Selling Sex in the Silver Valley

by Dr. Heather Branstetter

  “Yeah, he knows that I love him. And this is my job.”

  And they said, “We just put dollar signs in our eyeballs and go wham bam thank you ma’am when I stand in the boogie van.”

  And I go, “Oh, I see.” They were always trying to turn me out, you know. And I go, “You’ve seen my husband. [Clears throat] I don’t think so.” But I enjoyed working there. Boy the things you don’t learn. Weird people—not weird, you know it’s their choice, everybody likes something different, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

  Lux and Luxette calendar in 1978, after Dolores moved the Lux from 212½ Sixth Street to the Arment Building on the corner of Sixth and Cedar. Heather Branstetter collection.

  What kinda things?

  Oh, dear. Well we used to have one gentleman that come up every Monday, and he only wanted this one gal, Tammy was her name at the time. Nobody ever knew their real names. And we all called him “Ringa Hands,” and he’d be sitting in the parlor because there’s always one girl on call all night, you know, she has to be in makeup and all that. He’d sit there in that parlor and go like this: [rubs hands together nervously]. So we called him Ringa Hands. And he liked to be dressed in a diaper and powdered and [fed] a bottle. You know. Yeah.

  Wow. Every Monday, huh? Now was he local?

  I think so. I can’t remember where he lived or anything, you know.

  Did you know how many men were local versus how many came in from out of town?

  I knew the locals. Back then I used to know a lot of people because I tended bar for thirty-four years. I worked at the gas station also. I had three jobs. I worked for Gene Ussellman that had the old Metals for seventeen years.

  One day, this guy come up. Well, he was there when I got to work. One of the gals on the left-hand side of the hallway, she was with somebody. And this other guy was [just waiting] in this other room, and I thought, well, that’s strange.

  And I’d been to the grocery store, so I went to the kitchen and was putting shit away, and the madam goes, “Would you take this gentleman some iced tea?”

  I said, “Well, sure.”

  She says, “That’s our load man.” OK. And I come back to the kitchen. I sat down, and she goes, “You don’t know what a load man is, do you?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure I do.”

  “No you don’t.”

  I go, “OK, so I don’t. So tell me.”

  Oh, I don’t think you want to hear what it is, but—

  Yes, I do.

  Oh, no, you’ll puke. Well, this gal that’s with the guy, as soon as he comes in her, then she runs right across over there [to where the other guy was waiting] and that guy over there eats all of that out.

  Really? And they call him a load man.

  A load man. First load man I’d ever seen. Like I said, different strokes for different folks.

  And they could just pay for that.

  Oh yeah, they paid for everything. You don’t even get to look at a tit or nothing for nothing.

  Could they pay for anything, or were there some things that were off limits?

  No hurting, harming, you know, no anything like that. We used to have this big tall miner, he used to love it—this was at the Arment Rooms—when I’d come to work, because he’d buy the girls off the floor for the whole weekend. And he’d wait for me to come in, and he’d be hiding in one of those fucking rooms, just jump right out at me. He bought food from Albi’s—that’s when it was a good place—and always steaks and everything and always the bubble bath and all of that. Everything cost.

  And Albi’s delivered up there.

  Yep, and we would tip very well. In fact, I got all of the furniture I wanted out of the Arment Rooms when I came back from Kansas that time. I needed that. Kids got the sheets. Oh they didn’t screw in the sheets, though. Didn’t fornicate, excuse me.

  Did they screw on a blanket on top?

  They had a towel. A big, you know, beach towel, whatever. And then if they were bought off the floor for the night, then they could crawl in the sheets, but it cost extra.

  How much was it to buy someone off the floor?

  Depends on what you wanted, but most generally a hundred bucks. That was back then, you know.

  In the mid-1970s.

  To buy them off the floor was probably more than that, $150, maybe. I know a bubble bath was expensive.

  What was so great about the bubble bath?

  Well it was what you’d do in it, whatever you wanted, I guess.

  They [the girls] could go into the restaurants, but not the bars, you know. And they had to be off the street by five. And like I said, I tended bar also and people would get to talking about the girls and I’d put a stop to it: “You don’t know anything about those girls up there,” you know. “In fact, yeah, your husbands were probably just up there a while ago.” I never let anybody bash them. They did their job, and they did the best at what they knew how. Just like you do your best at your job. Everybody’s raised different, and thinks different, and nobody thinks the same.

  Did some people badmouth? What kind of things did they say?

  Oh just whores, sluts, pigs, whatever, you know. If my old man was going to cheat on me, I’d just as soon he’d a went upstairs, you know. At least they’re clean. They don’t got no disease or bugs.

  And was that the case, you never saw anyone with an STI or anything like that?

  If a guy had crabs or something, you’d just grab a bottle of Campho-Phenique and they’d just drown and you’d kill them right away, you know. But we’d sit and play pinochle on a slow night and when I’d day shift, I’d take the girls coffee in bed. They had to tip you every day and back then to take them to the airport in Spokane was fifty dollars and that was a lot of money back then.…

  How often did they go to the airport? Just for vacation?

