THE SOAP BOARD
My father was a collector of sorts. But most unusual — his soap collection.
My father was a collector of sorts. Not the kind of man that collected cars or coins or anything most people would perceive to be of value. Little chance we would discover dusty Pollock’s and de Kooning’s squirreled away in a basement corner — Dad unaware or unconcerned with the fortune that lived by the furnace — paintings mysteriously acquired after World War II in trade for a bottle of port or a carton of cigarettes after a drunken night of Greenwich Village revelry. Nothing that romantic or story-worthy. This was Montana.
He was an amasser of moments, choosing to collect strange symbols of place and time. There were dozens of baseball caps rimming the window of his den, filthy brims, sweat-stained headbands, commemorating golf outings, friendly electrical contractors, Rotary Club fundraisers, and long-forgotten conventions. Unspectacular gray rocks pulled from favorite rivers, piled high in the alley with the unfulfilled pledge that someday he would construct a stone barbecue or fence to highlight his fishing adventures. Bowls overflowing with matchbooks no longer destined to create fire, but instead celebrating special evenings at favorite taverns and restaurants.
But most unusual — his soap collection. Hundreds of tiny bars of motel soap, attached to a six foot by six foot piece of worn brown cork board with fuzzy pipe cleaners. One could almost comprehend and appreciate this assemblage if the soap commemorated great memories in magnificent hotels — The Waldorf Astoria in 1955, a thick bar of Eau de Wonderful from the Ritz in Paris brought home after a magical second honeymoon — luxurious soaps placed in temperature controlled display cabinets for generations to enjoy. But Dad was a traveling salesman on a budget, spending his days piloting a wobbly Dodge station wagon around the West, the back overflowing with catalogs highlighting gas pumps and steam cleaners, a supplier to men in steel-toed boots. He wore short sleeve Arrow dress shirts and skinny clip-on ties, a cracked plastic pocket protector overflowing with pens. A man that always carried a pocket knife and a clean white handkerchief. Dad seldom ventured anyplace more glamorous than Spokane or Denver. Most of the soaps he collected were the tiny slivers delivered sparingly in cheap motels — acidic, often soggy bars that lived on the edge of stained tubs and mysteriously transformed into arrowhead sized soaplets after one rub of the armpit, from places called The C’mon Inn, The Butte Super 8, and Rusty’s Motel in Forsyth, Montana.
Even as a kid I had trouble comprehending the attraction, but was a big fan of the dad and lad camaraderie that resulted from the hobby. He would come home on Friday night and empty the week’s bounty out of his worn leather Dop kit, the two of us spending a half hour before dinner cross legged on the frigid basement floor, Dad placing the soap against the cork board, lining it up so I could wrap the flexible wire pipe cleaner around the bar and wind it through the nearest two holes, twisting the wire together in precise little knots on the back of the board. Jack’s Motel in Malta, Buck’s T4 in Big Sky, Budget Inn in Cody. Each bar a movie trailer for my father’s stories:
-The dead rat he found in the motel pool in Havre.
-The hotel in Dillon with coin operated television and a vibrating bed.
-The great steakhouse next to the motel in Great Falls.
-The motel in Polson that only charged six dollars a night.
-The guy that had a heart attack and died in the room next to his in West Yellowstone.
-The time he let his friend Wally sleep in his motel bathtub in Jackson Hole.
There were the anonymous bars, lowest of the low in the world of motel soaps that didn’t even bother to mention the establishment, names like Lovely Lady and Camay, or the semi-anonymous Best Western. Even these were board-worthy, Dad licking the tip of his pen before making a tiny notation on the bottom of the bar.
Sometimes after a convention, or if he and Mom took a vacation, there would be a special bar, an almost full-sized model with ornate lettering from a famous hotel. It would receive special treatment, Dad fingering it gently, pointing at an embossed gold leaf logo. These bars would be placed on soap Fifth Avenue — a special section of the board for bars so big they required two pipe cleaners to properly mount. Dad would puff on his pipe, the two of us in sweet haze, the expensive soap a parable for my future.
“Son, work hard and be careful with your money, and someday you’ll stay at The Ridpath in Spokane. Fanciest hotel you have ever seem. They serve these shrimp cocktails. Nothing shrimpy about them. Huge. When they get really big they call them prawns. Not sure why.” He smiles and points at me with his pipe’s mouthpiece, one hand rubbing back his crew cut, his eyes surprisingly tender. I can see my reflection in his thick black framed glasses. “I know you’re going to be a big success, and your board will probably be filled with nice hotels instead of motels. Fancy places with big lobbies and room service. I can’t wait to see your soap board someday.” And he said it with such conviction I believed him. This from a man who more than once probably spent the night in his car so his family could live a little bit better.
One night my sister brought home a new boyfriend from college, a sketchy frat boy we struggled to like. Dad gave him the soap board tour, which he greeted with smirks and smart-assed remarks my father mistook for compliments, Dad was from a world that had no need for sarcasm. I wish I were a few years older so I could drag the kid into the alley and throw him headfirst into a dumpster. That night he is relegated to what passes for the basement guest room, technically a squeaky World War II-era roll-away mattress covered by my dead grandmother’s quilt. The bed sits in the corner of the unfinished concrete tomb, separated from my sister’s room by the furnace, twenty steps, the kitchen, and Dad’s watchful eye. Two days after the kid leaves we discover he has removed one of our rarest specimens, an almost full sized bar from The Fairmont in San Francisco, brought back from the 1972 Tokheim Pump convention. Dad emits a sad little moan when we find the wrapper mangled, carelessly tossed in the bathroom garbage can like the bloody clothing of a murder victim. The bar, half melted in a soap dish, still slimy and covered with disgusting coarse black hair, a cruel move that assured this kid would never be part of the family.
