80's tune conjures grizzly memory

Whenever I hear Huey Lewis singing The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll, I see a grizzly bear.

He’s got his head up and he’s walking out of the timber toward me.

It was 1984 and I was working construction at the appropriately named Silver Tip Ranch which sits on Slough Creek just north of Yellowstone Park. The main lodge at the ranch was being extensively remodeled. I was building a stone chimney in the kitchen and had taken a break to visit with the carpenters, who were set up in front of the lodge.

They had the volume cranked up on the boom box and about the time I heard Huey sing: “But it’s still that same old back beat rhythm, that really drives ‘em wild,” somebody yelled: “Hey, look at that!”

And here came the bear.

It was mid-morning. We’d been working since eight, running saws and drills, hammering and shouting at each other. But the bear didn’t care. He sauntered across the pasture, sniffing the air, headed right for all the commotion.

“They say the heart o’ rock ‘n’ roll is still beating. And from what I’ve seen I believe ‘em.”

The grizzly came to within 50 yards of us, stopped, stared, then turned around and scampered back to the timber.

No one got a picture. We didn’t have cell phones back then. The bear simply became a memory.

Inside the lodge, hanging on the wall next to the huge fireplace, was a rifle that had belonged to Frenchy Duret, who had been killed by a grizzly bear dubbed Old Two Toes in 1922. The bear, carrying lead from Frenchy’s Winchester, and a trap on one foot, apparently survived the encounter and was never seen again. The trap was found years later miles away near the Yellowstone River.

We all knew the story. Everybody who worked at the ranch had heard it. Heck, the big meadow upstream from the lodge is named Frenchy’s Meadow.

I don’t think the sight of that grizzly approaching the lodge scared any of us even though there was a good chance he was a descendant of Old Two Toes himself. Maybe it was Huey Lewis rockin’ out on the boom box, but nobody ran inside. We just stood and stared and watched that bear, and I suspect, more than one of us was tapping his toe to the music.

“Now the old boy may be barely breathing, but the heart of rock ‘n’ roll, the heart of rock ‘n’ roll is still beating.”

Parker Heinlein is at

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