The following is from Paul Wheeler, who grew up along the High-Line and in Great Falls, but now lives near Bonners Ferry, ID. This interested me, not just because memoir is always interesting, but also because it is a reminder how how “survival class” families manage to keep eating by inventing small entrepreneurial enterprises at the interstices of the “big business” or “high pay wages” that most people aim for these days. This is about a string of popcorn wagons and dispensing machines.
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I don’t know how much I can remember. I must have been pretty young. The only stepping stone I have is the earthquake that formed Quake Lake for a time reference I can date at Aug. ‘59, meaning I was only three. I don’t know how long they’d had the concessions prior to that, but my sense is at least a few years because of the numbers of stored empty pop bottles in the house and various sheds about the place. I grew up climbing sticky bottle mountain.
Seems like it was almost a part time family operation. My mom, dad and a teen gal named Vickie were the main operators, but Uncle Glen and Aunt Joyce apparently got pressed into service from time to time as well. Even my mom’s sister Elsbeth has popcorn wagon memories.
The main base of operations seemed to be an old garage/shop right behind the old fish hatchery in Giant Springs. That’s where the popcorn wagon lived when not in use, along with a couple various soda pop dispensers. Heh, I think I was most fond of that shop because it was right next to an old backwater slough that was chock full of big carp I liked to throw rocks at. They’d roll out weekends to work functions between Giant Springs and Glacier. Besides popcorn and soda, there must have been hot dogs. Heh, I didn’t eat a hot dog until I was well into my 40’s because my mother’s dire warnings about what the things were made of.
In addition to the wagon, there was a route of coin operated popcorn dispensers scattered all over the country with the big glass dome cover. You’d stick your nickel in grab a bag and stick it under the dispenser for filling. The machines didn’t actually make the corn, just kept it hot, so they needed constant filling. There’s probably a few still in a shed behind the old mercantile in E. Glacier.
When I was looking into them a few years ago, I found that people collect and restore the things and you can even buy new precut labels for them.
I have no direct memory of it, but apparently the popcorn wagon blew up and burnt. I think it was either my mom or aunt that got burned in the accident, but it must not have been really serious. A few years ago Uncle Glen mentioned that Aunt Joyce had run across a current article in the paper about the popcorn fire, but by the time word got to me, she wasn’t able to recall where or when she’d seen it. I did archival searches through the GF Tribune without success.
That must have been the end of the popcorn empire. I think my mom was thankful in a way because her memories mostly surround tripping over me in the narrow confines.
I’m pretty sure that I told you about my mother’s method for chasing off my nightmares at that age, where all those stored pop bottles in my bedroom played a part. I wrote it down and kept it after my mom fell off her chair laughing about that and putting our two memories together all these years later.
I woke terrified one night to fluttering ghosts trying to get up my nose and in my ears. My mom came into the room with a broom and opened the window and swept all my ghosts into the night, yelling at the beasts to NEVER come back and promptly slamming the window. She was my hero!
I used the same method successfully with my own children when they had the occasional bad dream and have shared the technique with lots of other parents over the years.
When my mom was here for Christmas several years ago, I was relating to her how I'd spread her method far and wide...She looked at me and couldn't believe that I remembered the story since I was not much more than two years old, although it seems that I didn't have all the information.
My dad used to run a popcorn and soda concession at a national park on weekends and there were always empty bottles stored in odd places around the house. It seems that they were the perfect breeding ground for a large variety of moth that hatch out at night en-mass.
My mother's tale is far different from the time of my remembering... She heard my screaming, walked into my room to be confronted with huge moths she initially thought were bats. Screaming in horror she grabbed a nearby broom and frantically beat the livin' heck out of the moths and flailed the rest out the window.
She said she would have stayed around to comfort me, but she had to go calm herself down with a bottle of adult beverage.
Apparently, folks had to do without their popcorn fix for the next couple weekends, 'cause dad was busy building a new shed to house the empty bottles in.
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I met Paul Wheeler in the Sixties when he was a small boy and brought money into the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife where I was the receptionist. I’d convert his dollar bills to change so he could operate the mounted rattlesnake in a glass case that had an aquarium aerator in its tail so it would rattle. The money slot was originally to cut down on uses so the mechanism wouldn’t wear out too quickly, but then it turned out to be a pretty good little money maker. The last time I saw it, the machine was in the storage warehouse of the Montana Historical Society. Over the years there were experts among the many visitors who informed us that it was NOT a Montana rattler but a Texas rattler and that its eyes were in sideways. No one but the experts ever noticed because they only looked at the tail end.
The problem with a “homegrown” museum like the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife is that it’s sensational stuff that brings in the customers, but credibility is lost if the place fills up with albino skunks and two-headed calves. Bob’s purpose was in part to provide excellent models for artists who portray animals. But the real kernel of the museum was a mount of a huge grizzly bear rearing up with claws out. The tourists loved to pose in front of it as though being attacked. Paul and many others vividly recall the rattlesnake and the grizzly bear -- even have nightmares about it!
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