Mountain Lake Tavern was the rowdy spot

Preface: This collection of vignettes is a chapter from my childhood memoir that spans the period from 1950 to 1964 when my parents, Bill and Anne Haug, owned a bar on Bigfork’s Electric Avenue.

If Mom and Dad were drinking on a weekend night, they each took one of my hands and we walked up the street to the Hotel Bar. As we walked past the Mountain Lake Tavern, the raucous noise was spilling out into the street through the always-open front door. “Come on in, Bill; I’ll buy you a drink!” Louis Richardson (the owner) would shout, but Dad just waved him off.

“How come we don’t go in there, Dad?”  

“Hmpf! It’s not a place for little girls and good women,” he replied.  

“But, why, Daddy?”  

He looked at Mom. Just then an old logger came out with his arm around the waist of a younger woman, laughing and staggering towards his old pickup.  Mom bent down toward me and whispered, “I’ll tell you later.”

I caught a glimpse of the bar through the open door. Men and women were packed at the bar on the left side of the room, some leaning on their arms wherever they could find room amidst all the glasses, bottles and full ashtrays.  The floor was littered with cigarette wrappers, spent filters, spilt drinks. Music was blaring from the jukebox. Two old men were playing cribbage at a table on the right, one of them sitting in a chair set backwards, his legs bent around the backrest.

When we were settled at the Hotel Bar, I asked, “Mom, you said you’d tell me why we don’t go in the Mountain Lake.”  

“Did I,” she said, absently.  

“Please Mommy?”  

“Well, they play poker in the back room.”

“But, Mommy, people play poker in our back room, too.”

“Yes,” she said, hesitantly, “but at the Mountain Lake they play for money, and that’s illegal.”  

“Oh.” I remembered they played with red, white, or green poker chips at our bar. “But we don’t have to go into that back room,” I stated, hopefully.  

“No, I guess we don’t.  But, it’s a rowdy place.”  

“What’s ‘rowdy’, Mommy?” I asked.  

She sighed, with just a hint of impatience. “Sometimes the men get into fights and break glasses on the floor, and give each other black eyes.”

I remembered sometimes finding the front window next to the bar in shatters on the sidewalk in front of the Mountain Lake, when we went up to clean our bar on a Sunday morning. “Someone must have made Louis really mad, or it was one hell of a party last night,” Mom said, laughing.

The Mountain Lion

Just past the Mountain Lake Tavern was a wood and wire cage that housed a wild cougar as a tourist attraction.

“Mom, why is that pretty cat in a cage?”

“I don’t know, Honey,” she replied, thoughtfully. “Someone caught her and put her in this cage so she wouldn’t hurt people.”  

“Would she eat us?”

“I don’t think so. I think she’d rather be back up in the hills. It’s a sad thing.”

I nodded, holding back a tear. You could hear her at night sometimes, calling to other cats in the woods.

Mary Murphy’s Beauty Shop

Mary was a middle-aged spinster who inherited a house and property on Bigfork’s main street. She enclosed the porch on the side, to create the only beauty shop in town. Mom and I went there once a week when I was a toddler to have our hair done. Mom was first; then it was my turn while Mom was under the hair dryer.

Mary arranged a board across the arm rests of the styling chair for me to sit high enough to watch in the mirror. Sitting at the sink was very uncomfortable and I whimpered the whole time. Once back on the styling chair, I entertained Mary by making the sounds of different animals and having her guess what it was.

The part I liked best was sitting under the warm dryer. I studied all the nail polish colors until I fell asleep. The part I liked least was when I got a permanent. I hated the stink of the ammonia, and the pull of the tight curlers on my scalp. I hated even more the way my hair looked when the permanent was all done - my hair was all frizzy and fly-away, and tangled too easily. “I don’t want another ‘pernament’,” I whined to Mom afterwards.

“I know, Sugar. This one didn’t turn out so good, but maybe Mary will have a better one next time.” I gave Mom a look that implied, “Don’t you dare.”

To be continued.