Unabomber
Page 31
A pack of curious dogs greets a visitor before an official welcome is offered by Chris Waits—mechanic, road builder, welder, well digger, logger, contractor, and hard rock miner—a man who’s practiced just about every trade and skill known around Lincoln, Montana.
As you enter the hand-built house of Chris and his wife Betty, it’s quickly apparent that you’re not visiting the typical single-minded Montanan. First to catch your eye is the massive bookcase, a 30-foot wall, ten feet high, stuffed with a library ranging from Old Testament translations to textbooks on metallurgy. Then there’s the computer workstation with all the latest accouterments. Just across the room is a grand piano with classical music scores marked and dog-eared from hours of practice.
“My pride and joy is the piano,” Waits says. He’s played since the age of three, mentored by his mother, a musician and piano teacher, who lives close by. To the musically inclined families of the greater Blackfoot Valley, Waits is known fondly as piano teacher, church organist, and host of recitals held at his converted auto repair shop he called the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
“I don’t know anything he can’t do and do well,” says close friend and Lincoln patriarch “Bobby” Didriksen, who serves with Waits on the local historical society board. “He can remember everything that’s ever said. You can have a conversation with Chris and then he can sit down and write it out, word for word.”
Waits’ intellect sneaks up when you least suspect it. In a discussion about Ted Kaczynski’s Spanish-written journals, Waits offhandedly mentions that he too is a student of Spanish…as well as of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
As you become acquainted with Waits it becomes clearer how for twenty-five years the brilliant, hermit math professor time and again gravitated toward the wealth of knowledge and thought that resides at the mouth of McClellan Gulch.
As an associate editor of the Independent Record, the daily newspaper in Helena, Dave Shors coordinated coverage of the Unabomber story when it broke in April 1996. His staff’s reports helped give the world its first view of the reclusive hermit.
Fascinated with Montana mining history, Shors had kicked around the Lincoln backcountry for years, photographing what’s left of the gold and silver mining era. These days he spends his weekends operating, with his wife Crystal, a quaint Helena antiques store that specializes in Montana lore and historical books.
A loyal customer of old books has been a colorful character from Lincoln named Chris Waits, who shares Shors’ interest in Montana history, particularly mining. In the spring of 1998, soon after Kaczynski entered his guilty plea, Waits was buying some books from Shors when their conversation turned to the Unabomber and the ordeal Waits had endured in helping the FBI with its investigation.
Talk about publishing a book ensued—Shors had just co-written and published an autobiography of a legendary Montana fly fisherman, Pat Barnes. Waits wasn’t much interested in working with a big city publisher, and he and Shors seemed to hit it off.
epub ISBN 978-1-56037-583-8
mobipocket ISBN 978-1-56037-584-5
paperback ISBN 1-56037-131-5
hardback ISBN 1-56037-139-0
© 1999 Farcountry Press
Text © 1999 Chris Waits
Printed in Canada
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means (with the exception of short quotes for the purpose of review) without the permission of the publisher.