Tom Satterthwaite
Photo Credit: Montana Standard
Oral History Transcript of Tom Satterthwaite
Interviewers: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: February 28th, 2020
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: February 17th, 2021 by Nora Saks
[00:00:55]
AUBREY JAAP: Okay. So it is, what's the date? It is February 28th. Tom Satterthwaite is here with us. So I would - Tom, like you to start with - just talk a little bit about your parents, your grandparents. Give us a little bit of your family's background.
TOM SATTERTHWAITE: Ok, I will. St Mary's, we've been St. Mary's Gaels forever. Both my grandmas and both of my grandpas came from Ireland. My Grandpa Satterthwaite was a Cousin Jack. And then they all went to Cleator Moor before they came to the States. And then when they came to the States, they settled in the UP - Michigan - and came here. So we've been Butte forever.
My son still lives in the house that my grandma and grandpa kind of built, not built, but remodeled in 1890. So nobody's gone far from Woolman Street except me. But my Grandma and Grandpa Daily, my Grandpa Daily came from, I believe Cork. And my grandma came from the UP. And they were Dailys.
They just lived up the street from us, two houses away. And like I say, my grandpa on the Sattherthwaite side, whom I never did know, he died in 1914. I think he had an awful drinking problem. And as I look through the old city directories, they arrived here in Butte in 1890 and he died in 1914. And in the interim, they lived in 17 different houses up in St Mary's. Because I think they were always one step away from the rent collector. You know what I mean? That's just the way it was.
JAAP: Yeah.
[00:03:21]
SATTERTHWAITE: My grandma remarried to an Irishman named Kneafsey, K N E A F S E Y. And I always refer to him as my grandpa. He came from County Mayo and he was a wonderful guy.
He's my grandpa. He used to take me on walks and I don't know how elaborate you want me to get on them, but I have fond memories of my grandpa. When I went to the first grade, in 1948, he went back to Ireland. To live with his sister. My grandma had already died a year before I was born. She died in 1941 and we lived with my Grandpa Kneafsey in the house at 25 West Woolman until he did go back to Ireland.
But he used to take me for walks. We'd go down to the post office, because he always sent Lipton tea bags to his sisters in Ireland. And they didn't have tea bags, so that was an innovative kind of thing. And we'd go down and mail them at the post office on Main Street.
[00:04:37]
And he had a dear friend, I think the man's name was Harrington. He was a shoemaker and he had a little shop between Mulcahey's Bar and Eclipse, the main cash grocery. And we'd go in there and I can still smell the leather and that old stove. And I'd just sit and listen. They spoke Gaelic all the time. So I had no idea what they were talking about.
The only thing I was anticipating was a stop at St. Mary's church to ride to light a candle. And then up to Mrs. Harrington's to get some candy to go home. But he had, I just had wonderful memories of him. He used to tell me stories, scare the living you know what out of me.
[00:05:43]
In those days, the Original wasn't the open amphitheater it is today, you know, as you saw in the paper the other day. The Original I remember - that all these buildings, and they're always dark and full of people, guys, you know? But when the wind would blow, and those sheave wheels were turning, it would set off sort of a howling sound. Ohhhhh. And he used to tell me it was the banshees, that they lived up there and, 'you better be good. You better be good, Jack'. They'd call me Jack all the time. I don't know why.
But, 'you better be good Jack, or I'll get the banshees down'. And I was petrified. I believed everything. My mom would say, 'oh for God sakes, don't play...he's just pulling your leg.' And I'd say, 'no, he's not. No, he's not, because he told me there's little wee ones that live in the basement too. And I know that'. In the cellar, not the basement. I'm used to saying basement, but in the cellar, where the wee ones live.
Well, anyway, he went away back to Ireland and I never saw him or heard from him again.
And he didn't die until 1965. I found that out through research. That he didn't die till 1965. And I've always regretted not knowing that because he was such a powerful influence on me. I just loved him dearly. I can still see him. He'd take me for a walk and I'd hold onto his hand, you know.
[00:07:28]
He worked at the Black Rock when he came here. He was up the Black Rock, Black Rock forever. And of course he and my dad didn't get along too well. Well, there were too many of us in that little four square up there on Woolman Street, you know? So anyway, he sold the house to my dad. And my dad owned it first, and then he sold it to Grandpa Kneafsey and he married my grandma, and then they reversed the whole process.
But as I said earlier, my grandma and my dad and mom, not my mom, but my dad and his brothers and sisters, they lived in something like 17 different houses in 15 years. And when my dad and his older brother, the older brother was 15 and my dad was 13, they went to work in the Steward. They went to work in the Steward. And that's a kind of an interesting little story too.
[00:08:43]
But they built the house. It was just a shack and they remodeled it and put the yard in. They were so adamant about seeing that their mom had a house of her own and flowers. And we had the only tree I think, up in St. Mary's parish that wasn't wild.
Everybody would come to look at the ash tree in the fall, you know, take pictures of it. I can feel them people knocking on the door. 'Could we take a look at your tree'? I'd say, 'Oh yeah'. My dad would take them out and show him.
But anyway, we had a great time up there because - until everything went sideways. Well, I guess it didn't, I was too young, you know what I mean, too young to know. But evidently something went wrong and he went back to Ireland. But we've been there ever since. My dad and my Uncle Dick, they built it.
JAAP: And what's the address of that home?
SATTERTHWAITE: 25 West Woolman. My son lives in it now. I was born there. They were born there. My dad was born there, everybody. So I don't know what would happen to it if... I don't know what will - well, I think Danny, he's my son, he loves that - it's grandma's house, you know, grandma's house. So anyhow, that was some of my early recollections.
JAAP: Do you mind if I go step backward for a second? So when you talked about your dad and uncle working at the Steward, you said there was an interesting story to go with that. Would you like to share it?
SATTERTHWAITE: It's interesting because my mom's uncle, Pat, he was from Ireland. They lived up at 7 West Woolman, my Grandma and Grandpa Daily. And that's where my mom was born, at 7 West. She died at 25 West, so she didn't go very far. But anyway, her Uncle Pat worked at the Steward, and he was a diamond driller. So he got my dad and my Uncle Dick Satterthwaite on as diamond driller helpers.
So then Pat passed away and my dad was the assistant foreman of the diamond drills, during the thirties and forties. And he got my Uncle Spiky Daily on as the diamond drills. That was my mother's brother. He was a diamond driller. And when I got out of high school, I went to work as a diamond driller, up at the Badger with my Uncle Spike.
So that was my first time underground. For a long time. I worked with him for a couple of years. And I was living at home, 19. I thought to myself one day, you know, God love her, Jenny will come back and haunt me - that's my mom. But I thought to myself, 'if I don't do something, either my mom's going to kill me or I'm going to kill her, one of the two. We can't live in the same house together'.
I was 18 years old, you know, and had all the answers. So I joined the Navy. I joined the Navy and I come home and I said, 'mom, I joined the Navy'. You know what she said? 'Good luck'. That was it. So anyway, away I went to the Navy. But we were all diamond drillers.
My dad had worked for 53 years in the mines. He was still working when he died in 1967. He was still working in the mines. Every one of us worked in the mines. Everybody worked in the mines. Some of the younger ones, didn't go underground. They went to the Pit, you know, but I spent a lot of time underground. Oh, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. You know, being a young kid, boy, I was scared to death, you know, but I had my Uncle Spike there, so Uncle Spike, he would take care of me. Anyhow.
[00:13:41]
JAAP: Can you tell us about your first time underground? What was that like? Your first time underground? What was that like?
SATTERTHWAITE: Oh I was petrified. There were a couple of times in my life I've been petrified. That was one of them. One of the first actually. We were up the Badger and I was hanging on to him, and they could see my clothes were all muddy. So they knew I was a greenhorn. And those guys got on me. And I had my bucket, you know. And I put the bucket on one of the cars, on the sheets, and little did I know it was a toilet car. So that lit off everybody.
'Look at that. Jeez, I oughta sweeten it up for your kid. That'll kind of make those sandwiches sweet. Put it there again'. It kind of broke the ice, you know. But we got in the cage, and when you get in the cage, they're always goosin' people and...and if you're young and it's your first trip, they zeroed in on you.
