Recovering Ground

          I cannot tell the story of the Enders Hotel until I first tell the story of how we almost never got it. For us the legacy of property begins with our family ranch, asizeable operation of 4,200 acres that rests some six miles west of Soda Springs.Recently, the state of Idaho recognized ours as a "Centennial Farm," one that has remained in the same family for 100 years or more. In many ways, however, we have stood in the shadow of the Beus Ranch legacy. Its fortunate and formidable heritage-much like that of the Ender~-has been our survival, our contention, and our collateral dream. The ranch was first homesteaded by Louis Beus, my great-great grandfather, at the stroke of the twentieth century in 1900. Fifteen years later that very dream-under the eager watch of Louis' son, Albert-nearly saw a disastrous end. But in the irony of all ironies it was disaster itself that saved the ranch, our narrative, and in turn, made way for a new legacy in our family: The Enders Hotel. 

In 1915, the year before Theodore Enders took out a loan to build The Enders Hotel, the People's Bank of Denmark had drawn up foreclosure papers on the Beus  Ranch. At the time, it looked like the legacy that Albert's Italian Immigrant father, Louis, had no doubt dreamed of, was nearly over. An old battered shoe-box of papers suggests that Albert tried to grow too quickly. He ran cattle and sheep and had planted crops and orchards. He had chickens fluttering and scratching in the dooryard, pigs rooting in the pens under his crab-apple trees. Soon he started a dairy and bought plenty of equipment. He was likely overextended. It was a rough time for Albert and his wife, Dora. By 1915, the youngish couple had already buried three of their seven children. It was an uneven time. By 1915, talk of Idaho becoming a "dry state" was already in the wind. And by 1915, the notion of losing the ranch in the wake of losing children would have been catastrophic, would have been too much to take for Albert or for anyone. 

Signing those foreclosure papers was probably the most difficult thing Albert had to face second only to burying his children. Having no choice, no options, and no available cash, Albert signed the papers nonetheless, and drove them six miles on a ribbon of dirt road to the post office in Soda Springs. Afterwards, he would have gone downtown to the pool hall. And while masons hoisted pallets of brick and mortar on pulleys and ropes through a maze of scaffolding, and while these men were at work drawing a wage, and while the construction of a town was underway, Albert drank a whiskey in the backroom of the pool hall. I imagine he sat there alone over his drink as brick dust poured in through wall-cracks and settled on the oily, piss-colored liquid in his glass. That is where Albert likely talked himself down from burying the cold barrel of his pistol in the back of his throat, gagging himself to the point that his eyes would have watered. That is where he would have convinced himself that squeezing the slick trigger in a vertiginous spell of drunkenness and dejection was not the way to go.  Although men have killed themselves for less than a lost ranch and dead children, Albert held out.

               And, like all family stories, it was more complicated than that-more complex  than foreclosure or disentitlement. To be sure there were other factors at work, factors that, when taken in context, make Albert's survival story all the more remarkable. Albert's father, Louis, the Italian immigrant, overshadowed the list of other factors. While there is no evidence or whispers to suggest that Albert and his father fought or detested one another, there is much to suggest that they didn't exactly square. Louis' family had been converted to Mormonism when he was scarcely one year old. Mormon Church icon and early President, Lorenzo Snow, delivered his standard tract to the Beus family in their small, stone cottage on a hillside in Piedmont,  Italy. The Beus family, having been promised the Lord's Bounty in a place called Deseret, the new Zion, was hooked. It was 1850, and a new movement fueled by a wide-eyed fervor was underway in America. It would later be called the Second Great Awakening. And one of the most fascinating, controversial, and contentious extensions born out of that movement was Mormonism-the one thing other than property that has cleaved my family for over one hundred years. 

Five years after Lorenzo Snow had visited the Beus home, Louis' parents-Michael and Marianne-sold their sheep and property and had saved enough money to book passage for new country. And on December 12, 1855, Michael and Marianne with Louis and his seven brothers and sisters, boarded the John J. Boyd in Liverpool, England and set course for New York. At Ellis Island they were greeted by a Mormon constituency who helped to arrange their travels to Winter Quarters-now a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska. They reached the Mormon village in June of 1856. Louis was then seven years old. From Winter Quarters, the Beus family entered the Mormon Church's first handcart company. From here, the elders would have said, you will walk to Deseret. The Beus family walked from eastern Nebraska to Utah pulling behind a clattery cart held together with leather thongs, ropes, and twisted wire. It will test your faith, the elders would have told them. It will test your faith.

