Bigfork's hotel bar used to be the classiest in town

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.

Bigfork Hotel, Bar, and Standard Station

The Bigfork Hotel and Standard Station were at the end of the main street, across Grand Avenue. The O’Brien family lived in a small apartment at the far end of the building. Edmund ran the hotel and his brother Kenny ran the Standard station, which was a small log kiosk with gas pumps on the sides, set in the middle of the hotel’s parking area.

The hotel looked like a Swiss chalet, and was quite different from the other buildings in town. You could enter the hotel bar from the lobby, or from its own side door.  I liked going in through the lobby because the room had a strangely nice smell of leather and Edmund’s pipe smoke.  

“Lets go in the side door,” Mom suggested. “It reminds me of a speakeasy.”

“What’s that, Mom?”

“When the sale of alcohol was prohibited by law, bars were shut up. But at night, it was easy to get in if you spoke the secret word. That’s how they got the name ‘speakeasy’.”

“Do you know the secret word, Mamma?”

“Oh, that was just in the old days. You don’t need a secret word anymore.”

The Hotel Bar’s side-door was out of the light from the Standard sign on the gas kiosk, and hidden by ivy that grew up a lattice on the side of the entry porch. The lounge was a small room, with one tiny leather booth for two by the window, next to the juke box, three black tables with chairs in the middle of the room, and several leather stools at the bar.  We always sat at the bar.

A wide doorway separated the room from the lobby, closed by stained-glass pocket doors that were usually open just wide enough for a person to pass through, but closed later when the hotel guests were asleep.  

This was the classiest bar in town.  It catered to the hotel guests, and was never very busy.  People went there to be alone with their thoughts, or to have a private conversation with a lover or business partner.

“What’ll ya have?” the bartender said to Dad as he put down his bar towel from cleaning liquor bottles.  

“I’ll take a Jim Beam straight up. Give Anne a tall Vodka-7 on the rocks, and a root beer for the kid.”  

But if it was a cold night, I’d say “Can I have a hot chocolate instead, please?” (I was very polite because I felt so grown up in that bar). 

The bartender asked Dad, “How’s business tonight?”

“Pretty good,” which meant it was a busy one, or “Damn slow” if he was wondering whether we’d make enough to pay the bartender.  

Mom went over to the jukebox and picked out a song by Peggy Lee or Rosemary Clooney, then sat down next to me.  

One night, I was feeling especially affectionate towards Mom, and I started to slide over onto her stool to be closer to her.  As she scooted over to make room, she put her arm around me, then lost her balance and fell off backwards, landing on her backside with me half on top of her.  

She wasn’t moving, and when I looked at her, her face was white and blank.  I started to cry, thinking she was dead, “Mommy, Mommy!” I sobbed.  

Daddy pulled me close, against his knees, while the bartender came around the bar with the smelling salts.  “She’s OK, Honey, just knocked out,” Daddy said, patting my shoulder. 

Mom woke up, but she couldn’t get up without help from the bartender, and she screamed when she tried to stand.  I screamed too.  Usually Mom was very stoic, but that night she just whimpered in pain.  I was so sure she was angry with me, and I tried to hide behind Daddy, but she called me to her and stroked my head.  I said over and over “I’m sorry Mommy.”

“I know, Sugar.  I just lost my balance.”  Dad walked back to our bar and got the car, and we took Mom into the hospital in Kalispell; it took over an hour to get there, the gravel road was rough and had lots of sharp curves as it navigated around the farms, and she moaned all the way. She had a broken tailbone, but they didn’t put her in a cast. They just told her to lie still for a few days, and gave her lots of pain pills.

To be continued.