Selling Sex in the Silver Valley
Page 10
Ginger was a case and a half! Great personality, outgoing and funny, Ginger knew how to have fun—all the time....
The Jade Rooms: Madam—Loma Delmonte. A heavyset woman, Loma had a filthy mouth when she was upset, which was quite often. When her street door opened, she would pull the curtain away on the door at the top of the stairs to see who and what was going on. If you were a customer, fine. If you were merely moving off the street to avoid being seen whilst you took a whiz, the upper door was opened and you were treated to the most vile dressing down you ever heard. While she was cussing you and delving into your momma’s history, we would be called. Many times we arrived while the wrong doer was standing in the doorway with his mouth open in amazement and his whizzer still in his hand. I still laugh when I think about that. Not only did he get a superior chewing out, he got arrested too—you guessed it—“Disturbing the Peace.”...
Matchbooks advertising the houses. John Hansen Collection; photo by Heather Branstetter.
The brothels’ matchbooks also featured revealing photos. John Hansen Collection; photo by Heather Branstetter.
One of the most interesting stories about Loma was in 1958, she bought a Lincoln Continental Mark III. She went to Spokane, to Empire Lincoln Motors and placed the order for her new car. The new car had to be painted the exact color of a pink hairbrush she carried with her....
“The girls” were, for the most part, good neighbors. Some had college educations, some had very little formal schooling. One thing they had in common is that they filled a very special need in the community....
Other than creating conversation about the time “when,” I think the need for “the girls” is just as strong now as it ever has been. I miss them. I miss knowing they were there taking care of business. They were a part of town. In some cases, the best part—that part that takes the cutting edge off humanity. Think about it!
“LOOK ON THE SUNNY SIDE”:
THE OASIS BORDELLO MUSEUM COLLECTION
The following notes and letters are from the files of the Oasis Bordello Museum. Darlene Murphy, who preferred to be called “Ginger,” began running the Oasis Rooms in 1963. Documents confirm that she bought the Arment Rooms in 1966 for $19,080 and hired women to help her manage it while she spent the majority of her time at the Oasis Rooms.234 The letters featured here are edited to protect privacy. I have tried to reproduce the language in a way that is as faithful as possible to the original documents, which were written by hand. They reveal a more personal and intimate look at life in the houses.
The following two letters were addressed to Ginger. The first was from a woman who used to work for her, and the second was from a woman who had just received a job offer from her. Both letters indicate a great deal of respect, admiration and love for the Oasis owner and manager.
November 9, 1982
Dear Ginger,
Just these few lines to let you know that you have been in our thoughts and prayers. I also hope that this letter finds you and yours all in great health and spirits.
I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write you but it just seems as though everything just happened so suddenly that I haven’t had much time for myself lately. I hope you understand.
Thank you so very much for the beautiful flowers you sent. My mother just couldn’t get over them and it really meant and still means a lot to her....
As for me I’m still working and keeping myself very busy with that and of course my animals take a lot of my time too, which I don’t mind at all, they have all been a great comfort for me.
So how’s life been treating my favorite and dear friend?
I hope that all is well with you, by the way how are your little ones doing? (your kids/dogs)
Could you please thank the girls for the nice card they sent for me. I’d do it but after I finish this letter to you I need to send out some cards for my mother and that’s not going to be easy.
Ginger thank you also for being there when I really needed someone. I love you for that, but I love you more for the many, many things you taught me while I was up there. You’ll always have a very special place in my heart forever.
Gotta run now but I’m hoping to hear from you soon cause I’d love to keep in touch with you.
Loving thoughts and warmth from my heart always,
[name redacted]
P.S. Thank you so very much for all that you have ever done for me. Love ya bunches!
[Postmarked July 10, 1984]
Dear Ginger
How are you doing? I hope this letter finds you in the very best of health.
I must admit that I was happy when I heard that you were trying to get in touch with me, because your job offer may be very important at this time in my life. I came back to San Francisco to bury my mother and having done so I am prepared to leave again and probably never return. In the last three years I have tried a number of things in a search for something permanent but I have discovered that there is nothing that suits me more than being around a house.
Another thing is that me and my man have been together 16 years and we both are ready to find a home not a place. We both knew that we are not getting any younger and it’s time to settle down to do something with at least a promise of stability. I don’t expect you to tell me that I have a permanent job without finding out how I am going to work out but if staying there is dependent on my willingness to learn, my ability to do my job and my sincerity, then I will have no problem in satisfying you. I am very interested in finding out what you have in mind.
At this I am working [as] a maid in Nevada, there is no problem leaving. But I would like to have a idea of the position Ginger. Let me knew, and I will call you and let you knew my time and date that I’ll be at the door.
Love Always
[name redacted]
A woman who called herself “Casey” was one of the last girls working at the Oasis. She was well liked, according to a research participant who was one of her many admirers.235 In the museum, her room was preserved and little bits of her life remain, including a pencil drawing of her face signed by someone named Mike. Her room also features a little wooden sign that says, “IN GOD WE TRUST—ALL OTHERS PAY CASH!” A trucker sent her the following two letters:
8-10-86—Sunday Morning—Rain—
Casey;
A short note to say how much I’ve enjoyed your company the last few months, we had some good some bad but they go together like us.
