Selling Sex in the Silver Valley

by Dr. Heather Branstetter

  Dolores in 1965. Richard Caron Collection.

  Dolores’s discretion and strict management ensured she remained in the community’s good graces. Many of my research participants made note of the fact that she hosted private parties for local civic or social organizations like the Gyro Club. There was no sex at these parties, which operated in accordance with the “underlying and rarely spoken agreement” that they “wouldn’t fall into some kind of a debauchery, you know, a big orgy that then would be talked about in the community for the next century,” as Morrison put it. He told a story about how upset his father was when someone had transgressed the code of conduct at one of the social club parties Dolores hosted. His dad said he’d seen a “community leader” at the party

  slip off to one of the bedrooms with one of the girls, and he didn’t come back out for about twenty minutes. And I’m pretty sure that they weren’t in there having another drink. And he says, “That was just, just so improper.” I mean, he could care less if that guy went up there on his own, every night of the week, if that guy chose to do that, but to do it and to violate the unwritten rules of decorum, you know, for the club to be together up there, was really reprehensible to him.227

  Several other people I talked with noted this incident, which appears to have been exceptional and well known because it was not in accordance with the kind of social propriety required in a town the size of Wallace.

  Dolores was not afraid to fire sex workers or housekeepers for overstepping boundaries. One story often repeated locally involves a robbery at one of the houses, resulting in a court case. One of Dolores’s employees was called to testify as a witness and accidentally let on that the attorney cross-examining her had patronized the Lux often enough to be familiar to her. The way this tale is repeated often ends with the woman telling defense attorney Jim Keane, “You know damn well which way that door opens,” as the court erupts with laughter. The actual court transcript (featured in the next chapter) reveals that her language is slightly subtler than this. In fact, she appears to have slipped up by accident only after Keane’s questions disoriented her, but Dolores fired her for this lack of discretion anyway.228 According to rumor, Keane tried to call his wife immediately afterward, but someone had already told her. He was embarrassed by the event until his friend gave him a copy of the court transcript for Christmas. The transcript contained a dedication in the front instructing the reader to make note of Keane’s award-winning performance. “After that he was proud of it” and began laughing along with everyone else.229 The anecdote spread, and Keane became infamous as a result; one day, he was sitting on a plane next to a man who’d heard a funny story about a lawyer from Wallace, and before he knew it, Keane was listening to a stranger tell him this tale about himself.230

  Light from the Lux Rooms entryway. Richard Caron Collection; photo by Heather Branstetter.

  Dolores and her poodle, Mikey, in 1978. Richard Caron Collection.

  5

  Firsthand Written Accounts

  and Regulation

  This chapter features written primary sources post–World War II. They add depth and complexity to our understanding of the houses and women who worked in them. I present them as lightly edited, accessible versions of the original documents. The first section is an account of an attempted robbery at the Lux, followed by an autobiographical narrative written by a former Wallace police officer. The third section offers a look into some of the handwritten ephemera left in the Oasis Rooms when the women left. Finally, the chapter closes with a sampling of files from the time when the Shoshone County Sheriff ’s Office regulated the houses and women.

  “NOT IN THIS WHORE HOUSE”:

  ATTEMPTED ROBBERY AT THE LUX ROOMS, 1957

  On July 4, 1957, a man named Russell with an “odd hairline, deep set widow’s peak, eyes close together with large eye brows, thin nose at the top, wide at the bottom” and a “very thin mouth” walked up the long steep staircase leading from Kelly’s Alley into the Lux Rooms and attempted to rob it. This account of the event is re-created from a copy of the preliminary hearing transcript. Quotation marks indicate wording pulled directly from the original document.231

  Self-described “professional prostitute” Edna was working that night. It was about 3:00 or 3:30 a.m., she said, and she was the only one available to meet with clients. When she encountered Russell alone in the back parlor, which seated between ten and twelve people, she was wearing a typical outfit for the time: white flat ballerina shoes and a one-piece that transitioned from white linen shorts with a green ruffle around the bottom into a sequined peacock leotard that zipped up the back.

  “Hello and how are you, fine?” Edna asked Russell. They sat and chatted for two or three minutes. Dolores Arnold, who ran the house, poked her head into the parlor to check on her comfort and try to speed things along, asking Edna if she was going to be busy. Then she closed the door and walked away.

  Taking the cue from her boss, Edna asked if Russell wanted to go to a room with her. They both stood up, and she held out her hand. Instead of answering her with his hand or a verbal response, Russell pulled out a switchblade, which he held to her stomach.

  “Oh,” Edna startled, looking down at the blade.

  “I didn’t come to give, I came to take,” Russell said.

  “Not in this whore house you won’t,” Edna put on a brave face.

  “You don’t seem afraid of me.”

