Getting candid about decanters

Many people return from a Las Vegas trip with nothing more than the shirt on their back, but when Swede and Lois Goodheart returned from a trip to Nevada the couple brought back an item that would start a wonderful collection that would spill into the next 40 years and across their basement.

"It was the early 70's and I guess I was looking for a Christmas present for Swede, so I saw those, but I only got one," Lois recalls, pointing to six, 14-inch leprechauns full of Kentucky bourbon ... at least Lois thinks they are full.

"I have no idea really," she admits. "I was more of a wine person."

Ascending the stairs from the main floor of Lois' Malta home and into the basement, your eyes are immediately drawn to a handmade, wooden bar outlined with bright orange vinyl trim. In front of the bar are stools with the backs and seats sporting the same orange vinyl (one of the stools was an old telephone operator's chair Lois salvaged from her days as a switchboard operator in town and Lois and her friend of 70-years Helen Heck upholstered together.) The walls behind the bar are covered in deep grey barn wood and on the barn wood are several shelves housing much of the Goodheart bottle collection (which numbers over 100 bottles and is masterfully displayed around the cellar.)

Lois walks behind the bar and pulls a switch on a vintage Great Falls Select Beer clock making it hum to life. Next to the clock is a thermometer, a gift from the old Arcade Café in Malta which reads about 70 degrees in the basement. Above a glass display case on a wall in front of the bar, Lois flips another switch and an old Hamm's Beer advertisement lights up – the same way it did when it hung in the old Murphy's Bar for years – and the action of the display depicts moving water.

On one shelf sit bottles – little statues really – of Merriweather Lewis, William Clark, Sacagawea and two more members from the Corps of Discovery, all designed by Charles M. Russell. The shelf beneath the explorers holds bottles in the likenesses of a Rough Rider clad Theodore Roosevelt, General Armstrong Custer and three other tough looking hombres.

"We bought those sets in the 1980's," Lois said. "But it all started with the one I bought in Las Vegas as a Christmas present and it mushroomed from there. We just started collecting them and it was fun and interesting."

The collection – and the way it is displayed – has always been something the Goodhearts have taken pride in and once word got out to the public that the basement had been converted into somewhat of a bar and museum people started requesting tours at the family home.

"If they were republican, I'd show them the Democrat Donkey up there," Lois points to a decanter on the display case underneath the Hamm's sign. "And if they were republican, I'd show them the Republican Elephant over there."

One set of bottles is a miniature Northern Pacific train complete with engine, coal car, passenger car and caboose.

"Swede worked for the railroad for 25 years, so trains are a big deal to us," Lois said.

Near another wall in the basement sits a massive wooden display case hosting three shelves behind glass and half a dozen cabinets beneath. Atop the case, six different turkey decanters are perched after they "flew north," Lois says (meaning a relative from the south sent them to the Goodhearts). Behind the glass are decanters fashioned after Model T cars, livestock, cowboys and some that represent various events. Lois' favorite bottles of the collection are seven bottles made to look like telephones which give a visual history of how they changes from the late 1800's into the 1950's.

Mixed in with the decanter collection are various other novelties – beer cans representing the TV shows M.A.S.H and Dallas sit next to a can of Billy Beer produced by the President Jimmy Carter's colorful younger brother in the mid 1970's.

Though many of the bottles in the collection hold bourbon, Lois said she wasn't sure she liked the taste of the whiskey or not as she had never tried it and Swede wasn't much of a bourbon connoisseur either.

Swede passed in November of 2006 and since then Lois hasn't added many pieces to the collection. Among the many things Swede accomplished during his lifetime – including telegraph operator and enthusiast, World War II veteran and sports referee (he was inducted into the Montana Officials Association Hall of Fame) -- he was also a politician, serving on the City Council and as Mayor of Malta as well as representing Phillips County as a state senator and was appointed by Montana Gov. Tom Judge as a member of the first Coal Board of Montana. It was while Swede was away in Helena as a state senator that Lois got the bug to build the bar in the family basement.

"Every time he would come home (from the Senate) there would be something new because when he was away I didn't have anyone to answer to," Lois joked. "Nothing he could do about it and he liked it."