Cat Who Went Up the Creek

The Black Bear Café occupied half the main floor and was the scene of the reenactment. Qwilleran and his guests were ushered to one of the booths lining three walls. On the other long wall was a bar with twenty stools, and in the center of the room were chairs still upended on tables after the last floor sweeping.

Beverages were being served until eight o’clock, and hotelkeeper Gary Pratt made the rounds of the booths, welcoming the spectators and reminding them to look at the programs on their tables. With his shambling gait and shaggy black beard and hair, he looked as ursine as the eight-foot mounted bear at the entrance.

The programs credited Roger MacGillivray, historian and coach; Carol and Larry Lanspeak, directors; Thornton Haggis, stage manager, who also played the role of “Whitey.”

Principals were Whitey, the saloonkeeper; Jake, his helper; Mrs. Watts and Lucy, barmaids; and George, the most-favored customer. Then there were lumberjacks, just in from the backwoods camps; the elite river-drivers from French Canada; sawyers from the mills at the river’s mouth; dance hall girls; and sailors from the schooners in the harbor.

Mildred, a native of the area, knew them all. “Lucy” was the daughter of her hairdresser; “Jake” taught math at the high school and coached the wrestling team; “Stinko” worked at Toodles’ supermarket; “George” was an insurance agent.

At eight o’clock the lights blinked for attention, and then blacked out, leaving only the vigil candles in the booths. The audience was silent, but a commotion could be heard beyond the entrance doors at the far right end of the bar. At the opposite end a double door opened and in came Whitey with his bar apron tied around his middle and with his shock of white hair looking like a torch in the grubby saloon. His helper, Jake, followed—a mountain of a man in a plaid flannel shirt. The two barmaids, one middle-aged and one young, wore long gray granny dresses with small white collars and white ruffled caps.

Jake went to work, setting up the chairs around the tables, while the barmaids wiped the tabletops. Whitey started pouring stage whiskey (cold tea) from whiskey bottles into shot glasses.

There were impatient thumps on the entrance door and shouts of “Open up!” Whitey consulted a large gold watch on a long chain and gave a nod to his helper. After unlocking the doors, Jake barred the entrance with his huge arms and admitted the thirsty horde in a thin trickle while bellowing, “No corks! No corks!”

He referred to the caulks, or steel pins, that could be attached to boots for gripping logs. Indoors, they damaged floors. In a violent fight, they damaged flesh.

In they came! Husky lumberjacks in beards and pigtails and burly backwoods clothing . . . Sailors of a taut, wiry build, wearing striped jerseys, tight pants, and hats with brims turned up all around. They yelled with the exuberance of youth:

“Whitey, y’ol’ galoot! Ain’t you dead yet?”

“Pour the red-eye, Whitey! I gotta thirst that’d drain a swamp!”

“Where’s George? He owes me a drink!”

“Ain’t George here yet?”

The loggers dropped into chairs around the tables and got out the cards and dice. The sailors kept their distance from this rough crowd and lined up at the bar. Also at the bar were three of the elite river-drivers in red caps and red sashes, just arrived from Quebec to ride the logs downstream like daredevils. A few dance hall girls, swishing their short skirts and twitching their bare shoulders, were especially interested in the French-Canadians.

The barmaids were bustling about the tables when young Lucy shrieked, “He pinched me!”

“Slap his face!” Mrs. Watts shouted, but before Lucy could summon the nerve, big Jake was on the spot. He raised the culprit by the collar, glared menacingly in his face, then dropped him back into his seat.

“Yahoo!” the other loggers yelled. In Whitey’s saloon it was all right to flirt with the dance hall girls but not with the hired help.

Whitey signaled to three sailors, and they put their heads together and sang sea shanties in three-part harmony. “Blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down,” and then the rollicking “What do you do with a drunken sailor early in the morning?”

Meanwhile the card players were gambling noisily for pennies; the crap-shooters were yelling incantations to the dice; the bawdy joke tellers were putting their heads together and then exploding in obscene laughter.

Next, three girls perched on barstools, crossed their knees and sang “She’s only a bird in a gilded cage,” while the patrons yelled, “Ain’t the one in the middle a dinger! Chip chip chip!”