苏拉威西岛矿产:Part 1: A way of life in Montana

It’s wakeup time at the Great Falls Rescue Mission, which has been called the final pit stop before the graveyard for those unable to handle their addictions.

"This is the last stop for most of these folks," says Glenn McCaffrey, director of the Rescue Mission. "They’re almost literally one yard from hell."

He says about half abuse alcohol, half abuse drugs.

This morning, the Mission houses seven regulars working off their room and board and five other transients.

"Most of these people get government checks of some sort, and when those checks run out later in the month, we begin to see them in greater numbers," says McCaffrey.

Breakfast is at 6 a.m. Today it’s grits and eggs, and clients are expected to help clean up the cafeteria and sweep out the dayroom before they head out.

"A few are actually looking for jobs," says McCaffrey, "but most of the professionals will be out collecting cans to get the money for alcohol or drugs.

"But we have a rule here – if you come in intoxicated, you forfeit your bed."

By county ordinance, there can be no sale of alcohol between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m., so that’s the earliest the bars can open. The old Maverick Bar in downtown Great Falls used to start its happy hour at 8 a.m. for the night shift workers and could be a rowdy place in the early morning hours.

Some bars still open at this hour, including the Lobby Bar, the Prospector casinos and the Half Time Sports Bar.

"I didn’t," he says. "I usually spend the nights out."

But the gray-tiled dayroom can be a dry place, so Jerome periodically slips out into the alley where he has a cache of beer waiting for him.

"I pick up cans," he says. "If I go all day, I usually can get around 30 pounds."

That’s $7.50, and Jerome says he spends most of it on drinking beer with his friends.

"Tom is what I call a suicidal drinker," says McCaffrey. "He just drinks himself to death every day. I’ve watched him deteriorate over the past few years."

That’s an unfortunate reality at the Mission, where success stories are rare and people are hitting bottom at a younger age.

"One thing that really worries me is that we’re beginning to see a lot of 18- to 25-year-olds here now," says McCaffrey.

Officer Mark Thatcher of the police department’s DARE squad is standing before Mrs. Figarelle’s class at Blessed Trinity Catholic School, preparing to talk about the evils of alcohol, drugs and gangs.

But first, he opens a box of questions from the 19 fifth-graders:

Do you ever arrest anyone who doesn’t want to be arrested?

Most people don’t want to be arrested, responds Thatcher, remembering in particular a 16-year-old drunk who wanted to avoid being charged with minor in possession.

"I put him up against the car to frisk him, but he took off and ran from me," he remembers. "I chased him and tackled him, but during the scuffle, he bit me on the inside of the leg.

"Another officer joined me at the scene and we subdued him and threw him is the back of a police car," says the officer. "Then he spit in my face and kicked out the rear window of my police car."

Do many people abuse drugs and alcohol?

"I know quite a few people who take drugs and a lot of people who drink too much," says Thatcher.

How about police officers?

"I don’t know of anyone who takes drugs, but I do know of a few people who drink a little too much," he responds. "I don’t think they’re alcoholics, but they may let the stress of their jobs get to them a little too much."

The workday has started in Great Falls. All told, about 35,000 people hold jobs in and around the city.

Some, suffering from hangovers or other alcohol-related problems, won’t make it to work today. Statistics say fewer than one American in 10 has a drinking problem, and two-thirds of them hold jobs.

Employees dependent on substances like alcohol have two to three times the normal absenteeism rate, according to VRI, a company that contracts with businesses to provide counselors and programs to troubled employees.

The Cascade County Tavern Association board of directors was to meet at the office of its executive director, John Hayes, on North Star Boulevard, but none of the board members show up.

Hayes has prepared a report, however, reporting that the association’s major fund-raiser the week before had raised $12,000, most of which would go to support local charitable activities.

"We average 10 to 12 calls a week for donations," says Hayes. "Our board meets once a month to send checks to those we feel we should help.

"Our emphasis is on kids," he says. "For example, we usually help the St. Vincent DePaul Society with their annual outing that takes about 40 kids up to a camp near Monarch.

