he asked the bartender to hand him his pistol from beneath the counter and a bottle to take home. Grigsby was tending bar and reportedly sampling the whiskey at his Unique saloon. On June 22, 1887, Fort Worth saloon man William T. Skipping town, Vaden repeated his performance that October 7 at Mayer’s saloon in Fort McKavett, Texas, smashing up the place and threatening bartender Ben Daniels with a hooked pole until the latter, who doubled as a deputy sheriff, shot Vaden dead. A doctor had to amputate, infection set in, and Hill died two days later. City Marshal Tom Hill responded to the fracas, and amid a three-way struggle for the rifle he was shot through the left foot. He then barged into the neighboring Palace saloon, spoiling for a fight with bartender Frank Borman.
Vaden got drunk, armed himself with a Winchester and shot out the lamps in his own establishment in Ballinger, Texas. If he had psychological problems to boot, he was a ticking time bomb.Ī bartender and two patrons pose with a wiseacre waving a six-shooter and a cigar at the White Dog saloon, thought to be in Colorado. If a bartender with the habit didn’t drink himself to death, he might get into a drunken brawl with a customer and die of “lead poisoning.”Ī man with ready access to both liquor and guns could be a dangerous hombre. For one inclined to alcoholism that could prove fatal one way or another. Unfortunately, one of the temptations of working behind a bar was access to an endless supply of booze. That could get a man fired as quickly as dipping into the till. It was a bartender’s option whether to serve the good stuff or the “Who Hit John.” An absolute no-no was dipping into an employer’s stock. Patrons could order either beer or whiskey.
In the early years few even knew how to mix the specialty drinks that came to be known as cocktails.
There were no qualifications for being a bartender. To lure patrons from rival saloons, Leer shrewdly slashed the price of drinks, knowing most men weren’t there for the variety show. Leer of Fort Worth, Texas, bought out his partners in the Theatre Comique, and most nights he tended bar. One too proud to tend bar was not likely to be successful. Like every other business owner, a saloon man had to be willing to roll up his sleeves and go to work. Selcer Collection)Ī bartender was not necessarily the barkeep (or saloon proprietor) and vice versa, though newspapers on the frontier used the terms interchangeably.
“Bill” Ward of Fort Worth, Texas, drew patrons with tokens like this for free drinks. Reflecting in 1931 on his own pre-Prohibition saloon visits, writer Travis Hoke described the ideal old-time barkeep as “a counselor in all the ways of life, recipient of confidences, disburser of advice, arbiter of disputes authority on every subject.” Tending bar in the Old West could be dangerous work, and a good saloon man was not easily replaced, as he was far more than a simple drink pourer. The plea might also apply to bartenders, who, like their piano-playing colleagues, tried to do their best in often trying circumstances. While declaiming in a saloon in Leadville, Colorado, he read those words on a sign over the piano. The celebrated Irish poet and playwright did a lecture tour of the United States in 1882 that took him to Western mining camps. That saying entered Western lore from an unlikely source-Oscar Wilde. PLEASE DON’T SHOOT THE PIANIST HE IS DOING HIS BEST. The fellow in Olaf Carl Seltzer’s 1928 watercolor Barkeep looks tough enough to handle rowdy patrons. Please Don't Shoot the Bartender | HistoryNet Close