Marvin's embodies the LaFlesch family legacy
By Cole Boehler
Just what is a "tavern"?
It is a business enterprise, for sure—a license, a building, fixtures and inventory, customers, a staff, financial statements and taxes.
And that's about all that can be said about a tiny minority of them.
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Johnny LaFlesch: the late 40's or early 50's.
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Many others are historic icons that anchor a small town's Main Street; they are places where friends—even husbands and wives—have met and friendships and love have flourished; a tavern may embody a family's generational legacy, a place where children and grandchildren have learned a trade and built a business and a living.
That would pretty much describe Marvin's Bar out at the "Wye" west of Missoula where east/west I-90 and north/south U.S. Hwy. 93 intersect. Situated just to the south of the Interstate, the small log structure has occupied this spot since the middle of the Great Depression and pervious to World War II.
It seems a little out of place considering the massive and modern nearby truck stops, restaurants, casinos and hotels and all their bright lights and noise and traffic.
Current owner KC LaFlesch told the Montana Tavern Times the bar was started in
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Interior and exterior preservation is the priority.
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1937, just four years after "the Great Experiment"—Prohibition—ended, and it may have taken several years to get it really functional. A fellow named Marvin Gratiot was the founder.
It was in 1948 that KC's folks, John—or Johnny, as he was known—and Ann LaFlesch bought the business.
There must not have been much money available, as John and Ann put up a couple of interior walls to create the family's "bedroom" right inside the bar. In fact, KC can show you the marks on the floors where the walls stood—over in the same corner now occupied by the pool table. There are some cupboards there that served as the family's "closet."
The folks and the first two sons—Louie and Corky, babies at the time—lived in that little space. Back where the kitchen exists today, KC can show you where the family bathtub was positioned in another corner.
See what we mean by "family legacy"?
Some people might have been inclined to just bulldoze the whole works and put up a fancy bar/restaurant/casino/travel stop on this prime piece of real estate at the busy junction. But not KC: his family's history is wrapped up in the floors and walls and doors and such, as you will find out if KC gives you an escorted tour. Every feature has a story.
Johnny and Ann had four boys. By the time the third came along, they had scraped together enough money to build a small frame house behind the bar and the "bedroom" walls were torn out. The modest little house still stands out back and KC uses it as his office and for storage.
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Johnny and Ann LaFlesch, probably late 1940's.
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The boys all got into the bar business at one time or another, KC says.
Three brothers—Jay, Corky and KC—bought the old Chuck's Bar from Charlie Clark back in the early 1980s. It was situated on West Main in the heart of Missoula's bar district (this writer spent considerable time there while a student at the university in the early and mid 1970s when Charlie Clark owned it).
Eventually, Jay and Corky bought out KC and the place was then called Corky's. Then Jay bought out Corky in 1988 and it was known as Jay's. He opened another bar—primarily a music venue—upstairs and, hence, that was called Jay's Upstairs.
In the meantime, KC bought the Sawmill Saloon in Darby which he operated until selling it in 1984. He opened a food operation in Tempe, Ariz. called Pasta Plus Deli and Catering, which was a killer, KC says, calling for "working all day then all night."
He sold that then knocked around some, picking up odd jobs when available.
During the early 1990s, as Johnny and Ann aged and slowed down, brother Corky managed Marvin's four years until KC bought it in 1994. KC says his father drove a darned hard bargain and cut him absolutely no slack on the sale price, making KC pay above the next best offer.
But, judging from what KC says, he has no regrets.
When he acquired the business, it had become fairly run down, he says. Ann passed away in late 1995 and Johnny, at age 72, went a few months later in early 1996.
"I put a quarter million in it in renovations in the first 10 years," KC says, and he managed to pay it off in full, too, during that time. Since then, he admits he's been "making a nice living," seldom pulling a shift these days, leaving that to his one dozen employees.
"I'm a pretender, not a bartender," he says with a smile. Liquor sales and gaming pays the bills; the food service is mostly just a convenience for customers, KC adds.
Sure, the old place has been rewired and replumbed, bathrooms and kitchen upgraded, but KC took great care to hide all the infrastructure behind the walls, above the ceiling or below the floor. There are no out-of-place conduits or pipes showing, no extension cords, no cabling for jukebox speakers, security system or television sets.