           It took the Beus family over three months to walk across the plains and to pass through the mountains. And unlike most families who had to bury children along the trail, the Beus family made it relatively unscathed and unharmed. Although modern day Mormons will talk on ad nauseam about the "trials and tribulations" of their pioneer ancestors, it is not an exaggeration to say that the faith and moral tenacity that so many of them hold stems in part from those early migrations. Nor is it an exaggeration to say that Louis' faith came from the same well. Louis, who had grown into adolescence in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountain range near Ogden, Utah, married Mary Terry in 1876. Eight years later, the couple removed north to Soda Springs in the Idaho Territory-then little more than a church outpost-where Louis worked a variety of jobs to earn enough money for his own place.

            Hard work, frugality, and prosperity are among the bedrock principles of the Mormon faithful. So when Albert, who had rejected Mormonism about as quickly as he was born into it, learned that the People's Bank of Denmark had moved to foreclose on the family ranch, he must have known his father's thoughts on the matter. The Mormon patriarch with his deep-set eyes, distinguished nose, and gaunt face would have seen the foreclosure as a consequence and punishment for Albert leaving the church. Turn your back on providence and providence will turn its back on you.

The same English waters that Michael and Marianne Beus had set sail from in 1855 were alive with German U-Boats in 1915, some sixty years later. Winston Churchill, then first Lord of the British Admiralty, had long been interested in drawing the United States into a war against Germany. Danger lurked in the waters off the coast of England as the possibility of world war mounted. Churchill, then overseeing the operations of a top secret British Intelligence Office dubbed "Room 40," had sent out numerous confidential memoranda calling for more, not less traffic in English waters despite the impending threat of German attack. If a German U-Boat fired upon an American ship it would most certainly guarantee Woodrow Wilson's commitment to U.S. involvement in a war against the Kaiser.

             On May 1, 1915, the Lusitania-the world's largest and most extravagant ocean liner of the time-was bound from New York to Liverpool. In that morning's papers, the Germans had warned of possible attacks against seagoing vessels in English waters. Despite the global tensions and warnings, however, the Lusitania set sail under the watch of Captain William Turner. Six days later the first-class ship with its 1,959 unwitting passengers, entered the volatile waters off the coast of Ireland. In the early morning hours of May 7, 1915, British Intelligence received word that three merchant ships had already been destroyed by German U-Boats near Ireland. Within hours, German U-Boat 20, commanded by Kapitanleutant Walther Schweiger, was set on a dead course for Captain William Turner's Lusitania. 

When the crew of German U-Boat 20 spotted the palatial ship in their periscope lens, Schweiger ordered a torpedo launch. Within minutes the torpedo had cut through the waters that separated them and hit Turner's ship striking her just below the lapping waves. A massive explosion caused the ship to sink some 300 feet to the ocean floor in eighteen minutes. Of the 1,959 passengers aboard, 1,195 lost their Iives-123 of whom were Americans. And amid the debris lost in the sinking was a thick envelope of papers detailing the foreclosure of the Beus family ranch in Soda Springs, Idaho. The papers, bound for The People's Bank of Denmark, never made their final destination. I imagine them floating in the green coastal waters, a seascape littered with wreckage and bodies and slicked with the glut of fuel. They floated until the seams in the envelope atrophied and opened, spilling forth pages of portentous certainty. I imagine that while people gulped and gasped and flailed for their lives, a sheet of paper bearing the spidery signature of Albert Beus floated script-side down. I see the signature bleed from the sodden parchment in tiny plumes and clouds of black ink, and I see the ink suffuse with the murky green waters, and in moments the signature is gone-lifted forever-like it  

Catastrophe and devastation affect people in strange and often times frightening ways. A survivor of the Lusitania disaster once talked about his reoccurring nightmares:  how he would wake up and find himself standing on his bed, arms in motion. He was trying to swim out of his nightmare, away from the wreckage, away from all those floating people whose faces shone white and smooth and as dead as eggshell. He was trying not to drown. I wonder if Albert had a similar dream on the night he signed the foreclosure papers. I wondered if he dreamed of dead children or of drowning in the dark, fallow loam behind his clapboard house.  The sinking of the Lusitania turned out to be a compelling justification, a prima facie case, for U.S. military actions against Germany. Many say that the sinking of the Lusitania granted Churchill his wish. For the United States, its demise signified the first of two hellish wars. But for Albert, that tragedy signified a second chance to save his ranch. It signified his own second great awakening.  As the United States Military marched off to War, Albert Beus returned to his fields. Still, though, he would have to raise enough money to satisfy the outstanding note to the bank. The loss of the foreclosure papers didn't absolve his financial obligations; it just bought more time. 

