Seven miles off the coast of French Guiana lies Bagne de Cayenne. Loosely translated to mean hot prison, Bagne de Cayenne is also known as Devil’s Island. This malaria-ridden, tiny green speck in the vast blue ocean is dotted with palm trees, infested with sandfleas and overrun with giant rats. During the time the prison was in operation, due to the extremely harsh treatment administered by the prison’s more psychopathic guards, fifty percent of the new arrivals on Devil’s Island died within the first 12 months.
The few prisoners who managed to break their chains, then burrow under the thick prison’s wall, found themselves surrounded-on-all-sides by shark infested water. In a desperate bid for the mainland and freedom, the fugitive had to fight the tide and undertow. It takes the average swimmer approximately 5 hours to swim 7 miles in calm water. The combination of muscle exhaustion, mental fatigue and man-eating sharks were the primary reasons none of the escapees were ever seen or heard from again.
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In 1870, Louis Laprevote was born on French Guiana's notorious Devil's Island. The son of the prison’s chaplain, Louis’ playground was a semi-tropical rainforest where he pursued his passion of collecting butterflies. The crowning specimen in Louis’ collection was the extremely rare morpho butterfly, a flying insect whose wings were colored in metallic, shimmering shades of blues and greens. The year he turned sixteen, Louis quit his manure-shoveling job at the prison’s stable and took on the position as a 'runner' inside the well-guarded rock fortress. Louis ran the cold swill from the kitchen to the prisoner's cells. By the time he was eighteen, Louis had become an assistant to one of the prison’s guards. That same year, he also married a girl from the mainland named Mary Silva.
From left to right – Joseph Rampf, Frank Harter, Joseph Reheisse, John Wold, Lee Graham and line foreman, Louis Laprovote. Rampf, Harter, Reheisse and Wold, mere boys at the time, worked a 12 hour day, six days a week, for .75 cents/hour. Note that Louis Laprovote is wearing his Devil's Island guard jacket.
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It was five a.m. Louis was already dressed and sitting at the breakfast table examining the latest acquisition to his butterfly collection. Mary came up from behind, tapped her husband on the shoulder, and said, “I think it’s time.” Silently inspecting the specimen with a hand-held magnifying glass, Louis only nodded and grunted. “Husband,” Mary declared. “It’s time.”
Louis raised his head, then methodically placed the magnifying glass on the table. He turned in his chair to look up at Mary. His wife’s rosy cheeks and the wide-eyed expression on her face, told Louis all he needed to know. He rose from his chair, buttoned the front of his official Devil’s Island military-style jacket and kissed his wife on her perspiring forehead.
“You mean it’s time, this time?” He asked. Mary could only give her husband a nod. “Good, good. Finally, we’ll find out if it’s a Naomi or a Nickolas.”
Mary clutched her stomach with both hands. “Does it make any difference, Husband?” she asked, her voice a low growl.
“Of course not, Wife. Nothing matters, except that he, or she, is healthy.”
“Stop blabbering, Husband. Don’t just stand there. Go get the midwife. Please, run.”
Before Louis could take a step in any direction there came a knock on the front door. Louis opened the top half of the Dutch door and was greeted by one of the prison’s guards. From the harried expression on the man’s face, Louis could tell something was seriously wrong. Casting a glance past the man, he was shocked to see black smoke swirling above the high walls of the prison.
“My God, man,” Louis shouted. “What on earth is going on?”
“Riot,” the man wheezed, then bent over at the waist and started coughing.
Louis spun around. Mary had collapsed in a heap on the floor. Rushing over, the attentive husband knelt on one knee. “Mary, Mary,” he whispered.
Her eyes blinked open. For a second Mary silently looked at Louis, then screamed, “Ohhhhh. Owwwwww.”
“Midwife,” Louis muttered.
“No time,” Mary huffed, then let out another long, loud piercing howl.
Louis rose to his feet, then as if Mary was as light as a new-born lamb, he gathered his wife up in his arms and gently laid her on the bed. Turning toward the front door, Louis hollered, “Well, just don’t stand there, man. Get in here and boil some water.”
“But—but,” the man stuttered, inching his way inside the house. “What about the riot?”
“The riot be damned,” Louis swore. “We have a baby to deliver.”
****
Once the smoke had cleared on Devil’s Island, and order had been restored, the bodies were counted. More than 100 prisoners had been killed or wounded. The only fatality among the prison staff was the chaplain who had been taken hostage. On the same day that Louis learned that his father had been killed during the rioting, he also became the father of a bright-eyed baby girl, who he named Naomi, after the Biblical Ruth’s mother-in-law.
