Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [38]
We bellhops lived in a tiny little cabin called the Owl’s Roost. The hotel itself had a long beautiful lobby, appropriately rustic. There were cottages all up the hillside. We were paid only $10 a month, but we got room and board and our tips. I made enough there every summer to last me through the next school year. I had some great friends on that job with me. Jim Brown went on to become a successful surgeon. Jim Calloway was another friend. He became a naval aviator and flight instructor. Walter Baker became very successful in the cement business in Memphis.
In addition to being bellhops, for a brief time, Jim Brown and I were involved in another caper. At that time you could not buy liquor on Sundays. People would check into the hotel and want to buy liquor, but since it was Sunday, they were out of luck. Being the enterprising young men that Jim and I were and always looking to provide service to the guests, we decided that we would buy the liquor and then resell it to the guests at a very profitable margin. This worked splendidly for about three weeks. We had said it was capitalism at its best. Then Charlie White told us one day that the owner of the liquor store wanted to see us. We went over there, and the gentleman explained to us that we could call it whatever we wanted, but, he said, we were bootlegging, and if we did not stop, we were going to be incarcerated. He was polite, but he was very effective. Jim and I immediately abandoned that business endeavor.
All of us bellhops had a grand time working at Rockaway Beach. Dorothy Jo came down to visit me sometimes. Sometimes I hitchhiked home to see Dorothy Jo, or I would get a ride with the mail truck. Often she and I would go hear a big band play at the Shrine Mosque—among them Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. At the end of the weekend, she drove me out to the highway, and I hitchhiked back to the hotel.
The job of bellhop at Rockaway Beach was a coveted assignment that every boy at Central High School would have liked to have had. We had as much fun, if not more, than the guests. There was a dock and a pier with lots of room to lie in the sun. We had the best tans on the beach.
Johnny Kidd and His Louisianans played every night at the dance pavilion, and the bellhops got in free. Dorothy Jo and I danced away many a night there. She was a great dancer. I didn’t dance very well… but I danced better than I sang.
I got a lot of mileage out of telling my friends about checking singer/actor Tony Martin into Hotel Taneycomo, and like all bellhops, I remember his generous tip.
I look back at bellhopping at Hotel Taneycomo on Rockaway Beach with the fondest of memories.
• • •
I am eternally grateful to my mother for seeing to it that I had an active and educationally rich childhood. She was devoted to education and to me, and she made sure I got the maximum benefits out of my schooling experience in the South Dakota school system. Both of my parents contributed significantly to my love of nature, my love of sports, and my love of animals. They were dynamic, physically active people who loved to travel, loved to read, and were always kind to other people. They taught me to believe in myself and to treat people with dignity and respect. When I look back on my childhood and my youth, I am immediately reminded that it was all made possible by the love and care provided to me by my mother and father, for the few years he had with us.
6
Tilly–What a Mom!
I have often said that the three most influential people in my life were Dorothy Jo, Ralph Edwards, and my mother, Matilda, or Tilly, as she was called. I have written about Dorothy Jo and some of the wonderful years we had together, and of course,