I wonder how Albert raised that capital, though. Loans, no doubt. Some personal, some traditional. The paper-trail runs dry here. Although I do not know for certain how Albert saved the family ranch, I am free to speculate. He raised just enough money to cover the note the second time around. On the second set of foreclosure papers, Albert did not sign on the line of surrender. Instead he paid the outstanding balance and went back to work. But now he had another loan or a number of loans to payoff. And this time he didn't owe the faceless and otherwise anonymous bankers who worked in Danish offices an ocean away. This time he owed the men in his own town, men he saw daily at the pool hall, the mercantile, the cafe.

           Presumably, Albert kept current on those notes in that first couple of years. It is not hard to imagine that it would have been difficult for him to keep everything running under the certain scrutiny of his fellow townsmen, his wife and surviving children, and his pious father. Assuming that debt-however providential-must have felt like wearing another man's skin. It is no stretch to surmise that Albert wanted out of that debt as soon as possible. He wanted to feel like himself again.

           Stirrings. On Februrary 25, 1916, Lora S. LaMance, a national organizer for the Women's Christian Temperance Union, arrived in Soda Springs to talk with the town's ladies about the ills and evils of intoxicating liquors. Talk of prohibition abounded. The town's Mormon faithful-people like Louis and Mary Terry Beus-also attended the meeting. The push to make Idaho a "dry state" was underway. Albert's first reaction was most likely outrage. While Lora LaMance spoke to her gathering at the Presbyterian Church, a group of men across town gathered in the pool hall to decry the preposterous movement. People like Theodore Enders who had by this time drawn plans, secured his loan, and hired contractors, must have felt ambushed. Or maybe not.  I wonder at what point Albert felt his outrage abate. Did his views on the dry state initiative change when he shucked out two-bits on the bar for a round of drinks? Indeed, did a simple exchange of currency for drinks trigger his business sense? Go ahead, he may have thought. You pass your horseshit initiative. By all means. I'll drive you to Boise my own self. Go on and pass it. See where it gets you. 

It is tempting to place Albert, Theodore Enders, and Johnny Wallace-thepreeminent bootlegger of Caribou County and Albert's long time business partner-around a table in the pool hall. It is tempting to recast the conversation they may have had, the elliptical discussions, the recursive remarks. Such banter would have been abbreviated, cut to the quick. Talk of shipments and goods, of product and sales, of roads and routes. They would have talked in questions and their gestures would have filled in the gaps: a raised brow; fingers drumming the table; the cluck of a tongue; The pop of a stick-match. Nothing spelled out. I see the triangle that connects the three men and their individual roles: Theodore, proprietor; Johnny, supplier; Albert, runner. Of course their talk was speculative as the law had not passed yet. Yet. But it would. Within the year. And the dialogue would emerge and the business would soon follow. By the time The Enders was open and operating in 1919, prohibition was law and these gentlemen had a corner on a highly lucrative market. 

The stories bleed through the generations and inevitably dilute like ink in water. Stories of Albert, and his running partner, Jack Macey, carving bootleg roads through the Idaho backhills, over to Wyoming, with axe, pick, and shovel. They could clear brush and trees, uproot stumps, and dislodge boulders so long as each had a jug of whiskey to smooth out the pain in his back. They worked mostly at night as they cut through a landscape thrown askew in shadowy patterns of swinging lamplight. The roads criss-crossed the countryside, roads that trailed under gray cottonwoods or forded pebbly streambeds. Some are still visible, covered only in June grass-vague reminders of ambition and restlessness. Some of the roads have been swallowed by willow thickets, stands of aspen, clusters of juniper, and gooseberry brush. These rutted trails once saw their share of bootleg traffic: groaning trucks bucking a load of contraband, shipments brought in from the hinterlands to the drugstore in the Enders Hotel.

