in crime over the years was her big brother Jimmy Buffett, who was frequently seen in the Livingston nightlife scene. His song, Livingston Saturday Night came from the movie Rancho Deluxe. They both appeared in the musical bar scene, McGuane with hair almost down to his waist.

After my story on Gatz and McGuane, I first met Tom in person at the Montana Book Festival at the Holiday Inn in Missoula in the fall. Tom had invited me to the ranch to fish a special hatch on the West Boulder in his backyard, but the call never came. He’d been steelhead fishing in British Columbia, near Smithers and the fishing was too good to leave. I spied him at a table talking a blue streak to someone, so I approached and waited my turn. It was taking awhile when Larry Lahren, the then Park County Commission Chair, who I’d covered for the paper and befriended, spied me and came over and butted into the conversation with the tact of a Brahma Bull.

“Hey, Tom! Have you met Mark?”

Tom said he hadn’t but remembered an email I sent him. He looked at me sheepishly, and said, “I thought you were an Englishman standing there in that Barbour Coat.” And then he added, “I have one of those,” and winked.

We shook hands and he said, “I didn’t get back from BC. Fishing was too good.”

I said, “ Well there always another day, eh?”

“Yes,” he said. “There’s always another day for fishing!”

He looked over the presentation table. “I hope they brought books, because I sure didn’t.”

“I’m sure they have,” I said.

“Well, Mark, I’m going upstairs to brush my teeth. I’ll see you later at the panel.”

“You bet,” I said.

I went to have dinner somewhere and came back later and hung near the door of the conference room where he was to be on a panel chaired by the professor William Kittredge, an old friend of Tom and Jim Harrison’s, and his wife Annick Smith a Big Blackfoot Valley resident and producer of Norman McLean’s A River Runs Through it. It doesn’t take much to meet big movers and shakers in the literary/film universe in Montana.

I was chatting with Lynnette Zwerneman, Larry Lahren’s publicist of sorts and frequent babysitter to McGuane’s grandchildren Masie and Charlie Kirn. Their mother, Tom and Margo’s daughter Maggie, was divorced from the essayist and novelist Walter Kirn, who also lived in Livingston in a downtown loft he bought cheap from a CUT Church member before they descended into the bunker in Mol Heron Canyon in the ‘80s.  The loft real estate included all of the downtown businesses on the city block. Not a bad deal. Maggie had remarried to the manager of John Mayer’s Band. Mayer had bought the River Trees Ranch on the Yellowstone at the mouth of Pine Creek: A good gig by any measure.

Tom appeared and spoke briefly with Lynnette about the kids and then looked confused. He looked at me and said, “ Where am I going?”

“Right in here, Tom,” and we strode in the doorway. He got real excited and exclaimed, “There’s s Bill Kittredge!”  And literally ran down to the table for the reunion. I took a seat and waited for readings to start. Everyone told a few personal tales. Suddenly unabashed, Tom launched into a tale of debauchery in which he a Jim Harrison had decided to visit Bill in Missoula, and bought an enormous amount of liquor for the occasion and spent three days “hugging the toilet Bowl,” as he put it.  Kittredge nodded and said, “ Yup.”

Tom went to the podium and read an essay from his book Some Horses about the birth of a new horse on the ranch. They raised cutting horses and competed professionally on the Montana circuit both he and Laurie. Both were state champs at one point

At the end I took a couple of his books I brought and gave them to him to sign.

“Just sign?” He said.

“Yup,” your signature’s enough for me.

He scribbled his name on the blank pages inside and handed them back.

“Thanks. I’ll see you around,” I said and left while the leaving was good. There was something odd about the meeting but then again he was getting old and forgetful so anything could happen.

The next evening he and writer Rick Bass read on stage at the Wilma Theater. I sat with Lynnette, who spied me and climbed over me and sat down. I wondered what she was up to?

After awhile she said, “Do you have an vodka?”

“On me?” I said. “No.”

“Well, I just thought I’d ask!”

Tom took the stage and retold the drunken visit story to a packed theater. Everyone laughed. At the end there was a signing table in the lobby and Lynnette and I met Tom at the entrance, chatted a bit and escorted him to the signing table. I watched for a while and then went back to my cheap motel by the railroad tracks. Trains roared by all night.

If a would be writer knew Tom McGuane or not the one thing we all had in common is the need to get a sheaf of our work into his hands to read. I was no exception.

Rick Bass wrote in a Narrative Magazine essay on his chronic shyness of an extreme example of this subliminal need for McGuane’s approval.

About the worst case I ever heard of it (besides me) was from a writing student, a grad student at the University of Montana named Jake. One time Jake and his friend Brian were fishing and drinking, with the sun high and butter-yellow, a lovely day—June, tall grasses blowing on the hillside—and Brian and Jake were just outside the town where Tom McGuane lives, and they were up on this hillside, taking a break from fishing, and drinking vodka.

