Set back across the Milltown railroad crossing, a large neon sign on top of a white farmhouse beckons to the hungry and thirsty returning from the Blackfoot.  Baseball trophies, pool tables and neon signs decorate the dim bar. 

Harold’s Club has the unpretentious feel of a classic Montana bar.

In fact Harold’s Club is a classic Montana bar.  It was once commemorated in a poem by Richard Hugo, a nationally renowned poet who taught creative writing at the University of Montana.  The poem, published in a compilation titled “The Lady in Kicking Horse Resevoir” in 1973, describes some of the bars interesting decorations and the essence of the clientele.

The Milltown Union Bar

for Harold Herndon

(Laundromat & Café)

You could love here, not the lovely goat

in plexiglass nor the elk shot

in the middle of a joke, but honest drunks,

crossed swords above the bar, three men hung

in the bad painting, others riding off

on the phony green horizon.  The owner,

fresh from orphan wars, loves too

but bad as you.  He keeps improving things

but can’t cut the bodies down.

You need never leave.  Money or a story

brings you booze.  The elk is grinning

and the goat says go so tenderly

you hear him through the glass.  If you weep

deer heads weep.  Sing and the orphanage

announces plans for your release.  A train

goes by and ditches jump.  You were nothing

going in and now you kiss your hand.

When mills shut down, when the worst drunk

says finally I’m stone, three men still hang

painted badly from a leafless tree, you

one of them, brains tied behind you back,

swinging for your sin.  Or you swing

with goats and elk.  Doors of orphanages

finally swing out and here you open in.

Richard Hugo, 1973

Harold’s Club outlasted it’s original name, and the laundromat has been replaced by Lala’s cafe, but the “goat in plexiglass” and the “honest drunks” live on.