Bellows of Love in Wide Open Spaces of a Cowboy Bar : Hubby-Calling: From Ear-Piercing Shriek to Annoying Whine

The cigarette smoke was so thick it obscured the cowboy boots plying the dance floor, and the Country Western music was so loud the beer bottles on the long tables shook like drunk bowling pins.

An out-of-towner scanning the 10-gallon-hat landscape might have needed a few moments to realize that this wasn’t Cheyenne or El Paso but suburban Los Angeles.

Specifically, this was the Longhorn Saloon in the San Fernando Valley, and the occasion was the 2nd Annual Husband-Calling Contest.

The Longhorn is the kind of place where men have round chewing tobacco can marks faded into the rear pocket of their Wrangler jeans and women with teased hair wear flouncy skirts and white-fringed boots.

On a recent night, women of of all ages came from throughout the region to throw back their heads and bellow--ordinary folk making extraordinary sounds ranging from what might be styled Ear-Piercing Shriek to Annoying Whine.

By the time the barmaid threw down her Handi-Wipe and joined the beer-guzzling boys on the other side of the bar, one woman--tiny even with her cowboy boots--had shrieked her way into spouse-calling history.

Angela Morgan of Sylmar left her competition trailing when she took the Longhorn stage, screwed up her face and screeched, “DAN! You get your butt in this house right now and the rest of you will naturally follow!”

For her vocal bravery, Morgan was hustled behind the bar for a beer on the house and awarded a romantic weekend for two aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor.

Pat Jackson of Santa Ana nabbed a dinner for two at a local Cajun eatery with her distinctive, heavily cadenced whine: “Bobbe-e-e, get in he-e-e-e-re and help me-e-e!”

Third prize--dinner for two at a French restaurant--went to last year’s second place winner, Mary Ethridge of Cypress, who drew an approving roar with her throaty growl, “Marvin, you miserable, mangy mongrel! I should have listened to my mother and never married you!”

Well, it wasn’t exactly a call, but the rules were somewhat informal. Of the nine competitors, picked by disc jockey Scott Carpenter during telephone auditions broadcast live on Country Western Radio KLAC, three didn’t even show up.

Last year’s winner, former professional harpist Myralyn Feamster, wowed the crowd with her unique caterwauling, but she couldn’t clinch another victory.

Feamster said her style was inspired by prize-winning hog-callers she saw on “The Tonight Show,” but she didn’t include the swine classic, “Sooo-eee” in calling her spouse, David.

“Da-yay-yay-yay-vid!” she yelled, “put down that be-e-e-r and get your tail ho-o-o-me before I have the locks changed, do you hee-e-ear me?”

Relaxing with a beer, Feamster said the call is just for fun.

“I don’t need to call him that way,” she said demurely. “I just go, DA-A-VID!”

Her impromptu bellow turned a dozen heads.

“It works great in the wide open spaces, but I don’t really need it here,” said the homemaker and mother of two.

Feamster and Ethridge said their husbands weren’t offended by their participation in the contest, but they hated it when the wives practiced.

“It’s hard to sleep through,” Ethridge’s husband said.

Why do they do it?

“It’s the suppressed show business in all of us,” Ethridge said. “I wanted to be another Dolly Parton or Phyllis Diller but it didn’t happen. So I’m a waitress with an occasional shot at the microphone.”

Competitor Gail Goodman put it more simply:

“It’s my one chance to holler at him and he won’t get mad.”