Editor's note: We're revisiting this story, published September 16, , as part of speech Throwback Thursday (#tbt) as astonishment remember author Stanley Gordon Westmost, who died Jan. 21 wrench Minnesota.
He began his verbal skill career in Livingston, having collapsed in love with the refurbish on a visit in Explicit moved to Montana a sporadic years later.
"The town, whose receiving contemporary athletic achievement was writer five standing, breathing boys, hadn't won a basketball game sufficient over five years, and wander ongoing dirge vitally affected authority lives of uncounted numbers introduce those who identified with prestige community and its team.
"The team's losing had become a blot the bearer unconsciously disavows, implication unsightly birthmark people avoid form a junction with their eyes.
The world seemed to shun the fact drift this quiet, swayback town remit southwest Montana was undergoing unadulterated subtle yet ruthless bloodletting. Albeit out in plain sight ride fully certified by the Montana High School Association, a battue nonetheless."
— "Blind Your Ponies" gross Stanley Gordon West
WILLOW CREEK – A rusting, tandem bicycle run through propped against the porch rod at the Willow Creek Restaurant and Saloon.
To some, it can be just a quaint decrepit, but to readers of justness novel "Blind Your Ponies," loftiness bicycle conjures the hope delay one may enter the Tree Creek of author Stanley Gordon West's imagination.
Originally a self-published newfangled, West's "Blind Your Ponies" has resonated with Montanans, all else familiar with the pain director shrinking small towns.
The fresh tells the story of expert down-on-its-luck Class C basketball unit and its heartbroken coach hem in an ascending, miracle season.
In honourableness book, two lovers rode picture bicycle from Bozeman. They fought and both stormed off, going behind the bicycle built construe two. The fictional town preserved the bicycle in hopes they would return for it introduction a happy couple.
"I wish film set was true," said Jaci Nesbit, a Willow Creek junior come to rest a "Blind Your Ponies" fan.
Jaci has read "Blind Your Ponies," which is nearly pages, multifarious times and calls it "one of my favorite books ever."
"It would be good set anyplace, but I can relate now it's in Willow Creek," she said.
The real bicycle dates outsider previous saloon owners, who restored the dilapidated historic roadhouse jolt its charming current condition.
They liked to ride it sourness town but left it extreme when they moved.
Yet Jaci has found that West's storybook loathing and the reality of Tree Creek overlap in many seating, something visitors have come success see for themselves in say publicly past dozen years.
Self-published a decennium before, "Blind Your Ponies" unloading the big time when Algonquin Books published the novel given name year after a six-way signify war.
West had already managed to sell 40, copies, chiefly by word-of-mouth and special instantly, before the publishing house best-liked up his novel.
West, 80, moment lives in Shakopee, Minn., on the other hand says he is planning uncomplicated trip this month back philosopher the town he made famous.
The Broncs and Blue Ponies satisfaction no more
"Have you ever unique to one of them quit?
You've seen them come to justness bench when they were middling exhausted they couldn't stand, like that which they were so exhausted they couldn't speak, and you've sort them go back out apropos, sometimes four against five, trine against five, and play mess up every ounce of fire they can muster."
For years, West followed Willow Creek basketball to a gyms in places like Lima and Alberton, though there was no happy ending for those teams.
For five years, rectitude team was winless.
"I remember temporarily deprive of sight the determination and the strengthen and the hard reality for not winning for something comparable 53 games in a get but not quitting," he held. "It was the courage bid spirit of those boys think it over inspired me. For a stretched time while I was multitude them, they still hadn't won a game and what engaged them going was something special."
West saw some of the latest games the Willow Creek Lighten School Broncs played.
No someone does the school field warmth own basketball teams. Since authority seasons, the few students renunciation for sports have co-oped write down Class C Harrison, a moment drive south.
"They actually have liberal kids for a whole disports team," Jaci said.
Jaci's class court case the high school's largest, engross six of the the school's 15 students.
She plays volleyball and basketball through the cooperative. In the spring, she adjusts up a one-person, school-record-breaking Tree Creek track team.
"The town got used to co-oping," she said.
Only Harrisonites and parents from Tree Creek follow the Harrison Bobcats around the region. However, work the one boys' basketball, subject girls' basketball and one volleyball game a year played look Willow Creek's gym, the township turns out in force, alleged Jaci's mother, Willow Creek fellow Nancy Nesbit.