That's one thing I remember about miners, Aubrey. They never grew up. They never seemed to grow up. They were always full of the devil, you know, just always playing pranks and foolin'. And the old Badger shaft of course, was not like the Kelly, all cemented in, you know. It was woom, woom woom. I thought, 'oh cripe, where am I going? To the depths of hell I'm sure'.
[00:15:20]
And we went down to the 3,200 at the Badger and went back in the drift and started drilling. And I kind of accepted it, you know? But anyhow, then I went to work. Jimmy Carden called me one day and said, 'you want to get out of mines'? I said, 'Oh, I'd love it, Mr. Carden'. He said, 'well, I've got a job for you up at the High Ore, oilin' on the hoist'.
I said, 'well, that'd be grand. That'd be just grand'.
So I went up the High Ore on the hoist. Worked with some of the fun, oh the nicest people. And then I went in the Navy.
But while I was in high school, my first job - Jimmy called me, Jimmy Carden called -I was a junior at Central. He said, 'you want to run the elevator up at the Hennessy building'? I said, 'Oh yeah'.
So I went to work at the Hennessy building, running the elevator up and down to the sixth floor and fifth floor. And then I went to work as an office boy at the pay office. It's just kitty corner here. You know, the old bank building. Yeah. Yeah. I went to work there.
[00:17:01]
I always have such warm memories of working with those old guys. The armored car that's up at the mining museum? It was in the basement over there. And those guys, God love 'em, Dan Kinsela and Bowl O'Sullivan and all these things.
There were really three beautiful girls. They were just out of high school. They were key punch operators. The ACM was just changing to a computerized, the old key punch thing, you know. And they were always bribing me to go take the girls, one of the girls, down to the basement with in the armored car. They'd give me $20. 'Here. Here's $20, go do it'.
I was just out of Central, Christ. I was beet red and you know, they were having the best time in the world doing it. And then they tell the girls - two girls were from Butte and one was from Whitehall. And they were really cute. We've become really good friends over the years, you know. But they'd tell the girls and then I was petrified to see the girls. Comin' from Boys Central, you know what I mean.
[00:18:34]
And you know, my mom used to always tell me when I started dating, 'now, you remember, you treat that girl, like she's your sister'. I think to myself, 'Jesus, I don't have any sisters. How do you treat a sister? I don't know how to treat a sister'.
So anyhow you know, everything just was fun. And then when I went to the Navy, and came home, I thought, 'do I want to go back to that'? And there were a lot of things that were influencing my decision at the time, and I can relate those to you, but it's a little different. So I thought, 'I'm gonna go to college'.
I had two uncles, one on my Daily side and one on the Satterthwaite side, Brother Satterthwaite was the first kid from Butte to join the Irish Christian brothers. And he was leaning on me big time. And he knew I wasn't going to put a collar on. So he kept pushing me into going to college.
When I come home from the Navy, I had grown up a lot. That experience and that's a whole different, but I grew up a lot and I went to college and for the first time in my life, I found out that learning could be fun.
[00:20:08]
'Cause I went to the nuns and then I went to the Irish brothers. And their philosophy - if there isn't any fear, there's no learning. And I found out that learning could be fun. And it just struck a chord with me.
And from Northern - I went to Northern because there was no, I'd never been to Havre in my life. Never been to Great Falls in my life. So I thought, 'that's as far away as I can get from these guys'. Because if I came back and went to Dillon with all my friends, I'd have blown it in a year and been back in the mines. I would have, just as sure as I'm sitting here talking to you. So I went as far away as I could.
[00:20:59]
And then I met my wife up there and everything changed, you know. But yeah, that education thing was a big thing with me. I've never been able to satisfy my craving for learning. After Northern, I had a scholarship to MSU and went to a master's degree. I was Mike Malone's first graduate student.
JAAP: Oh.
SATTERTHWAITE: Yeah. And we'd become very good friends before he died untimely, actually. Then I started teaching and I decided, I got to get some more. So I went to Madison, to Wisconsin, worked on a PhD. And I had everything ready to go. I had my dissertation ready and I had everything. And the school board, I was teaching here, the school board wouldn't renew my leave of absence.
[00:22:08]
So I had to make a decision. Am I going back to Butte or am I going to stay here? Well, I had two children by then and my mom was elderly and I thought, well, so I came back.
But I've never, ever lost the love of learning. I had a Fulbright scholarship in Germany, and Ellen was kind enough to get me a letter of introduction.
And so I did a lot of research while I was in California, at Stanford. On ACM and so on, but that's on a different track. Anyway, that was, you know, the early years, running around up there as a boy, I've always believed that, and I do today even more so than I did then - there could have been no better place to grow up for a boy than on that Hill.
[00:23:14]
Because it was just an adventure. A lot of things you weren't supposed to be doing, but they were the ones that were really fun, you know? Yeah. It was just such an adventure.
And I was different than a lot of the kids because I was absolutely in love with the mines. My dad started me on that when I was really little. He, as I said, was assistant foreman of the diamond drills.
And in those days, there was no pit. So the Hill was still intact. And he'd have to take the new drill bits, you know, with the diamonds on them, around to the guys that were drilling in the mines. And he'd take me. And so I was in every mine two, three, four dozen, I don't know how many times - continuously. I just fell in love with them.
Everybody was so friendly, little kid coming, you know, 'who's this guy'? And so I really got to know the mines.
And going back, when they remodeled the house on Woolman Street, they forgot to put a shower in. Well, there was no real reason for it because all we had to do was run across the street to the Original dry, which we did my whole life until I went in the Navy, I showered at the Original dry.
[00:24:57]
And the real plus with being at the Original dry as a kid, was you pick up all that stuff that those guys talked about, you know? So I always had a new little bank of swear words to share with the guys at recess up at St. Mary's, you know? I could pick up that stuff. I knew all the swear words. Yeah, it was fun. It was really fun.
But anyhow, I do have such a love for the mines. And then everything started to change. I grew up, and my brothers grew up, and the Pit started eating away at things. And people that I knew up in the Gulch, up in Dublin Gulch, or Corktown had to move. And it was just, things were really changing quickly.
[00:26:07]
I didn't really realize it at the time, but I picked up on it early. Yeah. That it wasn't going to be the same for much longer, you know?
I would guess that the two greatest influences in my life, growing up in St. Mary's, were the church and the mines. Without either one, I don't know where I'd be or how I'd think. They made me what I am. I have to say that, the combined - and they weren't always compatible.
You know, when they built the new St Mary's school, I was in the fifth grade and it was right in the Steward yard. The old St Mary's was just, well, you know. You know, just east of where the new one was. And the old St Mary's I can remember because I used to watch the trains go by all the time. I'd get in trouble, see for daydreaming, looking out the window at the BAP going by all the time.
And then when we moved to the new school, I really got in hot water. Because when it was warm out a little bit, they'd open the windows. And you could hear the guys out on the sheets at the Steward talking.
[00:27:39]
And you could hear them ringing the bells for the cage, you know. Nine and two. I knew what nine and two was, two one and two, I knew what that was. And I'd go home every day and tell my dad, 'Hey dad.. I learned a new...'
He'd say to me, 'if you want to clear the cage, what do you ring'? I'd say 'two, one and two.' And he thought that was cool. He thought that was really cool.
But the nuns didn't. So it became a tug of war between me daydreaming out the window at the miners and listening to them, or listening to that nun up trying to diagram a sentence.
And the nun didn't have a chance, you know. Finally it go to the point where I was going to repeat the fifth grade, if I don't get my you-know-what together. So anyhow, I got my stuff together and my dad helped me.
[00:28:45]
But he always thought it was so cool that I knew the names and I could name all the mines. I could name how deep they were. I could tell him what the bells were, you know and I'm in the fifth grade.
And so the church on the other hand, I don't have any good memories. None whatsoever. I do in a way, because St Mary's is still St Mary's, you know? And I can't go by the building anymore, without, you know, making the sign of the cross. But I don't have good memories from them.
[00:29:36]
I had two traumatic experiences while I was at St. Mary's. First grade, we had a nun, Sister Rowan Marie. And the only difference between Sister Rowan Marie and the rest of us was she was 22 and we were first grade. Otherwise she was just one of us, you know? We loved her to death. She played with us, she taught us songs, and it was just great.
