by Bill Geist
We lunged for their bags, like monkeys at bananas, which startled and scared people, frankly, who hailed from mid-Missouri towns like Moberly and Versailles (the latter pronounced in American, exactly as it appears here).
If their luggage was still in the car, I ignored their insistence that they could fetch it without me, marching purposefully by their sides out to their cars. I might chime in with some chummy remark, commenting on the beautiful day (95 degrees with 80 percent humidity) or asking: “Where you folks from?”—to establish a bond, to ingratiate myself.
This could backfire, like the time I noticed a license plate holder that read “Parkhill Motors, Champaign, Illinois,” and I chirped enthusiastically, “Hey, I’m from Champaign!” whereupon the man snapped, “You are?!” slammed down the trunk, and sped off with his passenger, an attractive blond woman some thirty years his junior.
Once in a blue moon, a dad would walk in with luggage in hand and—Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!—an attractive young daughter in tow.
I’d step in front of him, blocking his path to the front desk, grab at the bags like a purse snatcher and ask in a rapid-fire blur: “Sleepwithyrdawtertdayfryasir?” just to see if I could pull it off. Dads would reply. “That’s okay. I’ll can do it myself,” or words to that effect.
Girls were always on our minds. More so, I would say, than boys were on girls’ minds. And certainly with more prurient interest. Why couldn’t we even up the hormone levels between the two genders so at least we’d all be on the same page?
Occasionally a couple of unaccompanied girls would check in together. Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! I’d see them to their room, then hustle back to the front desk to punch “off” the circuit breaker for their air conditioner. In seconds, their light on the bulky, aged black switchboard would glow and I’d push in the plug.
“Hello, front desk,” I’d say. “How may I be of service this afternoon?”
“Our air conditioner doesn’t work,” one of the girls would say. “We’re hot.” Indeed.
“Place cool washcloths on your chests…necks, rather…I’ll be right there,” I said with a sense of urgency and was off to the rescue. Sometimes I’d pick up John along the way because he was handsome. (It was my strategy to hang out with handsome guys, thinking they’d attract a lot of good-looking girls and I’d have a shot at some of the decent-looking leftovers. This didn’t really work, either.)
Our response time was pretty much dependent on the Hotness Index of the damsels in distress, the index based upon their physical attractiveness and “approachability.” If their Index reading was high, we might pick up a toolbox on the way. For credibility. With these two girls, we went that extra mile, stopping in the supply room to pick up a big, heavy, black, iron…thing, who knows what it was, and rolled it into their room on a hand truck.
“What’s that?” asked the blonde, slim-yet-somehow-still-curvy-with-the-face-of-an-angel.
“Sweet Jesus,” I thought to myself as I admired her, but apparently murmured audibly.
“What?” she asked.
“This?” I replied. “Oh this. This is the…the Kool-More, the Kool-More 5000,” I said, adding, “Would you like to come to our staff party at the pool tonight?”
“I think we’re going to the Ozark Opry,” said the brunette, who made Natalie Wood look like the Wicked Witch of the East.
While they discussed their options for the evening, John and I draped wires randomly from their air conditioner to the big, heavy, black, iron thing and started making electrical sounds such as “Bzzzzt, bzzzzt” and the like. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. The girls were puzzled.
“I think we got ’er!” I said proudly, then ran out of the room, up the stairs, hit the circuit breaker, and bounded back down to their room, breathless. “Working?” I asked.
“Yes!” said the brunette. “We can’t thank you enough.”
Well, actually you could, I thought, but settled for “Just happy to help out.”
They said “yes” to the pool party after I reminded them that the Opry did shows every night, failing to mention that our pool parties were also held on a near-nightly basis. In the hallway, John and I gave each other a smile and would certainly have given each other a high-five if such a thing existed.
The pool parties could get raucous. Ina Kay, a waitress, remembered a dishwasher who jumped off the fire escape thinking he was jumping into the pool but fell forty yards short, landing on the stone patio. And lived. She also remembered the night another waitress, Van, was tossed into the pool and her falsies floated to the surface. Boob jobs were still in the development stage.