This morning will be extra hard for me because I’ll have to let you go back, but it will all work out I’m sure, we will see more of one another in the very near future. So don’t think that I’m not thinking about you all the time, the ring is small and so are you, but the love you have inside is quite large and will hold for a long time. So do me and you a large favor. Stay the way you are and remember I also love you too. Take good care of yourself and don’t let mom get under your skin.
I’ll see you soon if possible.
Love [name redacted]
“Be Good” [quotation marks in original letter]
try [added as though it were an afterthought to the instruction to be good]
Drawing of Casey by Mike. Oasis Bordello Museum display; photo by Heather Branstetter.
Sign in Casey’s room. Oasis Bordello Museum display; photo by Heather Branstetter.
8-19-86
Tuesday Night
Casey,
Here I am again in Bed Bugger Heaven. Detroit, Mi. [Omitted: many details about shipments in a variety of cities throughout the East and Southeast. He urges her to remember Nashville, Tennessee—“good time!”]
I never sent any cards to the house in Salt Lake City, I’m not sure mom would like that, you know how long it’s been since I’ve written to anyone. (Long time). Tonight just isn’t right your not here watching T.V. in the truck, sure is real different with out you. I guess you were right about me being Spoiled! O’ Shit I sat down to supper tonight and had Spaget—sure I almost order a Ruebon Sourdwetd. I talk
ed to dispatch and I might be able to line up a load to Spokane or Seattle not for sure yet! but I’m working on it. I don’t have a P.O. Box yet but I will soon. The truck seem to be running o.k. I hope the flight was ok. I’d have give anything to see the look on mom’s face. You know it’s almost my bed time 9:00 P.M. So for now, take good care of yourself. Ok. I miss you a lot. I’ll write later,
[name redacted]
P.S. Say Hi to Ginger
This letter, featuring a Seattle postmark, was from a different man writing to three women who worked at the Oasis.
April 16, 1984
Dear [names redacted],
The time I spent with you last Thursday night and Friday morning was like heaven. If it wasen’t for this physical nuisance I’ve contracted I’d swear I was dreaming. Thank you so much for the idealic [sic] vacation. See you again this summer.
Love,
[name redacted]
A woman who worked at the Oasis during the 1980s left a small notebook behind in a drawer in one of the rooms. It contains phone numbers, times, city names and a few scattered phrases, including the sentiment that “at least my kids will make me happy I knew that they really do love me. I love them to they don’t expect anything from me they love me for just myself and that’s a good feeling.”
Ginger’s room at the Oasis offers a partial window into her system of values. On the dresser sits an empty bottle of Black Velvet whiskey and a book about Nostradamus beneath a poster showing two birds flying under the sun. A poem on the poster instructs, “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” There is also a framed comic that portrays a woman dressed in red, cleavage for miles, holding a cigarette as she tells a police officer, “Well, I would have reported it sooner sergeant…but I didn’t know I’d been raped till the check bounced!” The documents reproduced below were written in Ginger’s elegant handwriting. They appear to be personal reminders and/or instructions for the girls. Although Ginger was not known for being very religious, these documents indicate Christian beliefs.
By Reverend Dr. Gaines Sun. April 20, 1980
Look on the Sunny Side
There are always two sides
The Good and the bad.
The Dark and the Light
The Sad and the Glad
But in looking back over the good and the bad
We are aware of the number of good things we’ve had
And in counting our blessings
We find when we’re through
We’ve no reason at all to complain or be blue
So thank God for good things
He’s already done
And be grateful to Him for the battles you have won
And know that the same God who helped you before
Is ready and willing to help you once more.
Daily Prayer
Lord, when we are wrong,
Make us willing to change;
And when we are right,
Make us easy to live with.
Read written prayers—say Lord’s Prayer
Read Scriptures:
1st John 2:13–17; 4:4–6
Matt. 6:24
James 1:13–15, 20–27
14th Chapter St. John
Joshua 2:1–22
Hebrews chapter 11
2nd Samuel 18:18
Proverbs 15:8, 11:29, 1:7, 3:35, 1:32 Psalms 121
Proverbs 3:5, 6
Matt. 6:9–13, 24:36–42
1 Corinthians 13:5, 6, & 7
Psalms 46:1, 28:8–9, 119:105
Matt. 5:15, 16
SHOSHONE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE FILES
Until 1973, the women who came into town to work in the brothels were fingerprinted and photographed by the Shoshone County Sheriff ’s Office (SCSO), which then ran a background check. Police worked together with the madams to look into the histories of the women and their connections. They kept physical records in filing folders containing rap sheets with photos, birthdates, aliases and ephemera such as newspaper articles inserted alongside the rap sheets. These files show that some of women who worked in Wallace’s houses began selling sex after suffering incest, abuse, sexual assault or an unstable home life growing up. They also reveal evidence of the profession’s mental health and substance abuse hazards. It is important to recognize that the women featured here are in some ways different from the majority of the women who worked in Wallace—the sex workers who led more “normal” lives are not as visible because their files are not as attention grabbing as the exceptional ones. Inevitably, the records offering the richest information focus on the negative aspects of sex work and its intersection with criminality.