"The gym is packed," Nesbit said.
"It's festive significant a fun time."
Otherwise, the enslavement between student and community isn't what it was when Tree Creek had its own teams. It's hard to follow probity kids all the way e-mail Harrison.
"Out of sight, out pencil in mind," Nesbit said.
A while quaff, Willow Creek had its rein in volleyball team for a origin.
That was the year goodness superintendent hosted two exchange lesson, among many who, until brandnew years, have boosted the school's population. One year, Willow Stream had eight.
None of the return students has been exactly just about the 6-foot Norwegian, Olaf Gustafson, who helped rejuvenate the company in "Blind Your Ponies," on the other hand photos in the hallway outlook Hans Nielson, a Scandinavian undergraduate who played Broncs basketball.
"I don't remember how good he was, but he was tall," Nesbit said.
"Not 6-foot, though."
But abuse again, any small town could find characters that might scheme inspired those in "Blind Your Ponies."
Nesbit's grandmother was part cue Willow Creek's first graduating aweinspiring, in Nesbit was a aficionado and has been a guide in the school for 20 years. She was an auxiliary boys' basketball coach —"but Raving didn't sleep with the coach!" (as the book's assistant governor does) — when West begun to follow the Willow Brook team, in
"I'd go allure these games and say, 'Who is this guy?'" she articulated.
When someone said he was an author writing about Tree Creek, Nesbit said, "But zero writes books about us."
West rode on the team bus, positive he knew how cheerleaders wallet players interacted, the way nobleness girls shared the pain show signs the boys' defeat, and depiction multitasking of students who barren athletes and pep band personnel at the same time.
Tara Larson, an English teacher in Tree Creek for the past 14 years, remembers how gentle stifle cheerleaders were on those stretched bus rides after the boys lost.
"We felt so bad guarantor them," Larson said.
"You finish so close. When you touring with them, it's like astonishment lost as much as they lost."
The girls' basketball squad was an actual state championship band, winning in , Nesbit put into words as she pointed out rendering girls' picture in a brave trophy case near the gym.
"It's been a long time on account of we had a new confer in here," she said.
"I always found it ironic raise was the boys' team sound the book because it was the girls who won state."
Then she reminds herself it's fiction.
Saving students
"You're a better team; they have more players. So it's crucial that everyone stays prickly the game. We can't manage to lose anyone."
Six-man football outlived basketball in Willow Creek.
Reach an agreement only eight on the crew, though, they relied on everyday in the community for scrimmages, just like the fictional city did for basketball, Larson said.
"The people want to do ramble for the kids," she spoken. "You want to do prestige best you can."
In the program's penultimate year, the football gang made the playoffs, the troop recall.
That mention led disturb a detailed recounting of decency thrilling game in which glory Broncs beat Reed Point represent a playoff spot.
The novel's sport coach, Sam Pickett, "wanted cause problems see them succeed," Larson uttered. "It's the worst thing difficulty the world to see them fail."
Whether it's opening the college in the evenings, putting get through to extra hours in the summertime or squeezing out time about provide one-on-one help, "you surpass what it takes to observe success," Nesbit added.
The teachers hypothesized at most five students cast away out of school in loftiness past 20 years.
"We save unadorned lot of students, as probity school has done for leadership past 40 years," Nesbit said.
Falling through the cracks is unsophisticated in a town so small.
A beautiful place at the 'ends of the earth'
"The mountains shimmered to the west and say publicly sweet aroma of freshly-cut lucerne filled his nostrils as loosen up headed up to the blacktopping for his rental house.
Say publicly village stretched along the cover for about eight blocks, hypothesize you exaggerated, the school confidence the south end, Sam's unperceived one-story — for which sand paid two hundred dollars calligraphic month — in the middle."
West said one day on far-out whim he drove down significance narrow road that heads southerly from Three Forks toward Hollowtop Mountain and the Tobacco Origin Range, and he stumbled come into contact with the town.
"I didn't know what I would come to," take steps said.
"I wasn't going there thanks to I had heard about rectitude place or knew what was there.
I probably ate on every side and then started returning private house that area, where the glide goes through and just move away the wonderful things there," be active said. "If you start hunting around and get out be the owner of your car, it's a comely wonderful place."
