Warm Springs

Many years ago, a sheet metal worker on a construction project I was working on told me about when he had spent a few months installing ducts at a place we euphemistically called “Warm Springs.” Technically, it’s the Montana State Hospital, the state’s psychiatric hospital. We indelicately called it the “insane asylum” or “looney bin” back when I was just learning to tie my shoes (which took a while, if you must know). Adults called the hospital Warm Springs because that’s the unincorporated community in which the hospital is located.

On a side note, any time I irritated my mother with my boyhood fidgeting, endless questions, or accidents, my mother would chide in exasperation, “You’re going to drive me to Warm Springs if you don’t knock that off!”

At any rate, Joe, the sheet metal guy, said he witnessed a lot of weird goings-on, as you might expect. One day, he got a terrible fright. As he passed by a window, he happened to see one of the male patients sitting outside. As he watched, the man pulled a plastic bag over his face and clamped it around his neck with both hands.

“I was sure the guy was trying to kill himself,” Joe said. “So, I ran down the hall to tell one of the hospital staff.”

Joe had a stutter, especially when excited. After mostly sputtering out an attempt to explain what he saw, he more or less led the staff member outside and pointed to the patient, who still had the bag over his head.

The man from the hospital visibly relaxed when he saw the man with the bag over his head. “Oh, that. He does that all the time. No worries. He doesn’t like the wind on his face.”

—Mitchell Hegman