The saloon: You have seen the movie a thousand times. A gunslinger just released from prison is looking for the brothers that set him up and stole the family farm.
He slams through the swinging bar doors and scowls across the room. The piano player misses a note and slowly stops. There's a music sign over his head that reads, “Don’t shoot the pianist, he's trying his best,” the bar becomes silent, all eyes turn towards the newcomer.
One of the Plumer boys is playing cards with his back to the gunslinger but everyone at the table knows what's happening and slowly scoots their chairs back. Our star walks towards the bar but in the blink of an eye, Plumer reaches for his gun only to be outdrawn by the gunslinger. Frontier justice has just taken place…”Cut!”
The saloon was a hub where new arrivals and locals all went. It was the place to be.
Back in the day, saloons weren’t fancy like on Hollywood sets. Tents, lean-to’s, dugouts and caves all dotted the West attracting thirsty travelers. Think about it: If you had a place with gambling, alcohol, grudges, women and firearms, all hell is going to break loose and it did.
Lore has it in 1860, St. Joseph had a population of around 10,000 with 129 saloons. A few years later, likewise, Leavenworth, Kansas, had 16,500 people with 150 watering holes.
The mixing of different types of people could cause mayhem: gunfighters, cowboys, farmers, soldiers, yes - Indians, settlers, drunks, dandies and painted ladies. With that said, we are just talking about the happenings downstairs, what goes on in the rooms above the bar is a subject for another column, in perhaps another publication.
Most saloons served warm whiskey and beer out of barrels. On screen, you see bartenders pouring drinks from bottles but that didn’t happen until later. Some joints short on space used the barrels as stools at the bar but many saloons of the day were “stand up bars,” where there were no women or chairs, only alcohol and the obligatory spittoon.
Down the street from the local cemetery is Kelly’s Pub, it was a “stand-up bar.” Did its best business on funeral days both before the burial and after, for an impromptu wake.
Animals loved the saloon scene too. Dogs, mice, rats, varmints, cats and horses made up the menagerie that leaves you with an idea of the cleanliness and stench of the place. Outhouses, thank the whiskey gods, were out back.
The quality of the product varied widely with many proprietors cutting their whiskey with stuff that could kill you: turpentine, ammonia, gunpowder, tobacco juice and even formaldehyde. Just think of the cringe on an actor's face as they react to their first shot of whiskey for the day.
Alcohol poisoning was a thing. Bartenders kept on pouring as long as you paid or had good credit. There were no guardrails or designated drivers.
Tolerated by the times, alcoholism was a major problem, but people didn’t know how to treat it. Elixirs and fraudulent treatments sprang up, most laughable. The Keeley Institute used bits of gold put into a solution to somehow suppress your want for a drink and A. B. Baines' famous potion could cure anything from baldness, bad breath and bunions to toothaches.
Saloons were sanctuaries, for a varied type of crowd seeking whatever.
Some saloons were even safe havens for hard drug users, having an opium den in the back or a local pusher of laudanum at the end of the bar was not uncommon.
In this area with the Civil War on the horizon there were Yankee supporting bars and taverns that took a Southern bent. Most peoples' allegiance were known but many merchants tried to straddle the fence doing business with both sides.
Having so many saloons and different passionate stances, long festering feuds and drunken arguments turned into violence easily, people died in the streets regularly.
The history of alcohol is as old as mankind itself, from the time millenniums ago when someone left fruit in a vessel too long, fermentation took place. Then eating it, not wanting to waste anything and getting that “buzzed feeling.” Alcohol has entertained and cursed mankind ever since. China, Mesopotamia and Egypt have all left evidence of wine and beer being consumed by their elite and in ritual ceremonies.
Beer, whiskey and saloons were big business in the old west and continue today. In the United States, we consume 6.3 billion gallons of beer and 20 million cases of whiskey annually.
Yuengling is the oldest continually run brewery founded in 1829 while popular and expensive Buffalo Trace was first distilled over 200 years ago.
Back to being able to visualize John Wayne walking through those swinging doors looking for someone and heading to the bar. “I’m here to kick ass and drink some whiskey but pilgrim, I'm plum out of whiskey!” If he’s talking to you, run for the hills!
So if you are headed to Tombstone, Dodge City, Cripple Creek or Deadwood to play a little cards, there are 1890 themed saloons in all those places, minus most of the animals.
W.C. Field loved the drink, “If I had my life to live over again, I’d live over a saloon.”
Even Mark Twain had some whiskey thoughts: “Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in life, but in many good cases the man’s in a neighborhood saloon and didn’t hear her.”
So being the double-edge sword of saloons, it’s a spot to meet, be entertained and enjoy life or a place of sin, excess and violence.
The saloon is like life itself—it’s what you make of it. Thank you. I’ll have another!
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