The House on Clay Street.....

I'm sure, as many of you read the subtitle above, eyebrows are raised to say the least.  Since there is no "Clay Street" in our hometown, you know I can only be talking about the infamous House on Clay Street in Bowling Green.  It was the subject of a best seller by the same name and was a brothel operated by Pauline Tabor for many years. 

I never actually got to meet Ms. Tabor but when I attended college in Bowling Green, I had seen her on more than one occasion.  No, I wasn't a customer but she was well known around town.  In fact, she was well known around the world.  I remember when I first got to Western and got to meet some of the guys around our dorm, one of them (a foreign exchange student from Japan) asked me "vere's de Red Barn?"  At first I didn't know what he was referring to until my roommate informed me that was the nickname for "Pauline's."  Naturally since we didn't have Google or Mapquest back then, I took him down by there personally via the shuttlebus downtown and then by walking a few blocks.  Actually I had never seen it myself so it was also an adventure for me.  It happened to be on a Monday night.  We rode the bus downtown, and I took him to Gabbard's Pool Hall for some of their gourmet chili (it has about 1/4" of grease floating on top of it) and a couple of games of pinball.  When we got over to Pauline's, we discovered she was closed on Mondays.  We found this out from another guy who pulled up in front of the driveway.  He told us that when she was closed, she would put a Milk Can in the center of the driveway (which was there).  The can was tethered to one of the columns on the front of her house (it was actually a beautiful old Victorian Mansion - with probably 7 or 8 bedrooms -DUH!) and had these majestic columns on the porch.  She had a narrow driveway that went alongside a privacy fence and there was parking for 10-12 cars in the back yard.  Aside from the milk can in the driveway, the house looked perfectly normal and was probably the nicest one on Clay Street.

At any rate, I showed it to my Japenese Friend and pretty soon we were on our way.  I tried not to let on that it was my first trip down there too.  He probably thought I was one of the smartest people he had ever met as I could answer his questions as fast as he could throw them at me.  What he didn't know was that any sex education expertise I had, it was from working for four years in a drugstore after school.  I carried a prophoylactic in my billfold for four years, until it formed a circular ring in the leather.  It showed people you were "a man" when you pulled your wallet out of your pocket to pay for gas.  The attendant sort of "looked up" to you.  Kinda made you feel "James Bond" like!

As time went on, I couldn't get that milk can out of my mind.  I used to think how cool it would be to get the can for a souvenir.  This seemed like an impossible task as the chain that secured it had a large padlock and was pretty thick.  It would be impossible to "hacksaw" through it without getting caught.  That's all I would need, headlines in the Times-Argus that read "Central City Native arrested for stealing milk can at Brothel."

Then one day my roommate (who was originally from Morgantown) introduced me to a classmate of his who lived in an apartment above a hardware store.  He worked at the hardware store part-time to help pay his rent.  He had a key to the place.  I asked him if they had any bolt cutters in the store.  "Sure" he said, "we loan them out all the time!"   "Eureka," I thought, "here's my meal ticket to getting a milk can from Pauline's."  He was a great guy and agreed to help me.  The following Monday evening, a friend who had a car and myself went to pick him up in front of the hardware store.  We took him to Gabbard's for some world-class chili w/grease, a couple of pinball games and the we set off to Pauline's.  All was quiet so we parked down the street about 1/2 block away.  My friend who owned the car unlocked the trunk in preparation for our "haul," and my other friend and I took the bolt cutters and headed back up the street.  I took the cutters while he stood watch.  Slowly I walked into her driveway, took a breath, slid the cutters on the chain and compressed the handles with all the strength I could muster. Bam....paydirt....the chain fell to the ground with a clink that sounded like Big Ben.  I knew everyone in the neighborhood heard it, so quickly I gathered it up, grabbed the handle and ran down the street, depositing the "stash" in the trunk of the '55 Ford sedan and away we went.

Needless to say, I was the talk of the dormitory.  The Japanese student paid for my dinner and looked up to me like I was some kind of hero.

In those days, Bowling Green had a Television station that broadcast two things....News and Wrestling.  I constantly watched the news thinking it would make headlines but when it didn't I had nightmares that some "burly" wrestler would hear about it and come looking for me. 

