Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is an interesting short book for several reasons. It appears to be a perfect example of how many senior citizens and retired folks are digging up or gathering together lots of local history and preserving it for posterity. In this case, the author relates how he first started hearing some of these stories 50 years ago. Now, half a century later he has taken those stories and interviewed many 60-90 year-old friends and acquaintances and boiled down their oral history into this 121 page historical tome. Combined with interviews and library research the author presents a fascinating, enlightening, humorous and entertaining book of historical facts and local myths about the underbelly of Wyoming's wild nightlife. As the author jokes, this is not a politically correct book and most of it is probably true. Lots of pictures of the most famous "sporting houses" in Wyoming are included in the book. There are also very rare photographs of the "sporting girls" that were taken to be used for advertising their services. The reader may be surprised to learn that this kind of prostitution still openly existed into the late 1970's. The Wild West was still alive and well in Wyoming.
The most famous "Soiled Dove" or "Fallen Angel" in the book is Martha Jane Canary, "Calamity Jane" of Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody fame. She was only one of the many "ladies of the night" discussed within the book. One particularly interesting chapter is entitled "A Day in the Life of a `Working Girl.'" It provides the answer to many people's questions about what it was like to visit one of these places. It also provides interesting insights into what the girls really thought about their customers.
In several instances described, "housewives also went to these places. Not for sex, but to find out why their husbands went there. This took a lot of courage. Some of the questions the girls would answer were; 'Why would he prefer this place rather than our home?' `What do you do for him that I don't?' The working girls were always happy to answer questions like these. Prostitutes never thought themselves to be in competition with housewives. Their only job was to make a man relax and be happy enough to spend his money...Prostitutes seemed to know more about this than some housewives."
A few housewives also worked part-time at brothels, usually in places where no one knew them, like on the other side of town in larger cities. There are also a couple of examples of the "dens of sin" in various communities and settlements being burned to the ground in suspicious fires. Housewives were the suspected arsonists, but none of them were ever charged.
The book is full of trivia facts such as "The FBI was first activated into Federal Service as prostitute busters." Another fact was "that almost every town in Wyoming had Whorehouses." This book is also full of jokes and satire that often ring all too true.
"Badland Charlies" most famous patrons were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and their gang "The Wild Bunch." The book is peppered with such characters with equally colorful names. One of the book's indexes is for 124 euphemisms for prostitutes, their customers, the sexual act and the brothels that the author had not printed in this volume. The author mentioned that he'd used 250 other euphemisms ( who would have thought there were so many) in the book so as not to offend too many readers many of who objected to the term "Whorehouses" or "Whores." Included in the book are many definitions and sources for terms like `Two-bit Ho." This is a very folksy, sometimes corny reportage of local history, but it is certain to provide the readers many chuckles and help them separate fact from myth. The authors humor is typified by a a sign covering the breasts of a nude prostitute's full-length portrait on the back cover of the book. The sign says, "Not Politically Correct."
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The Great Wyoming Whorehouses
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