And then I went to the second grade. And Sister Mary Victor. And she was, I don't know what was wrong with that lady. I say a prayer for her still all the time. Other than my mother-in-law, she was the meanest woman I ever knew in my whole life. My mother-in-law topped her, but until I'm got married, she was the meanest woman I ever...
[00:30:48]
It's just kind of an anecdotal thing, the old St. Mary's, you had to go down the basement, it had two stairs going down from the first floor. The girl's bathroom was here and then the boys bathroom. And we had a trough. Well, I'm sure that somebody up at the big shot cut it, you know, up on the Anaconda Road with the Parrot, cut some pipe. So it was just a trough. And the boys would all have to line up in front of the trough. And she'd stand on the stairs, looking right straight down at us, you know, just like that.
And you had to stand - 'hands behind your back'. And we'd stand, put our heads down. 'Eyes up'. We'd have to put our eyes up. 'Okay'. And then you got to go to the bathroom. Well invariably, somebody had, and in those days you couldn't wear jeans, you know, you had to wear denims. So there, you had a big patch in front of you.
But she'd look at us. She'd stare at us. One day, a kid a year ahead of me, he found out that if you got down on your knees, you could look under the door into the girl's bathroom. So we set several people up to be lookouts, and naturally the guys stiffed them.
[00:32:22]
Here comes Sister Mary Victor down the stairs. And you could always hear the rosaries, you know - click, click, click. They didn't holler. So he's on his hands and knees looking under the door, and she walked in. She beat him to...I can still see him.
She made a sign like this, about the size of this, you know? Hung it around his neck and it said, 'I am dirty'. And he had to wear it all day in school. He had to wear all day at school.
She got wind of the fact that - I guess, I don't really remember - some of us were playing doctor, in the tunnel under Main Street? That was a good spot, you know. So some of us were playing doctor and I suppose one of the little girls blabbed it or something, I don't know. And I look at it now and I don't even laugh now. Usually those things are funny after a while, you know, but this, she tormented me for a whole year.
[00:33:54]
And I didn't know what I was doing. I was in the second grade. I didn't know squat, but she would - just like the police do sometimes, they brow beat a person till they tell them what they want to hear. And I think that's what she did with me.
I became so passively hostile to them. And it was always the threat of, 'do you want me to tell your mother? What did you do? Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. I'll tell your mother. Did you touch her'?
You just sit there, you know, and on and on. Until it got worse, you know what I mean?
[00:34:56]
And then the old St Mary's school, I don't talk about this very much. It's not fun talk. It's damn hard. The third floor was a gymnasium. But we weren't allowed to go up there because it wasn't safe. The old school had been built in 1906 and this is 1953, '52. But she took me up there one day. She said, 'we're going upstairs'. And I thought, 'what the hell is upstairs'?
Well, up we go. I can't remember if she came in the gymnasium or she stayed outside. But when I walked into the gymnasium - now, remember I'm second grade. How old? Seven or eight years old. I walked in. I'd never been in this place before and I looked around and there was a portable stage right in the middle of the place.
[00:36:04]
And sitting on that stage in a big chair, was Father Rooney, the pastor. I thought, 'oh Christ. What in the Christ is this?'
And so I had to go up to him. It was just like an inquisition. It was. I had to stand there. And he questioned me with that booming voice. I was scared of him to death anyway, because when we'd go to church, he rant and rave in the old Irish way, you know, at the parishioners. And I'd hold onto my dad's coat and I was just scared of him.
Well, here I was one on one with him. And I don't remember what the outcome was other than I maybe went to the third grade and got a different teacher or something, you know.
Father Rooney and I had already had trouble before that. I was down visiting my Grandpa Kneafsey. And the alley that comes down by, excuse me, down by our house, you know, there's an alley come straight down. We used to kind of have sleds right there. This was way before. And I inadvertently left my sled in the alley. Well, the priests would come out of the back of the priest house, you know, and come down our alley.
I call it our alley, 'cause my dad and my uncle put it in. Come down our alley, and he ran over my damn sled. He just crushed it. Big black Cadillac, you know, and Father Rooney crushed my sled. He didn't even stop. He didn't even stop. He left and away he went.
[00:38:14]
I don't know if it was the next day or the day after or whenever it was, but I went up and stood in front of the priest's house on Main Street and called him every filthy name I could think of that I learned at the dry. I called him everything. CS words and MF words. And you know it. If I heard it, I laid it on him. He's out on the porch screaming...Oh, I called him everything.
So my mom come running up, because some woman up there, you know how maybe Kate McShane, I suppose, or somebody called her. And up the street, she come and she grabbed me and down I go. 'Wait till your father gets home. You're in trouble, Mr. You wait till your father gets home'.
Well, when my father come home - I thought, 'well, he's going to, he's going to really work me up'. He didn't let on, but I knew he thought it was cool. He thought it was super cool. He didn't let on, you know. But the next time we went over to the Original, to the shower, he takes me over. We walk up the stairs to the dry, you know, the Original dry. Go in. Bunch of guys are hanging out there. His name was Tom.
'Tommy, is that the kid that called the priest everything'? 'Yeah, that's the kid'. 'Oh, come here, kid. You're our kind of guy'. And oh man. My mom wasn't happy, but my dad was, he thought 'good for you, Jack. Good for you'.
[00:40:17]
That was one of - the other one, I was in the seventh grade. And I held a record, I'm sure. It's not documented, but I know I hold the record of serving masses at St. Mary's. Nobody ever served more masses than I did at St. Mary's. I was still serving mass when I had...Mike. We'd go up and Father Sarsfield had needed somebody. And, 'yeah, we'll go up and do it'.
But I used to do it all the time. And Father Barry, infamous name now, but, he used to get me to serve like a funeral. It was 10 o'clock. You got out of school. Sixth grade. So I wouldn't want to go back to school. He'd say to me, 'you're going back to school'. 'No father.' 'Let's take a ride'.
And he took me up to Elk Park. Out on a dirt road. And he started to try to molest me. He was in the car. Just give me a second, okay?
JAAP: Ah, Tom.
[00:41:42]
SATTERTHWAITE: Yeah, he was trying to molest me. And I was, oh, I didn't know what to do. And he took my hand and he put it down on his crotch and he had his pants open and I hit the panic switch. I just absolutely went berserk. It was pouring rain outside. To this day, all I can hear is that rain. Because I knew - where am I gonna go? I don't even know where I'm at. We're on a dirt road up, up someplace. And I don't even know where I'm at, and it's pouring rain and I can't go anywhere. I just can't go anywhere. What am I going to?
I just started screaming, crying, and he panicked. And he got really angry with me and took me home. And all the way home, 'you mention this to a soul, you're going to be in more trouble than you've ever been in. You hear me'? 'Yes. Yes, father. Yes, father'.
What I think people and I don't know, are you Catholic?
[00:42:57]
JAAP: No.
SATTERTHWAITE: You Catholic?
CLARK GRANT: No sir.
SATTERTHWAITE: People who didn't grow up in that strict, pre-Vatican II `Catholicism, have very little idea of what it was like. People say to me, people that are psychologists, you know, 'well, didn't you tell anybody'?
Well of course I didn't. I wouldn't have mentioned that to a human, there's no way I could tell. 'Didn't you tell your mom'? I wouldn't tell my mom that. So I lived with it.
And unknown to me, I think it was seething inside of me, and still is. I have absolutely no, nothing zero, nothing, nicht, nothing to say good about the Catholic church.
[00:44:00]
I liked the religion, because it brings more memories to me. My grandpa lighting candles and my dad teaching me prayers. But the structure. People, I don't think people, unless they've been in that situation, can relate to how it affects a person.
But I didn't go off the deep end. I mean I didn't start doing drugs, trying to bury it. And it's just sort of, I put it back in a vault someplace. And it has not - it never, ever came out until I started teaching school. There were a few incidents of people, this is the early seventies now, of abusing children in school. Young girls. I was out at the East Junior High and there were a couple of teachers there that should not have been.
And that sort of resurrected things, you know? And I would say this, and it sounds very trite, but I don't mean it to be trite, that my education allowed me to look at that stuff and keep it in perspective. And say, you know those are things that you have to deal with. I can't jump on some bandwagon and have somebody give me $8,000 as, you know, compensation.
