Much of my childhood was spent at Bear Creek Saloon, watching pigs cross the finish line.
By ANNA JORDAN
Throughout my childhood, it would take a minimum of 45 minutes after the designated departure time for my family to get in the car. This was how it had always been, whether it was school or practice or recitals — we were never on time. But once we arrived in Red Lodge, Montana (population: 2,610) our lateness was exacerbated by three generations of my family with varying agendas.
Red Lodge is largely a single-story town in what could kindly be called rural Montana but would more accurately be called the middle of nowhere. My family has always visited at least twice a year: once for summer — for events like the 4th of July parade, the Pig Races, a trampoline with a hose on it — and winter — for a white Christmas, white ski slopes, white people everywhere. As kids, we treasured those days when there was something to do, but we especially treasured the Pig Races.
The name is accurate. They race pigs.
The adults would attempt to figure out who would drive our grandmother, Deeda. The children, including me, were spread out across vehicles. My twin and I hunkered down in the back seat of one of the three cars being used to shuttle my entire family to Bear Creek Saloon & Steakhouse for the event of the summer: the pig races.
Eventually, Deeda would be ushered out of the house by one of my aunts and the three cars would take off for the 20-minute drive into Yellowstone that took us to the very precipice of Wyoming. Through the mountains we’d rattle in our rental van, passing infinite hills which always made me jealous that someone else had thought to name Montana “Big Sky Country.”
In order to get to Bearcreek (population: 99), you have to drive by the abandoned Smith Mine which contributes much to the local history. There was a massive explosion in the coal mines in the 1940s that turned the settlement of Washoe into a ghost town and forever dwindled Bearcreek’s population. From the road, you can see the ruins of the town and the scarred opening to the mine.
The Smith Mine disaster is the worst coal-related incident in the state, but more importantly, it was a sick landmark that whispered to me that I’d finally get to eat homemade-tasting food and watch pigs stumble on a dirt track.
Bearcreek would come into view, meaning we could finally see the two businesses that I knew of in the whole town: a cockamamie pie place and the steakhouse. Despite the time it had taken to get everyone in the cars, we were all out in less than a minute, crossing Main Street to make our way into the rough, woody bar.
The inside of the building was a black hole where only neon lights and harsh fluorescents could make any difference in the ever-present shadows that connected chairs and tables across the restaurant’s interior. My parents have always had to wear glasses and use their phone flashlights to look at the two-page menu, but as a kid, I found the bar to be cave-like and thrilling. I tend to squint now.
Reservations were often sold out weeks in advance, but as longtime patrons, we had likely made the reservation months before. To accommodate our massive family, there was only one table large enough for the group of us, and we sat there most summers.
Built into the back of the restaurant there was a stage where I have never seen anyone perform besides my family at dinner. I didn’t realize it was anything more than a platform until I was a teenager.
At the track, my dad would rush into the line to place bets so that he could buy out two entire rounds and assign each person in our family to a pig. That way, at least one Deeda descendant was guaranteed a win.
They keep the pigs in little stalls with lots of food until they usher them onto the tiny mud racetrack — “they” being volunteer tweens who, until I was 13, seemed like the coolest people I’d ever met. After hearing a bell that signals the time to race, the pigs struggle to find the end of the track, where even more food is waiting for them.
The racing plus the slot machines in the dimly lit, mahogany-tasting bar inside are two of the best ways to gamble within a 30-mile radius of Red Lodge. If your pig wins, you receive $25.
I have never spent the $25 I have won from a winning pig, opting instead to keep it paperclipped and waiting in my secret stash for a day that will never come — when my luck is better than a pig with my name on it blindly running to the finish line first.
The pigs are raced as piglets and are raised as livestock by a local farm, while all the money made from racing and the bar funnel into keeping the restaurant alive and providing scholarships for local kids struggling to afford education.
The pigs are named almost exclusively in puns. “Baconator.” “Notorious P.I.G (Piggie Smalls).” “Patsy Swine.” “Hillary Clintham.” “Lardo.” That one wasn’t a pun, but it was just so mean-spirited that I’ve never forgotten it. The taxonomy was lost on a kid that just wanted my pig to win, but now it’s my favorite part. I still don’t think I’ll ever truly be funny enough to come up with a viable pig name.