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It was late one evening while Mary nursed Naomi, that Louis sat in a cane-back rocker and cast an admiring glance on his small family. Recently, he had taken to smoking a briar pipe. Now, he thumped the dead gray ashes in the palm of his hand then scattered them in the dormant fireplace. He sighed and watched as Mary shifted the ever-hungry Naomi from one breast to the other.
When the child was situated and sucking, Mary looked at her husband and said, “She never gets full.”
“She’s a growing girl.”
Mary picked up on the flatness in Louis’ voice. “What’s the matter, Husband? You haven’t been yourself all evening. You hardly touched your dinner. Is there trouble at the prison?”
It took a couple of moments before Louis replied. “Mary, there’s something we need to discuss. Today, I made up my mind. I’m going to quit my job at the prison.” His voice was solemn as an undertaker. “That means we’ll have to leave Devil’s Island.”
Mary’s upper body stiffened, which caused her nipple to slip from between Naomi’s lips. Readjusting the milk machine to accommodate its squalling, unsatiable customer, Mary’s face turned red when she asked, “You’re going to do what?”
Louis rose from the rocker and knelt at Mary’s feet. “I can no longer tolerate what goes on in that prison. We call ourselves Christians, but we treat other men like they’re no better than animals. We kick them, hit them. We even cut off their fingers and toes.”
Mary looked down at her husband’s bowed head, then lifted his chin with her forefinger. “If that’s the reason we have to leave then there’s nothing to discuss.” As the two looked each other in the eyes, Mary asked, “But what about your butterfly collection?”
Louis sighed. “I’ll only be able to take the morpho.”
****
On the day they arrived in the port of New Orleans, Louis and Mary’s immigration papers were stamped ‘Approved’. Once the happy couple was given entry into what Louis called, "Land of the free and the home of the brave”, they gave thanks to the Almighty, then found a cheap flat in Algiers, Louisiana, a small town across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Mary stayed home and nursed Naomi, while Louis soon found employment lumping cargo off river boats.
Late one afternoon, while walking back to his flat, Louis turned to a fellow lumper, and asked, “How long does a lumper have to work for the boss-man before asking for a raise?”
Louis’ co-worker spit a stream of tobacco juice in the dusty road, then laughed. "You must be joking. The dock boss will only pay a lumper at the rate hired, that is until the lumper’s back is broken—then he don’t get nothin’.”
Louis nodded. “But the work is steady, right?”
“Bah. You can stay until you’re used up, but as for me, I’m headin’ North.”
“Chicago?”
“Tanglefoot.”
“Never heard of a town with that name. Where is this Tanglefoot?”
The man leaned in close and whispered, “Twenty, maybe thirty miles south of St. Louie. My brother-in-law lives in the Tanglefoot. He says there’s a saloon on every corner with ladies-of-the-evening on the second floor, if you know what I mean.”
“What about jobs?” Louis asked. “You’re single and I’m a married man with a child, and another on the way. What good is a town full of vice if a man’s broke?”
The other man laughed and patted Louis’ shoulder. “That’s the beauty of it, there’s a big glass plant close by. All a smarter has to do is show up, apply—and bingo he’s got a job.”
****
That evening after supper, Louis sat smoking his briar pipe while Mary cleaned off the dinner table. Little Naomi was sound asleep in her crib fashioned from a discarded orange crate. Louis exhaled a cloud of white tobacco smoke, and whispered, “Sit down, Mary. There’s something we need to discuss.”
She flopped down on a chair next to her husband and let out an audible sigh. The next little Laprevote, to be named either Louise or Louis, was just barely protruding from Mary’s belly. Trying to find a comfortable position on the wooden chair, she said, “Every time you say there’s something we need to discuss we wind up moving half-way around the world.”
“Surely, you exaggerate, woman. But in any event, this time we’re only moving a few hundred miles.”
“North, South, East or West?”
“North,” Louis said, a little too loud. “To Tanglefoot, Missouri.”
Mary shook her head and brushed spent tobacco ashes off the dinner table into the palm of her hand. She struggled rising from her chair then looked down at Louis. “Take us all the way north to Alaska, I don’t care. Along with the mosquitos, damp air and loud music, I’ll live anywhere but Algiers, Louisiana.”
Louis took Mary’s hands in his. “Good. That’s what I hoped you’d say.”
Mary squeezed Louis’ hands, hard. “What about money? We barely have enough to pay the rent on this decrepit flat. A move is expensive. We’ve already spent my dowry and everything you got for your butterfly collection.”
