Those plaintive sobs drifting across the river from Okawville? They’re coming from Claude Bell’s clients. Now 96, he started giving massages at the Original Springs Hotel in 1938, and he just retired. He still comes back for a few longtime clients, though: “I hate to drop ’em all at once,” he confides. “One fellow comes from Overland every Wednesday night.”
Seventy years ago, Bell, newly married, was making $3 a day at a drugstore in Mississippi. His uncle, a masseuse at the mineral-springs hotel in Okawville, said, “That’s no living,” and sent him a train ticket.
“I really didn’t expect to stay here,” Bell admits. “It was August, and it was hot.”
Surely Mississippi was hotter?
“Yeah, but you expected it. I said, “I’m going back,” and my uncle said, “Then you’re walkin’.”
He stayed and learned. “Whatever you do, you do the best you can,” his uncle warned, “’cause I don’t want my customers saying you don’t know what you’re doing.” Later, Bell even went to Chicago to the College of Swedish Massaging (“It’s not there anymore.”) Doctors started sending their patients to
him—then came themselves. “One was a big shot at Saint Louis U.; he’d send a note with his patients telling me what to do. Some people, their ankles and elbows and wrists would be all swollen, and the joints of their fingers, and you would work on them specially.”
The emphasis back then was pure health, not spa indulgence—and all Bell had to work with was the venerated water of the mineral springs.
“We didn’t give oil massages, just hot water—about 102 degrees. You put a mitt on your hand to scrub people, and then they would lay there for a while, and then you’d put them on a table and give them a massage. Just your hands, that’s all you used.”
Does he miss the simplicity? “Oh no, I like the oil. It’s not greasy. Just a small scent, not too loud.
“The ladies burn candles,” he adds, then, with firm dignity: “I don’t burn candles.”
Bell’s reputation grew fast: “People in Okawville would come over to our house on Sunday to get me.” This is white people in southern Illinois, mid-century? “Well, I had two people who were prejudiced, but the people in Okawville were just as nice as they could be. I have learned a lot about people over the years. You take now: I know a fellow from Croatia and there was a guy who came to the hotel from Serbia. Two people, same race, but they couldn’t get along. Somebody explained it to me: This fellow had been in a concentration camp.”
Bell’s done his share to ease people’s stress and heartache. “This priest I know, he came over one Wednesday evening, white as a sheet. I said, “What the heck is wrong with you?” He lived in a church rectory on Grand, and somebody outside had started shooting. He was just shaking. I talked to him and quieted him down, went down to the bar, got him a drink and gave him a massage. Then he was fine.
“When my wife died, I went into church and there were two extra priests on the altar,” Bell says suddenly. “I’d worked on both of them. I have never gotten over it.
“Of course, I’ve also met some stinkers, you know how that is,” he adds. “Y’know, some people are in a hurry. You give them a massage, and they want to jump right up off the table. ‘You got a hot date with a cold broad or what? Take your time, don’t be in such a hurry.’
“One fellow said I had as much strength in my hands as I did 40 years ago. You just have to know how to rub ’em. Some people like a real hard rub and some like it real soft; you adjust yourself. They start drawing up in the shoulders, you know you are rubbing them too hard.”
What’s his best advice? “This is the thing: I don’t talk to people when I’m working. People come here to relax. If they want to talk, I’ll talk. If they don’t, keep your mouth shut. And if you can relax, try to relax. This dentist was telling me how he pulled teeth. I said, ‘Do you ask them to relax?’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘’Cause you can’t!’”
What about Bell, does he get massages?
“You want to know the truth? We had a girl here from the Ukraine, Olga, and she and I would exchange massages when we weren’t busy. But afterward, you’re tired, you don’t want to go back to work. But now I’m going to start getting them! It helps you. You’d be surprised how your body can just fall apart.”
His hasn’t. His doctor urged a colleague to guess Bell’s age. “Early 80s?” Bell’s doctor snorted. “You’re not even in the ballpark!”
So, his secret? “I don’t eat too much. A few vegetables, not much red meat. Not much meat at all. I had a bad gall bladder, got that fixed with a low-fat diet and I’ve been on that ever since. Lowfat milk, cottage cheese, angel food cake—which I hate, but I eat it.
“And to tell you the truth, young lady, this water is wonderful. Okawville Original Springs Water. I’ve been drinking it since I started.”
—Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
