There may have been “no surprises” at the Holiday Inn down the road but, oh boy, there were surprises at Arrowhead Lodge, all right, with amenities and features unexpected and often unappreciated in these Ozark hills.
At Arrowhead, guests checking in were asked questions they weren’t prepared to answer: “Do you prefer the American Plan or the European Plan?”
“What?” they’d reply, and I’d explain that one plan includes meals and the other does not, without confessing that I myself wasn’t sure which was which since no one ever chose the one that did.
We didn’t ask if they’d be paying with cash or a credit card, because there really weren’t any credit cards. Not yet, leastwise not around these parts. (“You mean to tell me you just sign your name and they give you stuff?”)
Puggy, the chief desk clerk, would next say, “Billy, our bellhop, can help you with your bags,” and they might reply: “Billy our what?”
Bellhops. In the Ozarks?
“I can handle them myself,” they’d say, or words to that effect, but usually too late, after Puggy had handed me their room keys so they couldn’t gain access without me.
The keys themselves added to their state of confusion. Aunt Janet, tired of replacing room keys that parting guests forgot to return, had attached them to full-sized rubber tomahawks adorned with feathers.
By this point, the guests were rattled. For most this was their first interaction with a bellhop. We were probably the only ones between St. Louis and Kansas City. We wore uniforms of sorts: white shirts that we’d spray starched and ironed ourselves—hence the occasional brown burn marks of a rookie. Worn with black pants and black bow ties, the outfits weren’t elaborate to be sure but enough to suggest that we were hotel employees, not members of some luggage-snatching gang that hung out in lobbies, as some guests suspected.
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.