Don’t quit your daydreaming job

At the University of Montana in the late 1970s, Pete Fromm admits he wasn’t a great student. Consumed by the mountain man stories he’d absorbed as a youth, he much preferred adventure and daydreaming.

In his last year of school, Fromm found he was three credits short of a degree. He needed a class, fast. Flipping through the course catalog and keeping in mind his requirement for a nighttime class (that’s the thing about daydreaming, it takes the day), his eye fell on creative writing, taught by Bill Kittredge. 

This happenstance, described during this month’s History Book Club meeting at the Northwest Montana History Museum, put Fromm the writer in the spotlight as a guest while readers also discussed his work.  

With a focus on regional history, the club sometimes is lucky to have authors present when their books are featured. Dozens of Flathead Valley readers turned up for stories in person from the trim Missoula writer sporting a Keep It Wild! T-shirt and a gray horseshoe moustache. 

Fromm jumped up to act out that first class. Kittredge had failed to show. The students rustled and conferred, then started to discuss leaving. At last Kittredge stumbled in. Fromm leaned heavily against the museum’s 1880s back bar, and you could almost see an imaginary cigarette angling out of his mouth as he embodied the venerable author and longtime professor. 

Taking a long look around at this new crop of students, Kittredge slowly shook his head, reached for the door, and said, “Not tonight.” 

Fromm sat down with us and said, “I knew I had found my class.” 

Workshopping stories through the course and taking note of classmates’ lively response to his stories, Fromm took heart in ideas with wings, and the practicality of writing: “It was free. You didn’t have to buy tools.” 

He didn’t immediately take the leap. Fromm remembered Kittredge pulling him aside to say, “I don’t know what your plans are, but you could do this for a living.” Instead, he became a park ranger.  

Eventually Fromm made it back to writing, producing short stories, novels, memoirs and a screenplay. Most of the book club readers knew him via “Indian Creek Chronicles,” which tells of Fromm’s seven months living in a tent in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, where the contemporary mountain man “babysat fish eggs.”  

Fromm said, “My job took five minutes a day so I had a lot of time to figure stuff out,” including that “those mountain man books are full of it. They never get cold. They drink enough whiskey to pickle an ox.” 

Reality isn’t Fromm’s favorite inspiration. He said, “I didn’t really want to write those two nonfiction books because they’re about me — I already know what happens.” 

Imagination has had some hard knocks recently. The verb form was struck from the name of our county’s library system, where patrons no longer read as freely. 

It’s hard to resist stories. Well-told tales and keen observation fuel the power and possibility of imagination. Fromm credits parental encouragement, saying his dad “read to us until we were in our teens and it got embarrassing.”  

Fromm’s words have since connected with generations of readers worldwide.  

Daydreaming pays off. 

Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at mdavis@dailyinterlake.com.