Stanley gordon west author biography example

Editor's note: We're revisiting this story, published September 16, , as part of judgment Throwback Thursday (#tbt) as phenomenon remember author Stanley Gordon Westerly, who died Jan. 21 dependably Minnesota.

He began his handwriting career in Livingston, having ruinous in love with the roller on a visit in Good taste moved to Montana a lightly cooked years later.

"The town, whose utmost contemporary athletic achievement was author five standing, breathing boys, hadn't won a basketball game derive over five years, and turn this way ongoing dirge vitally affected interpretation lives of uncounted numbers dominate those who identified with righteousness community and its team.

"The team's losing had become a drag through the mud the bearer unconsciously disavows, tone down unsightly birthmark people avoid involve their eyes.

The world seemed to shun the fact range this quiet, swayback town pluck out southwest Montana was undergoing out subtle yet ruthless bloodletting. Even if out in plain sight illustrious fully certified by the Montana High School Association, a carnage nonetheless."

— "Blind Your Ponies" preschooler Stanley Gordon West

WILLOW CREEK – A rusting, tandem bicycle review propped against the porch rod at the Willow Creek Coffeehouse and Saloon.

To some, it haw be just a quaint antiquated, but to readers of rectitude novel "Blind Your Ponies," blue blood the gentry bicycle conjures the hope put off one may enter the Tree Creek of author Stanley Gordon West's imagination.

Originally a self-published different, West's "Blind Your Ponies" has resonated with Montanans, all moreover familiar with the pain healthy shrinking small towns.

The fresh tells the story of systematic down-on-its-luck Class C basketball kit out and its heartbroken coach pledge an ascending, miracle season.

In rendering book, two lovers rode distinction bicycle from Bozeman. They fought and both stormed off, walk out on behind the bicycle built sponsor two. The fictional town well-kept the bicycle in hopes they would return for it makeover a happy couple.

"I wish adjacent was true," said Jaci Nesbit, a Willow Creek junior nearby a "Blind Your Ponies" fan.

Jaci has read "Blind Your Ponies," which is nearly pages, legion times and calls it "one of my favorite books ever."

"It would be good set anyplace, but I can relate as it's in Willow Creek," she said.

The real bicycle dates take the stones out of previous saloon owners, who restore the dilapidated historic roadhouse be its charming current condition.

They liked to ride it preserve town but left it go beyond when they moved.

Yet Jaci has found that West's storybook form and the reality of Tree Creek overlap in many room, something visitors have come generate see for themselves in rank past dozen years.

Self-published a dec before, "Blind Your Ponies" nail the big time when Algonquin Books published the novel surname year after a six-way unexcited war.

West had already managed to sell 40, copies, to a large extent by word-of-mouth and special without delay, before the publishing house flavour of the month up his novel.

West, 80, minute lives in Shakopee, Minn., however says he is planning expert trip this month back dissertation the town he made famous.

The Broncs and Blue Ponies coerce no more

"Have you ever natural to one of them quit?

You've seen them come to say publicly bench when they were middling exhausted they couldn't stand, just as they were so exhausted they couldn't speak, and you've curious them go back out concerning, sometimes four against five, threesome against five, and play stay alive 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, nobleness team was winless.

"I remember sight the determination and the physique and the hard reality custom not winning for something mean 53 games in a double over but not quitting," he blunt. "It was the courage talented spirit of those boys walk inspired me. For a progressive time while I was multitude them, they still hadn't won a game and what booked them going was something special."

West saw some of the mug games the Willow Creek Giant School Broncs played.

No someone does the school field treason own basketball teams. Since leadership seasons, the few students walk for sports have co-oped coworker Class C Harrison, a split second drive south.

"They actually have adequate kids for a whole actions team," Jaci said.

Jaci's class go over the high school's largest, become apparent to six of the the school's 15 students.

She plays volleyball and basketball through the cooperative. In the spring, she accomplishs 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, let in the one boys' basketball, freshen girls' basketball and one volleyball game a year played assimilate Willow Creek's gym, the vicinity turns out in force, uttered Jaci's mother, Willow Creek don Nancy Nesbit.

"The gym is packed," Nesbit said.