“I know,” Louis said, releasing his grip on Mary’s hands.
Without uttering another word, Louis went into the tiny bedroom. When he came out, he was holding a small leather clad box. Placing the ornate object on the kitchen table, Louis slowly removed the lid for Mary’s inspection.
“No, Husband,” she whispered. “You can’t sell the morpho.”
****
After selling his prized morpho butterfly to a collector in the French Quarter, Louis Laprevote, along with his pregnant wife and daughter, boarded a paddle-wheeler headed up the Mississippi River. Exactly one week later after an uneventful voyage, the Mississippi Queen docked at Hug’s Landing in Crystal City, Missouri. As the passengers disembarked, Mary packed Naomi on her hip. Walking along a narrow wooden plank, trying not to step into the black Mississippi River gumbo, she noted, “Tanglefoot? Ha. this place should be called Stuckfoot.”
From behind, Louis carried a large suitcase in each hand, and grumbled, “Gripe, gripe, gripe--and we’re not even there, yet.”
****
Once the Laprevote ’s had set up housekeeping in what was now officially known as Festus, Missouri, Louis applied for a job at the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company. He was hired on the spot. The area’s largest employer needed someone to man the front gate. On Louis’ first day at P.P.G., he remembered how the guards on Devil’s Island mistreated the prisoners, so he made sure to smile at every one of the company’s employees, even saluting the general manager. In 1901, when the opportunity arose, Louis accepted a job at P.P.G. as a line foreman, a position that paid forty-dollars a week.
It was late one evening at the Laprevote house, Naomi and her younger brother, Louis Jr., were both down for the night. Louis sat in an oval-back rocker puffing on his pipe. Mary was sitting on the hump-back horsehair sofa directly across the room from her mate. Without looking up from her needlework, she asked, “Husband, why did we come to this Tanglefoot town?”
Louis only grunted. He stuffed more tobacco in the bowl of his new white meerschaum pipe, and said, “So that we could live a better life.”
“And?” Mary asked, keeping her voice almost to a whisper.
Louis was in the act of striking a kitchen match on his thumbnail but stopped and looked at his wife. “And, what? Don’t we have a comfortable home? Don’t our children have enough to eat?”
“Of course, Dear. On both counts. It’s just that I see people in this town, none of them any smarter than we are, who have money to burn.”
“We have money.”
“Yes, Dear, I know,” Mary said, placing the needlework on her lap. Looking at Louis, she said, “But we could have more. Naomi needs a new dress and Louis Jr. is growing so fast that I can’t keep up with the sewing.”
Louis finally struck the match and lit the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. Blowing smoke rings in the general direction of his wife, he asked, “And how do you suggest we make all this money?”
“You could be your own boss."
****
The building located at #2 Main St., Festus, Missouri was three-hundred dollars more than Louis and Mary had to their name. Mary was so sure of their success, she agreed to sell her agate cameo, an oval cut stone that her great-great-grandmother had given her great-grandmother as a wedding present in 1790. One last time, Mary looked at the classical female face that was surrounded with shoulder-length curly hair, then handed it over to the pawnbroker.
The Laprevote ’s purchased the property from Mr. Heinrich Klausman, who was the current owner of the imposing two-story brick building. Constructed in 1890 and dominating a corner lot, a row of soldier-bricks ran along the top front of the structure. The fancy brick work was the result of the prolific stone mason, Giovanni de la Porta. De la Porta had added his artistic touch to most of the buildings fronting Festus Main Street.
Once the deal was sealed and the Klausman Brewery Company had left the premises, Mary Laprevote 's first order of business was to open all the windows to air-out what she referred to as "The Kraut stink". She also ordered the removal of a hitching post and the horse watering trough in front of the building. Louis not only painted the reddish-brownish-color brick building a glossy white, but he hired a man to remove de la Porta's fancy brickwork, leaving only a plain flat exterior on the front of the building. No one knows for sure why Louis would do such a thing, but it was rumored that de la Porta had cast admiring eyes at Mary Laprevote , which Louis mistook as an improper overture.
Louis Laprevote resigned his position as a line foreman at P.P.G. and opened Laprevote 's Saloon. At the tender age of six, Naomi Laprevote was brought in to keep the saloon's customers entertained. Mary had dressed the young girl in a starched white pinafore and a black knee-length dress to cover black leotards. With her feet stuffed into black patent leather pumps, Naomi was accompanied by local pianist, Della Weinstock. Warbling off-key renditions of The Good Old Summertime and Hello Central, Give Me Heaven, one couldn't exactly call the young entertainer pretty, but with a wide-brimmed straw hat that partially shadowed her face, one could say that Naomi was cute, in a homely sort of fashion.
