Everything's Peachie at Beachie's

Chapter Five: Everything's Peachie at Beachie's
FROM THE RIFLE RANGE at Fort Benning to wherever good soldiers go, the name "Ma" Beachie has a special place in their pocketbooks. Just the thought of "Ma" brings back memories to dogfaces around the world. For it was the truth that through the portals of "Ma" Beachie's honky-tonk passed the most active GIs in the nation.

There the warriors would go to watch the floor show, to make passes at the B-girls, to drink, to gamble, to dance, to test the bedsprings, to fight, Students from nearby Alabama Polytechnic Institute (API, also known as Auburn) flocked to "Ma's" as a favorite hangout. Of all the night clubs, honky-tonks, cafes, casinos, snuggeries, haunts, retreats, roosts, shacks, shanties, hutches, cowsheds, huts, lodges, courts, alehouses, gin mills, bars, saloons, speakeasies, hovels, kennels, booths and stalls in Phenix City, none could compare with "Ma" for the soldier-student clientele.

A goodly number of the joints didn't want the flower of young manhood except on payday. "Ma" catered to the boys in khaki and the boys with the crew cut. Her girls catered to them, too.

One delectable blond bombshell, a stripper, had her own form of entertainment which worked on either the student body or the GI body. In fact it was effective dynamite on any normal, red-blooded male-type human being.

This little girl would cozy up to a man, sit in his lap and tenderly caress his face and neck, cooing softly all the while. As the swain caressed in return, the stripper would take his band to guide it along her thigh, up her side, around the belly, up between the valley of the breasts and over the nipples. It was fair to middling dark in "Ma's" and the man would grow bolder. Laughingly, the wench would lead him on, helping his imagination rise like mercury in a thermometer over an open flame.

Like the thermometer, Buster grew hotter and hotter. And like the mercury, which would explode our of the glass tube if it became too excited, the man would reach the bubbling over point.

Then suddenly the girl would jump up and make a mad dash to her dressing room. After a moment's shock, the man would leap to his feet, shouting, and crash across the floor in wild pursuit. A couple of enlisted men— in excellent physical shape—almost made it, only to have the dressing room door slammed in their face. Undaunted they banged on the door with closed fists and wrenched at the knob.

But like the lady hen who chose death to dishonor, the stripper was answering no knocks, believing it was something other than opportunity at her door.

The stripper was safe. "Ma" retained a couple of bouncers on the payroll to handle just such commotion. These bouncers knew their job. Only when a fight became too rowdy would they oust the participants. More than once they let the sluggers battle it out inside the club. All the toss-guys did was make certain the fighters didn't get too close to favored customers who weren't participants in the brawl.

"Ma" preferred to handle her own evictions by talking an unruly group into calm. In the event neither she nor the roughnecks she hired could do anything with the rowdies, "Ma*' would haul out a brace of pearl handled pistols she kept within her reach.

She was a little, white-haired, meek-appearing, dried-up woman who weighed ninety-nine pounds, wringing wet, and was five feet, one inch tall in her underwear,

"Ma" sat on a high stool and bossed her chambers with an iron hand. The stool added to her height. She didn't do any work, other than sit there and watch and issue orders. A customer entering the front door could see "Ma" right away, and right away "Ma" could see him, too. It was a two-way proposition.

Propositioning was a major undertaking at "Ma's" particularly during the war years. Soldiers sometimes would be lined up outside waiting their turn to make a deal with a girl on the inside. The major- type proposition seemed to run something like this:

"How much? How long?"

The price depended on how near it was to payday. The length of time began at fifteen minutes, with an increasing pay scale for additional time. In this regard, "Ma" was little different from the operators of any other houses of physical enjoyment.

Where she differed primarily was in the field of entertainment.

No one disputed "Ma" when she said she gave her customers the best floor shows in Phenix City. It was unusual for her to have fewer than six strippers and generally the girls would be good lookers, beautiful sex specialists who didn't have to know how to bounce or grind or wiggle, as long as they simply got on the stage, took off their clothes and did some form of a shimmy.

It was intoxicating stuff. It made even women clients drunk occasionally and they would jump on-stage and begin their own amateurish form of disrobing. This, in its way, was often more appealing than performances by the pros. Once in a while "Ma" would pay the neophyte ten dollars.

"Ma" must have turned her back on all the excitement. She didn't remember any such things taking place at her club. Why, sir, her place was so clean that church groups visited her weekly, soliciting donations. All the customers would pitch in happily and so joyous was "Ma" over the visit that she would toss in a dollar herself. If any of the clients could remember such a visit, they probably thought it was all part of the entertainment.

The stage where the strippers put on their acts and went through the appropriate gyrations was raised about three feet from the floor. Up-front tables were right alongside. An excited customer sometimes had to be restrained from vaulting to the platform and helping the stripper along the way.

