The Mouse Is In The House

A story (and playlist) about Rocky's Nuthouse, a watering hole in West Yellowstone, Montana.

“There were days, and there were days, and there were days between.”
—Grateful Dead, “Days Between”

Sometimes I think about how I used to be. You know what I mean? I think you know what it's like to feel it. To sit, and think, hm, that was different then, and that was something that I think I liked. But then you don't know, do you? Or do you? 

All I know is what's in front of me, and right now what's in front of me are some mountains. I'm in a shed turned into an office, staring through a window, looking at peaks cutting against a crisp blue sky. I’ve taken a few breaks today to sit outside on an old wood bench, leaning back, basking in the sunlight, thinking about how I used to be. If only there was somebody to take my photograph in these moments of whimsy. I could hold a cigarette like a real tough guy. Maybe the picture could even be an album cover. Make sure you get my tattoos in the shot. Shut up please I am trying to look cool here.

I did a big long drive by myself over the summer of ‘21 – through the mountains of Montana and Wyoming and Colorado and maybe some other states but I'm not really sure because at a certain point mountains just kind of blend together because they're fucking mountains. It was incredible. This endless feeling of an endless road over endless snow-capped hills, the white tips blurring into infinite clouds. I stopped the car when I felt like stopping. I drove the car when I felt like driving. I pulled over next to a river and took video of people rafting through rapids. They cheered at me like they’d just spotted Big Foot. Is that him?! I didn’t care. My hair was long and my beard was scraggly. So, fuck it, I thought. I’m Big Foot! I grunted back in their direction. I believe!

There's a lot to behold when you stop, and you stare, and you look at things, and you think about how you used to be.

My drive took me along the spine of the Rocky Mountains and through dozens of tiny towns with populations of three digits or less. One of those places was called West Yellowstone, Montana, just on the border of Yellowstone National Park — which, for those who don’t know, is 3500 square miles of preserved land in the Mountain West. Its mass stretches across parts of Wyoming and Idaho and Montana. Fun fact: Yellowstone was not only the first National Park in the United States, but it's widely believed to be the first national park in the world. The world! America wins again. You've probably seen pictures of Old Faithful, the very famous geyser that's erupted every hour or so since the land before time. It's where the buffalo still roam, too. And if you’re lucky, you may see a chubby tourist from Louisiana get out of their car and try to take a picture of some bears on the side of the road. (I was lucky.)

In West Yellowstone, there’s watering hole called Rocky’s Nuthouse, a locals only oasis in a desert of billionaires in baseball hats and Patagonia vests. On my visit, the Nuthouse had all the dive bar cliches that make cheap beer taste better. Carpet floor. Ripped barstool seats. Dollar bills pinned to the ceiling. Fluorescent lights. A bartender named something generic like Bill had long black hair and a big belly and served bottles of beer. Behind the bar, a sign read: "West Yellowstone is too small to have a Town Drunk. So we all take turns!" I chuckled to myself as I ordered a Coors Banquet for three bucks, noticing that “Town Drunk” was capitalized. Later, I will pay $25 for a T-shirt with an image of a drunk squirrel wearing a helmet on the front.

A guy named Mouse was a regular at the Nuthouse. After a beer or two, I had enough courage to start chatting. He and I got to talking about one thing or another. There were a lot of stories, of which I don’t really remember the details because the bottles of beer kept flowing. I don't know what Mouse’s real name was. He was a musician, or at least, he said, that's what he tried to be. He was in his 50s and he’d been around. He had a flip phone and worked for the park.

I learned that's what people in West Yellowstone call Yellowstone. The park, they say. Yeah, the park. I work at the park. The nonchalance was charming, and working for the park seemed like the quaint and simple kind of life that I’d like to live – until I thought about what it would be like to get groceries on a Monday in late February. Then again, maybe West Yellowstone is beautiful in late February and the grocery store is stocked with T-bones and rib-eyes and venison and other meat for real mountainfolk. I guess it could be a nice place to find a life; a life that I would then one day look back upon and think about how I used to be.

I asked Mouse what kind of music he listened to.

