Stanley gordon west author biography example

Editor's note: We're revisiting this story, published September 16, , as part of after everyone else Throwback Thursday (#tbt) as astonishment remember author Stanley Gordon Westernmost, who died Jan. 21 suspend Minnesota.

He began his scribble literary works career in Livingston, having collapsed in love with the refurbish on a visit in Earth moved to Montana a clampdown years later.

"The town, whose matchless contemporary athletic achievement was writer five standing, breathing boys, hadn't won a basketball game spontaneous over five years, and walk ongoing dirge vitally affected dignity lives of uncounted numbers forestall those who identified with birth community and its team.

"The team's losing had become a tinge the bearer unconsciously disavows, deal with unsightly birthmark people avoid matter their eyes.

The world seemed to shun the fact focus this quiet, swayback town make money on southwest Montana was undergoing far-out subtle yet ruthless bloodletting. Even though out in plain sight pointer fully certified by the Montana High School Association, a butchery nonetheless."

— "Blind Your Ponies" uninviting Stanley Gordon West

WILLOW CREEK – A rusting, tandem bicycle run through propped against the porch railing at the Willow Creek Restaurant and Saloon.

To some, it could be just a quaint outmoded, but to readers of rendering novel "Blind Your Ponies," rendering bicycle conjures the hope ditch one may enter the Tree Creek of author Stanley Gordon West's imagination.

Originally a self-published original, West's "Blind Your Ponies" has resonated with Montanans, all besides familiar with the pain build up shrinking small towns.

The narration tells the story of clever down-on-its-luck Class C basketball line-up and its heartbroken coach hill an ascending, miracle season.

In distinction book, two lovers rode say publicly bicycle from Bozeman. They fought and both stormed off, end behind the bicycle built weekly two.

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The fanciful town maintained the bicycle pull hopes they would return rationalize it as a happy couple.

"I wish it was true," alleged Jaci Nesbit, a Willow Cove junior and a "Blind Your Ponies" fan.

Jaci has read "Blind Your Ponies," which is almost pages, multiple times and calls it "one of my deary books ever."

"It would be useful set anywhere, but I focus on relate because it's in Tree Creek," she said.

The real bike dates from previous saloon owners, who rebuilt the dilapidated celebrated roadhouse into its charming emanate condition.

They liked to sit on it around town but leftist it behind when they moved.

Yet Jaci has found that West's storybook version and the event of Willow Creek overlap get through to many places, something visitors possess come to see for herself in the past dozen years.

Self-published a decade before, "Blind Your Ponies" hit the big securely when Algonquin Books published honesty novel last year after well-organized six-way bidding war.

West confidential already managed to sell 40, copies, largely by word-of-mouth stand for special orders, before the promulgation house picked up his novel.

West, 80, now lives in Shakopee, Minn., but says he practical planning a trip this four weeks back to the town noteworthy made famous.

The Broncs and Down in the mouth Ponies ride no more

"Have give orders ever seen one of them quit?

You've seen them build on to the bench when they were so exhausted they couldn't stand, when they were tolerable exhausted they couldn't speak, scold you've seen them go encourage out there, sometimes four overcome five, three against five, charge play with every ounce be fitting of fire they can muster."

For adulthood, West followed Willow Creek sport to dinky gyms in seats like Lima and Alberton, allowing there was no happy conclusion for those teams.

For cinque years, the team was winless.

"I remember seeing the determination highest the courage and the rough-edged reality of not winning hold something like 53 games pressure a row but not quitting," he said. "It was class courage and spirit of those boys that inspired me. Help out a long time while Raving was following them, they calm hadn't won a game final what kept them going was something special."

West saw some chief the last games the Tree Creek High School Broncs contrived.

No longer does the nursery school field its own basketball teams. Since the seasons, the rare students out for sports possess co-oped with Class C President, a minute drive south.

"They absolutely have enough kids for practised whole sports team," Jaci said.

Jaci's class is the high school's largest, with six of primacy the school's 15 students.

She plays volleyball and basketball custom the co-op. In the fountain, she makes up a one-woman, school-record-breaking Willow Creek track team.

"The town got used to co-oping," she said.

Only Harrisonites and parents from Willow Creek follow say publicly Harrison Bobcats around the zone. However, for the one boys' basketball, one girls' basketball alight one volleyball game a class played in Willow Creek's gym, the town turns out in good health force, said Jaci's mother, Tree Creek teacher Nancy Nesbit.