[00:45:50]
What's that going to do for me? You give me a fist full of money and I'm supposed to forget it all? No, that doesn't work. I'm sorry. I'm not doing that. So I never did. I never turned in Father Barry. I wouldn't do that.
But anyhow, the church, the mines. Oh God. Yes. Black and white, black and white.
And everything was going along well. I got married, two children, wonderful wife. She was from Northern and I had just got out of the Navy, you know? So all those farm girls up there - fresh out of Ferdig or Ryegate, or some little town that I'd never heard of, you know? Man, I was like a wolf in a pack of sheep.
I thought, 'whoa'. So anyway it was one of the most wonderful experiences I ever had. And then I met my wife. And we've had a great life. We've been married 53 years, two boys, a grandson and a granddaughter coming.
[00:47:12]
But during that period, I got really into - and again, from my education, I didn't do drugs. I never drank, never drank. And drugs to me were not something I wanted to play with. But with the absence of drugs, and with the absence of alcohol, I've never left the sixties. They had such an impact on me. Again, good and evil. I've embraced the sixties philosophy to this day. I get so angry when I hear people putting the jaws on Bernie Sanders because he's a Socialist!
Hell, I was a Socialist, I joined the Socialist Party in 1969. Come on. 'Where'd you learn your socialism'? And this is my pat answer for that - 'from the original socialist. Jesus Christ. That's where I learned it'. But anyway, I was really into hating the war.
[00:48:22]
I remember when I was in the Navy, I lucked out because I got out, before. But they were sending us to boat school, for the small patrol boats on the Mekong Delta. And to groom us, again to groom us. I use that word too. When we were learning to use an AK or an M 16 or a M60, the targets were little things with no faces, but the conical hat and the black pajamas. And I was at target and I thought, 'come on, where's the red thing, with the circles around it? Why am I aiming at a person'? And I got out of the Navy before I finished that.
I hated that fucking war. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I hated that fucking war with a passion with a passion, to this day.
So I almost went to prison because of it. I was going to Northern, and I was in Veterans Against the War, and there was a big group in Missoula at the U. And we were kind of - at Northern, what can you do at Northern?
Well, you can do a lot. We would get kids, draft dodgers that would work their way around, around the country, I guess, I don't know. I never did get to know any of them, but. They would get to Missoula and then somebody from Missoula would call and, 'we got a kid'. 'Okay'.
[00:50:25]
So pretty soon the kid had come up to Northern, new student. Nobody knew the diff. 'What the hell is? I'm a new kid. And ah, how you doing'?
So there was a little town, it's right on the border. I suppose it's big now. But at one time Turner, that's the name - Turner, Montana. The only thing that was there was the Antler Bar, and some old lady used to run the Antler Bar.
So it was a piece of cake. We'd take the one or two boys that wanted to avoid the draft. We'd go to Turner, be shooting pool, drinking a little beer. Two Canadians from the University of Regina would come in and start playing pool and we'd be bantering back and forth. When it come time to leave, the two draft dodgers would leave with the Canadians. And we'd go back to Northern, no sweat.
Until one day, I was going to class and Joe Crowley, who was the president of Northern, he was from Butte. He said, 'can you come down to my office'. So he sent a message and he wanted to see me. Well, I thought, 'well, he's a Butte guy, maybe he just wants to'...so I went down to Joe's office and there were two guys there, young guys all suited up. I knew the minute I walked in the office, there was something going on.
They introduced themselves, and the one kid flipped open his wallet and - 'Federal Bureau of Investigation. We know what you're doing'. Holy Christ. That was another trauma. I thought, 'I got two children'.
[00:52:25]
And then they, good cop bad cop kind of deal, you know? 'Well, I'll tell you what, if you keep it up, you're going to prison'. 'I'm telling you that right now, no ifs, ands or buts about it. Just stay away from it'.
So I did. I had too much to lose, you know.
And to really throw oil on the fire, my youngest brother, who I adore to this day, I adore him. I'm sorry you guys.
1969, he gets killed. He gets killed in combat, he's 19 years old. And those fuckers lied to us. They all lied to us, you know. Telling us the story - we're saving the world for democracy. You didn't save anybody. You killed my brother. Oh, I went crazy. I really went crazy. And I've been crazy ever since I'm afraid...
[00:53:35]
Sister Mary Victor, and Father Barry and all the rest of them aside, nothing crushed me, like losing my brother. I wrote poems for them. They're in our book.
The only thing I like about, not like, I guess that's the wrong word. The only reason I accept it is - when he got killed, he got killed saving some other kids.
Just because those fucking South Vietnamese took off. They left them. They left them with everything exposed. They just chickened out and ran. And Dick was a machine gunner. My brother, Chum, he was a machine gunner. And he and his ammo bearer were in a secure place. But when the Vietnamese took off, the NVA and the Viet Cong came in - the whole flank was exposed. So Dick got up and with the machine gun and went down and exposed himself and got killed. And it makes me feel a lot better, that kind of thing.
[00:55:11]
But I've never been the same since. I've accepted it. And my mom, I was here taking care of my mom, it crushed us. My brother Bob, who's the middle boy and the black sheep of the family in every sense of the word, every sense of the word. The only reason he went to Vietnam was the county attorney called me, and he had stuck up the Radio Bar. Pulled a gun.
County attorney called me. I knew him, Jack Pothroe. He said 'Satch, what am I going to do with this God damn kid'? I said, 'I don't know. He got drafted'. He said, 'you have his ass on a train tomorrow or he's going to prison. Do you understand me'? 'Oh yeah. Yeah'. So, I saved him. I saved him again. I saved him again.
[00:56:15]
But the war lasted with him for so long. I often say, now I look back and I say, 'you know, Chum was the lucky one. He got killed instantly. It took Bob 50 years to die'.
When he'd get drunk and I'd go down and get him out of jail, or I'd take them home and get him cleaned up, and he'd be drunk. And he'd tell me about killing kids and how they used to enjoy running over them. Just horrendous stories.
But he was a sharp bastard, boy, I'm telling you. He was a con man, like I say, he was a black sheep, for sure. No good Irish. And it was all black.
[00:57:09]
I'd take him down to the psych unit at Fort Sheridan. In Wyoming, the veterans psych unit? On the way down, he'd break out the papers. 'Who've I got today? Oh, I see. I got Dr. Jaap. Okay. I know what she wants to hear'.
Oh, he'd feed her full of bullshit. He knew what she wanted to hear. Boy, who was a sharp bugger. Then he died. Drank himself to death. My mom was, he put us through hell.
From the time my brother got killed, everything changed. Everything. My dad, thank God was already passed away, two years before Dick. And then everything changed. I became the patriarch of the whole clan, so to speak.
Still today, 'call Tommy, what are you going to? I can't do it - call Tommy'. And, but those were some of my memories of growing up, up there. Like I say, some good, some bad it's like that old Jimmy Buffett song, you know, memories, some are good, some are bad.
[00:58:40]
But I wouldn't have changed it for the world, you know? There was no place like St. Mary's. No place in God's earth could anybody ask for a better place to grow up as a little boy, than in St. Mary's. The mines were simply our playground. That's all, everybody was family. If I was up the Gulch playing with Jackie Hogart or Mickey Dennehy, I'd eat supper at his house. If he was on Woolman playing with me, he'd eat supper here, or Frannie Johnson, or any of them.
[00:59:22]
But St. Mary's is a wonderful place. Would have been just heaven on earth if it hadn't been for the religious. And of course it wouldn't have been there if it had not been for the religious.
I hope you - are you going to put the run on me? I know, 'cause one thing conjures up another, you know?
JAAP: Yeah.
SATTERTHWAITE: When I went to Northern, I found out that learning could be fun. And then when I went to MSU, I learned how to research. And I researched Con Kelly. I liked Con. He's a Butte kid. He wasn't born here, but he was a Butte guy.
[01:00:15]
And then in Wisconsin, I decided, well, I had already written a masters thesis on Con Kelly, but I wanted to know more. I came to grips with the fact that if I'm going to understand Butte, and the Butte that I know - I got to get outta Butte. I got to go somewhere. You can't come to grips with Butte, in Butte. You know? I don't know.