The other portions of the shows were the ordinary honky-tonk circuit riders: acrobats, singers, dancers, and usually a filthy-mouthed master of ceremonies.

Broken down has-beens, stopping off at "Ma's" for a drink and a memory, would take the stage during an intermission. They would tap dance or put their all into a song of years ago. For a few brief moments they were in the limelight, in a dump in Phenix City where the smoke often hung like smog and a singer's voice couldn't be heard above the roar of activity. But it was center stage for the old war horses. At least for a fleeting spell they could live again in what had been but was no more.

To this extent, "Ma" was a kindly soul. All she wanted was for her customers to have a good time. That, and the major portion from their wallets.

To help accomplish the latter, there was a game room at the joint. "Ma" still declares her innocence in having anything to do with gambling. Maybe she should refresh her recollection, for in Phenix City, where a sucker never got an even break, the dice table at "Ma's" earned a reputation-justified or not— of being fairly square until about 1 A.M. The croupiers would become tired of it all by then and turn on the heat.

"Ma's" place was unique in another way. It wasn't along the strip on either Fourteenth or Dillingham Streets, nor was it on any of the highways. It was in an old and dirty house, nestled back among some residences on a dirt road, its squalor hidden by flickering lights and the darkness of the night. A neon arrow, which blinked off and on, indicated the trail to passersby on the paved road a quarter of a mile distant.

"Ma" had a sad, hound-dawg look about her. Peering over the tops of her spectacles in a quizzical manner, wearing a plain white uniform, "Ma" looked just like a practical nurse and if there was one thing "Ma" was, it was practical.

Her first husband passed on to his just reward thirty years ago when "Ma" was thirty-four. "Ma," whose real name today is Beachie Howard Parr, was left with five children and little else, besides a small, unprofitable grocery store. She had the task of feeding, housing, clothing and training the young ones until she remarried. With her brand-spanking-new husband, "Ma" went to New Orleans and there she took her apprenticeship in night clubbery. She liked what she saw and learned, and upon returning to Phenix City, decided that was the life for her. Up went the club and in went "Ma" as the proprietress, on July 14, 1937.

She liked what she had so much that she never visited any other booze spots in Phenix except the Lasso Club, where her sister competed with her.

The sister, Ada Eberhart, was never the showman "Ma" was. Her bistro hung heavy along a rutted street, not far from "Ma's," and had the appearance of a haunted house. It was haunted, by a special type of human flotsam who made their homes in the gutters.

Unlike "Ma" who was always prim and soft-spoken, Ada was a dour-faced woman who got her kicks from vials and bottles.

The Lasso Club, which was better known as just plain "Ada's Place" was one of the last joints to close. Even after the padlock was on the door, the veranda served as a favorite gathering place for the hop crowd.

In its heyday, Ada's was satisfied with the overflow from "Ma's," and although its specialty couldn't be advertised on billboards, it made the rounds by word of mouth.

As the clean-up hit Phenix City, the depression hit "Ma." Four husky, muscled bouncers and two trim strippers sat around with "Ma" peeling stringbeans. It was a sad time. "Ma" had taken to serving food, strictly a byproduct in the old days.

"Ma," along with the other brothers and sisters of the gambling and night club society, was hauled into county jail for possessing a gaming device. She had to remain overnight while $750 bond was raised. "Ma" didn't relish the cornbread and beans served the second day but she was a philosophical soul, a true optimist. Her faith in the future of her beloved Phenix never wavered, even in the dark hours when she peered through the barred door of the jail.

"I've been accused of everything but I'm certainly not guilty," she said. "I tried to cooperate with Fort Benning. You couldn't have girls available if you stayed on limits. They were very strict. They'd inspect you three or four times a night. You had t' keep on th' ball,"

As she left the jail yard, "Ma" smiled, fluffed her cotton-white hair and observed: "This will be good for business when we re-open."

She climbed into a pick-up truck which a friend had driven around for her. Sitting next to her little granddaughter, "Ma" waved as the vehicle moved out into the street and carried her to her farm.

Weeks later she breathed a soulful sigh of relief when the charge against her was dismissed. Justice, "Ma" figured, was triumphant.

"Ma" said she got her nickname because of her age, her white hair, and because she was so nice to the soldiers. Her years of hard work, she said, had done nothing more than provide her with a living. She claimed to be "flat broke," having only forty-seven cents.

"Ma" had worked since she was seven and now she had three children still living, eleven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. One of her daughters died in a drunken stupor in bed. The death of another child is lost in time.

Of her living children, "Ma" indicates a preference for her son, a chip off the old job. He has a job exactly like hers, in Reno.