Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains, by Jan MacKell, $34.95. Do we really need another book on the West’s historic hookers? Oh well, why not? Jan MacKell has put together a volume on the West’s frail sisters that is as fact-filled as you’ll find, with hundreds of stories, both truth and legend. The author posits that Sacagawea might have given Meriwether Lewis a venereal disease that led to his death.
MacKell organizes the book by states, with Colorado getting the most space. Whether that’s because we’re the wickedest or because the author lives in Victor isn’t clear.
Whatever the reason, MacKell seems to have turned up the names of every hooker who ever plied her trade here. Many are famous, including Mattie Silks and Laura Evans (or Evens, as the author spells it). Others are obscure, such as Grace Hoffman in Alma, who gave up the life to marry a rancher and left behind a cookbook filled with notes. One is, “Sin . . . would seem a virtue if it was only shared by you.”
Hoffman’s life was a happy one, but too many of the women in the book were addicted to drugs and booze and either were killed or committed suicide. Many went out of business when morals in general lapsed. One madam complained about the competition from college girls, who “will do it for a burger and a beer.”
In many ways, “Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains” is a (dirty) laundry list of prostitutes, raw data that is organized only by time and place.
It lacks the interpretation of Clark Secrest’s “Hell’s Belles,” which is the gold standard for books on Western prostitution. Still, it’s an entertaining read for buffs and scholars alike of the underside of the West.
Going Green: True Tales From Gleaners, Scavengers, and Dumpster Divers, edited by Laura Pritchett, $19.95.
As kids, we called it trash hunting. Pritchett thinks of it as gleaning. To most Americans, it’s Dumpster diving. And it isn’t just for down-and-outers. Scavenging is the ultimate green experience, claims Pritchett, who started collecting trash as a child and now takes her kids along to help search through the Dumpsters.
Pritchett and some two dozen other writers who provide the essays in this book furnish their homes with discards, dress themselves in cast-offs and even feed their families on roadkill. According to essayist Michael Engelhard, his friend Bart serves up bobcat tamales and fox stew and calls the Colorado Department of Transportation to find the locations of deer killed by cars.
There’s a certain amount of pride that they are going green by recycling trash, the writers claim, but most admit economics is their primary motive. You can remove and sell copper from many discarded items. If you’re handy with your hands, you can repair appliances for resale or use trash for artwork.
Then there is the thrill of the hunt. Professional scavengers know the pickings are best at the end of the month (or in college towns, at the end of the semester) when people are moving. So they don their old clothes and gloves and head for the alleys to see what treasures are waiting for them — clothes, knickknacks, office supplies, sometimes even antiques.
Dumpster diving is a life experience, writes Pritchett. Her kids tell her, “Mom, you’re the best mom, because if you suddenly die, we know how to live out of Dumpsters.”
Rocky Mountain Heartland: Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming in the Twentieth Century, by Duane A. Smith, $50 cloth, $22.95 paper. With comparisons between today’s economy and the Great Depression, it might be a good idea to look at just how bad things were in Colorado, Montana and Wyoming in the 1930s.
In this factual and well-written account, Smith tells that nearly a quarter of Montana households were on relief, farm income was cut in half, 85,000 businesses failed, credit was virtually nonexistent, and foreclosures and evictions were rampant.
Colorado suffered even more than many states because we were part of the Dust Bowl. Between 1932 and 1939, Colorado averaged almost one dust storm a week.
Smith, the prolific Western historian, covers the entire 20th century in “Rocky Mountain Heartland.” He tells how all three states were rural at the beginning of the 20th century. Montana and Wyoming still retain much of their rural character, but Colorado became an urban state with all the challenges of urbanization.
It boomed after World War II, but growth brought problems that inspired the environmental and anti-growth movements.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver novelist who writes regularly about new regional nonfiction.