About ten, our two girls with the air conditioner problem, the Goddesses of Ladue, strolled out to the pool, looking even more ravishing than before.
“Wow,” said Richard, more mature than John and me, a smooth, handsome ladies’ man from Kansas, who also bested us in status as one of the day desk clerks. Naturally, I began to worry.
But the two girls came straight to us, giving thanks once again for saving them from heatstroke. We spent the entire evening fetching them cold beers and acting fascinated with whatever the hell they were talking about: mascara, miniskirts, whatever it took.
And after all that, when they became tipsy and decided it was time to duck into the shadows and make out…it was not with us.
With Rich? No. Worse. With each other!
Damn! Ever hear of such a thing? Oh, sure, you have now. But in the early sixties? And these were attractive girls! They didn’t have to resort to such desperate measures.
I thought that after all the time and effort and beer we’d put into our relationships…this unrequited lust was terribly rude.
Was the world changing, or were these two just plain nuts? I hoped it was the latter. I certainly didn’t need more competition, did I? Jesus.
We didn’t have much experience with the likes of Them. Well, there was Mike, the son of Zoolena Ferguson, who ran the gift shop, but Mike was sort of beyond…He was tall and heavyset, like an NFL lineman, except he was given to wearing colorful, patterned muumuus with sandals that looked like he bought them at Bob’s Women’s Wear for Men. The muumuus billowed as he swished dramatically through the front door, making his entrance into the lobby as though coming out of the wings to take center stage at the Metropolitan Opera House. He was a drama king to be sure, sounding like Nathan Lane in The Birdcage even when he was merely ordering a tuna salad sandwich. Mike’s account of a trip to Carl’s Market to buy lunchmeat was as dramatic as Homer’s Odyssey.
I don’t recall any whispers or snide remarks about Mike’s proclivities. Funny about these Ozark folk, these presumed rednecks. You never heard racial slurs or nasty remarks about sexual preferences (beyond the occasional “light in the loafers”). Not the way you would in far more cosmopolitan St. Louis or Chicago. Now, you would hear Baptists badmouthing Methodists.
* * *
There would be further disappointments that summer on my journey to erase the ugly scar of virginity. As a young man you were made to feel like there was something terribly wrong with you, especially since most guys lied about their ages the first time they had sex by two, three, four, or five years! I felt like I should be wearing a scarlet “V.” I thought at one point that I had lost my virginity on Ed’s boat, only to look it up in Webster’s and find that, strictly defined, I had not.
A pair of older (mid-twenties) women checked in, experienced an air-conditioning malfunction and asked Wheezer and I during our repair call if we’d sleep with them. Knocked my socks, and pants, off! We didn’t even know their names, and I suspected they didn’t much care about ours, but guess what? We weren’t offended in the least.
I probably should have known this was too good to be true. There was something in the matter-of-fact tone of their request—as if they were asking for extra towels.
Still, we couldn’t whip off our black bellhop slacks fast enough. The women stripped to their underwear and looked mighty fine doing
it if I may say so. There were two single beds so it wasn’t immediately clear who would sleep with whom. But there would be no losers here.
Or so we thought. We slipped beneath the sheets and turned off the lights. At intervals, I’d hear Wheezer’s “date,” saying sweet nothings: “Go to sleep, now, let’s go to sleep.” My “date” was less vocal, physically warding off my advances by scooting toward her edge of the bed. She might have fallen off the edge to the floor but the room was too small. She was just sort of smashed up against the wall, worrying about splinters.
What the hell was going on? Could they be a couple of strict vocabulary-ists? When they asked if we’d like to “sleep” with them could that have been precisely what they meant?
In the morning, we woke early, dressed quickly, and were headed for the door when my bed partner stood, kissed me on the cheek, and said: “You were a perfect gentleman.”
Great.