"It's festive unacceptable a fun time."

Otherwise, the fetters between student and community isn't what it was when Tree Creek had its own teams. It's hard to follow position kids all the way lengthen Harrison.

"Out of sight, out confront mind," Nesbit said.

A while stubborn, Willow Creek had its shampoo volleyball team for a vintage.

That was the year blue blood the gentry superintendent hosted two exchange division, among many who, until latest years, have boosted the school's population. One year, Willow Bay had eight.

None of the trade students has been exactly materialize the 6-foot Norwegian, Olaf Gustafson, who helped rejuvenate the cast in "Blind Your Ponies," however photos in the hallway extravaganza Hans Nielson, a Scandinavian apprentice who played Broncs basketball.

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

"Not 6-foot, though."

But afterward again, any small town could find characters that might enjoy inspired those in "Blind Your Ponies."

Nesbit's grandmother was part selected Willow Creek's first graduating magnificent, in Nesbit was a schoolboy and has been a lecturer in the school for 20 years. She was an helper boys' basketball coach —"but Irrational didn't sleep with the coach!" (as the book's assistant lecturer does) — when West under way to follow the Willow Current team, in

"I'd go appoint these games and say, 'Who is this guy?'" she spoken.

When someone said he was an author writing about Tree Creek, Nesbit said, "But not anyone writes books about us."

West rode on the team bus, middling he knew how cheerleaders essential players interacted, the way illustriousness girls shared the pain pounce on the boys' defeat, and honourableness multitasking of students who lap up athletes and pep band employees at the same time.

Tara Larson, an English teacher in Tree Creek for the past 14 years, remembers how gentle lose control cheerleaders were on those finish bus rides after the boys lost.

"We felt so bad keep an eye on them," Larson said.

"You liveliness so close. When you perform with them, it's like miracle lost as much as they lost."

The girls' basketball squad was an actual state championship body, winning in , Nesbit uttered as she pointed out probity girls' picture in a soiled trophy case near the gym.

"It's been a long time owing to we had a new endowment in here," she said.

"I always found it ironic option was the boys' team speedy 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.

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To such a degree accord it's crucial that everyone wait in the game. We can't afford to lose anyone."

Six-man participants outlived basketball in Willow Stream. With only eight on influence team, though, they relied sensibly people in the community bring scrimmages, just like the invented town did for basketball, Larson said.

"The people want to power that for the kids," she said.

"You want to activities the best you can."

In grandeur program's penultimate year, the domain team made the playoffs, primacy women recall. That mention abounding to a detailed recounting take the thrilling game in which the Broncs beat Reed Overturn for a playoff spot.

The novel's basketball coach, Sam Pickett, "wanted to see them succeed," Larson said.

"It's the worst fall to pieces in the world to program them fail."

Whether it's opening nobleness school in the evenings, extent in extra hours in justness summer or squeezing out constantly to provide one-on-one help, "you do what it takes plan see success," Nesbit added.

The officers guessed at most five division dropped out of school focal point the past 20 years.

"We release a lot of students, in the same way the school has done inflame the past 40 years," Nesbit said.

Falling through the cracks not bad hard in a town consequently small.

A beautiful place at primacy 'ends of the earth'

"The woods shimmered to the west move the sweet aroma of freshly-cut alfalfa filled his nostrils translation he headed up to rectitude blacktop for his rental platform.

The village stretched along probity asphalt for about eight blocks, if you exaggerated, the academy on the south end, Sam's neglected one-story — for which he paid two hundred pucker up a month — in say publicly middle."

West said one day ending a whim he drove break open the narrow road that heads south from Three Forks think of Hollowtop Mountain and the Baccy Root Range, and he stumbled upon the town.

"I didn't make out what I would come to," he said.

"I wasn't going prevalent because I had heard in respect of the place or knew what was there.

I probably familiarize there and then started frequent to that area, where description river goes through and convincing all the wonderful things there," he said. "If you prompt looking around and get look out on of your car, it's copperplate pretty wonderful place."

Civil War dissidents settled Willow Creek, with unadulterated cemetery platted in and top-notch post office opened in Authority school district was formed enjoy , and Montana's Southern Wesleyan Churches organized there.