"Everything, until the whole Grateful Dead thing happened," he said, throwing his hands up in exasperation as he delivered this extremely cool answer. I swear I felt the Grateful Dead tattoo on my leg tingle. Clearly, we had a lot to talk about. 

And talk we did. He proceeded to tell me about how he followed the Dead around America from 1990 until Jerry Garcia died. For the non-Deadheads, that happened on August 9, 1995, just eight days after Garcia’s 53rd birthday. Mouse spent five years on the golden road. Decades later, talking about this time period with a random traveler at the Nuthouse, he remained very proud. He spoke with a cocktail of confidence and sadness and regret and hope. Someone who hasn't seen the edge might describe him as tragic, but that would be as foolish as it is ignorant.

“Those years taught me about survival,” he said. His voice was charming and scraggly. “I don’t know if I’d be here without them. In fact, I know I wouldn’t be.”

Keep on rowing, I thought.

You could tell Mouse lived many lives. He had undeniable assurance and conviction. Someone who wouldn't hesitate to tell you that it’s all gonna be alright despite wondering how the bills were gonna be paid. He'd always be right, though, and those bills would always be paid — at least the ones that needed to be.

Mouse wasn't the only oddball at the bar. A heavyset guy sat in the corner playing a slot machine. He was transfixed by the spinning fruit, continually pushing the red button with dollar signs, that jangling whirr repeatedly coming to life. 

CHA-CHING. CHA-CHING. CHA-CHING. 

At one point he pulled himself away from lighting money on fire and cornered me. He said he was rich and that he didn’t need to work. He breathed heavily through a gaping mouth. I couldn’t stop staring at the yellow in his front teeth. 

Outside over a cigarette, he leaned in closer, a few inches from my face. His breath smelled like cottage cheese.

“I’m pulling in 18 a month,” he said. “And I don’t do anything.” He told me he was cousins with the mob in New York. That's where he got his money, or some of it, or something. Again, these details are blurry. I blame the Coors. But I do remember him grinning like the Chesire Cat before paying for a few rounds of drinks with multiple hundred dollar bills. The mafia, you say? I had no choice but to believe him. 

There was another man sitting at the bar. This guy was a bit more put together. His name was Freddy, and he was the property manager at a luxury ranch "up the way, kind of near Big Sky." I enjoyed the simplicity of explaining directions in West Yellowstone. Freddy was a bit older than me, probably in his early 40s. As he complained about the current price of beef, I chimed in with how I thought the world was going nuts. (In case you don’t remember, “the world going nuts” was a go-to conversation topic in the summer of ‘21.) He agreed, and I learned that the name of his ranch was something fancy that referenced a wild animal. I imagined the lodge smelled like George W. Bush's house.

I thought about the room I’d booked at the Super 8 across the street, and decided to play my cards. Maybe this guy Freddy had an extra presidential suite available for the night, and this random guy could maybe stay there for free because, why not, this random guy seemed like a cool guy and might write a story about it someday.

"Buddy, I deal with the one percent of the one percent,” Freddy said, and I laughed. "Look man, I don't mean to be rude," he smiled as he continued. "But if you don't have at least 100 million dollars in your bank account, I won't even begin to have a conversation with you about staying at the ranch. So, do you have at least 100 million dollars in your bank account?"

Freddy slapped my back and went outside to smoke a cigarette. Fair enough. I did not have at least 100 million dollars in my bank account.

Mouse didn't have 100 million either, but he did have a lot of tales. They float through my memory almost dreamlike. We got lost in our conversation in ways that can only happen with strangers. He didn't tell me specifics about mistakes he'd made in life, but he didn't need to. His thick framed glasses made him look like an English professor, and he offered his own lessons. Oddly, he was also wearing maroon colored swim trunks. I never did get around to asking him about that sartorial decision. 

He told me that, the previous night, he “killed it” at karaoke. Apparently everyone in the bar was impressed, and he's the greatest drummer on planet earth. No shit, Mouse? Some of these claims were backed up by others sitting around the Nuthouse.

"You know, he's pretty talented," an elegant woman with white hair said, giving an air cheers in the general direction of a smiling Mouse. She was thin and chic and her jewelry suggested that she liked to come hang out with the riff raff, but probably spent her nights at the ranch up the way near Big Sky. Money dangled from her earlobes.