"That costs $1,500 to $2,000 each year, and we finance most of it," he adds. "They make the kids pay a buck apiece, and we make up the difference."

On this Friday, the tavern association received two requests for charitable donations, and it wrote checks for $250 to St. Vincent’s and $400 to the food bank.

Business is already booming at the Lobby Bar in downtown Great Falls.

Half a dozen folks are at the bar, a handful are gambling, and three people are locked in a serious discussion at a back table, with 12-ounce glasses of red beer in front of them.

"They’re lined up at the door when I open at 8," says manager and former owner Tara Fatz.

"I have quite a few seniors who come in for coffee and some who come in to drink," she says. "We call it the ‘Soaps and Suds Hour’ because we’re all watching the big-screen TV."

Fatz is one of about 3,000 people employed by bars and restaurants in Great Falls. The annual payroll for these jobs? About $19 million.

A dozen people meander into a meeting room on the second floor of Opportunities Inc. for their weekly Alcoholics Anonymous session.

There are 63 meetings in Great Falls each week. They open with members introducing themselves by first name and admitting their alcoholism. Then they go around the room, discussing current problems and the 12-step recovery program.

At this meeting, members are nervous at the presence of a reporter and ask him to leave.

At Gateway Recovery Center, a distraught mother shows up, asking center director Rod Robinson for "help and hope" in treating her 15-year-old daughter, hooked on alcohol and marijuana.

A little while later, says Robinson, an alcoholism patient "just stopped in to say thank you" for helping him get his life and family back together again.

Municipal Court is just winding down in the basement of the Great Falls Civic Center.

"I’d guess that more than half of the caseload is alcohol-related," says Kory Larsen, an assistant city attorney.

Of the 31 appearances this morning, he says 18 obviously involved alcohol.

Paul Horning, a bartender with the Half Time Sports Bar who teaches a course in responsible alcohol consumption, visits with Viki Gallagher, owner of the Frontier Bar. He’s explaining the TIPS program under which bars can get a 15 percent break on their liability insurance.

"We’re trying to promote responsible consumption of alcohol," says Horning, explaining that the classes cover how to deal with underage drinkers, fake ID cards and bar liability issues.

"One of the biggest problems our new bartenders have is how to tell someone they’re cut off without creating a great big hassle," says Gallagher.

"It’s never easy, and sometimes there will be hassles," Horning responds. "But we’ll show your bartenders how to kill ’em with kindness, and we’ll do some role-playing to help them learn. We’ll also show you some ways to slow customers’ drinking down."

He said that can include giving the customers water along with their drinks, giving them non-salty snacks, and not being too quick to see if they need another round.

Gallagher agrees to enroll half the Frontier Bar’s alcohol servers in the program, which is locally underwritten by Devine Brothers Distributing and Anheuser-Busch.

At Largent School, Tammera Nauts is compiling a list of school district students who have been charged with being minors in possession of alcohol.

Through the end of October, 619 students have been written up for MIPs, compared with 491 at that time a year before.

"At the rate we’re going, we’re projected to have 766 MIPs this year," says Nauts. "Last year, we had 593."

Jack King, proprietor of Bert & Ernie’s Saloon and Eatery, is standing behind the bar, a glass of beer in each hand, pondering the question of how much alcohol his lunch crowd consumes.

"Give me a moment to think about that," he says and heads off to deliver the beers. When he returns, he has an exact count.

The restaurant has 45 tables, he says, and 40 are full. Only four of them have alcohol on the table, and retirees occupy two of those tables.

"People are drinking less, but that really doesn’t affect us as much because this is a restaurant, not a bar," says King.

In the past, someone might have two drinks with lunch, he adds. "Now it’s usually one."

Two aides and one teacher are finishing feeding lunch to one student and beginning the afternoon special education class at Loy Elementary School.

The six students, ages 6 to 11, are severely and profoundly cognitively delayed, which is the new buzzword for mentally retarded.

One sits at a high chair, howling, another in an easy chair rocking, and the other four surround a teacher who is trying to help them pick out a picture of a tree in her textbook.

