Riding with the glamorous, reckless Jezebel
Preface: This is a chapter from my childhood memoir that spans 1950 to 1964 when my parents, Bill and Anne Haug, owned a bar on Bigfork’s Electric Avenue.
Doris Anderson was my Mom’s “partner-in-crime.” Her husband Harry drove a truck and was away from home a lot, so she enjoyed Mom’s company. I thought she was glamorous with her bright red lipstick; colorful silk scarf holding her reddish-blond hair off her face, and plastic wing-shaped sun glasses with rhinestones on the brow. Her smile was so warm, you forgot the acne scars on her face. She liked to flirt, so Dad called her “That Jezebel.”
Doris supplemented the family income with a hair salon that Harry installed in the attached garage of their home between road trips. Since Mom had not yet learned to drive, we walked to Doris’s for our Friday hair appointments. But if the weather was wet and cold, Doris picked us up at our house in her new Chevy.
“Mom, can I come too and play with Candy Jo?” I said, jumping up and down. Although Candy was two years younger than me, she was my best friend. Mom held the car door open and pulled the seat-back forward so I could climb into the backseat next to Candy and her baby brother, Eric.
We drove north out of town, past the school and the football field, past Elmer Sprunger’s art studio, past the Crohn’s, and pulled into the last driveway at Doris’s brown house with white trim (past her house, the gravel street turned into a country road up the hill and through the pine trees toward Ice Box Canyon). Doris picked up Eric and walked with Mom to the salon. Candy and I ran to the backyard to play.
After Mom’s hair was dry and styled, Doris closed up shop and we all piled into her Chevy, with Candy and I in the backseat and Mom holding Eric in the front. If it was hot weather, we went for a ride to a swimming spot like Yellow Bay, Echo Lake, or Lake Blaine (which was our favorite because it had a roller-skating rink); sometimes we joined other moms and kids for a swimming party. Otherwise we went to Kalispell to shop or see a movie matinee at the Strand.
The Chevy smelled like perfume, cigarettes, and spilt Kool Aid. It had automatic windows that glided open at the touch of a button. “Stop playing with those windows,” Doris yelled at Candy.
“All right, Mom,” she sulked.
But if we didn’t obey, Doris had a control by the driver’s seat that inactivated our buttons. Doris pulled the keys out of the ignition and gave them to Eric when he got too fussy.
“Wow, Mom!” I exclaimed with alarm, “The car keeps running without the keys!”
“Pretty amazing, Sugar,” she replied, absentmindedly.
My mind was running ahead. “But Doris, what if you have to shut off the car in a hurry?”
“I’ve never had to do that,” she replied, but I wasn’t reassured.
”You’re a reckless Jezebel,” Mom declared, echoing Dad’s name for Doris, and they both laughed.
To be continued.