I think people - the bull con that you hear on the street about Butte this, Butte that - it's all mostly bull con. But the greatness of Butte, this simple greatness, was the tremendous influence that it had on 20th century America. There was nowhere else, or very few places that had such an impact. Fourth largest company in the world.
[01:01:22]
And I found that John D. Ryan and Con Kelly were totally different people. And yet they made this - you know, they were both Irishman. They just made this the most important place in America, actually, in the first decade of the 20th century. There would have not been, or there would have been, but I struggle to come to grips with what the first World War, the Great War, would have been without the arms race that proceeded it, between Great Britain and Germany. And that arms race was made possible by copper from Butte, nowhere else.
And when you get into that and that's not growing up in Butte, but that - it's part of it, you know? And most people that - they never get that deep into Butte history into what...
And it's so frustrating because you run into so many roadblocks. ACM is locked down tight. And so there's second hand information, very seldom do you find primary research material as you know. But it's amazing what Butte was.
[01:03:05]
It's a bittersweet thing for, I go up and drive around St. Mary's almost two, three times a week. I do. And sometimes I just park and talk to the old guys up there that I see. In the Steward yard, you know, or in the Original yard, I visit with them. They're not there, but they are. They're like the banshees that my father or my grandfather told me about.
But anyway it's just that - I don't know whether it's a blessing or a curse Aubrey. I think it's one of, a little bit of both. But you can't get Butte out of you. You can leave Butte, but Butte can't leave you. You know what I mean? You're just stuck in it. My wife doesn't understand it. Why don't you hold onto the past so much? Because when I drive around, it's so bittersweet. This isn't what I remember, you know? It's just simply not what I remember.
Big holes. I remember, well, the Gonyan house was there. Or the Doorbelbus block was there, you know. And all those miners, and we used to go down and go to the kitchen at the Gonyan house. And they'd - the ladies there always had a roll or something, 'here kids, here's a roll'.
[01:04:36]
Now, it's nothing. There's nothing, you know? When I was driving the trolley I got, I couldn't do that much. I did it one summer. And then I kept thinking, why is it that when I talk about, I have to always use the verb 'was'? I don't want 'was', you know. But I guess what, I can't come to grips with is - things change.
That's the only constant is change. Isn't it? But other than all of my crying and moaning and swearing about what went on, it's been just a wonderful life. And it just keeps getting better. I say that honestly. I'm 77. I'll be 78 now in May. We have one and a half grandchildren. We celebrated our 52nd anniversary.
[01:05:38]
And a week later we had our first grandkid. And I absolutely worship the ground he walks on. I keep saying to my son, Mikey's dad, you know, 'I want Tommy to remember his grandpa. Like you remember your grandma. And like, I remember my grandpa'. That's so only important. But it's just, it gets better.
Now we're having a little girl, so who knows what that'll bring, you know? Yeah. Who knows what that'll bring?
And look at all the folks that - I had the wonderful opportunity of meeting Ellen. You, Nicole, all of them. You know, that's why when I come up here and I haven't been up for a long time because I'm having a hard time getting around now, but I could sit here and all of a sudden day's gone, you know?
[01:06:47]
You're not ready to run me out yet?
JAAP: No, we're not, Tom.
SATTERTHWAITE: Well, do you have any questions or anything?
GRANT: I was curious just to hear a bit more about your research on ACM.
SATTERTHWAITE: Oh, yeah. I've be glad to. ACM outgrew Butte early. When Daly sold ACM to Standard Oil, they moved everything back. And this was still vibrant. You know, it was still the major copper producer in the country. And John Ryan and Cornelius Kelly were partners and they worked famously together, but they were black and white. They were totally diametrically opposed to one another, personality wise and vision-wise.
[01:07:49]
Ryan is, you guys know, he was a banker. When he went to New York, when Ryan called him back to New York, after Daly had died, and Henry Rogers and Ryan became good friends, he moved into banking.
He became a board member of Citibank of New York, City Corp now. He started schmoozing with the likes of H.H. Rogers and New York bankers. The Guggenheims. He was patsy, you know he, that was his focus. And then he got into the Wilson Administration and became the first Assistant Secretary of War, for the burgeoning U.S. Air Force.
[01:08:57]
But again, Ryan is somebody that I'm a little nervous about doing anything with, because Ryan was a con man and a shyster. God, forgive me for saying that, John, but you were. Well, they were going to start making all these planes. The United States didn't have any planes, so they were using spads and Newports and those kinds of things from Europe.
So he's going to start making this, he got this American engine, V8 engine that was - they need a plane to put it in. And the best spruce came from Canada. No question. But down around Hamilton, Daly had a lot of spruce on the property. It was an inferior grade, but Ryan opted for that and got greedy, and started cutting all the spruce on government property. He's the Assistant Secretary of War, and he's ripping off the government.
[01:10:23]
Well, Wilson never trusted him. I've read some of Wilson's things and Wilson appointed him, but Wilson never, ever trusted him. And I think rightfully so.
After the war, Ryan becomes the first director of the Red Cross. First Director of the Red Cross, the American Red Cross.
And they cook up, they being Ryan and people in Citibank and others. They cook up this idea, and it sounded good on the surface. And it probably was. They were going to help the poor Russians, because you know those son of a bitch Bolsheviks, they just took it over. They took it over and they, you know, God damn Socialists, there you go again!
You know? So they're going back to straighten things out.
[01:11:25]
Well, really what they wanted to do, what Ryan wanted to do was get his fingers into the ore reserves in Russia. Because he thought, you know, the government's gone, those Bolsheviks are just a rabble. Let's get over there and get in on the ground floor.
But Lenin wasn't having any part of it. Lenin was way too sharp for John Ryan. He put the run on those guys early. He didn't get anywhere in Russia.
So, right after that, he comes back, and he and Kelly, I think by chance, my research tells me by chance at a luncheon, they mentioned that they were looking for new copper reserves. And at the luncheon, one of the Guggenheims, he said, well, we got a whole bunch of it in South America.
[01:12:29]
So. They conjured up a deal. I forget the numbers. I think it was, but it was for a dime on the dollar at best. And they bought Chuqui, Chuquicamata. And they were off and running. And that was a real death nell for Butte because now they had access to this dirt cheap - what do you pay these guys?
You got all kinds of trouble in Butte, 1917, 1919. You got all this trouble. These people are rabble-rousers and they want more money. Hell, let's go down there and exploit those Indians. So he did. And then he got into like I say, he got into Citibank. With Sunshine Charlie Mitchell. And he and Sonny, or Sunset Charlie, they started to bilk some farmers.
[01:13:26]
I think it was in the Midwest. They had the pump and dump schemes going, you know. The Bernie Madoff kind of thing, before Bernie ever got into the app. And they were selling watered stock to farmers in North Dakota and Minnesota and ripping them off. And Abe Pakora got a hold of it. And he was, he didn't - Pakora wasn't nobody. He was the lawyer for...But he did some serious research and he found out that what they're doing is bad news.
So he called them both before a congressional hearing. And it must've been the first time John Ryan ever had butterflies. He went to church one Sunday morning, I think, as I remember, at St. Patrick's cathedral in New York, and when he walked out, he dropped dead. I think he was due to go before the congressional hearing committee, just before that.
[01:14:43]
On the other hand, my man Con Kelly never, ever left Butte. He did physically of course, to run the company, but he was copper, copper, copper. He was ACM.
And as it turned out, it's a Greek tragedy. It's a real Greek tragedy with Con Kelly. He built it into such a power industry, but he knew, I think early, from what I read about Con, and I read his papers - those that are available. It was a Greek tragedy in that the two things he loved most were on a collision course: Butte being one, ACM being the other.
And as it got to after the second World War and things were changing and it was getting more and more expensive to run these mines, he'd come up with this idea called the Greater Butte Project. And the Greater Butte Project was designed - and it was a flop, I think, but it was designed to keep Butte vibrant for the next 25 or 30 years or beyond.
[01:16:14]
And it didn't work, but Kelly made a big splash over it. It's all over the papers out there. His heart was in the right spot. And he knew that block caving underground and building the mine to where they could do that would save the physical structure of Butte.
