A Note from Room 108.

Victory, Montana is an ongoing story about a small town, the people who care for it, and the man who found it by getting lost on his way to Yellowstone.

I’m sitting in what used to be a room at the old Starlite Motel. The bed is gone, the air conditioner doesn’t work, and someone has pushed a desk against the wall. Somehow, that makes it part of Victory City Hall. More surprisingly, this is apparently where I work now.

That would be easier to explain if Victory were a city, the manager’s office were a hall, or we were actually in Victory. None of those things is true. The old Starlite sits just beyond the town limits.

My name is Tom Grady, though around here they call me Doc. Just as City Hall isn’t really a city hall, I’m not really a doctor.

Carol, who owns the Honey Badger, gave me the nickname. She also gave me the job of town historian. I’ll get to both later. For now, just know that when Carol asks you to do something, she’s not really asking.

I was meandering toward Yellowstone, taking in as much of Montana as I could, when I saw a sign for coffee and pulled into the Honey Badger.

I’m still here. The coffee was that delicious.

Victory is the kind of place that takes time to explain because it doesn’t show itself to you all at once. At first, it was simply an interesting little town where I intended to spend an hour.

Then I followed the river, visited the park and started talking to people.

The park was confusing from the beginning. On paper, it was Victory Town Park. However, the sign at the entrance said Victory Federal Park.

The trail map? You have to take it with a grain of salt. Usable, yes, but wildly inaccurate, and most of the trails weren’t on it at all.

I followed them anyway. Many led to places that would have been major attractions in almost any other park. In Victory, there were no signs pointing the way, no parking lots waiting at the end and usually nobody else around.

It was a park few people had ever heard of and even fewer had visited, but to the people of Victory, it seemed to be the reason the town was there.

A day became several. I talked to more people, followed more trails and kept finding reasons to stay one more night. Every answer uncovered another question, and nearly every ordinary thing seemed to have a story behind it.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking much about Yellowstone.

Yellowstone was where everybody went. Victory was something else. Yes, it was beautiful, but Montana has no shortage of beautiful. That wasn’t what kept me here.

Now, a year later, I’m a regular at the Honey Badger. That’s almost unavoidable in Victory. There isn’t much middle ground: you either haven’t been there yet or you’re a regular.

Once you’re a regular, you’re in Carol’s world. And once you’re in Carol’s world, people tend to find themselves being put to use.

That’s how I ended up here in Room 108, which I’ve since designated the Office of the Town Historian. Nobody cared.

There’s no salary, no title on the door and, as far as I know, no authority attached to the position. What I do have is a desk, a filing cabinet that doesn’t quite close and stacks of boxes filled with photographs, documents and maps, none of them arranged in any order I can understand.

It may not be as important as my last job, but for the life I have now, it suits me just fine.

My first task is figuring out Victory Federal Park. We have national parks, not federal parks. I’ve heard the quick explanation, but it only made me want the long one. I’m hoping the answer is in one of these boxes.

I’m going to learn Victory as I go and write down what I find. The town has everything towns have: ordinances, deeds and meeting minutes. What it doesn’t have? This—a written history. That’s what I’m supposed to leave for the people who come after.

That ought to keep me busy for a while.

For now, it’s enough to say that I may have found Victory by mistake.

I’m beginning to think staying here wasn’t one.