Pickin' away: Martin regaled nursing home residents for 13 years

He’s still grinnin’, but Bob Martin’s not pickin’ anymore.

That’s because Martin, 96, decided to retire from an entertainment gig he’s been doing for the past 13 years.

Martin began playing banjo at Brendan House in Kalispell and Lake View Care Center in Bigfork in 2000 after his wife, Peggy, died.

“I thought maybe I could help a little bit,” he said. And help he did. Martin — who has stayed active over the years by hunting, fishing and snow plowing the road at his Swan Valley home — played banjo for 45 minutes prior to lunch every other week at both retirement home locations.

Martin said he started playing at Brendan House after his wife spent three weeks there prior to her death. “I started at Brendan House. Then someone heard I was playing there and asked me to come here,” Martin said, during a going away party for him at Lake View Care Center last week.

“I was getting pretty ragged at it,” Martin said, when asked why he decided to give up banjo playing. “My doctor tells me I’m healthy, but my back has given out.”

Martin said people often ask him the secret to his longevity. The answer is keeping busy, he said.

“When I turned 60, my two sons wanted to get me a La-Z-Boy recliner. I said, ‘I don’t want one. If you bring one of those in here, I’ll put it out in the shop.’ If I spent time in a La-Z-Boy, I wouldn’t have lasted another three years,” he said.

Martin said his back troubles are due to two snowcat accidents and a car wreck. It was also due to being bucked off and run over by a steer when he was in his early 20s.

Martin — who spent many years as a logger and heavy duty mechanic in the Swan Valley — said he began playing banjo in “1939 or 1940.”

At age 18, he started playing the violin at dances. A number of years later while attending the School of Mines in Butte, Martin acquired a banjo in a trade with a friend. Martin swapped his guitar and $20 for the banjo, which he borrowed and then pawned for $20 in order to make the trade. “Then I had to really scramble to get it out of the pawn shop,” Martin said.

Martin was born in Glendale, Ore., on Dec. 18, 1916. He moved to Montana when he was 16.

Martin recalled being one of the first parachute firefighters hired by the Forest Service in 1940. He did that for a year before joining the Army Air Corps during World War II. Three years and eight months later, Martin returned to the States.

He worked for Caterpillar in Boise, Idaho, and Alaska before moving back to Montana, where he worked at a sawmill in the Swan Valley. He later bought a Caterpillar and started logging. Eventually he bought four Cats. “I wore several of them out and rebuilt them,” he said. Martin still owns a D7 Caterpillar bulldozer that he used to plow snow near his Lost Creek Road home last winter.

Martin enjoyed a fried chicken dinner held in his honor last week at Lake View Care Center. When asked by activities director Karen Jones if he wanted white or chocolate cake, Martin replied, “Yes.” He ate a piece of both.

Caleb Soptelean can be reached at reporter@bigforkeagle.com.