Originally published October 7, 2016

The Club Moderne: An Elegy

Another Anaconda institution has been lost in those flames of a couple of nights ago. For many of us, it is another chipping away of a building block of our youth. As a child, I remember being fascinated as I drove by that building on East Park with my parents. There was something distinct about it. It looked so different from anything else in town. With its sleek Art Deco design and those curved “corners”, it seemed to belong to a world somewhere out there. Its name was a source of endless speculation. It was not a “bar.” It was a “club”—a place that you belonged to, where you socialized with fellow club members. We of course had other clubs in Anaconda (Elks, Knights of Columbus), but you had to join them, fill out an application. As I later learned when I became old enough, at the funny building at the corner of Park and Ash you merely needed to show up to become a club member. Then there was that “moderne”—suggesting the exotic, the French, the modern.

Being too young, what I did not realize is that the Club Moderne was the center of the social and political exchange in Anaconda, something akin to the agora in ancient Greece or the Roman forum. Through here passed the campaigning politicians, the discourse on the latest local and national political issues and of course the prognosis for the high school football and basketball teams. In virtual reality, coaches were continually hired, fired and re-hired by those sitting around the bar. My long-time friend and former teammate, Bob Matosich, summed it up best a few years ago. Working part-time there in his early teaching days, Bob told me he learned more about life and people in those off-hours behind the bar than he ever did in all the years of schooling.

And the Moderne could offer us a diverse choice of accommodations. We could remain in the intimate confines of the “bar” in the front or we could move to one of the tables in the more expansive “hall” in the back—two very different experiences.

What I remember most though about the Club were the class reunions. It hosted nearly all the Friday night kicked-offs of the weekend celebrations. As we walked into that backroom from the side door on Ash Street and looked at all those familiar faces from the past, we were transported back to a world we had lost, but not forgotten—Anaconda Central 1966. Yet we did not need to stay the entire evening in the reunion hall. We could return to the present--through the doors to the bar in the front to have a glass or two with those crowded in on that hot July or August evening. Like a time machine, travelling from past to present and then back.

As we drove down Park Street in our younger days, we would meet on the right at Main Street the magnificent Montana Hotel, Marcus Daly’s opulent gift to Anaconda and a reminder of its more glamorous days; a few blocks down on the left was St. Paul Church, the oldest Catholic church (and most likely simply the oldest church) in town; a few more blocks on the right was the Club Moderne and in the horizon was the big stack, which presided over Anaconda’s contribution to America’s industrial might—the smelter, the “Hill.” The Club now has passed over to the realm of the lost world to join these other icons of Anaconda and of our past.