They were just sitting there drinking that vodka, when a dog comes bounding up through the tall grass, wanting to play—McGuane’s dog. McGuane was one of Jake’s gods. So what does he do, in his breathless shyness, in his drunkenness, in the beauty of the day? What did Jake, whom McGuane did not know from spit, from boo, from squat, do?

Giggling, he took a sheet of paper from his notebook and scrawled his address on it, and wrote, “Tom—loved your last novel. Let’s do lunch—Jake,” and then tucked a story manuscript he had with him under the dog’s collar.

It was a great joke, very funny, but before Jake could call the joke off and take the manuscript back, the McGuanes drove past on the gravel road above the river, driving past in their new blue pickup, the whole family, and the dog, Sadie, took off after them like something fired from a cannon.

That seemed the end for Jake. He was mortified. Wobbily legged and drunkstaggering, he jumped to his feet and chased Sadie across the field, chased her toward the McGuane’s not-too-distant ranch.

The truck stopped at a gate, and Tom got out to open it, and Tom’s little daughter looked back and saw Sadie racing toward them; and then, surprisingly, not so far back—since Jake was a very good athlete—Jake, his legs churning, arms pumping.

The McGuane family watched, as Jake caught Sadie, bulldogged her down in the tall summer grass, wrestled the note and the manuscript from her collar, and then fled for the cottonwoods along the river.

My story is along the same lines only I’m not shy. Nervous about what I was about to do sure, but not too much to go through with it. It was a Sunday afternoon in the fall a couple of weeks after the book festival. I was going over to the West Boulder to fish and had to drive past the McGuane Ranch to get to the public access at the end of the road the other side of the West Boulder Preserve, a very high end and eclectic community of owners. I figured I stop and ask Tom to come along, or, he’d just say let’s go pout back and fish his private reach of stream, either way a win win for me. I pulled through his metal arch gate and drove down the long ravel driveway. Soon I passed a sigh that said: Slow Down! Old dogs and kids.

I didn’t see any kids but by the time I pulled into the parking area beside the log ranch house the dogs made their presence known in a big way. I sat in the driver’s seat of my Mazda B3000 pickup when a pack of at least forty dogs surrounded the vehicle! There was no backing out now. I drummed up the courage to meet my greeters in person and got out to face the music. There were various breeds on canines present in many stages of health from what I could tell of it. One hound was a tripod! I recall any hopping on only hind legs but it was possible. Howling and barking filled the yard.

“What’s going on guys,” I said.

Manuscript in hand I waded into the middle of the moving mass and moved toward the side porch and door. There was an SUV parking in the lot with Alabama plates. Hmm . . .just my luck, they have company. The dogs and I stepped onto the open patio that offered a good look into the dining room through picture windows. Seated were Tom and Laurie and a bald man with a familiar face. It was Jimmy Buffett!

Damn! I’m the local reporter. They’ll never let me in.

I was committed now and so knocked on the door accordingly.

Tom got up and came to the door still chewing his food.

He opened the screen door.

I said, “Tom I stopped by to see if you wanted to fish this afternoon?”

He got a wistful look in his eye.

Then he said “Take off your sunglasses so I can get a good look at ya.”

I complied.

“There he is!” Tom said, as if suddenly recognizing me.

He sounded like wine had been on the lunch menu but there was no way to be sure. Then he said, “My brother in-law is here and he drove an awful long way to see us.”

“Yeah, ah, I can see that.”

There was no mention of who his brother-in-law was but it was fairly common knowledge. Now I really wanted to meet Jimmy Buffett but I knew it was not to be.

“What are you up to?” Tom said.

“Oh not much, writing for the paper and fishing when I can.

“Bad timing, Mark.”

“Well,” I said. “I’d be honored if you’d read this excerpt from my novel.”

“Hand her over,” Tom said.

He looked at the sea of dogs surrounding me. “We’re babysitting some of our kids’ dogs.”

“Oh. Quite the welcome wagon.”

He laughed.

“Time to fish,” I said.

“Another time,” he said.

“Another time, Sir.”

He disappeared into the house with my sheaf of pages from an early draft of Warm Front. As a picaresque Western novelist, thrillers weren’t his forte. Comedic literature was but even that was mostly snubbed by the East Cast establishment.

In subsequent years I’d write him when we both were in Florida but he’d always decline offers to meet for lunch in Boca Grande, due to some unexpected death of an old friend or the like. There was a piece of advice on my acquisition via domestic relationship of a Florida Island condo and flats boat, which was essentially what he was doing winters on Boca Grande. McGuane, after all was born wealthy and married wealthier and invested in what is now very expensive real estate. He’d done well and done it his way, hard not to admire that.

I later learned he’d sold his little canal front house on Boca Grande and we sold our condo as well, so that chapter was over for the both of us. Tom fished with Keaton, Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard, neighbor Tom Brokaw, Huey Lewis and the late Lefty Kreh in the Bahamas for the ESPN show Buccaneers and Bones.

As for myself, I had one trip to Belize that was memorable so Tom and I both had interesting lives. Our final chapter awaited.