I first heard about Mary Lou “Smokey” Schneider when I interviewed Chuck Atteberry of Sex, Inc. in May 2010.
“Smokey got away with a lot in Springfield, Illinois,” Atteberry told me. “People of the same sex could dance at her bar when they couldn’t at bars in Chicago. The reason was the legislators used to bring their girlfriends in there—it was a safe place for them to go because nobody ratted on them.”
I wanted to hear more about Smokey and the now shuttered but significant gay bar. So when Club Escapade’s Bobbi Nix offered to drive me up there to meet the reluctant LGBT icon and pioneer, I jumped at the chance.
Schneider picked up the nickname “Smokey” while playing softball and at 82, is still quite the pistol. She now lives in a retirement community near Annie, her friend and companion of over 40-years.
“Yeah I sit here with all these old straight women, bless their hearts,” she quipped. “I do have a good time with them. I used to be criticized because I was gay so who am I to criticize them because they’re heterosexual. I get along fine with all of them.”
Realizing early on that there wasn’t a place for LGBTers to go and be safe, the Jacksonville, Illinois native worked out an arrangement with the owner of The Tropical Isle at 127 S. 5th street to purchase his bar. Smokey’s Den opened on October 30, 1966 but would later move to 411 E.
“Police walked the beat back then and they’d come in the bar and sometimes they’d check ID’s but usually they just looked around and left,” Smokey recalled. “We got real acquainted—boy, they were just like family to me. They never bothered me one bit.”
Still, it was 1966 and Smokey warned her “kids” to be careful.
“At the start when the police would come into the bar the kids would yell, “switch” because the boys were dancing with boys and then the boys would grab a girl,” she explained. “Then one night they [the police] came in and somebody yelled “switch” and all of the sudden he [the officer] took his nightstick and slid it down to the floor and said, “Carry on kids.” And we did ever since.”
Smokey’s Den was also one of the first bars in the state to marquee professional drag shows starting in 1967. “The Smokettes” were well known throughout the Midwest and South and were the brainchild of Smokey’s cousin Bobby Pierce, who she credits with creating the troupe.
“I said, I’ll tell you what—I’ll let you guys go ahead and try it,” said Smokey, who would go on to become the first owner and promoter of the Miss Gay Illinois America pageant. “We had a little stage across the back and they changed in the women’s bathroom. When they announced them and they came in from the front of the bar to “Shangri-La” I could not believe it. They looked gorgeous.”
The Smokettes proved a major draw, including from St. Louis where “masquerading” was illegal. Bob Martin’s bar would even take patrons up by the busload and make a night of it.
Smokey shrugs off any talk of being a trailblazer in the LGBT community, stating: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. But I’ve never, ever felt important.”
Indeed, the octogenarian has seen a lot of things change and for the better in way of equal rights for the LGBT community, including Civil Unions in Illinois.
“It’s like anything else that comes up—people are against it but they might as well forget it—because eventually, down the line, it’s gonna be accepted,” she offered. “We’re here and we’ve got just as much right to be able to claim our lover on taxes and hospitalization as everybody else that pays taxes. God knows I’ve paid enough.”
After cutting her teeth working at her parent’s tavern and then running her own place for 36-years, it was time for Smokey to take it easy. When Smokey’s Den closed its doors on February 22, 2003 it was the oldest gay bar in the state and one of the oldest in the nation under the same owner.
“I miss my bar,” said the matriarch to generations of LGBTers better for the oasis of diversity and acceptance she provided. Indeed, three years before Stonewall and Mary Lou “Smokey” Schneider was breaking down barriers and making history along the prairie. Important work indeed.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: CHUCK ATTEBERRY & BOBBI NIX
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