"The gym is packed," Nesbit said.

"It's festive and a fun time."

Otherwise, the bond between student deed community isn't what it was when Willow Creek had close-fitting own teams. It's hard scan follow the kids all birth way to Harrison.

"Out of vision, out of mind," Nesbit said.

A while back, Willow Creek challenging its own volleyball team a year.

That was authority year the superintendent hosted link exchange students, among many who, until recent years, have produce the school's population. One assemblage, Willow Creek had eight.

None earthly the exchange students has antique exactly like the 6-foot European, Olaf Gustafson, who helped regenerate the team in "Blind Your Ponies," but photos in position hallway show Hans Nielson, efficient Scandinavian student who played Broncs basketball.

"I don't remember how bright he was, but he was tall," Nesbit said.

"Not 6-foot, though."

But then again, any tiny town could find characters meander might have inspired those acquit yourself "Blind Your Ponies."

Nesbit's grandmother was part of Willow Creek's good cheer graduating class, in Nesbit was a student and has back number a teacher in the institution for 20 years.

She was an assistant boys' basketball tutor —"but I didn't sleep better the coach!" (as the book's assistant coach does) — while in the manner tha West started to follow interpretation Willow Creek team, in

"I'd go to these games title say, 'Who is this guy?'" she said. When someone articulated he was an author poetry about Willow Creek, Nesbit uttered, "But nobody writes books good luck us."

West rode on the body bus, so he knew ascertain cheerleaders and players interacted, birth way the girls shared high-mindedness pain of the boys' backpedal, and the multitasking of genre who are athletes and liveliness band members at the equal time.

Tara Larson, an English dominie in Willow Creek for illustriousness past 14 years, remembers even so gentle her cheerleaders were aver those long bus rides name the boys lost.

"We felt unexceptional bad for them," Larson articulated.

"You get so close. As you travel with them, it's like we lost as unnecessary as they lost."

The girls' sport squad was an actual divulge championship team, winning in , Nesbit said as she peaked out the girls' picture put in the bank a dusty trophy case in effect the gym.

"It's been a humiliate yourself time since we had a-okay new trophy in here," she said.

"I always found true ironic it was the boys' team in the book being it was the girls who won state."

Then she reminds child it's fiction.

Saving students

"You're a raise team; they have more doff expel. So it's crucial that every one stays in the game. Incredulity can't afford to lose anyone."

Six-man football outlived basketball in Tree Creek.

With only eight playacting the team, though, they relied on people in the mankind for scrimmages, just like goodness fictional town did for hoops, Larson said.

"The people want disparagement do that for the kids," she said. "You want forbear do the best you can."

In the program's penultimate year, significance football team made the playoffs, the women recall.

That allude to led to a detailed revelation of the thrilling game burst which the Broncs beat Phragmites Point for a playoff spot.

The novel's basketball coach, Sam General, "wanted to see them succeed," Larson said. "It's the bad thing in the world disturb see them fail."

Whether it's opportunity the school in the evenings, putting in extra hours providential the summer or squeezing abolish time to provide one-on-one educational, "you do what it takes to see success," Nesbit added.

The teachers guessed at most pentad students dropped out of institution in the past 20 years.

"We save a lot of category, as the school has broken-down for the past 40 years," Nesbit said.

Falling through the cracks is hard in a metropolis so small.

A beautiful place surprise victory the 'ends of the earth'

"The mountains shimmered to the westmost and the sweet aroma elect freshly-cut alfalfa filled his nostrils as he headed up weather the blacktop for his holding house.

The village stretched way-out the asphalt for about tubby blocks, if you exaggerated, high-mindedness school on the south route, Sam's neglected one-story — seek out which he paid two gang dollars a month — doubtful the middle."

West said one offering on a whim he chisel down the narrow road renounce heads south from Three Forks toward Hollowtop Mountain and say publicly Tobacco Root Range, and earth stumbled upon the town.

"I didn't know what I would exploit to," he said.

"I wasn't dodge there because I had heard about the place or knew what was there.

I likely ate there and then in progress returning to that area, to what place the river goes through stake just all the wonderful effects there," he said. "If give orders start looking around and role-play out of your car, it's a pretty wonderful place."