He asks you to note the logs, which appear to almost have been milled since the draw knife work on their surfaces is so fine, and since the log diameters are so consistent end-to-end, a natural characteristic of the lodgepole pine, KC says.
He notes some logs at the bottom of the walls had rotted out from exposure to moisture for 60 years, and it was quite a job to jack the building up, remove the bad logs and replace them. But that's how he has approached this "project" all along: restore, preserve; don't change it.
In fact, KC says a local historic preservation organization just gave him an award last year for his dedication to preserving the original building and fixtures.
Retaining the original atmosphere is a key to the business's success, says KC. "It's all about sight, sound, taste, touch, smell..."
And it is easy to see what he means. The scene at Marvin's at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon could be taking place in 1950, 1970 or 1990. Classic country music is playing on the jukebox, and the place is full of local linerboard mill workers having just wrapped up the last shift of the week.
"I worked hard on getting the right jukebox music," he says. "It's all about atmosphere."
Then he breaks into a humorous story—more family legacy:
"My dad used to come over here early on Sunday mornings (before legal opening time) to open the place up privately for a bunch of his cronies. He'd come over from the house in his bathrobe," KC says with a laugh.
"Well, one Sunday morning, as a joke on Johnny, all his customers showed up in their bathrobes!
"We get a lot of old-timers who come in here and tell stories from 50 years ago."
The door to the beer and liquor storage room once served as the "bedroom" door when Johnny, Ann and the two little boys lived in the bar; it is embossed with a longhorn steer, the business's trademark, which can be found elsewhere throughout the building and is on the bar's caps and T-shirts.
The wood from the bedroom walls was covered with brands, and those planks have been installed in the beverage storage room. See, nothing gets thrown away or lost; it is preserved instead.
In fact, KC has a number of old photos taken inside the bar. You can spot vintage lighted Hamms and Great Falls Select advertising clocks and such. So KC has been very patiently—and expensively—tracking down exact duplicates of the old pieces on E-bay and paying handsomely to acquire them. A new acquisition recently set him back $529! He then places them exactly where they were shown to reside in the old-time photos.
Old Johnny, one of the original "MTA Godfathers," would be proud of what KC has been doing and has done.
Even the standard big game mounts are hitched to family lore. The 6x6 bull elk was shot by Johnny up Fish Creek to the west; a brother bagged the antelope.
"My dad had gotten a bear up near Evaro (to the north) years ago," KC relates. "It hung in here, but it deteriorated badly, so I went back up there and shot another one. That's the one on the wall, now." (As an aside, KC, an avid hunter, will show you pictures of himself bringing an elk out of the high country on his mountain bike, an almost see-it-to-believe-it image.)
The preservation and restoration bug has bit KC hard.
"This place used to be a tourist trap," he explains, and given it's location at what was Old Highway 10 (now I-90) and U.S. 93, that is an entirely likely scenario. It served drinks, food and sold "curios"—tourist junk. They also sold gasoline.
"We had two gas pumps," which were removed a long time ago," KC explains. "I had to dig and look real hard to find the originals, but I did." They now reside near the north end of building and appear to be classic 1950s.
The original cash register is on display, even the original adding machine used by Johnny to tally the day's receipts. When a door or window deteriorates and requires replacement, KC will search for a vintage duplicate, or have one carefully hand-crafted to match the original.
Details, details. It's really all quite wonderful as KC takes you around the place, filling in the heritage.
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Classy period neon signs still adorn the exterior.
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A massive stone fireplace dominates in the southwest corner. And, of course, there's a story that goes with it, too.
"Johnny and Ann went on vacation one time. When they came back a week later, that fireplace was there," KC says. Apparently, some of the boys and a bunch of the customers quickly erected it as a sign of their appreciation. It stands strong today but features a gas insert in deference to the realities of the times.
Vintage neon signs and exterior lighting, refurbished and maintained at considerable expense, still grace the outside, just as it did in the 1940s and over the ensuing decades.
Ah, if these walls could talk they would tell the story of a hard-fought business, a family's and its generations' struggles.
Yep, even the tiny holes toward the bottom of the antique upright piano tell a story: "Well, Johnny caught a robber in here one night and he had his shotgun, see..."
Well, perhaps readers should just stop at Marvin's and get the KC tour themselves. It's worth it.
That old place just talks and talks...
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, March 2009, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W Granite, Suite 102, Butte MT. 59701