Well, I don't know this for sure, but I suspect that people such as Clyde Weed, and certain people in New York - who are not Butte people, never were Butte people. They were financeers, they were money men and they saw Butte going down the tubes. And the only way we can keep them going for a while is to open pit it.
And I think Kelly resisted. He's the chairman of the board, now. He's got some wack, you know what I mean? He's been there the whole century. He is Mr. ACM.
But, they forced him out. They forced him out. He retired in 1953, I believe, and died a poor broken man in 1955. And it's ironic, of course, that after Con died, after Con retired, the first scoop of ore came out of the Berkeley yard and the pit was off and running.
[01:17:56]
Because he was out of the way. He only had, I think he had six daughters, no sons. He's buried in Long Island. He was an old man. He'd come back and they'd get upstairs of the Finlen Hotel and play poker and drink whiskey and eat at Teddy Treparish's, you know?
I never met him. I just missed out on him. I went to work up at the Hennessy building in 1959, but those suits would come from New York and you could see them, you know, you knew there was something going on. They weren't Butte guys, that's for sure.
[01:18:45]
But anyway, that was Con. And that was - what I found out about them, very interesting.
And it, there's a dissertation out there waiting to be written. I'm just too old. I don't have the access to computer savvy anymore. And I would kill to see some young kid take it on, because we all know about Henry Ford. And we all know about Rockefeller. But nobody knows about Ryan and Kelly. And they were equally so if not more important to the development of the United States during the first part of the 20th century.
[01:19:33]
And that's what I say when I - you gotta leave Butte to get the Butte history, you know? Butte's not some drinkin' Irish town that - it's an important place.
And you can't understand American history, I don't believe, unless you understand the importance of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.
But unfortunately nobody goes that deep, except me, I guess. I don't know. There are a few kooks around besides myself that do get off on that kind of thing, but it's a wonderful town. It's just a wonderful town. It's like no place else in the world. I believe that. I believe that. Still is. But, anyhow. Was that okay?
GRANT: I just have one more question.
SATTERTHWAITE: Sure. You bet ya. As long as I'm, she's checking her watch, she's going to kick me out of here.
JAAP: I'm not. I'm not.
GRANT: Maybe two more.
SATTERTHWAITE: Okay. That's fine.
GRANT: I'm curious a little bit about more of what a diamond driller does and how that work fits into the larger...
SATTERTHWAITE: Okay. Diamond drillers, and they're called diamond drillers because that is - they're about the size of Aubrey's cup.
GRANT: The bit?
SATTERTHWAITE: The bit, and they're coated in industrial diamonds. And like I say, my dad used to get them the new ones and then we'd have to go out to the various sites, you know, and I'd get to go with him. But they were drilling mainly for new ore bodies.
[01:21:30]
You've seen the samples that come up, you know, the rock that big around. But they also drilled a lot of water holes, because water has always been a problem. We know that, you know. So if they had water, say for example, at the 1600 or the Badger, they didn't know what to do with, my Uncle Spike, he would drill a hole down to an abandoned drift at the 2200 and the water would go away. Okay? They were really important.
But in the early years and during both wars, they became extremely important, in terms of finding new ore bodies. Copper of course, but malidium, that kind of stuff, you know, that makes for good war machines. Titanium, whatever. So that's the essence of diamond drilling.
[01:22:41]
GRANT: So if you go down a drift, how far would you drill a hole?
SATTERTHWAITE: Well, I think that they depended. I couldn't answer that because - I would guess that some of the surface drills were going down, I don't know, 2000, maybe 3000 feet looking for new ore bodies.
The Ryan up here, you know, the Ryan? It was a misplaced thing that they drilled, they drilled for ore bodies and they found the ore bodies there, and then turned it over to somebody. I don't know who - this is later. This was way after Kelly, I believe, wasn't it?
I think the Ryan was...and they built the gallus frame, temporary gallus frame, and shaft and everything. They missed the goddamn ore body. Can you believe it? Where did these - I guess these are the guys that finished last in the engineering class.
[01:23:57]
I don't know, but they missed it. So it never did take off. The Missoula was another one. Uh-huh. I don't know why that ever happened. Well, I'd like to say because they didn't have the guiding hand of Cornelius Francis Kelly with them, but I don't know that for sure.
GRANT: And my final, I just have one more question, and maybe you have some, but I'm just curious how, what you think of the fact that the underground is flooded now?
[01:24:30]
SATTERTHWAITE: Well, I guess I'm just, goes with the territory. I think it's going to cause problems in the future. I won't be around. Who knows who'll be around, but it's not going away. It's like the Pit. They're not going away. They're here.
I don't know. It's a shame that they were so fluent in terms of money and cash and power that when they flooded the mines, they didn't even take out those huge stainless steel pumps. I remember down, when I first went down the High Ore, there were the old reciprocating pumps, you know? Babababump, ba bump. Then I went down to the Kelly. I thought, 'holy crap, where am I at, the civic center'? There's these huge open rooms, you know, they're all clean and indirect lighting. And all you could hear is these ruuuuruuu, all these electric pumps and everything's stainless steel. I'm thinking, 'holy moly'.
[01:25:53]
So I keep saying to myself, can you imagine what's going to happen to some archeologist 300 years from now when he discovers this thing? What the heck am I into? Atlantis in the West! You know, but yeah.
I look up at that pit and I just think it's just such, it just, it's a cancer. It's a cancer and people are saying, well, 'we can't get any businesses to come in there'!
Hello! How can you get a business to invest in a place like this? It's very hard. And you know me, I'm Butte to my core, but come on. If I were a businessman in New York or LA or someplace, why would I want to put money up there?
[01:26:53]
Superfund site. Everything's poison. It's all poison, except if you need something, like Woolman Street, we're across the street from a mine, there were two mines there, the Gonyan and the Original. There were two mines behind us and all those yellow dumps, you know, where we used to play as kids. What, I don't know. I didn't think we'd make it past - they were the only place to play, you know, in the winter, because they never froze.
And the beautiful blue water, you could take a nail and go like this and it'd come out and it'd be all copper.
But anyway, those dumps behind Woolman Street, behind my house. They leach down. Now they're leeching right now, as we're sitting here talking, you know? And so we went to the EPA and oh, he's a nice boy. I forget who - he works up at the Kelly now. Eric...
GRANT: Hassler? Eric Hassler?
[01:27:59]
SATTERTHWAITE: Yeah. He's a Mustang fan like I am, but Eric is a wonderful kid, but his hands were tied. He come up and looked it all over. He said that there's nothing we can do. I said, 'Eric, the whole place is loaded with arsenic. The whole place is loaded with every kind of heavy metal you could shake a stick at'. He said, 'Satch, I know that. All I can do is submit the...' and unless there's a child, that was the key. 'Unless there's a child living here, we can't do anything for you'.
'Cause they did it for the people that were next door at the time in Eddie Kelly's house. Cause there was a little boy living there. They dug it all out. They put in a new retaining wall, they did all of this and that and the other thing there, here next door. So it all depends on who you are and what you know, and you know how that goes.
And I go right back to where I started on this thing, boring you to death with my idea that I have very very little confidence in anybody other than close friends, because I feel that I've been lied to by the country.
[01:29:24]
They destroyed my family. And I've been lied to by the church, because they destroyed my beliefs. When they closed St. Mary's church, it was just a blow. It was a blow. Especially to my mom, my God. And from the day they closed that church till the day she had to go to the rest home, she never had one priest come and visit her.
Isn't that something? And now I'm supposed to be, 'Oh yes, father. Yes, father'.
Kiss my ass. I just don't buy it. They're all phony. Every politician to me is phony. And I get off on a soap box now, cause you got me started.
GRANT: That's what we're here to do.
[01:30:21]
SATTERTHWAITE: I just think that capitalism is the ruination. And if it isn't, religion sure is.But I don't know how you believe, or where you're believing.
JAAP: I'm pretty sure you're right up Clark's alley.
SATTERTHWAITE: I'm not trying to sell a bill of goods to anybody. These are my beliefs and I don't sell them to anyone. But I've been crushed by everything. And when I first went in the Navy, you know, I was gung ho. And I'm 19, and they're giving me a machine gun.