  There was always the period time. They would go home a week off. They would work three on and one off, usually. And if the girls were working for a car, or whatever, then they would just stay and work. And they could, couple of them would just take birth control pills, stops your period. And sometimes they would just use a sponge, cosmetic sponge and the guys didn’t know it, that they were on their period.

  How many men did they sleep with in a night?

  Oh goodness sakes, it’s hard to tell. Some of them might sleep with just one. And some of them, it’s hard to say. I never really stopped to count it. But, if it’s the quickie, ten minutes or twenty, you could do quite a bit if the guy would pick you. And we had one little gal when she came back on work after her week off, she set herself at a goal for what she was going to make that week. And if she didn’t make it, holy shit, yeah she was not a happy camper and she was not a very nice person, you know. I’d say, “Well goddamnit, Jodie.”

  Do you remember what her goal was?

  One week it was like $1,400 or $1,500. Yeah.

  And do you remember if she met that goal?

  She did. She was the cutest, the most petite, beautiful little gal I ever seen. I said, “You ain’t no bigger than a pint of piss.”

  Do you remember much more about her?

  That she was married. That she had a little boy at the time.

  Do you know anything about her background?

  No. They didn’t talk a whole lot about their background and that stuff. We even had, well everybody knew that, one guy in town, I won’t mention any names, he married one of the girls and they lived here.

  Is she still around?

  No. And you could not work in one of the houses if you were from Shoshone County.

  Do you think they stayed longer than six months? If you were going to do an average, would it be like six months to a year here, or did some work longer than that?

  Yeah, six months to a year. Some stayed longer. But you kinda want them to change because it would get a little old. But that was back when it was booming here. You know, it was romping, stomping. God, we had the loggers, we had the railroad men, we had the CF [Consolidated Freight truck
] drivers because Osburn was their turnaround. We had the mine inspectors yowsa yowsa. And boy, oh, boy. It was nothing to do $500 or $600 on a day shift. And tending bar, you know. Back in the ’70s. And, oh, it will never be that way again. I always thought it would go one more time, you know. I always thought it would just boom, and now I’m too old to work it. Pretty interesting back then. I worked in a lot of places.

  “Gypsy” in 1971. Richard Caron Collection.

  How much did the houses take in each night?

  Dolores worked sixty-forty and some of the others worked seventy-thirty. Trying to think which way it went, can’t remember who kept what. Some of the houses had the little sinks in their rooms. The Oasis didn’t; they just had a tin dish pan and a pitcher with water in it to wash the guys down before they went to bed with them. And then they poured in that pan and when that pail got full they’d set it outside their door and I’d go dump it.

  I cooked one meal a day when I was working day shift, and the rest of the time they had to fend for themselves. You heard about that gal, there was a tour going through the Oasis, and this one gal asked the tour guide if she could go into this room. And she walked in and picked up this lamp and unscrewed the bottom of it, and this money come out....

  How much money was made in total?

  Oh, God, that’s something they would never—because each girl had their own little box with a lock on it and a slot in the top of it, where you’d put the money down and the timer on top of it. When the timer went off, you went and knocked on her door, but you didn’t know for sure. You could make an estimate amount. Like Jodie, probably in one night, probably $500 or more. She could make the money; lots of the girls could make good money. And it all depends on how you come across with the guys and stuff. You know that.

  Did most of them work seven days a week when they were on?

  Yes. For three weeks.

  That’s a lot of work.

  Yeah, I’m going, “Oh!”

  Did they ever complain about being sore?

  I had one complain. This one guy would come in the morning, and he always wanted a blowjob. And she says, “Them filthy sons a bitches they take a shit and they never wash their goddamn ass and blah blah blah.”

  Somebody had said something about it being too big, she goes, “Yeah, I’m going to go to the doctor and see if he’ll sew this fucking pussy right up.”

  Yeah there’s a couple of them that would get, you know, all depends on what they did and what they used.

  Did you feel like they enjoyed sex or was it mostly just a job?

  It was a job. They had to pretend, of course. Otherwise some guys would really get pissed you know. Like when you’d give them a blowjob. If they don’t think you’re swallowing that, they’re pissed. And they’d try to keep a napkin right by the pillowcase and they’d roll over, spit and drop it.

  Did you get the feeling like any of them weren’t there because they wanted to be? Were there times you felt like the girls had been coerced into doing the job?

  No. Not really. That was their job and most of them, I’m not going to say enjoyed it, but that was their way of making money. I don’t know that any of them had been coerced into it. Not that I noticed.… Couple of times, we’d sneak up there—[my daughter’s] dad and I had matching motorcycles—and we’d sneak them on a little ride. They were very interesting. They were very nice. And like I said, I met nicer women up there than I ever did in the bars.

  What about drug use? Everyone seems to want to know about that.

  You know there was some of them. I didn’t know anything about cocaine or meth or anything like that. Pot. There might have been a couple that smoked pot. They couldn’t do it in the house.

  You didn’t get the feeling like addiction was a real problem?

  I didn’t…but just mostly pot was all I was around.

  How long did you work in the houses?

  About seven years.

  How many women worked in the houses at one time?

