The Journey to the West 12

Sigh! Another Sunday here at Sandhill. It snowed most of the day yesterday, but remarkable little stayed on the ground. This morning it was cold. Twelve degrees when I woke up. It is supposed to be colder tomorrow. Ceci, our oldest cat, threw up three times this morning. She eats too much. Our little elegant Katie who is always into mischief, fell into my son's fish tank and had to be rescued. Life goes on here as we wait impatiently for spring. This is by now the longest waystation on my journey to the west.

There was a good reason why the kids from Burke had a reputation for being tough. Burke, Idaho, was a small mining town about 7 or 8 miles from our town, built in a very narrow canyon. A train track and a small creek ran down the middle of the canyon and there was so little room that a beanery, built to room and board miners, was built to straddle them. It was a town inhabited almost exc lusively by miners and muckers, and was a rabid union town. Several mines were located there and in the early days there was constant conflict between the mine owners and the miners union. In 1899 most of the adult male population of Burke hijacked a train, loaded it with stolen dynamite, forced it to travel some 20 miles to Wardner, Idaho, where they blew up the Bunker Hill Smelter. To restore order a regiment of black soldiers was called in by the Governor (black soldiers were preferred as previous experience had shown that white soldiers were more likely to identify with the miners). All of the perpetrators were rounded up and placed in a bullpen for a number of days. A few years later the Governor (an ex Governor by then) was assassinated in Boise with a bomb. This led to a famous trial in which three of the leading union organizers were tried for murder (see The Big Trouble by J. Antony Lucas). This, of course, did not settle the miners’ grievances and conflict between them and the owners continued up into the time I was born and lived there. The miners were relatively poor, most with large families, living in small frame houses crowded together in the narrow valley, and with a reputation of fighting and violence. Thus when the kids from Burke entered our High School there was a period of adjustment that did not always go smoothly. The Burke kids were tough, and ready to fight at the drop of a hat. They certainly lived up to their reputations. But they were also athletic and made our football and basketball teams immeasurably better than they would otherwise have been. High School boxing was a big sport in those days and most of our boxers were from Burke. Some of them went on to intercollegiate boxing and even became national champions, but that is to come later. Only a few of them managed to stay in High School and graduate, many dropped out quickly and went to work in the mines or mills, their futures already determined.

As the kids from Burke traveled to our town by bus, and as the bus depot was only two doors away from Babe and Jim’s, they often waited there for the bus, and we gradually came to know them and get along. I don’t remember most of them playing pool, I suspect many of them were too poor to afford it. Perhaps it was just not athletic enough to interest them. Naturally, we didn’t spend all our time in the pool hall. We went to school, and dated, and were occupied with sports and dances and other teenage pursuits. With rare exceptions, few of us distinguished ourselves as students. High School was something we felt we had to endure and only a very few had any aspirations about attending college. I guess our teachers tried, but they, too, were not a distinguished lot, and also had to cope with disciplinary problems almost on a daily basis. One of our English teachers threw the blackboard erasers at us when his patience gave out. We had a chemistry teacher who wore thick glasses and did not see very well. She also wore loosely knit sweaters with no bra so her nipples could be seen. The girls chipped in to buy her a bra. The chemistry lab was on the third floor, her classroom was on the second floor. One winter some of the boys hung condoms filled with water from the third floor so they dangled, frozen, just outside the classroom. When she asked what they were, they told her “testicle tubes.” Sometimes, when called upon to recite poetry (which we hated above all else), someone would give an altered version: “Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, out of the bed and onto the floor, a sixty yard dash to the (outhouse) door.” We thought we were so clever and so funny, unaware of how stupid we were and how much more stupid we were becoming through our High School experience. Most of what we did learn we later learned wasn’t true, and we didn’t learn much to begin with.

Our town, in its heyday, boasted a population of probably no more than a couple of thousand permanent residents. But as it was the country seat it drew miners and loggers from the surrounding hills so it seemed larger and more exciting than it was. It boasted a great number of bars, some of which featured gambling, mostly in the form of blackjack and poker. There were also five whorehouses. Four of these were located right on the main drag so people passed them virtually every day (see Morialekafa, 5-29-07). The whores were not allowed to solicit from their windows or doorways, nor were they allowed to mingle with the townspeople. They were, however, recognizable to most everyone, and the madams, at least, were allowed to shop for groceries and walk the two or three blocks to the Post Office. There were no pimps, as such, but some of them had what were called “gaffers,” or “old men,” who were roughly like husbands. They were not allowed to live in our town but resided in the next town about 10 miles away. The whores were inspected by a local doctor once a week as it would not do for miners or loggers to get infected. The houses also had police protection, I know not at what cost. At this time my girlfriend worked in a soda fountain that was part of the main grocery store. One of the madams always stopped for a soda and became acquainted with her. She explained that as she had money, and no children, she would pay for my girlfriend’s college education if she wished, no strings attached, but she declined.

One of the unusual features (I guess it was unusual) of our whorehouses was the fact that there were student rates for High School students ($5 regular, $3 for students). Most of us were far too shy or frightened to take advantage of this, but some did, especially some of the kids from Burke who seemed more worldly in this way than the rest of us. On weekends, when the miners and loggers came to town, there was much drunkenness and fighting. Indeed, it seemed like that was considered the normal thing to do on your weekends. Fights often took place in the streets and were sometimes quite violent, with heads being bashed against the cement, noses broken, ribs cracked, and so on. It was, in short a booming, bustling mining town. As Missouri had been a source of scabs at times, Missourians were often singled out for beatings. There was even a story about a Missourian, rumored to be especially tough, who was brought to our town specifically to fight all comers. He was said to have been badly beaten and retreated to Missouri. Most of the time things ran smoothly, the bars and gambling halls made money, the whorehouses flourished, the mines produced silver, lead, zinc and gold, and the mine owners became rich by exploiting the labor of the miners and muckers. But, as the state was governed from the south (a very long way from us), and as those in charge were mostly farmers, Mormons, and other conservatives, they would sometimes insist on closing down our “dens of iniquity” (they were apparently shocked, shocked, to learn there was gambling, etc.). Everything would stop for a day or two, a couple of people would be arrested to spend a night in jail (my father was sometimes included in this sweep), and righteousness would prevail. But only long enough for the mine owners to get on the phone and complain they couldn’t possibly keep miners working under such restrictive circumstances, at which point all would begin again. It was the most wonderful lesson in hypocrisy. I learned it when still very young.