Cam rentsch

The worst bar in Missoula is called Stocks – well, it’s the Stockman’s Cafe & Bar, and Dobi’s Teriyaki during the day. Don’t ask, cause I don’t want to know how that actually works. Especially because it’s actually a decent place to eat, at least given how the food scene is in Montana. But Stocks the bar is usually the place people suggest you go at the end of the night, and, depending on how drunk you are, you either realize it’s time to finally go home or you’re thrilled and things are about to get weird. I’ve seen people smoking inside, there’s live poker in the back room, one time the floor was even covered with a layer of sod. Stocks has a bad reputation, and one of my ex’s told me she was proud that she had never been there before. 

I’m a bit old for Stocks now – to be honest I’m not sure if I was ever young enough for it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I’ve ever been. I’m a big fan of the Irish exit and nice little drunken walk home with my thoughts, so usually when somebody says “Stocks’o’clock” I take that as my cue to leave. And even though I’m living my twenties in reverse, I doubt I’ll end up in Stocks again anytime soon. There are plenty of better dive bars in Missoula, all of them I’d argue, and I can go to Red’s and the Rhino and the Union and Flippers, hell, I’ll even go to Plonk and pretend to be a yuppie and drink an overpriced cocktail. But right now I’m dog-sitting out past Alberton along the Clark Fork River, and this family has an impressionist style painting of the exterior of Stocks in the guest room I’m staying in, and I have some questions. First and foremost, if I actually remember what the impressionist style is, so I text my art historian sister.: “not the typical color palette but it’s play with light and an outdoor setting along with the very brushy technique i’d say yeah.” When I told her the context, that I’d say this is the worst dive bar in Missoula, she let me know that “the french would love it even more”. 

I can’t imagine this family ever having been to Stocks – their house is far too nice for that. They have granite countertops and a stainless steel refrigerator. Their dog is a German shepherd mix named Tilly who growled and barked at me when I first arrived and yet crawled into the bed to cuddle with me that night. Do they know that Stocks has a reputation for letting in all the college kids with barely passable fake IDs? I think, like lots of folks, they might just like the battered neon sign outside, a sign that seems to show that Missoula hasn’t yet been gentrified into a midwestern ranch dressing suburb like Bozeman has. 

Stocks doesn’t look like this painting, The painting looks wet – almost like something you’d see on the Oregon Coast. I don’t ask my sister if that’s an impressionist thing since I feel like I’ve already used up my big brother asking you basic questions about your career points. Our shoulder seasons in Missoula are surprisingly rainy, but that has never been part of the Stocks experience for me. All the humidity in there comes from the bodies trapped inside – almost like the cinderblock wrestling room I went to as a kid in rural Ohio where halfway through a winter practice the windows would be fogged up and the walls would sweat.  

I think Stocks might be in the eye of the beholder – what is the night they’re showing in this painting? The sidewalk is empty – if this was really a painting trying to capture Stocks you’d need drunk college kids, a bored looking bouncer, millennial couples with a little buzz looking wistfully at the kids they used to be. You can’t see the sign for the mediocre ramen place behind Stocks, the seemingly abandoned office building for Senator Tester on the other side of the road, but the awning for Tamarack Brewing is there. 

The trees on the sidewalk are bare – deciduous things with spindly limbs imported for a european-american downtown, something that would be out of place among the Bitterroots’ Ponderosas and Lodgepoles. The Stocks in this painting isn’t one I’ve ever seen – but does that mean it doesn’t exist? Maybe this couple met at Stocks – could you imagine that? Drunken twenty-something love, now immortalized in a style that doesn’t seem to quite fit the reality. But if that’s the truth, why would they put the painting in the guest room? 

Has this family even thought about this at all?