The rest of this chapter provides a brief snapshot of only a few of the 531 women who appear in the SCSO records from 1952 to 1973. As I surveyed what turned out to be in excess of two thousand pages, I looked for patterns and made note of trends. The women worked on what was known as “the circuit,” moving into and out of town in a transient way, traveling from one town to another like many of the miners did, and the files document other cities on the circuit. In part, the women moved frequently to ensure variety for the customers (“fresh inventory,” as one of my research participants crudely explained). The files also reveal rates of turnover within the houses during this time. One remarkable case, which I discuss in some depth, includes an intake form and personal history sent from a mental hospital in Nevada, where the woman had been committed.
Police officers made notes in the files as they evaluated the women from the perspective of “what kind of trouble might she cause for us?” While these records offer only an incomplete and slanted picture of Wallace’s sex workers’ lives, they also fill important gaps that don’t appear in the oral histories, which are featured in the last part of this book. The police were working with the madams in a collaborative way; they exchanged information to manage the industry together.
“Do not let back in town,” “Not to return to Wallace,” “Told to check out” or “Keep out” were the most common notations written in the files—these phrases indicated flagrant disobedience of the madams’ or town’s unwritten rules of discretion. One woman, for example, was “told to check out” after two weeks, following a night when she got drunk at Sweets, a local bar.236 The madams were strict about preventing the women from patronizing the bars, mainly because they wanted to avoid the perception that the women solicited on the streets. Some women earned the label “pillhead” or were “chased out for good, supposed to be on drugs.”237 They were evicted and prevented from returning to work in Wallace if they engaged in behavior like stealing the madam’s credit card or trying to “roll [rob] a guy.”238 Other common descriptions included “Trouble” or “watch out for this one.”239 One woman earned the label of “lesbian” after a police officer saw her kissing another woman at the Stein Bar, and she was noted to have “all the potential for a real trouble maker.”240 Her file reveals that eventually she married a man who was a miner from Kellogg.241
So many of the files contain patronizing language alongside matter-of-fact and sometimes brutal assessments of the women’s appearance or character. In more than a few cases, there is a tinge of voyeurism in the commentary by the police officers in the notations. The files provoke visions of the women finishing their intake interviews with the madams before walking down the street to the sheriff ’s office for processing, where the officers relish their own personal preview of the incoming women as they take mug shots and fingerprints.
“Kim” in 1955. Scan slightly altered to enlarge photo and hide full name; Shoshone County Sheriff ’s Office Files, Wallace District Mining Museum Archives.
Wallace’s pre-1973 regulation model would not be considered “decriminalization” by contemporary sex worker standards. Despite its entanglement with the criminal justice system, Wallace’s pre-1973 system would more commonly be called “legalization” because it tracked the women by fingerprints and photographs. Not
only are these kinds of regulatory practices invasive, but they also discourage compliance. The continuing stigma associated with prostitution makes such a system risky for sex workers. What if the laws change? What if a woman studying the history of prostitution in her hometown goes through the records fifty years later, when you are happily married to someone who never knew you were a whore, and now your past is coming back to haunt you? From a pragmatic perspective, it doesn’t appear to have been necessary to involve the police in regulating prostitution. The system apparently evolved the way it did because of a combination of convenience and politics.
Police regulation ended in 1973 because Idaho’s state law changed, effectively criminalizing Wallace’s system, which before had not been illegal in the eyes of the state.242 Sex workers continued to receive doctor’s checkups, but around this time, police participation in the regulation appears to have ended. The legal changes relevant to Wallace’s brothels concerned prostitution’s criminality and punishment. The revised laws prohibited “interstate trafficking in prostitution,” which forbade women from entering Idaho for the purpose of sex work; “accepting earnings of prostitution,” which applied to the local government, schools, madams and police; and “harboring prostitutes,” which outlawed brothels.243 Laws specifically criminalizing prostitution and “patronizing a prostitute” appear to have been absent until a 1977 revision.244
In many parts of Nevada, where the culture of symbiosis connecting mining to sex work was much like Wallace’s, prostitution was legal and remains so. The SCSO records indicate that there were many other towns across the West on the circuit, and they reveal that about one-fifth of the women working in the houses during this time also rotated between houses while they were in Wallace. Some women came to Wallace from as far away as Florida, Texas and Illinois, while others were immigrants or characterized as “runaways.” By looking at the notes on the rap sheets, it is possible to see which other towns also decriminalized prostitution: if the charge was “inv” or “venereal control” or sometimes “prost.” and the disposition was “fingerprinted, mugged, and released” (often shortened to fmr), it meant that prostitution was regulated in those towns. Montana seems to have been particularly permissive: Butte was well known for its illicit yet tolerated prostitution until 1982, and the records indicate that Great Falls also regulated illegal sex work well into the latter half of the twentieth century.245