There are 1,327 special education students in Great Falls, with disabilities ranging from speech defects to severe retardation.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has said that mothers’ drinking during pregnancy is the leading cause of mental retardation. But only a few children in the school district have been formally diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

"I suspect the problem is with the diagnosis," says Gail Cleveland, who is in charge of special education programs.

"It requires mothers to admit that they’ve been drinking during pregnancy," she explains. "So they deny it, and the physicians don’t press the issue."

At Benefis Healthcare, admissions records don’t show the cases in which alcohol contributed to illnesses such as cirrhosis of the liver, heart problems, premature births or accidental injuries.

But the hospital does have a sophisticated program for treating alcoholism at its Addiction Medicine Center. A group session is winding up in a small conference room with a one-way-glass window that allows counselors to keep track of the half-dozen patients.

Benefis has a couple of padded rooms for patients seriously out of control, but today they’re empty.

In fact, there’s no one in the detoxification program or receiving inpatient care. Normally, there are three to five patients in detox and a couple more receiving inpatient treatment, says Dirk Gibson, the hospital’s addictions abuse coordinator.

Nine patients are spending the day in the hospital for counseling, but go home at night, and an additional 44 adults and 15 adolescents are receiving outpatient treatment for alcoholism.

There are also 32 people ordered by the courts to attend DUI classes at the hospital.

"We aren’t the only ones offering these classes," Gibson adds. "There are probably 60 people in DUI school at any given time in Great Falls."

Dr. Dan Nauts, the program’s medical director, says Montana’s per capita alcohol consumption isn’t so high, but that it’s more concentrated.

"We have a lot of heavy drinkers," he says. "The levels on the breathalyzers far exceed what I was used to in Washington."

His frustration is evident.

"If all these problems are so obvious, why haven’t we done more to solve them?" he asks.

As schools get out, the H.A.N.D.S. (Heroes and Neighbors Down at the Schools) programs get going across town.

More than 900 elementary school children are enrolled in the program, designed to give students a safe learning environment from the end of school until their parents get off work.

"We’re trying to provide a program that’s better for the child than going home or being out on the streets," says its director, Ann Hagen-Buss, as she sits at a table in the Riverview School on the city’s northwest side and plays a game of sequential numbers with 6-year-old Andrew Carter.

Later, a group of fourth- and fifth-graders join Hagen-Buss at the table. Asked if they are aware of teen-age drinking, all nod.

"My sister’s in 12th grade, and she smokes and drinks," says one of the students.

The Department of Public Health and Human Services reports that 65 percent of Montana’s adolescents experiment with alcohol before they reach 14 and that high school students binge drink (have five or more drinks at a single sitting) at twice the rate of adults.

For that reason, Hagen-Buss wants to expand H.A.N.D.S. into the middle schools.

"This would be a place for them to hang out, use the libraries or the computer labs or the sports equipment, or just do some of the activities that interest them," she says.

"But if they just want to hang out and listen to music, that’s better than being out on the streets."

The Lobby Bar downtown is doing a thriving business by now, with drinkers shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar.

"We’re just here to have a beer and gamble," says Loren Carrier, an out-of-work cook from Tacoma, Wash.

"I’ve only been here a month, but I hooked up with a woman who did me wrong, and I’ve been drinking for three weeks now," he says.

At a table near the front window, off-duty bouncer Trevor J. Pasha is drinking with a friend and discussing the bar scene they both know.

"I’ve seen some people get about 10 feet tall and belligerent when they drink," he says, "but other people kind of go into a coma and don’t talk to anyone. Funny things get funnier and sad things get sadder.

"I’ve seen some bar fights, but not many injuries," he adds. "Most people are too drunk to do much damage to anyone. When you put those guys out, it’s kind of like pouring out a kettle of chicken soup."

Up at the bar, Tara Fatz is preparing a tray of sandwiches and chicken wings to feed to anyone who’s hungry. She figures it might slow the drinking down just a bit.

"I’m real proud that we’ve only had one DUI that I know in nine years of Friday nights," she says.

With schools out, district administrators get some figures on drug and alcohol use in the schools.

There were 183 kids in group sessions, most of them for drug and alcohol dependency problems, and 84 more in individual counseling sessions.