Vivian Bi / Daily Trojan
Once we finished eating, our parents would then unleash my sisters and cousins and me on the rickety, homemade viewing deck to watch the pigs. The deck had nails visibly sticking out of planks, and the stairs would whine if two of us were on them at the same time. The older I got, the more flammable the deck seemed, like driftwood. It was perfect. The schedule ran like a football game: with one race and then 15 eternal minutes before the next race was set up. But we weren’t always there to watch.
At the end of the deck path lay a ramshackle playground with a slide, rope, monkey bars and two swings that kids fought over like washing machines in a college dorm. This playground also housed the pigs between races, and we would flock to feed them bread we’d hidden in our pockets during dinner and stare into their wild eyes with adoration, as if we had built a special connection with them in those three seconds.
After feeding them, we’d often try to reach over the fence to touch them, spurring the cool volunteer tweens to yell at us. We’d sulk for a minute and move on almost immediately to playing kick the can with someone’s dinnertime beverage that would end up unrecognizable.
Looking back, those pigs would have probably bitten our fingers off, and they should have — that would teach us. There were a lot of opportunities for infighting among the kids, and kick the can started many dramatic wars that became life or death as long as we were in Bearcreek. Tears were inevitable at the Pig Races until all of us were above the age of 14.
Suddenly, the announcer would start up his microphone like a lawn mower and everyone would flock to the deck, desperate to secure a good view of the track before everyone inside also came out to flood the banisters with their drinks from the bar.
We’d listen to him go through the sponsors — most of which were stores from Red Lodge — talk about the scholarships, then finally announce which bettors were getting which pigs. Drunk adults would laugh at the names, and painfully sober kids like us would twitch in anticipation, waiting for the bell to sound and for the pigs to be unleashed.
Finally, they’d get to the round that my dad had rigged and we’d all see which ones of us secured a winning pig in the race.
If it wasn’t me, I felt a cosmic injustice that seeped into the rest of my life, wondering why my older sister Clare always got the pigs, why my twin Charlotte was so good at picking clothes and I wasn’t, or why my oldest sister Lucy had boyfriends and I didn’t. But if it was me, I’d look at the sprawling hills around me like I was one of their native bison and the floor was my everlasting dinner plate because, just this once, it was my time.
The bell would sound and the pigs were free to stumble about. Some took to it quicker than others, immediately sprinting around to the end of the track. Some would look at these speed demons and would infer that they, too, should take off in that direction, sometimes outpacing those pioneers. Some would need to be shepherded by the super cool tweens with a hose so they’d even leave the stalls. If my pig was one of those, my reverie would end and I’d fall back on contemplating the cosmic injustice I faced daily.
There have been three times in my life when this wasn’t the case. Most recently, when I was 19, my win felt otherworldly. I was so excited that when I went to collect the money, they asked me to present my ID since you have to be 18 or older to bet on the pigs. They didn’t believe me when I said I was almost 20. I’m still at the age where I’m offended when someone thinks I’m younger than I am, so I frowned.
For each win, I still have the pink winner’s slip and the cash, paperclipped together and hidden in my room in my childhood home. I think the only situation I’ll ever spend that money is after my wedding. I’m afraid that if I part with the money, I’ll instantly lose any favor I’ve garnered from those quantum building blocks that ultimately decide everything we can’t see.
Until recently, I never picked up on the fact that the adults in the family rarely ventured outside to watch the races or greet us at the playground amid our conflicts. Looking back, spending time with us during dinner and gossiping about the rest of our family over local beer was the main draw for them, not the raw ecstasy of watching your pig cross the finish line before your often superior older sibling. I didn’t come to this conclusion until seeing my dad buy another round of drinks after I won my race with Patsy Swine at 19 years old with a Shirley Temple in one hand and $25 in the other.
When I was younger, shepherding us back into the cars in mismatched immediate families — me in my aunt’s car, my cousins with my mom and dad — rivaled the time it took to get there. We’d hide under the slide, under tables, in the bathroom, under anything as long as we didn’t have to leave. There wasn’t any reason to stay; we just didn’t want to go. The way back was never as interesting, though I tried to memorize sweet potato sunsets some summers. It was too dark to see the mines most of the time at that point.
Getting home to our drunk parents, we’d try to tell them how we’d been wronged by each other all night and all our lives and we’d cry and our parents would tuck us in and say they’d talk to our sisters in the morning. They never did, and I figured it was because my luck was up thanks to my winning pig, though now I know they were probably hungover. The Pig Races had that effect.
