Guestward Ho! (5 page)

The Binders were with us only a few days and every minute of the time I imagined how those blistering edi
torials in the
Minneapolis Tribune
would begin and end
and I watched Bill turn white every time Mr. Binder would
look at him quizzically and say, "How long did you say
you'd been out here?"

Bill's standard reply was an evasive, "Oh, not so long."
Then he always managed to change the subject.

But somehow we got through it, although I must say that if it hadn't been for the fact that the Binders were
witty, generous, and very, very kind, we never would have. When they left, we were ashamed to give them a bill. I was
certain that they'd had a perfectly hideous time and were just too polite to say so to our faces. But I've been watch
ing the Minneapolis papers ever since and Carroll Binder,
gentleman that he is, has never written a word.

Easter was upon us and so were an equally gratifying and terrifying number of reservations when it occurred to Bill
and me that there were quite a lot of nagging little details
we had overlooked. You know, things like New Mexican l
icense plates for the station wagon, permits to be in busi
ness at all, and employees.

The necessary permits were one for purveying food, another for the sale of tobacco, one for sales tax, and still
another to run a hotel. The next question at hand was a
liquor license.

In the state of New Mexico, liquor licenses—there are
three different kinds—are both difficult and expensive to
come by. Well, actually, paying your dues or maintenance
or whatever the annual upkeep on a license is called is
very inexpensive—less than a hundred dollars a year—but
getting the initial license can cost anything from one
thousand to fifty thousand dollars, depending on what the
traffic will bear. You can't just go in and buy a liquor
license as though it were a pair of nylons. The licenses are
zoned, so to speak, according to square mileage and the
number of people residing in each area. If the area in which you happen to live his its full quota of licenses,
that's just too bad. All you can do is buy a license from somebody else in the area who's willing to sell out his
business—not his stock, either, just his franchise to oper
ate. So there is naturally quite a brisk trade in secondhand
liquor licenses and the amounts of money that change
hands over the same well-thumbed, but easily transferable, scrap of paper are simply staggering. We were offered a
liquor license for our area for a sum that nearly floored me,
but which was said to be quite reasonable, all things considered. The amount was ten thousand—count 'em, ten thousand—dollars!

There's an old maxim in the hotel and restaurant busi
ness that says all the profits are made not in the kitchen
but in the bar. This is particularly true of big hotels which
are forced to run a dining room, a supper club, a coffee
shop, and twenty-four-hour room service. In those places
the kitchen's annual deficit would look like a retirement fund to me, and it's only demon rum that keeps them
showing any profit at all.

While Rancho del Monte was by no means that elabo
rate, both Bill and I were smart enough to understand that
a brisk little gin mill off the main lounge might have made
all the difference between rags and riches. Even at ten
thousand dollars, which we
could
have dug up, a bar would
have paid for itself within five years without any effort at
all. If we had actually tried to
push
the bar—advertise it,
publicize it, put up signs, welcome all comers at all hours—
we could have paid off the ransom in half that time.
But then we wouldn't have been in the dude ranching busi
ness, we would have been in the saloon business.

So we did another flagrantly impractical thing. We said
to hell with having a bar. We did this for two reasons.
First of all, because bars bore both Bill and me. I find that,
by and large, bars come in three distinct styles: first there is that seedy, squalid, little saloon type with a tin ceiling,
nickering fluorescent lights, hissing neon signs, and a juke
box that bubbles; then there is that chi-chi sort of place
with arty murals, too much upholstery—usually cowhide
in the West—a peculiar young man at the piano, and kept
so dark that you need a miner's lamp to find the ladies'
room; finally, there is the place that falls somewhere in
between the workingman's hangout and the dilettante's de
light and that is the artsy-craftsy or tea-shoppe sort of place
with either flower prints or hunting prints on the walls and
a business that is mainly based on lonely older women who
order drinks that are either pink or sweet or both. To me,
all three are equally repugnant.

And in spite of the added revenue connected with a bar,
there are also definite drawbacks. First of all, a bar brings
in just as many undesirable people as it does desirable dol
lars. You, and at least one of your staff, have to stay up until the last drop is swallowed and the last car is driven away, and that's no fun when you know that reveille is at
six the next morning. Then, alcohol invariably brings
trouble, and while you can refuse service to those who have
already been served too much, to the bully boys who
get quarrelsome, and to the professional party girls who
perch like birds of prey on stools at the end of the bar,
there is still a tremendous amount of noise from five until closing. It seemed to Bill and me that in a small place like
Rancho del Monte, light sleepers and families with children would hardly welcome the blare of music, the outbursts of
inane laughter, the slamming of car doors at two in the
morning. Besides, if we had wanted to open a grog shop,
we could have done it right in New York without all the inconvenience of moving bag and baggage to Santa Fe.

So Rancho del Monte was run on a strictly Bring Your
Own Bottle basis. Those guests who wanted to drink sup
plied their own potables. The bottles were labeled with
their names and with the high water mark at the end of
each day. Soda, ginger ale, quinine water, and ice were on the house. If we ever felt flush enough to serve wine with meals, we did, but it was free, and the same policy was
extended to those guests who wanted a drink before dinner
but who arrived at Rancho del Monte innocently expecting
a plush cocktail lounge and finding only a very quiet bottle party of people drinking like civilized ladies and gentlemen
on the terrace. A lot of tavernkeepers have told us time
and time again that we were crazy and headed either for
the poorhouse or the madhouse, but I'd far rather have our
reputation and clientele than their profits, and headaches.

The next problem was hiring a wrangler, and a wrangler
is the one essential person on any ranch, no matter how
small. I was a little vague about just
what
a wrangler does,
so Bill and I sat down in the office and drew up a list of
requirements.