Well, hey, you want to feel some power? When you're 19 years old, you just push those butterflies down on a 50 caliber machine gun and see what you can do. Wow. That was heady business, you know? And I thought, 'Whoa, I'm all for this. Let's go'.
But it evaporated early and when they closed St. Mary's, that evaporated early.
[01:31:28]
I still make a kind of a pretense, because I think I owe it to my grandson to see that he has - his mom is Filipina and she's a dedicated Catholic. So they go to church all the time. St. Pat's. And I don't make a big fuss about anything.
Wednesday, I was over - I volunteer at the hospital Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning. Because it's the only thing I have that I can sell smiles and I don't have to charge people. But anyway, I was standing there and somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around. Father Porter goes, whoop whoop whoop.
What the heck are you doing? He usually gives us communion and I go to communion because it satisfies him. I don't mind that, but I wouldn't dare embarrass the man. He's such a sweet man, but anyway, he slaps the ashes on my head. Everybody was laughing, 'what the hell are you doing with ashes? You hypocrite.'
I don't know what I'm doing with the ashes, I guess I don't want to embarrass or offend Father Porter.
[01:32:56]
But anyway, yeah, I don't have much faith in anything. I don't know if you - I'm sure you don't know the Simon and Garfunkel song. Is it Kathy's song?
JAAP: Mmm hmm.
SATTERTHWAITE: Yeah, 'I stand alone without beliefs. The only truth I know is you'. I say that to my wife all the time, and the boys. I don't have many beliefs any longer. I don't know what - they say, 'well, what are we going to do when you die'? I said, 'I don't give a shit what you do. I'm dead. Cremate me or do something or drag me out there and throw me in the dumps. I'm dead. That's your problem, not mine, I tell the kids'.
I mean, I went through it with my brother and my dad, my two brothers, my dad, babababab. I don't want to go through it again. I hope I never have to go through it again. I just hope I never have to. It scars you so deeply doesn't it? We all have been there. So anyhow.
[01:34:08]
JAAP: Well, Tom, thank you for sharing everything.
SATTERTHWAITE: You won't be thanking me when you're...
JAAP: No, but you're one of those people, Tom, you are truly - when I think of someone kind, I think of you. You just exude kindness.
SATTERTHWAITE: Did you read the little thing in the paper? Do you ever read it in the paper? At the end of Today In History, and then they give you the little blurb. And my memory is fading.
[01:34:44]
Who was it? Who was it? Who said there are only three important things in life. Number one: kindness. Number two: kindness. And number three: kindness. And like I say, I, that's why I enjoy that hospital so much. Because I'm the face of St. James. When people walk through the door and I know they've got trouble, a smile and a kind word is probably what they need. And I go out of my way to make sure to do that. I'd never harm anybody.
After my brother got killed, I thought to myself, harming is not part of my repertoire, period. And I've made it a dictum. I just, not that I don't get angry at people. You know, I do get angry at people. I have an awful Irish temper and it gets the best of me sometimes, it really does. And I scare myself, but as I get older, I get a handle on it, you know?
But yeah, kindness - there's no substitute for it, is there?
JAAP: No.
[01:35:56]
SATTERTHWAITE: Just a smile. Just a smile. You can't believe what it does to some people over in that hospital. They just need a smile to boost 'em up.
But anyway, that's my story. I probably left out a lot of stuff. I said to Aubrey, 'do you want the G-rated version or do you want the X-rated'? So we didn't really get to the X rated, but you're about done. Anyhow.
[01:36:27]
JAAP: If you have more things you wanna share, I have no appointments today. If you have more you'd like to share, we're here. We have nothing going on.
SATTERTHWAITE: There really is no...and I say that in all honesty. I was the model little boy. All the rest of those guys up there - hey. Here's the little story. I'm not going to use names, okay?
JAAP: Sure.
SATTERTHWAITE: One of my classmates, he had two older sisters, Connie and Margie. And they were going to Central when we were sixth, seventh, eighth grade. So we go to school and this kid would go around at recess - 'my sister's going to take a bath today. You want to be in and watch it'? 'How much'? Well you'd have a nickel, you know, for recess. Or for after school, you could go to Mrs. Harrington's. So he'd pick up the nickels. Jesus. He was a pimp. And I didn't know it.
[01:37:45]
Anyway. He picked up all the nickels. And they lived on East Woolman Street. You know where the - well they're all gone now. I can't say, you know, where. Where the chutes were? The Steward chutes?
We could get up on the fence and you'd be looking right into his back windows of the house. It was a two story house on East Woolman Street. And so he'd make sure the shades were up. There'd be four or five guys standing on the mine fence, peekin' over the fence, seein' if we'd ever get a glimpse of Connie or Margie. Never did. Never did. Lost the nickels, but never did.
[01:38:33]
People were saying, kids were always sayin', 'hey, we're going to go under the chutes with Jane Doe'. I just made that up. 'There's a couple of them are going to be over there. You want to come over'? 'No'. Are you chicken shit? You're just chicken'. 'Ah no, okay I'll...'
So I go and I can remember once I went under the Steward chutes and here are the two girls, with no shirts on. What the heck. So I took off running. They had no shirt on, you know, and they're in the eighth grade, so they're starting to develop a little, you know, but I just never. Probably from my mom saying, 'you treat those girls like they're your sister'.
But when I went to Central, we'd skip class. I skipped class with somebody, I don't know who, a junior, we went over to Butte High. I thought, 'holy cripe. Look at these girls. Wow. You get to go to school with girls? You talked to girls'? I never talked to a girl. I'd be so scared. I couldn't talk to a girl. I couldn't. And that went on for quite some time.
And I go back, and I think Father Barry picked up on that. I think he picked up on that. He realized that - and so he groomed me, God rest his soul.
But I think that was one of the triggers that made him zero in on me. Cause I was no different, actually. I knew more swear words than anybody.
JAAP: Obviously.
[01:40:31]
SATTERTHWAITE: Yeah. And I could swear with the best of them, but when it came to girls - oooooooh. Until I went to Butte High, sneak over to Butte High. And like I say, then when I come home from the Navy and went to Northern, I was - whoa! I'm rolling here. All these little 18 year old farm girls, whoa man, like a wolf in a damn sheep pen.
Anyhow, but I was very very shy when it comes to girls. Not doing anything with girls. And that's the X-rated version.
[01:41:13]
JAAP: All right. Oh, Tom.
SATTERTHWAITE: Well, thank you so much. It's been, oh, just to be able to have somebody, it's just to have a forum where I can let it all hang out and do it safely. You know what I mean? 'Cause I've never, the whole time sitting in here, I just let it run. I just let my head run. I didn't try to doctor anything up or, you know, cover things.
I felt so comfortable with you both, and I knew I would with you. But I didn't know this young man. But right away, I knew that you're not a threat. And so I thought - hell with it. This is your golden opportunity, Tom. It's like going to Northern - strike!
So I let it all hang out and I'm sure a lot of it was just boring.
[01:42:13]
JAAP: No, Tom.
SATTERTHWAITE: Anyhow, my one big regret, or I guess there might be a couple, is that I opted to come back to Butte. And that isn't really a regret because my mom was devastatedover the loss of my brother. And she needed some serious support, you know. And my dad, they took care of their mom forever. So it was ingrained in me.
But my regret was that I didn't finish at Madison. And then I had an opportunity to go to Rutgers and I turned it down for that same reason. Those are regrets that I have, that I never did get my PhD. I got everything but. So, but I regret that at times.
[01:43:16]
What I never regret, ever ever ever, is going underground. Because there aren't many of us left, you know? I'm the only one in the family now. All my cousins and, that have ever been underground. I took my boys, we go up to St. Mary's, we go up to Jenny's, my mom's. They were probably, I don't know, little kids.
'We're going to mass, mom'! 'Okay'. Tell their mom, 'Linda, I'm taking the boys up to church'. 'Okay, go ahead'. And then we go up to grams and I'd say, 'we're going to mass mom'. And then one of the boys, invariably would say, 'grandma, we're going poking'.
Cause in those days, say the mines were closed most all of them. So we'd spend the entire day sneaking in and out of the Badger or the Black Rock. Or the Spec, the Mountain Con, you know. Up the Never Sweat.
[01:44:23]
And I'd have 'em down in there, telling them about this, and telling them about that. We had so much fun. Those boys, to this day, it's one of their great memories.