"Thanks sweetie, I love you too," Mouse replied. I don't think he was lying.

Hey Mouse, how many Dead shows did you attend?

"Somewhere between 220 and 240, depending how much I can remember on any given day." Then he erupted with laughter. Mouse really loved to laugh. A big, gregarious laugh that dominated the room. He seemed so genuinely happy – satisfied despite the bullshit he faced. Proudly grizzled. As he told his stories, he avoided nostalgia, but he did speak about how it used to be.

Mouse once hung out with Phil Lesh on a beach in California, and according to Mouse, Phil Lesh was a really nice guy. He let this story just slide out of his mouth without much context. I asked how he got to the beach with Phil Lesh in California. He said that it was just one of those things. Good enough for me, I suppose.

We went outside for another cigarette, laughing about this and that. Amidst it all, he punched me in the shoulder. “OK, let’s go! Check this out!” He lifted up his shirt. “MAMA TRIED” was tattooed across his stomach in all caps. “How about that?!” He grunted proudly, grinning the biggest grin of the night. I think he even pounded his chest. I learned it was one of his three Grateful Dead tattoos.

At that moment, I noticed another tattoo placed across his chest — it looked like someone’s name and a date, surrounded by a heart. I didn’t ask about that one.

Back inside the Nuthouse, we'd appropriately loaded up the jukebox with Dead songs. I asked him what the vibe was at the lot outside shows in those days. I felt like such a dork asking these questions, but this is important cultural history, damnit! And it’s tough to find extensive documentation of the fandom around the band – not the most reliable crowd, if you know what I mean. Word of mouth driven by word of mouth. A subculture of subcultures, sprawling out across all walks of life. Garcia once said something about how Deadheads represented every facet of American culture. You had your jocks, your punks, your freaks, your hippies. Hell, even Tucker Carlson has stories about taking acid at Dead shows in San Francisco. (I guess it didn’t work on him.) The point is that the tentacles really do reach their way into all corners of the elusive idea of America, and if you look hard enough, you’ll be rewarded. Seekers and wanderers, searching for meaning, experience, and connection. Ritualistic, almost religion. Pure, unaltered devotion.

The world’s biggest secret club, indeed. 

Mouse smiled at my innocent questions and musings. Then he got serious. Told me those days got “twisted, heavy, and strange.” He cocked his eyes as he delivered these clichés and didn’t say much more about the subject. He let his voice trail off, pausing for a moment as Jerry’s guitar crackled from the jukebox. It seemed like Mouse didn’t want to remember the details, despite wanting to tell me the details. 

"I just... I don't know, man. I wish I would've..." He wobbled a bit on his barstool. "I wish I would've known what I was doing. I was young, you know? I was 27 when Jerry died. And I wish I would've taken something from what... you know, the Grateful Dead are."

He emphasized that last word, placing his hands down on the bar to make his point. Or maybe he was catching his balance. Or maybe he was just remembering how it used to be.

"And put that forward in my life," he said. "I guess... Or, I don't know, man..." He trailed off. It was okay. We took a moment together. I stared at myself in the mirror behind the bar. I noticed dark circles under my eyes. My hair disheveled. My skin looked like leather. How the hell did I get here? We nodded at the bartender for some shots and I sipped another Coors. The mountains on my can matched the mountains out the window.

Mouse broke the silence. "You know, man, there was this period of time... I was... you know, I was just happy. I don't know. It lasted for five years. About ten years ago. This woman. We were together. We weren't married, but we were, you know what I mean? Don’t know what happened. Life, I guess…” I sipped my beer. Mouse continued: “I just wish I would've taken that time and pushed it forward…”

Then he took a long pause. He stretched his neck and shook his head, waking himself up from a dream of how it used to be.

"Man. Me?" He threw his arms out to the side. "I'm just Mouse, man!"

Then the familiar chords of "Bertha" kicked on the jukebox. “Oh man, I love this song!” Mouse shouted. He laughed his big laugh, told me to shut the fuck up, and started to play the air guitar.

This is a playlist inspired by Mouse.