  “I’m not,” Edna lied, fearing for her life. She had made it a practice to “never show fear” and wouldn’t begin doing so now. To show fear would be to reveal weakness to this man she believed wanted to steal money from the house.

  Russell repeated, “I have not come to give, I have come to take, as I am tired of working my ass off.”

  “Don’t feel bad, so am I.” Edna looked into his eyes and smiled, trying to be calm and understanding as she explained to him that he had “made a mistake.” She told him “he couldn’t get out of it, because the joint was wired to the police station.” Another lie, although she knew that in truth the officers were only a phone call away.

  “If not tonight, tomorrow,” Russell threatened.

  Edna “told him he would never make it out of there, the boys would be up the stairs before he could get down the hall.”

  “If not tonight, tomorrow,” he repeated.

  “Take a word of advice, if this is the business you are going into, don’t talk so much, learn to keep your mouth shut,” Edna said, sensing he was not an experienced thief.

  “What are you trying to be, a mother?” Russell asked.

  “No, if I wanted to be a mother, I wouldn’t be in this business.”

  Russell shook his head and put the knife back into his pocket as Edna threw the door open and called Dolores, who answered immediately. Edna told Dolores to “take a good look at the man...never let him back in again, as he had come to hold her up.”

  Edna then turned to Russell and said, “Come on, I will let you out,” walking him down the hall.

  “If not tonight, tomorrow,” Russell said for the third time as they approached the door.

  “There [will] be no tomorrow,” Edna finally told him. And if he was wise, she advised, he would get out of town, since Dolores had begun dialing the police the moment they started walking to the door.

  The man made it out the door, but police soon picked him up and brought him back in what was described as a “paddy wagon.” Dolores and Edna were offered the opportunity to identify him.

  In reality, Edna explained when she testified a week later, it would have been difficult for Russell to take any large amount of money from her that evening. “You have to go to the parlor and get your man, take him to the bedroom, talk with the gentleman” to negotiate services, “receive the money from the gentleman in the bedroom and then dispose of it” in a locked cash drawer containing individual boxes labeled with each woman’s name. Dolores and the maids kept the key to the lockboxes except when they knew they would
be busy. During the busiest times, they simply left the key in the kitchen.

  There was an awkward moment in the courtroom when Edna was asked to describe her outfit and the attorney didn’t understand how it worked. “I assume that you were clothed some way in the upper—” he asked, fading away, as she clarified for him. The purpose of the exchange about how she was dressed was supposedly to establish whether she had anywhere she could keep money. The lawyers asked her about the money situation at length. The only money freely accessible without a key might be “change for our convenience and juke box change and grocery boy and laundry boy and so forth,” but Edna noted that “as the evening progresses and on into the morning, there is liable to be a great amount of money on the premises, yes,” in the locked boxes.

  Edna’s testimony during Russell’s preliminary hearing reveals that she is flirtatious and funny; she flustered the defense attorney, Jim Keane, on more than one occasion. He eventually asked her if it was true that the only way a person could access these “large sums of money” was by obtaining the key from Dolores.

  “That all depends on what their talents are, Mr. Keane,” Edna responded. Keane tried to keep his cool and began to grill her on exactly where the cash drawer was in relation to the door.

  Exhausted with his questions, Edna finally became flustered herself, and the result was a rare lapse in the sex industry’s provider-client code of confidentiality. “You just open the door,” she said, “you know how the door goes back this way against the wall.”

  Lux calendar, 1957. Oasis Bordello Museum display; photo by Heather Branstetter.

  It appears to have been unintentional, but Edna had let slip that in reality Keane knew exactly how the door opened because he patronized the Lux. According to Richard Magnuson, the deputy prosecuting attorney, everyone started laughing. Not only had she let on that he had come to visit before, but her tone also indicated she thought he was asking dumb questions.232

  After the laughter died down, Keane responded, “I would hate to admit I did. I have been accused of a lot worse than that,” which of course led to even more laughter. Magnuson told me they eventually “had to take a recess because there was such a commotion,” and during the recess, Edna went up to Keane “and apologized profusely.”233

  In the meantime, Edna tried unsuccessfully to cover her tracks: “Mr. Keane, I did not mean it that way. When you open the door, the door usually goes back against a wall, well it went back, the cash drawer is right behind the kitchen drawer.”

  Keane likewise tried unsuccessfully to continue his line of questioning. He said, “And again I will ask you, oh strike it. That is all...” Finally he gave up, the laughter making it impossible to proceed with the interview.

  MEMOIRS OF A COP

  What follows is a slightly cut reprint of a narrative written by Reverend Dr. Jim Ranyon, sent to local historian Dick Caron in May 2008. A copy is available in the Wallace District Mining Museum. Ranyon grew up in the valley and was a police officer in Wallace during the 1960s.