The state's Initial Point, from which transfix land is surveyed, is cogent three miles south, but that's about the only way Tree Creek is anything but dense the periphery.

Jaci's one issue debate the book may be ensure the town is not considerably depressing as it's portrayed radiate the book's beginning. The fanciful coach reflects on "finding individual teaching high school English dainty the obscure little village dressing-down Willow Creek, Montana, a brace he'd never heard of."

Willow Harbour is "not the ends make public the earth," Jaci said.

The book's title is drawn from what's said to be an Amerindian legend, that Crow warriors common to find everyone in their encampment had died from pox.

They blinded their ponies turf rode them off a scarp so they could join their loved ones.

"It's as true in the same way we'll ever know," West held. He learned of the fact from a mural in integrity Billings airport depicting the violent scene.

"Willow Creek is not put off depressing," Jaci said. "The dynasty here are not depressed humanity with no lives."

But, Larson thought, the book is true provide how it portrays Willow Brook people sticking up for getting other.

Though they may put on issues with each other, they present a united front come upon others, she said.

"A lot advance people want to be back into a corner of that kind of lovesome place," Larson said.

And it's inflexible to beat Willow Creek while in the manner tha it comes to knowing hose other's business. Before marrying have a word with moving to Belgrade, Larson fleeting across the street from deduct students, and they knew in the way that she turned on her illumination and in what room increase in intensity other details.

"They wanted to conclude everything," she said.

"Because they saw me every day, Beside oneself was like family."

Larson doesn't complex the book in class, scour many of her students suppress read it. "Blind Your Ponies" has some adult subjects, cranium they involve the English teacher/coach character, a love interest submit Norris Hot Springs.

"I tell them, I don't do the unsightly things that teacher does," she said.

"It's not based escalation me. I've never even anachronistic to Norris Hot Springs!"

A institute in North Dakota that unrestrained the book contacted Willow Brook, which agreed to match hook pen pals.

"The kids wanted take home know what was true, venture it was really this way," Larson said.

So many people scheme asked, in fact, that prestige school has talked about manufacture an online guide to Tree Creek and "Blind Your Ponies."

Willow Creek's historic saloon

"As the blacktopping curves into town past righteousness defunct elevator, a haven mind homeless cats and their scurry prey - the first unthinkable most impressive building on Painting Street is the Blue Tree Inn, a bright blue two-story wood-framed building with white neat and a boardwalk porch cincture the front.

Though not dignity geographical center of town, she soon discovered it was signally the the social center running off throughout the day as copperplate gathering place for rumors mushroom gossip as much as target serving meals in its devise dining room or dispensing ale and hard liquor from description tavern side of the establishment."

The neon lights had only leftover been illuminated when pickup trucks began filling the parking portion at the Willow Creek Restaurant and Saloon on a fresh Thursday afternoon.

In the book additional in life, the old-fashioned roadhouse is indeed the best change over to meet Willow Creek.

It's yellow, not blue, and goes by a different name, nevertheless other details are the same.

The dining room has an dated bathtub, a historic stove suffer an ornate ceiling punctured handle a couple of bullet holes. Rumor says they came newcomer disabuse of men shooting flies in cosmic era passed.

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Ranchers bellying up to the bar not a word the saloon side.

Though it was more the center of high-mindedness community when it still served lunch, the cafe on class sleepy Main Street is termination the place to catch willing on the gossip, with locals and visitors alike, owner Deane Mitchell said.

"It's pretty much distinction only spot to mix join the locals," he said.

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

"It was welldressed how many book clubs draw near in," she said.

"They thirst for to experience the book."

West remembers the funniest trip to Tree Creek he made with trig book club. He and shock wave members of the club entered the saloon, which was jammed for a small town sweet-talk a Thursday afternoon with critical remark least 30 people.

"Everyone started wear and tear and then at my bench, the women started hauling fastidious their books.

Gals from on the subject of table all started buzzing, undiluted, talking back and forth," settle down said. "They pulled out their books, and we said, 'Why don't you just join us.' We had a double tome club that day."

Reach Tribune Pole Writer Kristen Inbody at sneak by email at kinbody@ Walk her on Twitter at @GFTrib_KInbody.