Page 52 - Flathead Living // Spring 2016

YAAK
John Runkle, owner of the Dirty Shame Saloon along Yaak River Road.
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DIRTY SHAME SALOON
with the diminished saloon crowds. Then in 2011, Belcher pleaded guilty to molesting two young girls in Mary- land. The Dirty Shame went into fore- closure, and Runkle purchased it in 2013 with his friend Ray Falzone, who he’d met 30 years earlier when they were both paratroopers for the 509th Air-
borne Battalion combat team.
After a brutal winter during which
temperatures plummeted to 31 degrees below zero, Falzone decided he pre- ferred the warm climates of Las Vegas and sold his share to Runkle.
“So now I own two-thirds of Yaak’s businesses,” Runkle says. “I’m a big sh in a mud puddle.”
His math isn’t fully accurate, but close enough. The only other business in Yaak proper is the Yaak River Tavern and Mercantile across the street. Runkle and the Yaak River Tavern’s owner are engaged in a land dispute that has reached the Montana Supreme Court.
“We’re the only bars within 50 miles
JOHN RUNKLE DOESN’T shoot balls o the pool table with a .357 magnum like a previous Dirty Shame Saloon owner did, nor does he drink much. Someone has to have a clear head when things get rowdy. Not to mention, at his age, sobriety might be his best weapon if he gets caught up in the mayhem.
“I’m a big guy, but I’m 54,” Runkle says. “My only advantage over a 25-year-old is that he’s drunk and I’m not.”
Runkle’s bar bills itself as the “World Famous Dirty Shame Saloon.” While it may not be the same kind of tourist draw as, say, Glacier National Park, it
does attract a certain adventure seeker willing to make a trip to the remote northwest Montana community of Yaak. If you’re not arriving to hunt or visit family, you’re likely there for the Dirty Shame.
“It’s the draw in the Yaak,” Runkle says. “It’s the famous bar.”
In 2006, a teetotaling Episcopalian priest named Don Belcher and his wife bought the Dirty Shame from Rick Car- sello. Runkle said the Belchers made changes, such as a two-beer maximum limit, that drove people away. The occu- pancy rate at Runkle’s nearby hunting getaway, Yaak River Lodge, fell in step
50 FLATHEAD LIVING S SPRING 2016