The Great American Saloon Series / Saloons of the Old West
Ertel, George
"The Great American Saloon Series / Saloons of the Old West" around the country." Anybody around here remember Watergate? Real news department: On 16 May, Evans and Novak reported that the Sandinistas had reached an agreement with the Russians, during...
...Excogitating a new law was easier and faster than developing good sense on the job, so legal proceedings were often governed solely by a judge's ability to exert his authority...
...It is said to include military programs...
...Instead, we find the usual claim that the Russians were only acting--if they have in fact acted at all in this field--in response to our evil initiatives...
...But the whiskey also reduced whatever accuracy the gunfighters were capable of, thus rendering the shootouts much safer for the participants...
...We have prepared, revised, and uncomplicated each unusual dish that we present to you...
...First the gangsters took control of the liquor supply...
...If they were not shot in straightforward duels, their neighbors would bushwhack them...
...But while no one objected to these goals, there lived those who were intolerant of the means for reaching them: wives...
...Contrary notions of frontier violence, like most misconceptions, were products of the eastern press...
...backbar mirror and shelves for displaying bottles and paraphernalia...
...One would expect that this news would appear in every major story on Nicar a g u a . . , but for the most part, we hear of hopes that the Sandinista regime will remain democratic and "independent of the two blocs...
...Our emphasis is on the utmost in eating pleasure and on ease m preparation...
...Some dishes may require hours of cooking time, but not preparation time...
...And that was the end of the saloons...
...brass rails, spittoons, and towel hooks to accompany the bar (the towels were for wiping foam off your mustache...
...Centuries before, European folklore had glorified pistol-waving bandits...
...Evans and Novak for digging out this important story...
...Next came Harvey Wallbangers and Pink Squirrels, the Peppermint Lounge and Studio 54...
...Yet the august Scientific American does not mention the event in a long study of "Chemical Warfare and Chemical Disarmament" published in its April issue...
...Eventually gas-lit chandeliers were installed in the more profitable watering holes, and, as electricity became available late in the century, light bulbs illuminated the interiors...
...Busting your tail on a horse was tiring, monotonous, dirty, and dangerous work...
...Many American experts think the "accident" took place in a plant manufacturing anthrax weapons for use against us and our allies...
...Carrie died in 1911 and did not live to know of the Eighteenth Amendment, but several states, including such western states as Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, had become dry--officially, anyway--during her lifetime...
...FOR THE EVERYDAY GOURMET A NEW APPROACH TO COOKING Robertson's Recipes have been gathered from tradition, from everyday use, from observation-and imagination, and contributed from friends and relatives...
...Sometimes it was the saloon keeper who threw the lead...
...Just like mental defectives and criminals went to Auschwitz and the gulags...
...Many a cantina doubled as the local courtroom...
...Along with the rotgut came other entertainments...
...When the frontier towns prospered from mining or cattle, so did their saloons...
...Better yet, we should all read the interview with Huber Matos printed in the Italian magazine I1 Leviatano back in January...
...Things got so bad that the barrelhouses actually deserved Carrie Nation...
...The front walls were fakes: double the size of the buildings themselves...
...Once women started drinking socially, repeal was a s u r e thing...
...Saloon keepers then had to install iron bars in front of the panes to protect them from the butts of horses crowding under the covered boardwalks during rainstorms...
...on the western stage the role was taken by the former mistress of Alexander Dumas, Delores McCord, who played the final scene in skin-colored tights s t r a p p e d atop a horse...
...In addition to the threat of eternal damnation, there was the presence of earthly judgment...
...One cause for doing so was cowboys riding their horses into the saloons...
...What next--the Detroit Dairy Freeze...
...Little miss, Taste my kiss of Panther Piss...
...Some were set up in covered wagons...
...Prostitutes, those frail sisters and soiled doves, operated in many barrelhouses, like Denver's Elephant Corral and the Alamo in Abilene...
...The barroom was a place to set aside your burdens, to purge yourself of worry, regret, and disappointment, to refresh your outlook on the world...
...Two stories high, the saloon front was impressive--until you caught a profile...
...Judge Roy Bean held court in his saloon, the Jersey Lily, in Langtree...
...IDEAL GIFT FOR: Brides, Mothers-in-Law, Uncles, Aunts, Friends, EVERYONE Membership dues are pleasingly minimal - - $11.85 ($I0.00 + $1.85 for postage and tax...
...mining and farming by George E r t e l were no picnics, either...
...John Wesley Hardin may hold the record for saloon shoot-outs, having killed perhaps 40 men...
...They fooled no one, of course, yet contributed to the carnival atmosphere the customers expected and enjoyed...
...Tents, Kansas sod houses, and Arizona adobes also served the purpose in their time...
...The whiskey mills were, after all, havens...
...After Hickok was gunned down while playing poker in his favorite saloon, New York journalist Ed Wheeler created a character he named Deadwood Dick to fill his copy...
...Germ warfare: There's been a fair amount in the press about the unfortunate accident at Sverdlovsk, in the Soviet Union, where anthrax seems to have killed a thousand or so citizens...
