Bonnie and I explored Helena a bit today. We went down into the pedestrian mall in downtown Helena, which was really quaint. To be a small city, Helena supports an amazing amount of shops and restaurants. Sylvia postulates that this is because people from the surrounding rural areas come in and make a day of it in the big city. The pedestrian mall was divided into blocks. One of the blocks was called Bullwhacker Block, which was just…I guess I have a dirtier mind than the average Montanan. I blame my time in Philadelphia. Anyway, there is a big statue of the Bullwhacker nearby. He’s a large statue brandishing an even large whip. The other blocks were less picturesquely named, but no less interesting. We even saw a bookstore called Aunt Bonnie’s Books, which pleased Bonnie to no end, given the presence of Baby Ewald on this trip.
We met Sylvia for lunch and had some sandwiches at a little café with a beautiful view of the mountains off in the distance. This city offers a lot of visual drama, which I appreciate. I can imagine that when your spirits are low, seeing the spectacle of the Sleeping Giant off in the distance would do a lot to inspire you.
After lunch, Bonnie and I took a train/trolley/tram tour of Helena. We drove through the mansion district, which was lovely. Helena was extremely prosperous at one point in time and had more millionaires per capita than any city in America. There is a club in Helena called the Montana Club where the qualification for joining used to be 1) being male and 2) being a millionaire. There were 134 members at its founding. Now the qualifications are slightly less stringent: you can be male or female (but maybe not both at once) and the membership is $200 a year. Anyway, I say all this to say that there were lots of mansions for a small city. Most of them I didn’t care for, since they seemed sort of out of place in Montana, being mainly based on Tudor mansions and Italianate villas and Victorian dollhouses. Why not build something that embraces that massive sky and sweeping mountain vistas? I guess it wasn’t fashionable at the time, but it offended my sensibilities to see brooding faux castles in granite perched on Montana hillsides. Nonetheless, the tour was enjoyable. Our tour guide, complete with pin striped overalls and cap, announced that she was running for state representative next year. Only in America. I love it.
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