The following weekend I hitched a ride home and took the milk can with me.  Back then, there was no Parkway....you went down 231 to Morgantown then Hwy. 70 to Browder and 431 for the final leg of the trip.  I don't know how many of you ever traveled Hwy. 70 but it had curves you could see your own taillights on.  As we sped home down the curvy old road, I envisioned Robert Mitchum hauling Moonshine in the old black and white movie, "Thunder Road." 

We made it home to Central City (we always took a rest room break at the Rochester Dam) and when we got to my house, I unloaded my treasure and hustled up the driveway before any neighbors saw it and asked questions.  I set it behind a bush just outside our basement door.

The next morning (Saturday), I went to retreive it for storage in our basement and my Mother asked me where I got the milk can.  Thinking quickly, I told her that one of my best friends, whose grandparents happened to live out in the country, had just signed on to have Holland Milk delivered to their door so they sold the old cow and no longer had a need for the can.  They gave it to me.  My mother, being the most gullible person in the world bought the story.  Dad was at work so he didn't see it.  Anyhow, I took the can, chain and all and stored it with some other junk in the corner of our basement.  I didn't think about it again.

A few years later, I was living at home again (I had a tendency to do that a lot) and was "surfing" channels on the TV.  Now you've got to remember, we're still talking a Black & White TV here that probably didn't get four channels and didn't get any before 3 p.m.  Surfing meant getting up from your seat,  manually changing the channel (including turning the antenna) and hoping for the best.  That particular evening, there happened to be a lady on a talk show "hawking" a book entitled "The House on Clay Street...Confessions of a Happy Hooker."  I looked at it and there was the Old Gal from Bowling Green herself....on National TV.  Without thinking, I blurted out "There's Pauline!" to which my dear sweet Mother asked, "Who's Pauline?"   I sort of gave her a quick synopsis.  I assured her I wasn't one of her customers and that my name wouldn't be anywhere in her book.

During the interview, the subject of the Milk Can came up.  She told the host (I believe it was Merv Griffin) that she had owned four such cans throughout the years and that three of them had been stolen.  It was mentioned that due to her fame, proof of ownership of one of these cans could be quite valuable.  She then acknowledged that she would know if they were genuine or not because she still had the keys to the padlocks of all of them.  She went on to say that if someone brought one by, and it was one of the original cans, she would be more than happy to autograph it and validate it's authenticity.  "Bingo!"  Bells went off in my head.  I was going to be rich and famous because I had one of four original milk cans from Pauline's driveway!!!!  

I didn't want to tip Mom off so I didn't go downstairs and check on my milk can.  I knew she would have forgotten about it by the next day so I slept on the situation and the next morning, I headed downstairs.  Most of the junk was still in the corner.  In fact there was even more.  I didn't immediately see the can so I figured it was on the bottom of the pile under old bicycle frames, lawn mower carcasses, tool boxes and the like.

Quickly, I started unpiling the stuff and creating a new pile in the center of the basement floor.  This went on for nearly an hour and when I got to the point where I could see the bottom of the pile, "Egads! There Was NO MILK CAN!!!" 

About to panic, I quickly ran upstairs and yelled "Mom, Where's my Milk Can?"  "Do What?" was her reply.  "My Milk Can, the one that was given to me a few years ago.....Where is it?"   "Oh, you mean the one that had the chain hanging from the handle?"   "Yes, Yes....That's the one....Where is it????"   "Well, about a year ago Franklin Bradley (a guy that lived down the street) ran out of gas in front of our house and was going to have to walk down to Field's Phillips 66 and get some.  He needed a bucket or something to carry it in so I gave him that old milk can...Thing looked horrible anyway!  I told him he could keep it....he's a nice boy!"

Well, you can imagine the pain I felt at that moment.  I've never had the pleasure of swallowing a Bowling Ball, but I suspect the feeling I had in my stomach was a similar feeling.  To this day, I wonder what would have happened if I had hauled the Milk Can back to Bowling Green, to Pauline Tabor's farm on the outskirts of town, unlocked the padlock and had her write a personal message validating it's origins.  I like to think she would have been a nice lady (I alway heard she was) and would have laughed about the ordeal or if she would have had me arrested for stealing it in the first place.  I tend to believe the former.