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wasn’t as dependent on the corporate types who came to scavenge at Kellogg. Wallace’s companies actually
lived
in, and mixed with, the community. In a Wallace bar like the 1313 Club, it wouldn’t be unusual to have two men in a heated argument over mining or even politics—the only thing remarkable would be that one man was a miner and the other a CEO.
    Those who live in them know that rivalries drive small towns. When boys morph into men, home territory becomes sacred. In the mining district, the battle over which sports teams were better
—
which town was bette
r—
sometimes turned intense. Parking-lot posturing frequently led to black eyes and petty vandalism, sometimes worse. One time a pack of boys wearing Kellogg Wildcats letter jackets took a baseball bat to the windows of a Wallace High School bus, leaving a row of jagged holes and a parking lot that glittered like a Vegas showgirl. The rivals were pretty evenly split in athletic prowess, allowing both towns to claim bragging rights. Most of the time, the Wallace Miners were the football team to beat, while the Wildcats had the upper hand in basketball.
    In the 1940s and 1950s, Wallace billed itself as “the richest little city in the world.” Kellogg would never dare such a Chamber of Commerce slogan. In fact, strangers knew Kellogg as the dirtiest town in America.
    C AREER S UNSHINE MINER C HARLIE C LAPP KNEW THAT HIS ROWDY son, Dennis, was a schoolyard fight away from a trip to St. Anthony’s, and he wasn’t about to let that happen. He moved his family from Wallace to Moon Gulch, seven miles from Kellogg. Dennis couldn’t have been more pissed off, or more dejected. Though only in sixth grade, he was a Wallace kid to his bones. Kellogg reeked. Heavy, leaden smoke ensnared the town. Not only did Uncle Bunk’s lead smelter put a gray lid over everything, but it encroached on every aspect of life—even those most sacred sports fields. The grounds staff made a valiant effort to keep the high school football field Foster Grant green, but to no avail. The smelter claimed the turf. The Kellogg track team had to huff and puff through smoke at home, and frequently did better on road trips outside the kill zone. Rivals hated playing on the Kellogg field of cocoa-powder dirt. Yet, for longtime residents, there was beauty in the discharge from the enormous smokestacks. It was a symbol of prosperity. Coming from poorer towns made it easier for most to shrug off the stink, or blink away the stinging air.
    Football saved Dennis Clapp’s childhood. At the time in a boy’s life when nothing matters more, the Wildcats were the better district football team. Miners’ sons battled on the barren Kellogg gridiron, dusting off and putting an end to disagreements their fathers had a mile underground. When Clapp graduated in 1967, he was a member of one of the biggest classes in Kellogg High history, with 299 classmates. And like many of his pals, Clapp took a temporary job at Sunshine while he contemplated what he’d do with his life. When summer ended, he just stayed put.
And why not?
He had cash in his pocket, and a cherry ’57 Chevy that he buffed to a mirror shine. By working underground, guys like Dennis Clapp had the opportunity to make serious cash.
    M INERS CHAFED A HEAVY BACK-AND-FORTH LINE BETWEEN THE mines in Butte, Montana, and those strung through the Coeur d’Alene Mining District. In hard times, when certain metal prices dipped low, companies cut back on crews and sent men packing for other, more viable operations. Labor disputes also sent miners from one place to another. Even so, men on both sides of the state line were fiercely loyal to their roots and to the guys who came from home. Coeur d’Alene men always thought they were better miners than those fellows from Butte. In Kellogg and Wallace, working three days in a row was known as a “Butte ringer,” as in “I got my Butte