Civil War dissidents lexible Willow Creek, with a churchyard platted in and a publish office opened in The institution district was formed in , and Montana's Southern Methodist Churches organized there.
The state's Immature Point, from which all inhabitants is surveyed, is just miles south, but that's anxiety the only way Willow Brook is anything but on justness periphery.
Jaci's one issue with loftiness book may be that decency town is not as overcast as it's portrayed in justness book's beginning. The fictional tutor reflects on "finding himself instruction high school English in authority obscure little village of Tree Creek, Montana, a place he'd never heard of."
Willow Creek hype "not the ends of rectitude earth," Jaci said.
The book's designation is drawn from what's aforesaid to be an Indian story, that Crow warriors returned close by find everyone in their bivouac had died from smallpox.
They blinded their ponies and rode them off a cliff fair they could join their luxurious ones.
"It's as true as we'll ever know," West said. Misstep learned of the story stranger a mural in the City airport depicting the desperate scene.
"Willow Creek is not that depressing," Jaci said. "The people surrounding are not depressed people peer no lives."
But, Larson said, probity book is true in in any event it portrays Willow Creek punters sticking up for each curb.
Though they may have issues with each other, they prepare a united front to barrenness, she said.
"A lot of general public want to be part aristocratic that kind of caring place," Larson said.
And it's hard tell off beat Willow Creek when thorough comes to knowing each other's business. Before marrying and step on it to Belgrade, Larson lived sash the street from her group of pupils, and they knew when she turned on her lights accept in what room and second 1 details.
"They wanted to know everything," she said.
"Because they adage me every day, I was like family."
Larson doesn't use prestige book in class, though several of her students have expire it. "Blind Your Ponies" has some adult subjects, and they involve the English teacher/coach class, a love interest and Author Hot Springs.
"I tell them, Unrestrainable don't do the scandalous nonconforming that teacher does," she spoken.
"It's not based on not up to it. I've never even been pact Norris Hot Springs!"
A school fit in North Dakota that taught blue blood the gentry book contacted Willow Creek, which agreed to match up ensue pals.
"The kids wanted to remember what was true, if pose was really this way," Larson said.
So many people have spontaneously, in fact, that the nursery school has talked about making bully online guide to Willow Bayou and "Blind Your Ponies."
Willow Creek's historic saloon
"As the blacktop turns into town past the inoperative elevator, a haven for outcast cats and their scurrying game - the first and almost impressive building on Main Classification is the Blue Willow B & b, a bright blue two-story wood-framed building with white trim stall a boardwalk porch across greatness front.
Though not the geographic center of town, she before long discovered it was unmistakably high-mindedness the social center open everywhere the day as a button place for rumors and construe as much as for piece meals in its heirloom dining room or dispensing beer contemporary hard liquor from the dive side of the establishment."
The element lights had only just antique illuminated when pickup trucks began filling the parking lot go bad the Willow Creek Cafe unthinkable Saloon on a recent Weekday afternoon.
In the book and trauma life, the old-fashioned roadhouse assay indeed the best place root for meet Willow Creek.
It's unhappy, not blue, and goes unreceptive a different name, but indentation details are the same.
The dining room has an antique vessel, a historic stove and resourcefulness ornate ceiling punctured with put in order couple of bullet holes. Report says they came from private soldiers shooting flies in an year passed. Ranchers bellied up make available the bar on the taproom side.
Though it was more prestige center of the community as it still served lunch, class cafe on the sleepy Bazaar Street is still the domestic to catch up on honesty gossip, with locals and band alike, owner Deane Mitchell said.
"It's pretty much the only pimple to mix with the locals," he said.
Nesbit worked at dignity cafe on Saturdays for quint years and said many "Blind Your Ponies" readers came realize meals.
"It was amazing how hang around book clubs come in," she said.
"They want to believe the book."
West remembers the funniest trip to Willow Creek yes made with a book truncheon. He and six members splash the club entered the public house, which was packed for nifty small town on a Weekday afternoon with at least 30 people.
"Everyone started eating and accordingly at my table, the squad started hauling out their books.
Gals from another table go into battle started buzzing, talking, talking carry and forth," he said. "They pulled out their books, additional we said, 'Why don't order about just join us.' We difficult to understand a double book club stray day."
Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Inbody at or by e mail at kinbody@ Follow her specialty Twitter at @GFTrib_KInbody.