Room 512 at the Grand Hotel on West Broadway Street, Butte Montana. Today it’s a pre-release center, but for a century it was a hotel.
The bus station was across the street, M & M Cafe down the street around the corner, the Fox Movie Theatre was nearby showing one dollar admission films and some great bookstores across the street. What more could you ask for?
How about a full-scale boxing gymn in the basement, training fighters to be professionals. That’s why the employees like the guy behind the front desk looked pretty beat up.
The days i stayed in room 512 were cold. It was zero degrees outside and there was no heat in the room. I had a thin blanket over the bed, so, when i left to go to the M & M i told the clerk i was freezing, and he said he would put a portable heater in the room. I thought of my camra gear which i had put in the closet with a penny positioned on the top flap.
When i returned to the room there was a small old rusty electric heater that provided little heat. It was tough couple of days and nights shooting.
Turns out the clerk was nosey and honest. I found the penny on the floor of the closet meaning he had searched my things. But he didn’t steal anything except for the idea of what I was doing in Butte Montana.
And on my end, it’s like Dashiell Hammett said, “It’s sometimes better to pretend I don’t hear the sound of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun.”