{"id":12809,"date":"2016-06-22T09:25:45","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T15:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=12809"},"modified":"2016-06-23T08:38:01","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T14:38:01","slug":"dogs-humans-to-gather-in-honor-of-walking-tom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/06\/dogs-humans-to-gather-in-honor-of-walking-tom\/","title":{"rendered":"Dogs, humans to gather in honor of ‘Walking Tom’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tom\"<\/a>

“Walking Tom” Weaver died Saturday in Red Lodge. He will be honored there Thursday night.<\/p><\/div>\n

Thursday night, many of the people and the dogs who considered Tom Weaver their friend will take to the sidewalks on either side of Broadway in downtown Red Lodge, to mark Weaver\u2019s death and to remember his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a pretty good friend of Tom\u2019s,\u201d Gordie Blevins said. \u201cI\u2019m not saying I was his best friend, but my dog was probably his best friend. My dog loved Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blevins is the owner of C.C. Legends, a gift shop at 113 S. Broadway. It was one of many stops for Weaver, who would walk up and down most of Broadway twice a day for at least the last 10 years, his pockets and a fanny pack stuffed with dog treats.<\/p>\n

Weaver, who became known as \u201cWalking Tom,\u201d died Saturday at 77 of heart failure, having earlier lived through two bouts of cancer and having struggled for years with chronic fatigue syndrome.<\/p>\n

Tera Reynolds, another friend of Weaver\u2019s, said all the dogs on his walking route knew exactly what time Weaver would pass by, twice a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019d be at the fence with their tails wagging,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Blevins said, Weaver had back trouble and didn\u2019t want to bend over to pet Blevins\u2019 border collie. So when Weaver walked into the store, the collie would stand up with her front paws on top of the counter, allowing Weaver to pet her and then give her a treat.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe preferred the rubdown more than the treats,\u201d Blevins said.<\/p>\n

Over at the Red Lodge Antique Mall, 101 Broadway, one of the employees was a good friend of Weaver\u2019s, too. He said he preferred to be identified only as \u201cSarge,\u201d the nickname everybody in Red Lodge knows him by anyway.<\/p>\n

He said Weaver, besides being so widely known for his love of dogs, \u201cbasically was walking Red Lodge history.\u201d Weaver grew up just south of town on Rock Creek, on land homesteaded by his mother\u2019s people. He worked as a heavy equipment operator but retired relatively early because of medical problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cRed Lodge became Tom\u2019s personal child, I guess you\u2019d say,\u201d Sarge said. \u201cHe did everything he could to help Red Lodge. He did everything he could to keep the peace between the rivalries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>He was also \u201ca real icon for Red Lodge,\u201d Sarge continued. \u201cI mean, tourists would say, \u2018Hey, where\u2019s the guy with the beret and the long, gray hair who feeds the dogs and fly fishes?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Tuesday morning, in fact, a British couple in the habit of visiting Red Lodge every two years stopped by the antique mall and asked about Weaver. They had been exchanging letters with him for years and had planned to go fishing with him on this latest visit.<\/p>\n

When they found out he had died just three days earlier, Sarge said, \u201cthey were heartbroken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weaver\u2019s most famous fishing partner was Ernest Hemingway. The great writer spent a lot of time in Red Lodge, Cooke City and the Beartooth Mountains. Weaver\u2019s father, Leland Stanford \u201cChub\u201d Weaver, was Hemingway\u2019s camp cook and guide, and a godfather to one of Hemingway\u2019s sons.<\/p>\n

Weaver talked often of fishing the Beartooths with his father and Hemingway. The Bozeman Chronicle reported<\/a> last year that Weaver told of his father\u2019s relationship with Hemingway in a 1999 documentary produced by KUSM, the public television station in Bozeman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018Walking Tom\u2019 Weaver Dog Walk\u201d scheduled for Thursday was cooked up by Sarge and Red Lodge resident Diane Dimich. Sarge told Dimich he didn\u2019t have time to promote it, so Dimich created a Facebook page<\/a> for the event.<\/p>\n