'How was church'? 'Oh, it was great'. Yeah. 'Oh yeah, Father O'Sullivan. He did a really good job today'. 'Did you serve'? 'No mom, we didn't have to do that'.
You lyin' son of a bitch! She'd say to me. So those are just things that are...
There's a lot I left out too, you know? The barks, the beer joints. Just grew up in beer joints. They were everywhere. Mulcahey's. The Liberty. The Crystal. The Lost Weekend was my favorite.
[01:45:22]
My aunt, when she was dying, she was in a rest home in Salt Lake. She was my dad's sister, my Aunt Hazel. She was the youngest. And my grandfather was really into drinking then, I guess. I'd go to Salt Lake to see her when she was in the rest home. 'Cause she was the only one I had left, you know, on the Satterthwaite side.
And she used to tell me the same story, she'd say, 'oh, the old man, he'd get me all dressed up. I was three or four years old and they put the dress on me. And gonna take me to church. And the son of a bitch would take me up to Grogan's Saloon, which was the Lost Weekend. And have me dancing on the bar and they'd give him drinks, you know'?
He had her dancing on the bar for drinks. And then I'd say, 'oh Haz, Auntie Haz'.
But when I'd go down, she was in a strict Mormon - because her husband moved, they moved to Salt Lake. So he went to work at Kennicott, see. And it was a Mormon old folks home.
[01:46:45]
So I come down and I'd bring her a couple of pound boxes of Shepherd's candy and a carton of cigarettes, she loved cigarettes. So. But the second or third trip I got in there, the director, very uptight Mormon man, 'we need to speak'. Okay to whatever. He said, 'you got to quit bringing this stuff to your aunt. Most of our people are diabetic and she's running around, giving them all candy. And until she came here, nobody smoked. Now everybody's smoking'!
But she was she was a pistol too. Seven men, seven husbands.
JAAP: Dang.
[01:47:28]
SATTERTHWAITE: Yeah. She was a flapper from the get go.
JAAP: Good for her.
SATTERTHWAITE: Yeah. Seven husbands. Can you believe?
JAAP: Hey, grew up dancing on the bar. Grow up dancing on the bar, that'll...
SATTERTHWAITE: That's the ones, like my mom would've said, 'well, that's the ones we know about'.
[01:47:51]
What you find too is that people, especially young kids, and I learned this teaching high school. They think they're inventing everything. You know, they invented the wheel. They invented this. It's just, my Aunt Hazel invented a lot of stuff before you guys ever thought about it. You know, my mom used to say, 'jeez, right'?
Anyhow, those are little anecdotal things that, you know? My mom growing up, her dad died when she was 12. She's the oldest, up on Seven West Woolman. They just tore it down not too long ago. She's the oldest. And she had five brothers and sisters. And she was 12 when my grandpa died. And my Grandma Daily, God love her, she took to the drink, awful. And men.
[01:49:01]
My mom used to tell us horror stories. She raised her brothers and sisters. She was 12, the youngest one was maybe one? 18 months. She quit grade school to raise them. They'd come, and she said, 'I'd run them all upstairs because your grandmother and her new boyfriend would be down drinking. And carrying, and raging, and fighting. I'd have them upstairs, hiding all the little kids. The little ones would be crying'.
Then the welfare department came. And she said they were there five or six different times. Because the kids next door had to go to the nun's home in Helena, because their grandpa got killed in the mines.
[01:49:47]
And she said, we'd run down the cellar, dirt cellar, you know, the cold cellar. We'd run down the seller and I'd hide them and no lights on. And they'd be pounding on the door, it was the welfare department. And they were going to take all the kids, she said.
So it wasn't fun. You know, in the thirties. Twenties and thirties, it was not.
If you lost your husband, the first thing you could do is get married again. It was the only salvation. Or take to the drink. There was always, you know, recourse in the bottle.
[01:50:34]
I never had a taste for it. My brother, Bob, he'd drink piss out of a gumboot. Dick. I don't know if Dick would have, he may have. He was drinking pretty heavily when he went to Vietnam, but I never did. Never did. I don't know what was wrong with me. I never chased girls. I was scared to death of girls, and I never drank.
How the hell could you live in St. Mary's parish and not do both? You know? I sometimes, I sit on the porch with a cup of coffee. Those are things that run through my head. You know, at midnight.
[01:51:15]
How the hell could you get away with that? But I didn't. And to this day I don't drink. I don't like it. I never did. I never had a taste for it. I suppose the horror stories of my mom, and she'd say, 'you know, we'd have all starved to death in the cellar if your Grandma Kneafsey, that's my dad's mom, didn't take care of us.
She'd come up the street, she made stew or something, you know? She'd always make a big pot for the Daily kids. Maybe that's how come my mom married my dad. I don't know. I don't know. Like I say, she didn't go far. She went from Seven West to 25 West and died.
Isn't that funny?
[01:52:09]
JAAP: It's a few houses down. Yeah.
SATTERTHWAITE: We were the first generation to leave St. Mary's. We being people my age. No one ever left St. Mary's. Why would you want to go anywhere else?
Terry Kelly, I don't know if you know Danny Kelly? Danny's dad used to say after they built the big, beautiful house over at IC, Danny's dad used to say, 'I'll come back and I'll haunt you. I don't want to go to heaven. I want to go back to Corktown'.
Isn't that funny. Nobody ever left you know? My mom thought when I came home from Northern with my wife, 'mom, I brought somebody home from school I'd like you to meet her'. It's nighttime. All I can hear is this voice, 'is she white? And is she Catholic'?
'Yeah. Yes. Both. Both mom'. 'Well, is she an Irish girl'? 'No mom, we missed on that one'.
JAAP: You got two of the three. Yeah.
[01:53:20]
SATTERTHWAITE: Yeah, 'is she white and is she Catholic'? And then after, 'is she an Irish girl'? No. And she never, till the day she died, could come to grips with the fact that - why couldn't you find a nice Irish girl up here? Because you were always trying to fix me up with one. Because she knew all the women, you know?
'Well, Josephine has got a real nice daughter. Why don't you see her'? 'I go to school with her mom, I know what she looks like'.
Anyhow, it's funny. It just is. But that's all part and parcel of the one thing that I believe, and that I really maintain.
[01:54:06]
There was no place like Butte. And there was no place in Butte like St. Mary's. We were all family. The mines were there for us. It was like a playground. Our own personal, you could go anywhere, do anything. Just so you didn't get caught, you know. Hook the train.
My mom used to hook the ore train and then jump off down by the Anselmo. So that's why I learned it - my mom, how to hook an ore train, and ride on the side all the way down to the Anselmo. If a kid did that now, you'd be...
JAAP: Oh god, yeah.
SATTERTHWAITE: You'd be in jail if you let your kid do things like that.
[01:54:54]
I remember one time we climbed up to the top of the Franny Johnson. I climbed the top of the Kelly gallus frame. All the way up, which was fine. But we couldn't get down. We were scared to death to come down. So they got a couple of guys. I can still see them, the bib overalls, the hard hat, you know. Come up and got us and brought us down. And they kicked our ass from one side of that Kelly yard at the other.
I was petrified...you know, when you're up, you're looking down, it looks a lot...but those kinds of things were so much fun. So much fun.
[01:55:39]
Where did you grow up?
GRANT: In Oklahoma.
SATTERTHWAITE: Oh, really?
GRANT: Yep, mm hmm.
SATTERTHWAITE: Oklahoma State University has some real archives. Is it in Enid? No? Where's it at?
GRANT: Norman maybe?
SATTERTHWAITE: Norman. Exactly. Yeah. Norman. They have some really interesting articles, that pertain to ACM.
GRANT: Really?
SATTERTHWAITE: And of course I'm way too old to go there, but yeah. Do you still live there or are you here?
GRANT: I live in Butte.
SATTERTHWAITE: Oh, good. Good.
GRANT: About six years.
SATTERTHWAITE: What brought you here?
GRANT: I started a radio station here. At the Carpenters Union Hall.
SATTERTHWAITE: Oh yeah. I remember that. I do remember that.
GRANT: I'm recalling now. You know, I think I met you once. I'll go ahead and stop this recording.
[END OF RECORDING]