Johnny Wallace was the pharmacist at Eastman Drug which, in 1919, was located in the south bay of the Enders building. By the time he died in 1990, at the age of 93, Wallace had amassed a considerable fortune, one that stretched into the millions. If they mention him at all, the local historians will remark that he was a "shrewd" businessman who "invested wisely"-if they mention him at all.

          There is a photograph of the Enders Building near the time of its completion in 1919. A sign hangs over the sidewalk bearing the word "DRUGS." Outside three dark coupes are parked in front of the building. Eight or so unidentified men stand on the sidewalk in ties and vest and coats. The grainy-faced men peer across the street, from one side to the other. I wonder if Albert is among them. I wonder if Johnny is the tall one in the suit, the one with his hands stuffed in his trouser pockets. Albert was a fixture in the Enders Building in its early days. If he wasn't present when the flash-bulb popped and flared, he would be soon. Sooner than later, no doubt.

Around the time that picture was taken, Albert and Jack Macey-his running partner-had agreed to make a large run to Wyoming. Demand was up and Johnny Wallace wanted double the load which meant taking two cars. I imagine Albert and Jack playing poker downtown that evening, Albert leaning back in his chair, his hat tipped back on his head. Jack, who is seated across the table, has folded his hand. He eyes his pocket watch, snaps it shut, and slips it in his vest pocket. He looks at Albert. A quarter to seven. It was time to go. Albert folds his hand, rocks his hat forward, and stands. "Ladies," he says to the group of men. "It's been a damn pleasure losing to you tonight." 

"The pleasure's been ours, Uncle," one says and the men laugh. Tom McKenzie, a Deputy Sheriff, who has not folded, sits staring at his hand. Without looking up he says, "Where you girls headed?" 

"Night fishing," Jack says. 

"Is that so?" Tom says as he smoothes his gray beard. 

"That's when it's best," Albert says. 

"If I was you, Uncle, I'd try Georgetown Pass," Tom says. 

"Oh?" 

"That's where it's good. No snags up that way." 

"Thanks for the tip, Tommy," Jack says and the two of them leave. 

I can almost hear the whine of the cars as they thump along the rutted road that will take them across the border, to Kemmerer, Wyoming. Albert leads, driving a 1915 Model- T pick-up, black with spoked wheels. Jack trails behind in a new gray Dodge Coupe with flared fenders. Each car carries heavy canvas tarpaulins. Each car carries the promise of profits. 

It was quicker to cut north, through Trail Canyon, Mill Canyon, and on into Tin Cup Pass. That was the main route that Albert and Jack had carved. From Tin Cup they would coast into Freedom, Wyoming. That was their usual route. The quickest. It was the usual route until they heard something unusual, something like Georgetown, no snags. Then they changed their routes. Going the Georgetown way meant dipping south and then angling east to Kemmerer adding two hours on to the trip but it was worth it. The extra time was worth not getting stopped and having their load looted by police or god knows who. 

I picture Albert leaning toward the Model-T's windshield, his eyes fixed on the ruts and button-hook turns. He cranks the wheel and rounds a switchback only to jam on the brakes. Before him lies a downed aspen spanning the road, its skin shining bone-white under the glow of headlamps. The two men, in their thirties, swing their car doors open and step out to survey the hold-up, to make certain it isn't an ambush. Both men stand in their shirt sleeves and suspenders, sizing up the tree's mass. It is too large to handle. Albert thumbs his hat up and it slides back a little on his dark, moppish hair. Jack hoists a jug to his lips, takes a pull and passes the pale, stoneware vessel to Albert. After a drink, Albert grabs a chain from the back of the pick-up, loops it around the aspen's trunk, and hooks the other end of the chain around his truck axle. "Back her up," he calls to Jack while motioning with his hand. Careful not to hit his new coupe, Jack maneuvers the truck backwards off the road a little and into a clearing. The tree pulls free and the road opens up. Eager to get back on the road, Jack and Albert clamber back into their outfits, draw a low gear, and start up the steep grade of Georgetown Pass.

I wonder what Albert carried with him on such trips, what Dora might have

packed for him? A sandwich of ham and cheese on thick-sliced bread, perhaps. A thermos of coffee? Smoked trout wrapped in newspaper? It's likely. But what about the things only he would have packed? Like a gun, for instance? Was Albert that kind of bootlegger? Was there any other kind? Were all bootleggers gun-toting outlaws as Hollywood would have us believe? Or is there some truth to the stereotype? I suspect it would have been foolish to run liquor without a gun. Besides, who didn't pack a gun in Soda Springs, Idaho in 1919?   