...The former exacerbated the latter because overproduction, especially of beer, resulted in pricecutting, which increased sales less than it decreased profits...
...On one occasion a cowboy and a gunman faced off, each grasping the other's left hand, drawing and firing five rounds apiece...
...Thus, as Richard Erdoes puts it, largely "the heroic gunfighter was an Eastern invention...
...a potbellied stove...
...the Japanese recounted tales of their outlaw Samurai...
...And then two trends peaked: the supply of booze and beer and the century-old reaction to chronic drunkenness...
...From " c a n ' t see to can't see," these men herded, fed, watered, branded, and fenced Cattle, and they labored at t h e i r chores for weeks, sometimes months, without a break...
...Some things never change...
...Other saloon keepers were less fastidious, such as the bartender who blamed the salesman for leaving his sample case open when a cowpuncher's horse added several road apples to the peddler's stock...
...on the other hand, no fewer died in New York's Hell's Kitchen or in Storyville of New Orleans during those years...
...for the Westerner he was a pain in the ass...
...In their best days, the saloons were glorious and enchanting places...
...Another Texan is probably the most famous of the old barroom jurists...
...Texas judge Three-Legged Willie was once questioned on a point by a defendant who held a bowie knife against the judge's throat while positing: "This is the law of Texas...
...Gunfighting in western saloons was real enough, albeit not in the fashion of "Have Gun, Will Travel" or "The Rifleman...
...Willie countered with his Navy Colt: "And here's the Texas constitution...
...Should we apologize to the widows of Sverdlovsk ? [] SALOONS OF THE OLD WEST I am told that this is the place to talk about Great American Saloons...
...One of these fancy women was Calamity Jane, so named because of what you contracted upon becoming personally acquainted...
...Boozing was socializing, and the place to socialize was in your local snake ranch...
...The s i n - b u s t e r got a ready-made congregation, and the customers enjoyed some lively entertainment...
...This language reminds one of the phrases invoked so piously by the leaders of East European Communist parties prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain in the mid-forties, just as American press coverage in general of Central America tends to echo the same desperate optimism that was to be found in our coverage of Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia more than 30 years ago...
...A buildup in Russian supplies, both of chemical weapons and of protective equipment, is said to have taken place in the late 1960s...
...Wood or brick walls replaced canvas or adobe, and hide-covered windows gave place to glass...
...Neither was seriously injured...
...and oil paintings of voluptuous women...
...Once upon a time, we would have welcomed the heroic survivors of Castro's prisons...
...The hell with them...
...Mail check or money order to: Katherine Ross Thoman Robertson's Recipes of the Month 3545-- A, Victoria Road Mountain Brook, Alabama 35223 (205) 967-4582 Name: Address: City: _State' __Zip: THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 29...
...On the job, cowboys carried guns because of varmints, Indians, rustlers, robbers, and range wars...
...Instead, we have the New York Times with a big front-page story on Sunday, 11 May, headlined: "Retarded People and Criminals loaded on U.S...
...In this month's mailing are Cousin Ruth's Chicken and Okra Gumbo, Belle Chasse Scrapple (a tempting breakfast dish of spicy sausage and corn meal boiled together), and the Original Cheese Cake...
...Earlier, when white men first entered the West, the saloons were, well, functional...
...Pretty waiter girls," the sometimes partially attired nymphs in the hurdygurdy saloons, were good for a dance and often more...
...In Fort Benton, Montana, a barman put 14 holes in a cowboy intent on riding his horse to his room upstairs...
...Mazeppa was a Cossack, left to die tied to the back of a hart...
...Characteristic of these early snake ranches were leaky roofs, windows of elk hide, the outdoors for plumbing, and wooden planks for bars...
...Lighting came from candles or kerosene lamps, which sometimes hung in groups from wagon wheels...
...Great American Saloons...
...There were, of course, more than a few professional gunfighters...
...The real saloons are all gone now...
...Most professionals, however, did not live long enough to accumulate such a string of accomplishments...
...Arnold's of Cincinnati...
...A lot of men took lead, mostly between 1860 and 1885...
...Miss MeCord's acting career ended when the horse fell on her...
...An oyster house...
...Communities selected judges on the basis of t h e i r common sense, fair play, and knowledge of the law--unless, of course, book-learning got in the way of reasonableness...
...Wild Bill never qualified as the world's greatest marksman...
...I suppose you Easterners thought the Golden Arches walk-ups were high times...
...Several "Kids" had reputations: the Texas Kid, the Nevada Kid, and Willie, Jimmy~ and Billy the Kid, the latter starting his life of crime s t e a l i n g shirts from Chinese laundrymen...
...At the end of the month you needed time out, not time off, and saloons provided the escape: camaraderie, excitement, immediate gratification, high stakes and fast action, sex, distraction, and edification...
...The Times editorial staff should be made to write 100 times on its blackboards the headline of the same date in the Washington Post: "Cuba: Slogans Mock Realities...
