By Karl Sorenson
To look at Gladys, it was easy to see how she had gotten her nickname. She was big, not in a fat, sloppy sort of way, but tall and broad at the shoulders and real strong. Gladys was a little bit over six foot tall and weighed close to two hundred pounds. And this was in her fifties and way past the prime of her life when she was a professional wrestler.
As a professional wrestler, she had done well on the women’s circuit. So well in fact, she was invited to be in a men’s tag team match. Her partner was Mad Dog Daniels. They were to compete against Mr. Destruction and Gorgeous George. Her version was that her team had won on the strength of her legs. She pinioned Gorgeous George’s head in a scissors lock. Although she was sure it “hurt like hell”, that “Goddamned Gorgeous George just wouldn’t give up”. She wasn’t able to hold his shoulders to the mat for three seconds with that hold. He still could not wrench his head free. They rolled around in the ring like that for most of the third period. When the clang, clang, clang of the final bell sounded and they peeled her legs from around that “beautiful blonde hair covered head”, both he and she wore jubilant smiles of victory. The match was a draw.
George said he could have gotten his head free at any time. But he grinned “that was as good a place to have my head stuck, as I could remember”. Big Gladys beamed with pride and smiled brightly over that fine compliment.
Dad was like many businessmen in those days. He let people keep a tab for drinks and pay when they were able; most of the time this worked just fine. Sometimes it did not. When it did not work and the man owing money did not come in to pay, Dad would say he was losing twice. One, he was losing the money owed. Two, since the man was embarrassed, he couldn’t pay, he spent whatever money he did have down the street at one of the other seven bars on that block.
One of dad’s lessons was that he “hated anyone who would lie, steal or cheat”. In his mind, when Tom Jenson wouldn’t pay after he promised he would, Tom was a liar. Worse, Tom was a cheat and even a thief. A tab is like a promissory note-fair payment for services or goods. As far as dad was concerned, by not making fair payment, Tom had stolen Dad’s money, which was too much for him. Dad made an arrangement with Big Gladys to go to work as the collection agency for the B&L Bar. It wasn’t the fifty bucks owed as much as the principle involved. Payment for Big Gladys was every dollar she collected and the fun had while collecting.
Tom was a working man and had been a plumber in Cut Bank since graduating from high school fourteen years earlier. He and his wife of thirteen years and their three children lived on the north side of the railroad tracks in the older section of town. Toms’ problem was that he liked “Old John Barleycorn” too much. He had tabs going at more than one bar in town. Shirly, his wife, managed to keep the kids fed even as she struggled with bills. At the same time, she somehow was able to save a few dollars each week for any emergency.
When Big Gladys showed up at Tom and Shirley’s front door after supper one evening, Tom made two mistakes. The first was not paying the tab when Gladys explained why she was there. The second was laughing at her.
There must have been a fair amount of both surprise on his face and fear in his heart when she dragged him out into the yard. She wrestled him to the ground and finally ended up with Toms’ head squeezed between those powerful thighs. The bad part was that Shirley and the three kids were watching out the front window with wide-eyed fear. The good part was that Shirley realized this was an emergency. One for which she had been saving money. She ran to the bedroom where she had stashed those one-dollar bills in the bottom drawer of the dresser.
It was a hell of a scene for the neighbors with Big Gladys and Tom on the ground and Shirley waving the money in the air while begging Gladys to release Tom’s head. She did and took the money offered as payment. It did not turn out to be the full amount owed, but both Big Gladys and my dad felt Tom’s embarrassment and shame made up the difference. Plus, Gladys had fun.
Tom did figure out how to get his other tabs paid so those owners didn’t hire Big Gladys too. And after that he didn’t spend so much time in the local taverns. Seems he wasn’t near as happy as Gorgeous George to be caught between those legs and especially didn’t like the retelling of the story each time he walked into a bar.
And, the men who kept tabs at the B&L Bar made sure they kept current with payments. Nobody wanted Big Gladys showing up at their front door after supper to collect a debt for Dick Sorenson. MSN