I look at a Forest Service map and trace the roads they might have taken that night or any night for that matter. I wonder if some of the "unimproved roads" were born under the work and will of those two men. It is more likely, though, that their roads do not appear on the map, as their stories do not appear in the history book. I measure distances and figure time. One hundred ten miles from point to point, from The Enders to Kemmerer. It was a haul by any standard. I entertain some guesswork. At best, they could manage maybe fifteen to twenty miles an hour over rough, improvised roads. If they left Soda Springs at around 7:00 PM like I imagine they did, Albert and Jack would have reached Kemmerer somewhere between 12:00 and 1 :00 in the morning, still under the full thrust of darkness. They would be home-if they were lucky-before sunrise. 

I do not know who their connections were in Wyoming. Details of such stories often fleck away like paint chips from a clapboard home. Time, like wind and weather, scours the surface of our narratives until, eventually, we're left with little more than the structure and less adornment, less detail. So I imagine, reconstruct. I attempt to right the structure and to readorn its surfaces. I imagine a livery stable in Kemmerer, hunkered on the rocky plain near the western edge of town. It ought to have a small, padlocked door at its rear, and next to it a larger door that swings open onto a hard­ packed lot. It is a livery stable but it is a holding-house too. Albert and Jack back their cars up to the large door. Men shake hands and share a joke. Cash is exchanged and crates are loaded. The men work quickly as they fight daybreak and suspicion. 

Their luck on the homebound route is threatened by the same forces that always threaten luck: unforseen circumstances. Jack's brakes in the new coupe go out as they descend the Georgetown grade. Following Albert closely Jack toes the pedal and it falls to the floor. The coupe glides forward in a rush and slams against the Model-T.  Bottles-cases and cases of bottles-clink and rattle together. Albert puts his window down, sticks his head out, and looks back. He is rammed again and nearly loses his hat. Jack is shouting, "My brakes! They're out!" Albert slows and is jolted again. The bottles clatter. He winces. He finds first gear and slows to crawl. The coupe grinds into the back of the truck and for the rest of the grade, Albert brings them both down the canyon. The engine moans and hisses, metal grinds and bends, breaks burn and smoke, bottles rattle under the tarpaulins, and the two men white-knuckle their way down off the pass to the safety of the valley floor. There, I am sure, they stopped to have a drink and check for damages. The story they would later recount at the pool hall would live on through the ages: they did not lose a single bottle of whiskey. 

In those days, the Enders Building was a stronghold of contradiction. The Women's Christian Temperance Union had moved their weekly meetings from the Presbyterian Church to the Ladies Parlor in The Enders Hotel. Upstairs, above the drugstore, these women sat in a circle of straight-backed chairs-passing around saucers of sugar cookies-while the floral patterns in their dresses connected them in a perfect daisy chain. There they congregated and reassured themselves that their cause was just and right and holy. They were making a great social difference. Downstairs, however, men like Albert Beus and Johnny Wallace lived out a different kind of narrative, but with no less conviction. 

In the same year of The Enders' grand opening, Minnesota Congressman, Andrew Volstead introduced a bill calling for prohibition at the federal level. One year later the Volstead Act went into effect. Between 1917 and 1933, Albert Beus worked his ranch during the day and ran liquor at night. He eventually paid off his debts and grew his ranching operation into a profitable business. His was the largest dairy in the county in the 1930s, and his cash reserves insulated his family from the brunt of the Depression.  I am struck by a lingering hint of reciprocity that exists between the Beus family ranch  and The Enders Hotel. One fed the other, fed the other, so to speak. That reciprocity rings true, I think, when I recall something my grandmother said the other night on the phone: "If we didn't have that ranch, we couldn't have bought the Enders. It's that simple." And had it not been for prohibition and Albert's partnership with Johnny Wallace, it is difficult to say whether or not he could have saved the ranch.  But more than anything, I am struck by how the presence of The Enders Hotel has always figured into our narrative, like it has always been with us. And in a sense, it has. Albert's brother, Wilburn, was hired to design and install the building's plumbing and heating system. And in the 1940s, my grandmother worked as a waitress in the Enders Cafe. I imagine she saved her tips in a coffee can. And that she would walk home after a long shift, her feet worn and blistered, and she would count her earnings over and over again. She would hold that cold can of change close like a secret and think and hope and whisper, one day, one day.