It will be simple enough: People and their dogs\u2014leashes, please\u2014are invited to stroll down Broadway on Thursday starting at 7 p.m., and to gather afterward in Pride Park at 12th Street and Broadway to share their recollections of Weaver.<\/p>\n

Dave Johnson, of Bridger, described Weaver as \u201cmy best friend for 20 years.\u201d He met him when Weaver was living in Fromberg for a decade or so and they stayed friends when Weaver moved back to Red Lodge about 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a guy who thought outside the box,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cAn old beatnik. That\u2019s what he called himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson is a contract bundle hauler for the Billings Gazette. He picks up about 1,200 newspapers at the Gazette and then drops them off for paper carriers all over Carbon County. He also drops bundles off at stores that sell papers and stocks newspaper vending machines.<\/p>\n

In 2004, when Johnson had problems with his back, Weaver took over the route for his friend until he recovered. Ever since then, Johnson would pick Weaver up late Saturday night, and they would drive to Billings to get papers and then make all his deliveries.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe rode with me over 500 times on Sundays,\u201d Johnson said, \u201cjust to help me out and then to bullshit. It made him feel useful.\u201d<\/p>\n

On those Sunday routes they\u2019d be in the car together for three hours. Weaver had a great sense of humor and liked to talk about everything under the sun. He was always reading a book, Johnson said, mostly on history and current events.<\/p>\n

In Red Lodge, Weaver lived alone in a small apartment over a house at Haggin Avenue and Sixth Street. \u201cHe just didn\u2019t have any money,\u201d Blevins said. \u201cHe was living pretty tight, but he was loving life.\u201d<\/p>\n

In nice weather he\u2019d start at the north end of Broadway and walk to the Red Box Car restaurant, at 13th and Broadway, then walk home on the other side of the street, twice a day. In the winter he\u2019d take a shorter walk, and since suffering a stroke a month ago he\u2019d drive his old GMC pickup with no reverse on it part way, then walk the rest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat old truck,\u201d Sarge said. \u201cI mean, he took it all over the Beartooths. He fished every lake in the Beartooths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said he\u2019d also drive the GMC up to Cooke City three or four times during the summer, staying for about a week each time. Up there he was Walking Tom, too, strolling through town with treats for every dog in sight.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe stood out in a crowd, that\u2019s for sure, in looks and personality,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

In addition to his twice-daily walks, he made regular visits to his favorite taverns, including Sam\u2019s Taproom at Red Lodge Ales, Foster & Logan\u2019s Pub and Grill, the Pub at the Pollard and the Front. Next week, Sarge said, some friends are hoping to throw a pub crawl in Weaver\u2019s honor.<\/p>\n

Tera Reynolds said she served as Weaver\u2019s treasurer when he ran for mayor in 2013. In his only bid for office, he lost to Ed Williams, who recently resigned part way through his second term. Sarge said Weaver just wanted to \u201cstir the pot and make people think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reynolds said Weaver was an old-school liberal, but he was something like Donald Trump, in a good way. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t brash and rude, but he was a complete outsider,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And outside is where he wanted to be after he died.<\/p>\n

Many years ago, Johnson said, Weaver took him and another friend, Nick Carpenter, to a lake in the Beartooths where he\u2019d scattered his mother\u2019s ashes, and where he wanted his own to be scattered.<\/p>\n

Carpenter died before Weaver did, Johnson said, \u201cso I\u2019m the only person who remembers where that is.\u201d<\/p>\n

He intends to honor his friend\u2019s request.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday night, many of the people and the dogs who considered Tom Weaver their friend will take to the sidewalks on either side of Broadway in downtown Red Lodge, to mark Weaver\u2019s death and to remember his life. \u201cI was a pretty good friend of Tom\u2019s,\u201d Gordie Blevins said. \u201cI\u2019m not saying I was his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[4567,4566,4536,4297,4565,386,4563,4564],"class_list":["post-12809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-c-c-legends","tag-dave-johnson","tag-diane-dimich","tag-ernest-hemingway","tag-gordie-blevins","tag-red-lodge","tag-red-lodge-antique-mall","tag-tom-weaver","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}