'Creative recall' and old friends

G. George Ostrom

T here is definitely a hazard in writing a column like this one for over 40 years. As you know, a major source of subjects are incidents from my own life such as the awful time at Flathead Mine in the late thirties when I took a bath and then they called off the dance. There are hundreds of other things, like my driving to Butte to give a speech and then finding out the convention was in Missoula. I have on occasion deliberately reworked and repeated columns and at other times innocently told a story without remembering I had done it before.

Relative to this is another factor. Several years ago while on a climb with Gordon Edwards we met up with a group of mountaineers who were ecstatic about meeting Gordon, especially when it happened high in the mountains. Our groups relaxed and chatted a bit. During the talk, one of the strangers asked about a historical happening in the park years before and Gordon asked me to tell about it. Used the Bill Yenne style and wove an elaborate and somewhat "padded" account. When I was through, one of the bedazzled strangers asked Fr. Edwards, "Is that really the way things happened?"

Gordon smiled and replied, "Yes, the basic facts were accurate; however some of the more colorful details might be difficult to verify. What you need to know is that George is blessed with creative recall."

Knowing this, perhaps some of you good readers can appreciate why not just my stories, but perhaps yours, and your friend's tales, get better as the years roll by. All of us have some degree of "creative recall". And with that knowledge in mind, maybe you can be forgiving if you sometimes sense repetition or a slight change in facts.

When the late "Mully" Muldown was about 85 years old he was a guest at the Kalispell Rotary Club. Someone asked him to tell us of adventures from his youth. Mully smiled and said, "When you reach my age, half the things you remember best…probably never happened."

With the recall business behind us, we can get on with other matters.

Many years ago, two of my parachuting friends and I decided to apply for an exciting job flying jets for a secret government operation. We had to take written tests and a physical, then went to Great Falls for transport to a flight-training base in Texas. The Federal officials discovered George Ostrom was three weeks too old. They said a candidate could not be over twenty-six and a half when he got his wings. I would be twenty-six years, six months and three weeks old. My friends flew south and I went back to Missoula.

The three of us have been together once since we parted 50 years ago. Those two showed up at a "Montana Party" in the Old Supreme Court Chambers of the Capitol Building in Washington during the Kennedy Administration. They could not tell me about what they were doing so we talked of other things.

This spring at the Columbia Falls funeral of mutual dear friend Bob Souhrada, there was one of the trio, Garr Thorsrud. His wife was with him and we talked of old days in the smokejumpers and at the U. The meeting was unexpected and very wonderful.

Then two weeks ago came a phone call from the other friend, Bill Demmons. He said he had read my first book and wanted to order the other two. We ran up a big phone bill. Monday he sent me a letter:

Hello George, Thanks for the books/photos. If #2 is half as good as #1 it will be wondrous. I only wish we were young enough to hike the trails the way we did in the old days, with those ridge runners - Carpenter, Manchester, Ostrom, Demmons, etc. I hope to see you in the Northwest one of these days. If you are in the Tucson area, call me. Sincerely, Bill Demmons

There is a point to this story. It was pure circumstances that put me back in contact with these two old pals who shared adventures with me fifty years ago. I should have made an effort to make that happen instead of relying on fate. I know Manchester is gone, and Carpenter, and…

Is there someone you should call today?

G. George Ostrom is the news director of KOFI Radio and a Flathead Publishing Group columnist.