...George Ertel is a market analyst living in Roselle, Illinois...
...Panther Piss I love you...
...Over 30 states had outlawed booze either partially or altogether when in 1920 federal prohibition became the law of the land...
...As the number of married women in the West became substantial, their insistence upon establishing orderly, civilized communities grew impossible to ignore...
...Neither was he an astute observer: "When it came to telling a bandit from an honest citizen, Wild Bill couldn't tell shit from honey," one saloon keeper commented...
...The worst of it is that you never will belly up at those bars, either...
...In the Old West everyone drank, and no one wanted to drink alone...
...Real news department: On 16 May, Evans and Novak reported that the Sandinistas had reached an agreement with the Russians, during a mission to Moscow by Nicaraguan -leaders late in March...
...Most gunfighting was between a m a t e u r s , usually cowboys...
...Matos said: The Cuban authorities and their spokesmen abroad consider all prisoners who have c o n t a c t s with i n t e r n a t i o n a l a n t i - Castro organizations to be " t e r r o r i s t s . " But we know that those designated as terrorists are in reality prisoners who have struggled during their imprisonment, not to be combative or litigious, but simply to behave in a firm and coherent manner, and in order not to submit to threats and beatings...
...And just as these fallen angels had 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 their place in the saloons, so did proponents of the unblemished variety: Itinerant preachers were usually welcome to address the assembled carousers...
...And when they hit the saloon on payday, they saw no reason to unbuckle...
...chemical-weapons procurement...
...Panther Piss, Panther Piss, Spit it out and hear it hiss...
...Other thespians also travelled the West, staging performances in theater saloons...
...His Honor named both the pouring spot and the town in fondness for a touring actress fi-om the East, Lily Langtree...
...It was a fair arrangement...
...Boats in Cuba...
...These included Edwin Booth, Sarah Bernhardt, Eddie Foy, and Lotta C r a b t r e e . Productions ranged from Shakespeare to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to Byron's "Mazeppa...
...Finally, the Times should remember the list of Nobel prize-winners who have been called mentally defective, from Solzhenitsyn to Einstein...
...Gambling, from poker and roulette to jumping grasshoppers and fighting dogs, was an opportunity--more or less, depending on the honesty of the house--to "knock Dame Fortune on her ass...
...Saloons that were once legitimate social institutions became seamy dives, narrowly maintaining themselves by hustling family men out of their paychecks...
...in shootouts he might blast foe and friend without distinction...
...Chicago or around the Horn from England...
...In a Fort Griffin, Texas, gunfight, the antagofiists couldn't hit one another, although they did kill two bystanders and winged two more...
...What the hell, all cowboys wore iron...
...You never saw the real saloons...
...Each month of the year we will mail you three recipes, which will have a predominantly deep southern - - Louisiana and Cajun - - flavor, and sometimes international...
...then came the flappers...
...A few jolts of Dust-Cutter brought out the fighting nature in cowboys, and poker, women, and the Civil War gave them something to fight about...
...If that is the case, the instigating decisions would have been made during the last high point of U.S...
...But a pin to Messrs...
...Oh well, it can't be helped, I guess...
...It's pure bliss...
...Besides, there were the traditions of the Revolution, the pioneers, and the Civil War to uphold...
...The exteriors of western jughouses were not something you'd miss riding through town...
...The Union Oyster House...
...TtaHtarianism and the press: Given the fondness with which so many of our journalists smash proAmerican tyrants from Iran to Argentina, one would hope for a bit of zeal in reporting on Soviet and Cuban evils...
...But on reviewing the subjects previously celebrated here, I begin to wonder...
...A f t e r all, men went to saloons to have a good time...
...You never painted your noses in Tombstone's Bird Cage, the Clippel" Shades Saloon in Butte, the Sazerac House of Virginia City, or the Long Branch-and no, you don't get points for watching "Gunsmoke...
...Ornate furnishings appeared: sixty-foot walnut, oak, and mahogany bars, shipped by rail from "The poem, "Panther P i s s , " as well as these other reminiscences of frontier boozing are artfully recorded in Saloons of the Old IVest by Richard Erdoes (Knopf, 1979...
...Robertson's Recipes of the Month, Inc...
...Viewing this high art was not always easy...
...In that tradition, the reporters from New York and Baltimore wrote extravagantly of the exploits of such gunmen as Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickok...
...Perhaps more died in saloons than in the western Indian wars...
...Carrie's husband died of the DT's, and her life's mission became stamping out public boozing_9 The six-foot, 180-pound latter-day Bella Abzug (the anti-saloon movement was the feminist cause at the turn of the century, taking priority among women even over suffrage) and her fellow reformers wrought "hatchetation" upon the saloons of the nation and provided the final effort to secure nationwide prohibition...
...Nothing is left but tourist traps and the memories of the few remaining old-timers who regularly irrigated themselves on Old Towse, Skullbender, White Mule, and Panther Piss...
Vol. 13 • July 1980 • No. 7
