I first met Jack Silverton in October of 2017, two weeks after we held my mother's Celebration of Life at the church across the street from my childhood home. My wife and I had just moved back to Kellogg. We now lived in my childhood home. It was football season. When he walked into the red retro glow of the Inland Lounge, Jack Silverton wore Seahawks garb: a baseball cap, a T-shirt, and a Seahawk jacket. Somewhere he'd found Seahawk suspenders that held up his Lee denim jeans. It was a Sunday. Normally, the Inland Lounge is closed on Sundays, but Seahawk fans in Kellogg had talked Cas into opening the Lounge on game day during the NFL season.
The Seahawks game hadn't come on yet. Their game with the Raiders in London would start around 10 a.m. I sipped slowly on a peppery Sunday morning Bloody Mary. The Lounge wasn't very busy yet and Cas and I started talking about some books. Jack overheard us. He took a long draw on his bottle of Bud Lite and suddenly said, "You know, I'm not much of a reader, but one afternoon years ago I was in the Kopper Keg and this guy came in and we got to talkin'. He was a great guy. Told me lots of stories about him and his dog drivin' across the country in his camper. He told me about walking the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and then eating shrimp Lo Mein and wonton soup in Chinatown and playing poker on a riverboat on the Ohio River near New Albany, Indiana and his job in a hayfield near Minot, North Dakota and how he happened to be in Hibbing, MN and Bob Dylan played a free, surprise concert in a local junior high auditorium and how he partied with two gals at Quinn's Hot Springs in Montana and drank pitchers of pina coladas, a pitcher in each hand. And now, and the guy beamed when he said it, 'Here I am in the famous CdA Mining District.'
"It coulda been all bullshit he was telling me, but I say never get in the way of a bullshitter." Jack's eyes narrowed. "You learn a lot from people's bullshit. Hell, I know I'll never see this guy again, but I learned a lot from him, I mean about what he thinks, you know, about America and work and women. All kinds of stuff. Maybe he never did all that stuff he told me about, but I'll bet he wishes he did. I know a dreamer when I hear one.
"All these years have gone by, and I've been thinking, you know what? I think that guy was John Steinbeck. Yeah. No shit. John Steinbeck. You probably learned in high school that Steinbeck road tripped across the country. With his dog. Charley. This guy didn't tell me his dog's name. He never told me his name. He sure told great stories. I love to think that I might have been drinkin' beers and swappin' tales in the Kopper Keg with John Steinbeck. I mean, seriously, he won a Nobel Prize, you know. Oh yeah. In 1962. You can look it up. Unreal. I mean I'm just Mr. Nobody old Jack Silverton. Imagine me, spending an afternoon getting buzzed at the Kopper Keg with John Steinbeck. " He chuckled. Then his eyes widened. "He won a Pulitzer Prize, too. Back in 1940. I looked it up.
"But, I'll tell ya the greatest storyteller I ever read. Jimmy Buffett. Tales from Margaritaville. That's a great book. Man, he'll start tellin' one story and it goes for a while and then you'll be damned he starts another one and you kind of forget about the first one and before ya know it, he's back to the first one again and before ya know it again they are one story and he wraps 'em up. That book's got a subtitle and I liked it so much I memorized it. Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions. At first I thought it was just Jimmy bein', you know, clever, but I couldn't stop turnin' it over in my head.
"That's what John Steinbeck was feedin' me at the Kopper Keg. Fictional facts and factual fiction. A couple years ago, I did some readin' and askin' around about Bob Dylan and not once did I find any mention of him playin' a free concert in Hibbing, MN. But, you know, John Steinbeck told me about who came to that concert and those people were real and their love for Bob Dylan was real, I mean it was truthful, even if it never happened and they were never there. That's why I say always let a bullshitter tell his bullshit. He might be lyin' through his teeth, but somewhere in there, he's telling a truth. I like how Jimmy put it. Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions."
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