* * *
Bellhops were expected to “sell” the rooms. Ed would call from home about four o’clock each afternoon to snap: “You full?” And you’d better be.
Families would typically pull up in front of the hotel and send Moms in on reconnaissance missions, which often included seeing the rooms before they signed.
The rooms on the first floor were the last to go. This was euphemistically called “the garden floor,” probably because of the green fungi, algae, molds, and various other scums thriving in the dank bathroom corners.
“Do you smell something?” a woman might ask as we walked down the hall. “No, ma’am,” I said firmly and falsely. “I don’t. Maybe it’s that new cleaning fluid the maids are using.” I was walking cautiously, not wanting to slip on the sweating linoleum floor. “Or it could be my pine forest aftershave.”
Looking inside she might next comment on the room’s coziness. “It’s so small.” And indeed occupants of the two beds could sleep holding hands.
“There are three of us,” she’d say.
“You know,” I said, charmingly, thoughtfully, placing my hand on my chin, “it’s funny. Four people stayed here for a week with a rollaway between the beds, and they loved it.”
That was…not true.
“Sounds good,” she said. “I’ll go get my family.”
And neither was that. Never saw the big, fat liar again.
* * *
The lake did not attract a well-heeled, cosmopolitan crowd. Rather, a lot of decidedly small-town, middle-class folks—and cheap you might say—who didn’t quite get tipping. Most had never used the services of a bellhop. They would tip waitresses, however, the standard 5 to 10 percent.
So, when I was carrying worn American Tourister luggage from a family’s Ford Falcon to their twelve-dollar room, I sensed that it was going to be like wringing blood from a stone.
You could see it in their blank looks after I set the bags down in their rooms. Early on in my bellhop career, I’d just walk out the door and curse the cheap bastards. But over time I learned not to give up. There’s always something more you can do.
I’d launch into a routine to give them more time to think: “Let me check to see if you have enough towels [more time], plenty of soap [more], the air conditioner is working properly [more], the TV [more], the lamp is functional [c’mon!]…the pool is down the hall and out the door [you’re killin’ me over here!]. The restaurant is open for breakfast…lunch…and dinner [even more]. If you need anything [idiots] my name is Bill, I’m working here this summer to make some [friggin’] money for college! [You stupid hayseeds!]”
If none of that worked I’d fold my arms across my chest and stare at them until hell froze over.
August, when the lodge was always full, was the best time for tips. A bellhop could go home with twenty dollars in tips from the day. But a couple of summers, right in the middle of August, a Purina animal feed mini-convention descended on the hotel and tipping pretty much came to a halt except for a few dimes and nickels. These were super hicks, people from small towns or no towns at all. We had to wear Purina red-and-white checked shirts. My dreams turned to nightmares when I saw those red-and-white checks in my sleep.
But we always had that dollar-a-day to fall back on.
* * *
Another role played by bellhops was protecting Puggy from assault by rightfully angry tourists. We released reserved rooms at 4:00 p.m. if the reservers had not shown up. Occasionally, we overbooked, so it became necessary for Puggy and me to set the lobby clock ahead from 3:45 to 4:00 p.m. Then sweat it out.
When the front door flew open at the real 3:55 p.m. we knew all hell was about to break loose. You could tell people had been driving like crazy to make the deadline. They were rattled. And sweaty.
The dad would step up to the desk and say, “Whew. Made it. I have a reservation.”
“What’s the name?”
“Shitoutofluck,” he’d say, or should have said.
“You’re Shitoutofluck?” Puggy would reply.
“Yes I am.”
Puggy would leaf through the reservation book, looking in vain for what, I did not know, but she appeared to be doing her level best to help.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Shitoutofluck, I’m afraid we released that room at four o’clock.”
“But it’s 3:55!” Shitoutofluck howled.
“Our clock says 4:05,” Puggy said pointing at the little hands on the little clock. “Sorry for the misunderstanding.”
“Do you have another room?”
