Seeing Mr. May on Electric Avenue

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.  While some may remember these characters and events differently than I, this is my perception of the people and events that shaped my life, not about facts that have no real meaning out of context.

The Old Steel Bridge

Dad had a Studebaker sedan, but because Mom didn’t drive until after I started school, we did a lot of walking. After breakfast each morning, Dad drove our Studebaker uptown to open the bar. I stayed at home with Mom while she did chores and planned our meals for the day.  

Then we walked uptown to join my Dad at the bar. I remember these walks because of my personal playmate. I was shy, afraid of my own shadow, and prone to nosebleeds; but she was precocious, curious and full of unbounded energy. She usually came around when we approached the old steel bridge.

It was narrow and there was no walkway on the side, so we had to share that narrow lane with cars, walking close to the side rail. If I looked down at the fast, noisy river below, it scared me. I lingered behind, waiting for Mom to talk me into it, or better yet, lose her patience and carry me across; but my playmate walked the rail like a tight rope, or did somersaults and cartwheels across the bridge, taunting me for my cowardice. Once across, though, the excitement of all the things to see captured my imagination, and my playmate was forgotten, until the next crisis of courage.

Bachelor Buttons

One time when I was three I noticed lots of pretty flowers growing along the path in front of the big white house near the top of the hill, where the Mays lived. “Look, Mom, look! Look at all the pretty flowers! What are they called?” I asked, dancing excitedly and pointing at them.

“Bachelor Buttons,” she replied, “my favorite.”  

“What color are they?”

“Blue.”  

“How’d they get there, Mom?”  

“Well, I suppose someone planted them.”

“But Mom, WHO planted them?”  

She thought for a while, and then said “I guess God did.”

I looked up and saw old Mr. May working in his yard above the flowers. He had very white hair and a bit of beard, and he had smiling wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. My eyes grew big, and my chin dropped, opening my mouth in expression of utter awe.  

“Look, Mom,” I said reverently, pointing at Mr. May. “There’s God!”  

Mom’s grip on my hand relaxed a little as she focused on stifling her laughter.  

Mr. May waved at us, saying “Hi, Anne, Cathy. Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

Huston’s Grocery

There were two grocery stores in town, each at opposite ends of the main street: The Bigfork Mercantile and Huston’s Grocery. Huston’s was next to a small triangular park at the top of the hill, where Osborne Street joined the main road. It was actually three buildings: the old-fashioned store, the meat locker, and the ice house behind the store. (Sometimes Mom worked in the meat locker if someone had a deer or elk they wanted butchered—she got her butcher’s experience in Scobey, where she met my Dad). You could enter the store from the side, near the meat locker, or from the front off the main street.

Skinny Boyer and his wife, Marie, leased the store from the Hustons, and they lived in a house across the street, behind the post office at the very end of the main street, with their daughter Nora Jo. (There was a small apartment connected to the store, where they could have lived, but Skinny’s Mother lived there).

Just inside the front door, set into a bay window, was a Golden Books display. Even though I couldn’t read yet, each week I got to pick out one book for Mom or Dad to read to me while I looked at the pictures. Right behind the books were the shelves with penny candy; red licorice sticks and Necco Wafers were my favorites. Mom liked Tootsie Rolls, but I didn’t like the way they got stuck on my teeth.  

Most of the canned, packaged and refrigerated goods were behind the counter, just like in old western or pioneer movies. So while I was picking out books and candy, Mom ordered the groceries from Marie. She was an attractive, witty woman, but her head shook a lot.

One day after finishing our shopping and we were back outside, I asked, “Mom, why does Marie shake so much?”

“She has St. Vitus’ Dance, Sugar; she can’t help it.

I wasn’t sure what that was, but I felt sorry for her.

To be continued.