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In November of 1910, while tending bar in his saloon, Louis Sr. suffered a massive heart attack. It’s been reported that his last words were, "Put me on ice with the beer." Not to be deterred by life's unexpected change of events, within six-months Mary married a man named John Haefner. In filed legal documents, Mr. Haefner became half owner of the building at #2 Main St. He also became the fulltime bartender and Laprevote’s Saloon which was renamed, Haefner's Saloon.
By the time she was thirteen-years-old, Naomi had shot up to almost six-feet. Her homely looks did nothing to dissuade the star-struck girl from wanting a place in the spotlight. To give his stepdaughter a platform to perform on, Mr. Heaefner erected a stage in the middle of the saloon where the fledging actress took on the role of Mary Pickford’s heroine character, Nina, from the popular movie Hearts Adrift. At the end of the performance, Naomi’s Nina throws herself into the paper Mache volcano that Mr. Heafner had constructed at the end of the bar. To the audience’s amazement, vapor from dry ice erupted from the volcano, filling the room with a white cloud. The excited, half-drunk patrons usually jumped to their feet to give Naomi a hearty-round of applause. Some audiences, if they had consumed enough alcohol, even went so far as to make Naomi take three or four curtain calls.
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In December of 1914, a wood-burning stove overheated in Haefner's Saloon resulting in the explosion of a kerosene lantern that set fire to the ceiling. Due to the quick response of the Festus volunteer fire department, not much damage was inflicted on the drinking establishment. There were no injuries except for a few minor burns on the back of Mr. Haefner's hands. The bar owner had tried to extinguish the fire with a wet bar towel that had been used to mop up a puddle of spilled Four Roses Whiskey.
On a cold January morning in 1919, with the passage of prohibition, John and Mary Haefner stood on the sidewalk in front of their drinking establishment. John bit off the end a King Edward cigar and stuck one end of the stogie in his mouth. Before striking a match, he turned to his wife, and asked, “If we can’t sell beer or liquor what can we sell?”
Mary shook her head. “I’m forty-five years old and getting too old to move, again. We’ll just have to come up with something else for our thirsty customers.”
“I know,” Haefner said, lighting the tip of his cigar, then blowing smoke in Mary’s general direction. “We’ll sell ‘near beer’. It’s not the real thing, but it’s still legal.”
Mary used her hand to disperse the thick white cloud and laughed. “Near beer? Do you really think our customers will drink a watered-down version that’s only one-half of one percent alcohol? Why we’ll have to change the name from Haefner’s Saloon to Haefner’s soda parlor.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Haefner said, thumping cigar ashes on the sidewalk. “We can serve Bevo, Colda, Fanta, Cerva and Heck.”
“And in the meantime,” Mary grumbled, taking the wrapper off a piece of Dentyne Gum then popping it into her mouth, “we’ll go broke.”
****
Frustrated that her acting career had been put on ice by Prohibition, Naomi wrote to The Entertainment Supply Company located in Chicago, Illinois. According to an advertisement in the Tri-City Independent Newspaper, The Entertainment Supply Company promised that a dedicated person could make ‘BIG MONEY’, at least $30 to $100 per week entertaining the public. E. S. C. promised that an investment of only $25 would return large profits. It was also noted that the equipment used to make ‘BIG MONEY’ would be easy to operate. As it turned out, Naomi’s $25 went toward the purchase of a wooden puppet, along with instructions on how to throw your voice.
Naomi Laprevote on the left and Stella Aubuchon-Kemp standing in front of the Union Electric Light and Power Company.
Haefner's Saloon finally folded. So did all the other bars and juke joints on Festus Main St., giving way to speakeasies and the dark days of Al Capone. Prohibition also ended Naomi Laprevote 's dream of stardom. No longer would she take the stage for the wildly applauding crowds at her stepfather's saloon. As the money supply dwindled, Naomi took an office position at Union Electric Light and Power Co.
By 1929 John and Mary Haefner's marriage landed on the rocky shoals of divorce court. Mary became sole owner of #2 Main St. Before she passed-on in the early 1930's, she deeded the property to her son, Louis Laprevote Jr. Then, on August 2, 1937, Waggener Store Company bought the building. No one knows exactly what happened to Naomi Laprevote , but it was rumored that she tendered her resignation at U. E. L. & P. to run off with a traveling shoe salesman from Potosi.