PETER • BURR • FOLKS

Posted on June 11, 2023

Pete died. Intermittently checking Gardiner, Montana obituaries over the years with no mention, today I find myself within 150 miles and drive over (Pete didn’t gave a phone). To Main Street, No.314. The 1930s house he bought for $65,000 USD in the later 1980s.

BANG BANG BANG (Pete was blind and nearly deaf). No answer. Strollers and a skateboard in front do not bode well. I canvass the tourist spots. None heard of Pete. I persist. Finally, the gal at a knife and tee shirt shop knew him, when he died. “It was a while ago”, she tells me.

The summer of 1986 I hitchhiked into Mammoth Hot Springs, a 65 lb. pack on my shoulders and five bucks in my pocket. Camping within Yellowstone National Park pre-season, Pete and I became acquainted at The Blue Goose, Gordy’s tavern in nearby Gardiner. This is where I learned an easy gesture of friendship: When buying a beef stick, you offer the container around to all, like cigars.

Pete, a New York transplant, arrived in the early 1980s similarly to me became a park service plumber. He was 38 that summer.

At a Gardiner wedding (within a few hours of arrival I was a “local” and was, naturally, at the wedding) after much free beer, Pete offered a “room with a view” within the park. And wow, what a nice old house he rented! Pete had won a park housing lottery with use of a cottage within Mammoth upon the famous “Soapsuds Row”. Former officer’s quarters, plenty of room, it may have been a Craftsman kit house. Perfect location!

I stayed that summer, getting a piano gig in the restaurant four days a week. Pete and I became friends. Driving old mining roads, shooting guns in the hills, visiting friends, we traveled everywhere with his dog Burr and cheap watery beer (drinking and driving laws only applied to hard liquor in those days).

We’d write, myself getting occasionally getting full letter, sometimes a postcard. Between 1986 and 2017 I visited four more times; I’d show up with no notice and bang on the door: WHO IS IT? Jim. OH, JIM? We’d be back where we left off. (Pete had a tendency to SHOUT most of his conversations). Rolling cigarettes and drinking watery beer. (See The American Road Trip • Part II for the 2014 play-by-play).

As best as I can figure, Peter Burr Folks lived 1948-2019. He died young, with health issues, but WOW, when he lived, it was larger than life.