The Ox-Bow Man: A Biography Of Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Chapter Thirteen: The Move to Montana and Uncompleted Writing Projects

« chapter thirteen » the move to montana and uncompleted writing projects T      moved to Missoula with the hope that they would now be together permanently. The fact that they didn’t rent but purchased their house at 212 Hastings Street suggests some degree of emotional commitment on Clark’s part. It was a relatively small house, with a covered little front portico with a slant to the roof, giving the appearance of the front a little idiosyncrasy. It had one and a half stories, with a finished basement below and one big room upstairs with a slanted ceiling that doubled as the Clarks’ bedroom and Walter’s study. The Clarks lived half a block from Bonner Park, and there was a grade school another block away. A half-dozen blocks from the house was the university, and you could walk there. In the words of Walter Brown’s son, Geoƒrey, the situation was about as out of the heart of America as you could ever want to live.... The football games which they all went to, › 254 ‹ 13-unv002.c13.4 6/29/04 4:36 PM Page 254 you would walk down the streets that were lined with maple trees that were turning color. It was a picture of middle America , for whatever value that might have today. Forthechildren,BobbyandBabs,however,themovewastraumatic . Babs, who was a senior in high school at the time, was involved in a romance in Virginia City and objected vociferously. Bobby, a sophomore who was a good student, was apprehensive that he would be exposed in the greater competition as not as good as he had shown himself to be. Clark’s son recalls that when he was afreshmanattheVirginiaCityhighschool,therewere25students in the whole school, whereas at Missoula “there were some 1,300 kids in a building that looked like a huge stone prison. There were more kids in my homeroom than there had been in the whole high school.” Nevertheless, as resistant or apprehensive as the kids might have been, the parents looked on their move as a new start for the family. In the back of Walter’s mind, however, was something of ashadow—asuggestionthathemightbeenteringauniversityenvironment like the one he had left in Nevada. In the late spring, Mackay Brown had written to him, as he told his wife, to report on recent events at Montana: You remember I told you that a considerable element of the faculty seemed to feel about President McFarland somewhat— if not so definitely—as Nevada feels about Stout? Well—it seems the feeling has suddenly, and with good cause, grown much stronger. He sought the advice of committees concerning a dean for the newly formed Liberal Arts Division, then ignored the advice and simply announced that the dean would be a man no one had wanted, and who is apparently ... disliked by much of the faculty, and despised by enough of it to make him worthless as a dean. (5/2/54) the move to montana and uncompleted writing projects › 255 ‹ 13-unv002.c13.4 6/29/04 4:36 PM Page 255 Hastings Street house where the Clarks lived in Missoula, Montana, 1954–56. Courtesy of Barbara Clark Salmon Picnic north of Sun Valley, Idaho, on the way to Missoula, July 1954. Walter, Barbara, and Robert Clark. Courtesy of Robert M. Clark 13-unv002.c13.4 6/29/04 4:36 PM Page 256 Then, aƒecting Clark more personally, this dean whom no one liked went over to the department to tell some of its members that the president wanted Clark to be the department chair and askedthemhowtheyfeltaboutthat.“Well,”Clarkconcluded,“no matter how the department felt before, there can’t be much doubt how they’ll feel now.” He was particularly irritated because in a discussion with the president about a new agreement with the faculty, the president seemed to guarantee departmental elections . Mackay Brown had further reported that in an address to some community groups in downtown Missoula, the president had complained that he had been having a terrible time getting things in working order, primarily because of opposition by the faculty. But he also complained about the heritage handed down tohimbyprecedingpresidents,and,Clarkadded,“heincluded,by name, President Clapp, whose time at Montana, like Dad’s at Nevada, is generally regarded as the Golden Age.” And thereby, he“alienatedmostoftherestofsuchfacultysupportashehadleft” (5/2/54). This struggle with President McFarland would drag on throughout Clark’s...