“No, Mr. Shitoutofluck. Not for tonight.” And that was the truth. All forty-one rooms were rented and soldiers from Fort Leonard Wood had paid a nominal amount to sleep on the floor in the supply room
“Get me another room, close by. And nice!” he snarled.
“I’m afraid the closest vacancy would be in Jeff City,” she said, delivering that news softly, sweetly, gently. Then, Shitoutofluck would glare at me. At that moment he wanted to kill somebody with his bare hands and it might as well be some scrawny, pimply-faced, little jag like myself.
Chapter Eleven
The Pow Wow Room
The Pow Wow Pub had been the utilitarian, largely unused, no-real-purpose Pow Wow Room, until Uncle Ed magically managed to obtain a liquor license.
Previously, if dining customers wanted an alcoholic beverage they had to bring their own, then order “setups,” which were mixers, such as tonic, seltzer, Coke, or a glass of ice—paying almost as much for the setup as they’d pay anywhere else for the drink itself.
For certain favored customers, a waitress would take their drink orders and pass them along to Jim Chappell, who would duck down behind the front desk and do the bartending sight unseen. Ed wasn’t selling alcohol but figured there was no law against giving it away. Was there? Probably too late to do anything about it now.
I didn’t get it. People said it had something to do with Southern Baptists. Turned out lots of things around there did.
The Pow Wow Room was a plain, wood-paneled…room…furnished with a couple of rough-hewn knotty pine tables and chairs. It had a big old jukebox that contained many hit records, but alas would play but one, C-6, “Cool Jerk,” a highly danceable tune by the Capitols that went something like this: “Cool jerk…dah dah dah…cool jerk,” and so on. Ad nauseam. Annoying? Yes, yes it was. But some thought it imparted something of a bizarre Zen quality to our parties. Others, like me, argued that, no, it was more akin to the musical weaponry the FBI employed to dislodge criminals in prolonged standoffs when they couldn’t take it anymore.
Actually, if you got lucky, there was one other song it might play: “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love).” Know it? By the Swingin’ Medallions?
But, was it enough to sustain an indoor employee party on a rainy evening? Yes, it was, with enough Schlitz and Ten High. The Schlitz was free, which we obtained by pilferage from the back of a beer truck—in moderation, one case per visit when the driver was making his delivery. Somewhere along the way I’d learned not to be piggish when stealing, which
I realize is not, like, one of those commandments chiseled in stone, but it’s a pretty good corollary.
We thought we were pret-ty sly dogs pulling off the beer caper, but the driver noticed the second time we did it. Ed told us he knew what we were up to and said he should fire the entire three-man gang—one thief, two lookouts. But he didn’t. I think what stopped him was the nature of the stolen goods, i.e., beer. He knew we were too young to buy it and damnit! Teenagers need beer. Simple as that.
About the only others who used the Pow Wow Room were big-time country music stars. Legends who’d come up from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville for gigs at the local Austin Wood’s Opry. Austin was blind. We’d see his big Cadillac coming toward us on the highway and always say, “Little more to the right, Austin.”
Some of the stars were big, like legendary Roy Acuff, the “King of Country Music,” and Ernest Tubb, a pioneer of country music whose stature was completely lost on us. Odd, then, that I can recall every word of some of his hits, like “I’m Walkin’ the Floor over You.”
That was back when country music was purely by and for country folk, with yodeling, thick, syrupy, almost unintelligible accents, twangy slide guitars and fiddles. There was no country music radio north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Way before a scantily clad runway model from Canada doing crossover could be classified as a “country singer.”
Here, in deepest Missouri, you could hear the hard stuff on your radio: “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?,” “Dust on the Bible,” “I’ve Got Tears in My Ears from Lyin’ on My Back in My Bed While I Cry Over You,” “Drop Kick Me Jesus (Through the Goal Posts of Life).” Loved them all. The titles.
The Nashville stars would come back to the Lodge after a show, some still sporting rhinestone-encrusted jackets, looking like they’d been dipped in glue and rolled through the precious stones department at Woolworth’s.