In a big rainstorm I worried about the soap board. What if the basement floods? Soap and water might be a natural mix, but bad for soap collectors. One day I rush home from school during a phenomenal storm, water bucketing against the roof, and run downstairs to check on the soap board. All is well, but as a precaution I mount a stepladder and pound a few nails six feet up the wall, struggling to get the board to safety.
Dad would proudly drag guests into the basement to show them the board, my mother and sister’s eyes rolling in embarrassment whenever he said “come downstairs, I want to show you something”. Without the benefit of motel narrative it was a confusing thing to see — row after row of crummy bars of soap hanging against the studs of an unfinished basement — like tiny motel tombstones. The guests, always gracious but baffled, smile and nod, and congratulate him on the mysterious accomplishment.
When I started dating and bringing girls home I would warn them. “Listen, my Dad is going to do something really weird, and invite you down to the basement to see his soap collection. Keep your jacket on until afterwards. It’s always cold downstairs.”
Soap collection? Two words never used together.
“Just do me a favor and don’t think he’s crazy, and tell him how much you like it.” And because I tended to have good taste in women, they would see the excitement in his eyes, grab a little glimpse of soap board magic, and respond accordingly.
With compliments…
-Look how nice the brown pipe cleaner compliments the tan on Harley’s Motel.
-Wow. Irish Spring. That’s a good one. I love their commercials. When the woman says, “but I like it too.”
Seeking artistic and travel advice…
-Why do you think Ben’s Inn uses a tractor as their logo?
-So of these three motels in Rapid City, which one do you prefer?
Philosophical discussions…
-Do you ever look at this and say, “here’s my entire life told in soap?” And what does it all mean? (I didn’t date her for long.)
When I brought my soon-to-be wife home she received the deluxe soap board tour, complete with detailed lodging narrative that went on for two glasses of wine. Afterward she hugged Dad, assuring him it was the best soap collection she had ever seen, cementing herself into the family.
When my folks were very old my mother decided to die, an event that shocked and baffled him. This was not part of the plan, especially as he slipped into old age fat and happy, unconcerned with any of the disciplines that might lead to elderly health and longevity. Mom was supposed to outlive him by at least five years, pad around the TV room in her quilted blue housecoat, make him toast in the morning, the two sipping coffee amidst a shrine of family pictures, maybe take a road trip now and then to collect another bar of soap. But in their 66th year of marriage she gave up early, even personally calling the Priest so he could come over and officially sign off on her death.
A few weeks later Dad took the now perilous journey down the narrow wooden steps, planting himself in an old plastic deck chair in front of the soap board. I found him there, leaning forward, chin against his glossy cane, discretely rubbing moist eyes as if he were watching a home movie.
“Look at this one from The Royal Hawaiian.” He raises an age-spotted hand and points at a big pink bar. “Your Mom, and Tommy and Mary and I went there in 1968. God, we had a great time. That was a lovely hotel. All pink. Imagine that, a pink hotel. Your Mom would wear those flowers around her neck. I was so proud of her. Guys would say to me, “how did you ever get such a good looking woman to marry you?” Don’t know. Just lucky. The luck of the Irish.”
And for the next two hours we sit in front of the soap board, Dad retelling the stories I had heard a thousand times but somehow seemed fresh.
A year later he gives up too, nodding away in his sleep. My sisters and I struggle to close out two lives, empty a house full of memories and somehow properly disburse things technically worthless but invaluable.
And what to do with the soap board? We stand in front of it for almost an hour, over forty years of stories rolling off of it. One of my sisters takes down the bar from the hotel in Napa Valley where she was married, one of the fanciest on Soap Fifth Avenue. My other sister removes the bar from a motel next to the hospital where her son was born. I remove a bar from a hotel outside of Portland, Oregon — the place we stopped when he drove me to college.
The next day we carry the board to his funeral, and prop it up next to the photo of Dad that sits in the back of the church. Friends shuffle in, and most smile when they see it, veterans of the soap board tour. When you live as long as Dad, funerals are less about grief and more about celebration, and at the end of the service I point to the board.
“I know most of you were dragged down to the basement to see his soap collection.” A collective smile goes through the crowd. “We want it to be Dad’s gift to you, so if you see a bar that has some special significance, please take it with you to remember our father.”
After the service family and old folks surround the board. Wally Streeter locates the soap from Jackson Hole, now four decades old, soap dust sifting through the edge of the paper, and smiles widely and points.
“Your Dad let me sleep in his bathtub at this place.”
One old man I don’t recognize removes a tattered bar from the bottom of the board — the KC Motel. “They went out of business thirty years ago, but I used to love the place. There was a bar next to it where I did some drinking, and it was easy to stumble home. The bartender had a dog that liked to drink beer and would howl when he played Nat King Cole on the jukebox. Not sure if it was because he liked it or didn’t.”
The soap board becomes the center of discussion for the next hour, and slowly most of the bars disappear, memories taken to new homes. I took four or five, and keep them dry and safe in a wooden box on my dresser. Sometimes I find myself adding to the collection. Not like my Dad — not every inn is worth commemorating — but some trips just need to be remembered. My wife and I return from a two week trip to Europe, and I pull several bars from my luggage as we unpack. Fancy hotels with big lobbies and room service, just like he predicted.
Tim O’Leary’s short story collection, Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face: And Other Tales of Men in Pain, will be released on February 16, 2017. Pre-order Tim’s book here. Visit O’Leary’s website to learn more.
