My Heroes Have Always Been Cowgirls By Mike Roselle

I met with Famous Missoula Waitperson Stacy Joe Moore in the Iron Horse yesterday. We couldn’t meet at Charlie’s because she knew too many Lowbaggers there, and so did I. We would have gone to the Old Post, but it was too crowded and noisy. It was about four, before the River Guides usually showed up, so that’s why we went to the Iron Horse. When the River Guides arrived in the next hour or so, I wanted to be seen talking to a Famous Missoula Waitperson. She said she only had a couple of minutes. I had wanted to interview her ever since I was first thrown out of the Raven. For a long time she would not talk to either Floyd or I, but she did eventually let us back in the Raven. What follows is an actual conservation with a Famous Missoula Waitperson. There are no witnesses since the interview was over before the River Guides showed up and she had to meet her boyfriend Greg, who is a big guy from Nebraska, at the Old Post. The first part of this interview took place before I knew she was not lesbian and had a boyfriend.

MLR: Stacy Joe, a lot of people are talking. Are you a lesbian?

SJM: No, but a lot of people think I am, and I don’t mind that, because it keeps the guys from hitting on me. I wish I was gay, but I’m too neurotic.

MLR: Stacy Joe is it true you were born in a bar in Ulm, Montana in 1979.

SJM: That’s not true. I was born on the bar in Ulm Montana in 1979.

MLR: Were there any witnesses?

SJM: Yes, my mother broke water two months early and was working as a bartender, so she had lots of cowboys around to help out.

MLR: Were you conceived on a bar?

MLR: I don’t know, maybe.

MLR: Are there any witnesses?

SJM: I hope not.

MLR: I also heard that you were a Lowbagger. Is that true?

SJM: Well, I worked with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in Escalante Utah.

MLR: That’s a Lowbagger group if I ever heard of one. Anything else?

SJM: I was working with PIRG and the Sierra Club on clean air and clean water issues in Salt Lake City?

MLR: You mean you were a migrant money picker?

SJM: Yeah, pretty much.

MLR: You grew up with people like Doug Peacock and Rick Bass hanging around all the time. Did they get on your nerves sometimes?

SJM: I didn’t know who they were; or that they were these big writer dudes, they were just kind of irritating sometimes. But most people get on my nerves.

MLR: Am I getting on your nerves?

SJM: You used to, but not today so far.

MLR: Stacy Joe, if you were such a good Lowbagger, how come you are now a waitperson in Missoula? 

SJM: I am not a waitperson, I am the manager, and I told you that when I threw you and Floyd out last summer. The reason that I am in the RESTRAUNT BUSINESS, and have been since I started working in my Father’s Bar is that it is hard to make a living in Montana unless you work in a bar or restaurant. I want to own a bar and a restaurant someday, but these Lowbaggers and Posers won’t tip. I have an old Ford Taurus my Dad fixed up, new brakes and tires, and I’m going to Portland to attend Culinary School. I have wanted to be a chef in Portland since I was 10 years old. You get paid better running a restaurant than you do working for tips in a coffee shop. If you live in Montana and don’t have a trust fund, tourism and recreation is where the jobs will be, and ought to be. I am not against logging, ranching and mining, because I grew up around those workers and their families, and we need those jobs, but I see Montana changing, and not all of it is bad. Recreation will give kids a choice to stay where they are. But we can still have mining and ranching jobs, too. It’s part of who we are.

Don’t get me wrong, I think we can have extractive industries, but not like some of these companies are doing it. W.R. Grace started poisoning people in Libby with asbestos thirty years ago. We’ve known about it and why they did it and no one has yet to get a check. Many of those workers have died and many more most certainly will. And they can’t get a check. Those bastards should be in jail. 

I didn’t really quit being an environmentalist; I just got tired of working with a bunch of serious hippy kids who often did not know what the hell they were talking about. Save this, stop that. These were a bunch of white city kids; they couldn’t possibly have understood anything about Utah, which is very much like Montana, in many ways. You don’t know what it’s like for a town when the young people move away, especially if you own a bar. We need these young people because they understand what it means to be from Montana. None of these Rich Bastards who are moving in now and driving up the property values understand. If those Poser Rich Bastards would step up to the plate and get involved in being a Montanan instead of just being Poser Cowboys then we could change things for the better. It would do more than having a bunch of Hippie kids knock on doors and annoy people.

MLR: Do you have anything good to say about your canvassing days.

SJM: Yes. It helped me to advance as a person. I learned a lot. Hard work and discipline. I met some real good people who influenced my life.

MLR: The guys at Charlie’s say that you came to the Top Hat in Missoula for one drink on your way to Portland five years ago and are just about to finish it.

SJM: And all I have to show for it is the tattoo on my ass. And no, I won’t show it to you, so don’t ask.

SJM: Good luck in Portland.

After the interview, her boyfriend Greg kicked my ass on the pool table at Charlie’s.
 
Mike Roselle harasses the staff of Missoula’s coffee shops in the morning, before harassing the greater-Missoula bar staff in the evening.