  I worked for the local grocery store and on occasion would be called upon to deliver groceries to the back door of each and every upstairs house. It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you! First, you had to fight the other box boys for the job and then you had to carry those wooden boxes up those twenty back steps of the fire escape to the locked and windowed back doors. I’d ring the doorbell and press my eye to the window, trying to get a glimpse of whoever came to the door. Invariably, soon there would be an answer and some sweet voice calling, “Who is it?” “Grocery boy,” I’d respond. The curtain would be pulled back to reveal a semi-naked lady.... She would say something like, “I’m gonna unlock the door and you can come in but don’t you look because I’m not dressed! Now don’t you look.” Right! I’d follow her down the long narrow shotgun hallway to the kitchen while she disappeared to put on some “clothes.” The clothes she donned always looked like something that might have been ordered from Victoria’s Secret. And always there would be a large tip. Anywhere from one silver dollar to several silver dollars. Talk about the best job in the world. Naked women and money, too....

  Lux and Plaza calendar, 1962. Oasis Bordello Museum display; photo by Heather Branstetter.

  In 1962 I came home from U[niversity] of I[daho] and was looking for a job. Dick Mays was chief of police at that time and was in the process of transferring to the sheriff ’s department. We hit it off together, and I decided to stick around until a job came open. When it did, I was the first in line and Bill Lilly, the new chief, hired me right away. The job seemed kind of boring at first. There was very little crime on the surface of things. On weekends the population always increased exponentially. Normally there would be about twelve to fifteen hundred citizens roaming around.

  It wasn’t very long until I received a call of trouble at one of the houses. We raced down Cedar St., stopped at the Arment Rooms, double-parked the squad car, threw open the swinging door at the bottom of those 22 stairs and raced up. At the top of the stairway the door was opened and the madam directed us to room number 3. We walked up to the door, knocked briefly and before we received a response, opened the door to find a guy with his back to us and [a] girl backed up into a far corner of the room. In my best bad ass voice I said, “What’s the trouble here?” Well, it was more than almost funny.

  This guy had his trousers at half-mast, his shirt and jacket were off, and the girl was trying to get past him to the door. His face changed colors about four times then he stuttered, “Hey, this girl is a whore and that’s illegal! Arrest her!”

  I said something to the effect of, “Put your pants back on, zip up and you are under arrest!”

  He sputtered some more until I said, “Shut up, you’re the one who is being arrested!” We put the handcuffs on him and led him to the front door and the long stairway down.... Just as I passed through the doorway, I felt the madam kinda pat me on the ass and slip something into my back pocket. I never thought about it until we were back on the street hiking our “perp” back to jail.... Charge: Disturbing the Peace. Fine: 25 dollars and costs total $28.00.

  We should probably state how the system worked: places of prostitution were allowed in Idaho and some neighboring states by city option. That is, it was left to the city to either allow or disallow the profession within city limits. Each house paid to the city a fine in the form of a misdemeanor of “running a disorderly house.” A fine was paid to the city by the madam based on the number of ladies who worked in that particular house. Mostly there were five to nine girls working on a daily basis. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that several thousand dollars went into the coffers each week. Yes, the fines were collected weekly. Again, these houses supported the city. The city paid [our] wages.

  Therefore, when I discovered the twenty-dollar bill in my pocket after my first call to the Arment Rooms, I thought I should go back and arrest the madam for trying to bribe this conscientious cop. My partner said, “Like hell, one half of that twenty is mine.” See, to them [the madams], it’s a tip to ensure that whenever there is a call, we’ll bust our butts to get there and solve whatever problem they have. It worked well, too. Being a low-paid cop, we needed some benefits. Christmastime always brought very nice bonuses for the individual cops....

  The Lux Rooms: Madam—Dolores Arnold. One of the most attractive women to grace the streets of our town. Tall and willowy, with high cheekbones and raven black hair, she was a head turner from any direction. Dolores never went anywhere without her standard bred poodle, Mike, a beautiful three and one half foot tall [dog]. Mike always looked like he had just come from the groomers. I don’t know how that is possible because the last time I checked, there were no dog groomers within a fifty-mile radius. Dolores drove a baby blue 1959 Cadillac that was always parked in the garage that abutted the Greyhound Bus Depot....

  Union Oil, the Greyhound bus station at Fifth and Pine Streets that some of the women used to travel into and out of town. Historic Wallace Prese
rvation Society.

  I don’t remember the madam’s name [at the Arment Rooms], but I do remember many of the girls. I learned to appreciate and truly respect them as individuals. They were just like everyone else, trying to get by in a sometimes rough world. It became known to me and the other cops that many of these girls were supporting children the best way they knew how....