Seven students were written up for illegal possession of alcohol on Friday, according to Tammera Nauts, and one was dismissed from school for using marijuana.

Ellis and Ilse McLean are sitting at a table in Jaker’s Restaurant, on 10th Ave. S., Montana’s busiest street, finishing dinner on their 44th wedding anniversary.

"My husband doesn’t drink anymore, but I’m having a glass of wine with my dinner," says Isle McLean with a captivating smile. "Two, in fact."

A native of Germany, she appreciates a good Riesling. And she has pronounced views on teaching young adults to drink responsibly.

"I think young people should learn to drink at home on special occasions," she says. "In Germany, we give children a little glass with water in it so they can join in the toasts. Later, we might add a little wine to their water.

"If children aren’t allowed to have something, they automatically want it," she explains. "They should learn to drink responsibly at home."

Police dispatchers receive a call about a party in a home in which the owners were out of town. Officer Patrick Brinkman is sent to the scene.

"One of the people said he had permission to be in the house, but we couldn’t verify that so we asked them all to leave and we secured the house," says Brinkman. "They were all pretty intoxicated."

That’s relatively common for night-shift cops.

"On this particular shift, I would estimate that 70 to 80 percent of our business is alcohol-related, whether it be family disturbances, DUIs or parties," says Officer Mike Stimac.

A middle school student walking up 5th Street North with his friends is shot with a pellet gun by a passing motorist.

Minutes later, another man is wounded slightly a few blocks away, jumps in his own car, gives chase, and gets a license plate number.

When officers make an arrest, they find beer in the car, but no indication either the driver or the alleged shooter had been drinking it.

During an intensive outpatient alcohol dependency session at Gateway Recovery Center, one of the 11 patients told the group that she finally felt safe and hopeful that her life could change for the better.

Officers are called to 504 41/2 Ave. S.W., where they find William Patrick Bailey bleeding profusely from the head and left eye.

"He and his friend had been drinking all day, and then they got to arguing so I hid all the knives," says his girlfriend, Shawna Odegard. "But the other guy grabbed a carving fork and just kept stabbing and stabbing and stabbing him in the head."

Stimac checks the home for the assailant, finds no one, and begins working on Bailey’s wounds. Bailey, sitting beside a half-consumed 18-pack of beer, wants no help.

"I don’t want to press no charges," he declares repeatedly. "I just want to kill that boy."

As medics try to persuade Bailey to go to the emergency room so that he doesn’t lose sight in his punctured eye, suddenly another man staggers into the kitchen.

"It’s him," screams Odegard. "He’s the one who did it."

Stimac is on him like a flash, whirling him against the doorjamb, patting him down for weapons, and handcuffing him.

"Are you going to arrest me?" asks the suspect, 31-year-old James L. Roach. "I just flipped out. He made me do it."

Roach bursts into tears as he’s led to a squad car for booking on an assault charge.

"This is one of these houses where we come a lot," says Stimac on the way to the hospital. "And it’s always alcohol-related."

Later, it turns out Bailey is a false name, the stabbing victim is identified as William Patrick Bird.

Two teen-agers at a C.M. Russell High School winter prom are charged with MIPs after one of them vomits on the dance floor and officers find an open 18-pack of beer in one of their vehicles.

Two squad cars scramble to the 1st Avenue Bridge after a caller advises the dispatcher that he saw a woman being chased down the street in front of the Lido Bar. The caller says the woman was abducted and thrown in a blue and white pickup truck, which was heading for downtown Great Falls.

No truck matching that description crosses the bridge, and a bartender at the Lido says she knows nothing of an altercation outside the bar.

Police dispatchers begin receiving calls that vandals have spray-painted homes, cars and property in a four-block area on the West Side.

More than 30 people are victimized by the vandalism. When an 18-year old man is later arrested, he tells police he was intoxicated when he went on the spray-painting spree.

Officer Stimac is still mulling the parting words of a Benefis emergency room technician, who had been complaining about the lack of a drunk tank in the city. As a result, the ER technician said, many drunks who can’t be discharged are left occupying hospital beds until they sober up enough to allow them to be released safely.