  Usually, you’d have five, four on and one off. Some houses had just four and there would be three on, one off. Dolores did so much for the town. More than you even knew.…

  Do you remember other things about them, like where they came from, what kind of stuff they liked to do when they were off work?

  Jodie liked to go hiking with her boy and her husband. And Tammy wasn’t married, didn’t have any kids…just wanted that car like Steve McQueen’s in The Bullet. And I really liked Billie, the madam.

  And what was she like?

  Straight up, tell it like it is. Explained things to you very well.

  She walked with a cane and was small, petite?

  Yep. She was probably five [feet], four [inches], at the most. Maybe 115 or 110 [pounds]. Most often wore a turtleneck with long sleeves and pants to match.

  Do you remember violence? Did anyone ever experience violence?

  One time, a guy was going to hit a gal. And we got it stopped. She whammed him one and I got the cops up there. That’s all I remember.

  And the relationship with the cops was good?

  Oh yeah, they were always there to help if anything would go wrong. They would come up and have a cup of coffee, just bullshit, tell us how the night was going out on the streets.

  Did they ever expect services for free?

  Oh, no. Not that I know of. I couldn’t say that anyway. I just don’t think so. But maybe. Maybe. I never worked for the U&I. She wanted me to. She sent a guy down to the Oasis, and I said, “Now come on, tell me why you’re here. You don’t want a girl, you just want to sit here and bullshit with me or whatever.”

  So finally he goes, “Lee would like to talk to you.”

  So I said, “OK.” I go over there to talk to her, if I’m going to make more money, that’s where I’m going to go. And we talked for a little bit, Lee and I, and I said, “And what is the pay?”

  She goes, “Well, I’ll start you out at—” and I think she said $1.75 or something like that. And I said, “I don’t think so. You know what I can do, and you know I’m good at it. Don’t give me that. You know I’m well worth the two-something.” And I never went to her house.269

  TEMPORARY CLOSURE

  Newspaper accounts confirm the houses closed for a brief time in 1973. The New York Times even covered the story:

  Students at the University of Idaho referred to the U&I Rooms as the U of I, northern branch, and when the houses temporarily shut down in 1973, students at a football game let fly a banner that read: “Governor Andrus—Give Wallace Back its Houses.”270

  In 2010, Mayor Vester told me he’d heard that the state had closed the houses down: “Harry Magnuson and Hank Day were the two most influential people around here and on Saturday morning, they called down to Governor Andrus and said, ‘You run your end of the state, and we’ll run ours.’ The houses were back open on Monday. That’s the way the story goes, as I’ve heard it.”

  Newspaper article documenting the houses’ temporary closure in 1973. From the New York Times, November 5, 1973.

  Former judge Magnuson offered his insight on the legal status of prostitution in Wallace before and after this temporary closure, which was a result of a change in Idaho’s laws. Magnuson explained that this time signified a major shift in the madams’ approach to advertising and the town’s approach to regulating sex work.

  RICHARD MAGNUSON, ON THE LEGALITY OF

  PROSTITUTION IN WALLACE

  The following account is mainly excerpted from an interview that took place in 2010, but I fold in some information from a 2014 discussion as well.

  The laws are always in flux, because they change every two years with each new legislature. For years, Idaho laws had designated three kinds of towns: cities of the first class, cities of the second class, and villages. There might have been another class that was called “charter cities,” which Boise and Lewiston might have been. Cities are the creation of the legislature, and they only have those powers that are granted to th
em by the legislature. State laws are called statutes, and city laws are called ordinances. But since Idaho statehood, the law had been the same, more or less; it worked under basically the same system. It was tied in with the city police and city court. So there were fees and regulation—the madams filed twice a month and paid $150 a month to operate, which totaled $9,000 a year.

  After 1972 or 1973, the laws changed, so there was no longer a city court system in Idaho. They amended the statutes and redesignated cities. Up until this time, the law had provided cities of the second class (what Wallace was) the power to control prostitution—it was neither illegal nor legal in the eyes of the state, so whatever happened was determined by city ordinance. But everyone thinks they can improve on something, I guess, and shortly after 1972, the state legislature reached idiotic heights. They passed what was called “Model Penal Reform.” That was the statute catchphrase for it, at least, and it referred to criminal law. That phrase used those words for the rhetorical purpose of making it sound good.

  In 1972, the state legislature held committee meetings throughout the state. I was the only person to show up in Moscow to protest the reforms. But the state ended up passing this entirely new set of laws reclassifying everything, and for the first time, they made prostitution illegal, while legalizing adultery and lewd cohabitation, which before that had been crimes. As far as I could tell, the logic on this indicated that they didn’t feel that the act [of sex] itself should be illegal, just the exchange of money.

  But after six weeks there was a public outcry so much that the state legislature reconvened and passed all the old laws over again. According to some old provision, though, all of the laws had to be Xeroxed, and this guy thought he’d “pull a cutesy.” Through Xerox editing, he omitted the line about prostitution being lawful again. But then someone else took out the penalty. So for a while prostitution was unlawful but didn’t have a penalty, so there was no enforcement. They put the penalty provision back in around 1973 or so.