"First of all," Bill said, getting all businesslike, "the
wrangler takes care of the horses."

"Natch," I said.

"He feeds them, waters them, and sees that they're
groomed."

"Yes, dear," I said, writing faster and faster.

"He sees that their bridles and saddles are soaped and
polished and kept in good repair, He has to
know
the horses . . . almost like a brother. . ."

I shuddered.

"He has to have a kind of psychic rapport with them. . ."

"Psyche Rappaport? Who's she?"
₍

"Cut the clowning. He has to know when they're sick
and either cure them himself or call the vet right away."

"Or shoot them," I said under my breath.

"On top of this," Bill continued, "he has to take care of
the guests, too."

"Well, I'm glad there'll be somebody else to help," I
sighed.

"I didn't mean in the lounge. I meant in the corral and
out on rides. He has to size up every guest and match the
guest to the right horse. He ought to be able to judge—
just by looking and not by asking a lot of embarrassing
questions—just how much riding experience each guest
has had and which saddle and which horse will be the best.
After all, we don't want all of our paying guests killed on
the range."

"I'm not so sure," I murmured. Then I wrote, "clairvoyant, genius, merciful."

"He also has to give elementary lessons to those guests
who don't ride at all, but want to learn . . ."

"More fools they," I said.

"And then he has to take the guests out on their rides."

"Well, he'll be just as busy as a little bee, won't he?" I
said.

"There are more requirements, Barbara," Bill said rather
pompously. "He has to be pleasant and genial with every
one. He has to be a pal to the men and a gentleman—
always
—to the ladies . . ."

"I should
hope
so," I said, trying to sound as much like
Mother as possible.

"And when it comes to children, he has to be a kind of
affectionate uncle, even though they dog his every step and
ask a thousand questions a minute . . ."

"Oh, it sounds like a lead-pipe cinch! There must be
thousands of young men who are just
itching
to take on such pleasant work—especially with the kiddies in tow."

"He must also address every woman as Ma'am," Bill said rather sternly, "and every man as Sir."

"Yes, sir," I said. "Anything more?”

“He should also be nice looking. Handsome, if pos
sible.”

"Now you're
talking!"
I said, laying down the pencil. "I can just see him now—kind of long and rangy with great big shoulders and itty-bitty hips and maybe deep brown eyes. I'm sick of blue. He could be a bit of Gary Cooper and a little of John Wayne and a touch of Rock Hudson with maybe just a hint of Randy Scott. And when he looks into my limpid blue eyes with those big, dark, dumb, dog eyes of his and says, 'Ma'am, whar's mah paycheck, Ma'am?' I'll simply flip!"

"That isn't all he has to do, either," Bill said.

"Dream on, fool," I said, taking up the pencil again. "He should be a Rhodes scholar, a tournament bridge player, an international gourmet, a noted authority on archeology, an accomplished pianist, and possessed of a pleasant baritone voice, I suppose."

"Not quite, but almost," Bill said. "Since this is a small ranch and without any other staff, our wrangler will also have to help with the dishes, wait on table, clean the swimming pool and take the garbage to the dump, drive guests to the movies at night, and be attentive—but nothing more, mind you—to any unattached young female guest."

"With a program like that, she'll be lucky if he has time to do more than nod in her direction," I said.

"Well, you know what I mean, Barbara," Bill said. "We don't want the kind of lecher who'll try to snatch all the pretty young girls into his bed."

"Bed?"
I asked. "Why bother giving him a bed? With a schedule like the one you've mapped out he'll never get to use it—not even alone."

Bill ignored my irreverence rather grandly. "Now, Barbara," he said, "where do you suppose we find such a paragon?"

"You might try M-G-M," I said.

However, we did find a wrangler who seemed to fill the bill and whose six or seven major drawbacks became apparent to us only when the ranch was jammed to bursting. Our Greek god, who was to be all things to all men and all women, was named Curly, presumably because of the bewitching tangle of taffy-colored ringlets on his big, beautiful, empty head. He was as stunning as a window dummy and every bit as bright. But he looked good and we were too new at the business to do much more than look at him.

No sooner had Curly settled into the bunkhouse—silk shirts, git-tar, Collie dog, and all—than the first large influx of guests arrived for Easter Week. There were only fourteen of them, about half the number we were supposed to handle at full capacity, but it seemed like rush hour on the I.R.T. subway to me.

If I have given the impression that we never fed a single guest before leaving New York, please forgive me. We used to entertain quite a lot. Bill and I would give little dinners for as many as four or six and sometimes a buffet supper for twelve—the extent of our silver and china. But those were parties which we would give three or four times a month and no more. We'd spend a day preparing for them, a day cleaning up after them, and still another day recuperating from them. Fourteen people in the house to feed three times a day, to bed down at night, and to tidy up after in the morning constituted—to me, at least—something of an ordeal.

Knowing less than nothing about the business of paying guests we worked out an unofficial, and very flexible, schedule for Curly and Bill and me. It went something like this:

6:30 Get up.

curly
: Tend horses, clean swimming pool, go to
garbage dump.

bill
: Start coffee—one full pound of it—and forty-two strips of bacon.

me
: Fix hair, face, set tables, dust public rooms.

7:45 Come and get it. (And don't think they came and got it on any set schedule. They straggled down from then until ten, although breakfast officially ended at nine.)

curly
: Serve, clear, start washing up.

bill
: Keep on cooking.

me
: Sneak up to empty rooms, make beds, replace soiled linen, empty ashtrays, dust, scour bathrooms. (Twelve bathrooms
sound
awfully good until you have to clean them.)

10:00
curly
: Saddle horses for morning ride.