Bipartisanship at its finest

It was 2011. I was travelling on business and I was travelling fast and comfortably in my 1976 Olds 98 with the Olds 455 engine. Coming down from Browning along the Eastern Front on a beautiful late spring afternoon. Zoom!

There went the little town of Dupuyer. Zoom! There went Bynum, there went Camper Family and a Honda Goldwing and a couple of trucks with Montana plates. I was doing a little better than 85 and I was living life large in my Olds 98.

Zoom, there went Choteau. There went Augusta, and, uh-oh, there went the drive shaft. I pulled over on a rise near Bowman’s Corner and got out to look under the car.

A Hutterite checking cattle pulled up and without a word handed me a cell phone. Great, but who would I call? He dialed a number for me and as I talked to the wrecker in Augusta I waved sheepishly to the 10 or so vehicles I had zipped past in the last 10 miles.

The wrecker came and lifted the Olds and I waved at a couple more laughing motorists. “How pride goeth before a fall,” I thought.

“What do you do?” the wrecker asked me. I was chair of the Montana Democratic Party and deep in Republican territory. “I can’t tell you,” I said.

He said, “I can’t fix it today, not until Monday.”

“I guess I could borrow an outfit from John Cobb,” I said, hoping to score points. Cobb had been the local state senator, a Republican, and in my mind as fine a man as walked the earth. But instead of points I got, “I wouldn’t drive a damn thing he owns,” said the wrecker.

I called the Cobb ranch. Cheryl answered and I told her my problem. “Oh Jim, you’re just in luck. Tomorrow’s the last day of school and our daughter won’t need her car.” I thought I heard an outraged screech in the background. “Can you drive stick?”

Half an hour later Cheryl pulls up in a pickup followed by her daughter in what appeared to be a mud-brown Subaru Forester.

“Now, Jim, the most important thing about this car is do not clean the license plate, we just haven’t had time to register it.” I looked. There was fully one quarter inch of mud on the plate, about the same amount as on the rest of the car except where it had been removed, like around the headlights and door handles. OK, that was fine by me.

“And where are you going,” she asked. “Helena,” I said.

“Oh good, you’ll get there before dark, because there’s an issue with the taillights.” I thanked them, and they drove off.

I got into the car. It smelled. It smelled like a calving shed. It may have been used as one. It’s not a bad smell, I thought, just powerful. Almost overpowerful.

I gassed up and set off – for Trout Creek and home. I figured that it would take the Helena cops about three minutes to pull me over, and home was the wiser direction to travel.

I made it home just in time to get a call from Cheryl. John was very upset, she said. He was worried that if I got pulled over it would be a big news story because I was the Democratic Party chair. They would get it registered right away, meaning they would have to drive to Helena, the county seat, to do it, a 150-mile round trip.

I had been thinking about getting pulled over, too, but from a completely different perspective.

“What a great story this would make,” I thought, “Democratic Party Chair pulled over while driving an unregistered vehicle belonging to former Republican state senator.”

Bi-partisanship at its best.

Montana Viewpoint has appeared in weekly and online newspapers across Montana for more than 30 years. Jim Elliott served 16 years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.