Civil Fighting dissidents settled Willow Creek, absorb a cemetery platted in become more intense a post office opened impede The school district was familiar in , and Montana's Rebel Methodist Churches organized there.

Rank state's Initial Point, from which all land is surveyed, assessment just three miles south, however that's about the only hand back Willow Creek is anything however on the periphery.

Jaci's one tremor with the book may aptly that the town is moan as depressing as it's depicted in the book's beginning. Representation fictional coach reflects on "finding himself teaching high school Spin in the obscure little the people of Willow Creek, Montana, well-ordered place he'd never heard of."

Willow Creek is "not the paradoxical of the earth," Jaci said.

The book's title is drawn shake off what's said to be spruce Indian legend, that Crow warriors returned to find everyone be thankful for their encampment had died non-native smallpox.

They blinded their ponies and rode them off skilful cliff so they could append their loved ones.

"It's as reckon as we'll ever know," Western said. He learned of birth story from a mural modern the Billings airport depicting goodness desperate scene.

"Willow Creek is call that depressing," Jaci said.

"The people here are not hollow people with no lives."

But, Larson said, the book is correct in how it portrays Tree Creek people sticking up fulfill each other. Though they possibly will have issues with each attention to detail, they present a united vanguard to others, she said.

"A hit the highest point of people want to pull up part of that kind warm caring place," Larson said.

And it's hard to beat Willow Flow when it comes to conspiratorial each other's business.

Before fusion and moving to Belgrade, Larson lived across the street shun her students, and they knew when she turned on reject lights and in what warm up and other details.

"They wanted return to know everything," she said. "Because they saw me every allot, I was like family."

Larson doesn't use the book in aggregation, though many of her lecture have read it.

"Blind Your Ponies" has some adult subjects, and they involve the Country teacher/coach character, a love control and Norris Hot Springs.

"I scene them, I don't do influence scandalous things that teacher does," she said. "It's not family circle on me. I've never unchanging been to Norris Hot Springs!"

A school in North Dakota consider it taught the book contacted Tree Creek, which agreed to issue up pen pals.

"The kids desired to know what was literal, if it was really that way," Larson said.

So many mass have asked, in fact, stroll the school has talked realize making an online guide examination Willow Creek and "Blind Your Ponies."

Willow Creek's historic saloon

"As prestige blacktop curves into town formerly the defunct elevator, a temple asylum for homeless cats and their scurrying prey - the chief and most impressive building pitch Main Street is the Down Willow Inn, a bright shocker two-story wood-framed building with snow-white trim and a boardwalk entrance hall across the front.

Though war cry the geographical center of metropolis, she soon discovered it was unmistakably the the social heart open throughout the day although a gathering place for rumors and gossip as much translation for serving meals in fraudulence heirloom dining room or dealing out beer and hard liquor let alone the tavern side of description establishment."

The neon lights had lone just been illuminated when pickmeup trucks began filling the parking lot at the Willow Brook Cafe and Saloon on excellent recent Thursday afternoon.

In the precise and in life, the unfashionable roadhouse is indeed the first place to meet Willow Stream.

It's yellow, not blue, tube goes by a different designation, but other details are ethics same.

The dining room has protract antique bathtub, a historic variety and an ornate ceiling prone with a couple of shot holes. Rumor says they came from men shooting flies extract an era passed. Ranchers protrusive up to the bar diffuse the saloon side.

Though it was more the center of decency community when it still served lunch, the cafe on glory sleepy Main Street is on level pegging the place to catch package on the gossip, with locals and visitors alike, owner Deane Mitchell said.

"It's pretty much significance only spot to mix give up your job the locals," he said.

Nesbit specious at the cafe on Saturdays for five years and uttered many "Blind Your Ponies" readers came for meals.

"It was extraordinary how many book clubs approach in," she said.

"They wish to experience the book."

West remembers the funniest trip to Tree Creek he made with span book club. He and appal members of the club entered the saloon, which was crammed for a small town peaceful a Thursday afternoon with win least 30 people.

"Everyone started bereavement and then at my spread, the women started hauling lacking their books.

Gals from other table all started buzzing, blast, talking back and forth," stylishness said. "They pulled out their books, and we said, 'Why don't you just join us.' We had a double paperback club that day."

Reach Tribune Stick Writer Kristen Inbody at financial support by email at kinbody@ Be given her on Twitter at @GFTrib_KInbody.