"A lot of the bigger cities have drunk tanks," says Stimac, turning his squad car off Fox Farm Road onto 10th Avenue South, "but does that condone a drunk’s actions?

"There’s no incentive to stay sober if you know you’ve got a warm place to stay for the night and maybe even breakfast when you sleep it off.

"But it is a problem," Stimac adds. "What are we supposed to do with a drunk who really just needs to sleep it off?"

There’s a call to a teen-age drinking party in Prospect Heights. Three officers arrive with their lights off and park their squad cars around the corner from the party.

As they walk down the dark street, two young men — one with an open beer in his hand — leave the house. One officer stays with them and the other two sprint for the house, where the kids are already spreading the alarm.

Officers suspect some of the teens — and probably some of the beer — escaped through a back door. Ultimately, there’s not enough evidence to make any arrests.

Four intoxicated males are reported fighting in an alley on the lower South Side, but they have left the scene by the time three squad cars get there.

It’s another call for a fork-stabbing at 504 4 1/2 Ave. S.W. Officer Stimac can’t believe it, but he’s rolling fast with lights flashing and siren sounding. There’s an ambulance and EMT personnel in a fire truck right behind the squad car.

When he hits the scene, though, it’s a different problem: two women brawling in the doorway of the house he had left just a couple hours earlier.

"She got mouthy with me, and I punched her," says one of the combatants.

The other woman asks an officer if he’ll give her a lift to Cindy’s Bar, just around the corner.

Officer Stimac checks in briefly at the police station. In the first six hours of his shift, he has handled eight calls. All but one involved alcohol in some way.

"That’s about the average I had anticipated," he says, "but the probability of alcohol-related calls increases as we get closer to closing time."

Joe’s Place on 9th Street across from Holiday Village Mall is tame by comparison. Several dozen people are drinking, chatting, gambling, but no one is out of control.

"It’s been fairly quiet in here tonight," says bartender Tom Knutson.

Just down the street a block, it’s livelier at the Other Place. The music is a little louder and the crowd a little bigger. One patron with a point-and-shoot camera wanders through the bar, capturing the action.

"Hey, cut that out," snaps a guy in a baseball cap who has been hugging a woman by the bar. "Man, you’re gonna get us both killed."

The J-Bar-T is packed, and Alibi, a Billings band, is playing some old favorites.

The dance floor is full. One blonde is relatively formal in a low-cut, black velvet dress with a heavy silver necklace and high heels. Another is fashionably informal with her red vest unbuttoned to show her lacy black brassiere and the elaborate tattoos on her chest and shoulders.

Hot off the dance floor, a young man in a white cowboy hat stands beside a woman perched on a barstool. She glances around, then begins unbuttoning his denim shirt and nuzzling his chest. Embarrassed, he flushes and backs away.

Beside them, a middle-age man is asleep, the brim of his black cowboy hat just resting on the bar. Beside his head is his beer bottle.

"We’re going to let him sleep until we close," says the barmaid, Laurene Lawson. "Then we’ll escort him out of here, make sure he’s OK and get him a cab if he needs one."

With that, the band winds it up for the evening and the lights come on.

"There’s a point where you have to exercise self-control," says Page Lutes of Bozeman, looking down at the sleeper. "When you can’t maintain control, you’ve lost it. And it takes a lot of control sometimes to maintain it."

Off the dance floor comes a younger couple. They begin to arouse the sleeper. Finally, they get him to his feet and begin to lead him out of the bar.

About halfway to the door, however, he lurches into a young woman and pinches her butt.

Without hesitation, she whirls him around, crouches down, and bites the label off the rear pocket of his jeans. Laughing, she stands with the label between her teeth.

Outside the bar, the sleeping drinker comes to life in the chilly night air. He’s Knute from Jordan, he announces.

As the parking lot is beginning to clear, Knute is asked if he is going to be driving home.

"It’s too far to drive home tonight," says the young lady who has been helping Knute out of the J-Bar-T. "So we’ll take him to a motel tonight.

"And tomorrow," she adds, "we’ll probably start all over again."