So I left Benicia, where John Barleycorn had nearly got me, and ranged
wider afield in pursuit of the whisper from the back of life to come and
find. And wherever I ranged, the way lay along alcohol-drenched roads.
Men still congregated in saloons. They were the poor-man's clubs, and
they were the only clubs to which I had access. I could get acquainted
in saloons. I could go into a saloon and talk with any man. In the
strange towns and cities I wandered through, the only place for me to go
was the saloon. I was no longer a stranger in any town the moment I had
entered a saloon.
And right here let me break in with experiences no later than last year.
I harnessed four horses to a light trap, took Charmian along, and drove
for three months and a half over the wildest mountain parts of California
and Oregon. Each morning I did my regular day's work of writing fiction.
That completed, I drove on through the middle of the day and the
afternoon to the next stop. But the irregularity of occurrence of
stopping-places, coupled with widely varying road conditions, made it
necessary to plan, the day before, each day's drive and my work. I must
know when I was to start driving in order to start writing in time to
finish my day's output. Thus, on occasion, when the drive was to be
long, I would be up and at my writing by five in the morning. On easier
driving days I might not start writing till nine o'clock.
But how to plan? As soon as I arrived in a town, and put the horses up,
on the way from the stable to the hotel I dropped into the saloons.
First thing, a drink--oh, I wanted the drink, but also it must not be
forgotten that, because of wanting to know things, it was in this very
way I had learned to want a drink. Well, the first thing, a drink.
"Have something yourself," to the barkeeper. And then, as we drink, my
opening query about roads and stopping-places on ahead.
"Let me see," the barkeeper will say, "there's the road across Tarwater
Divide. That used to be good. I was over it three years ago. But it
was blocked this spring. Say, I'll tell you what. I'll ask Jerry----"
And the barkeeper turns and addresses some man sitting at a table or
leaning against the bar farther along, and who may be Jerry, or Tom, or
Bill. "Say, Jerry, how about the Tarwater road? You was down to Wilkins
last week."
And while Bill or Jerry or Tom is beginning to unlimber his thinking and
speaking apparatus, I suggest that he join us in the drink. Then
discussions arise about the advisability of this road or that, what the
best stopping-places may be, what running time I may expect to make,
where the best trout streams are, and so forth, in which other men join,
and which are punctuated with more drinks.
Two or three more saloons, and I accumulate a warm jingle and come pretty
close to knowing everybody in town, all about the town, and a fair deal
about the surrounding country. I know the lawyers, editors, business
men, local politicians, and the visiting ranchers, hunters, and miners,
so that by evening, when Charmian and I stroll down the main street and
back, she is astounded by the number of my acquaintances in that totally
strange town.
And thus is demonstrated a service John Barleycorn renders, a service by
which he increases his power over men. And over the world, wherever I
have gone, during all the years, it has been the same. It may be a
cabaret in the Latin Quarter, a cafe in some obscure Italian village, a
boozing ken in sailor-town, and it may be up at the club over Scotch and
soda; but always it will be where John Barleycorn makes fellowship that I
get immediately in touch, and meet, and know. And in the good days
coming, when John Barleycorn will have been banished out of existence
along with the other barbarisms, some other institution than the saloon
will have to obtain, some other congregating place of men where strange
men and stranger men may get in touch, and meet, and know.
But to return to my narrative. When I turned my back on Benicia, my way
led through saloons. I had developed no moral theories against drinking,
and I disliked as much as ever the taste of the stuff. But I had grown
respectfully suspicious of John Barleycorn. I could not forget that
trick he had played on me--on me who did not want to die. So I continued
to drink, and to keep a sharp eye on John Barleycorn, resolved to resist
all future suggestions of self-destruction.
In strange towns I made immediate acquaintances in the saloons. When I
hoboed, and hadn't the price of a bed, a saloon was the only place that
would receive me and give me a chair by the fire. I could go into a
saloon and wash up, brush my clothes, and comb my hair. And saloons were
always so damnably convenient. They were everywhere in my western
country.
I couldn't go into the dwellings of strangers that way. Their doors were
not open to me; no seats were there for me by their fires. Also,
churches and preachers I had never known. And from what I didn't know I
was not attracted toward them. Besides, there was no glamour about them,
no haze of romance, no promise of adventure. They were the sort with
whom things never happened. They lived and remained always in the one
place, creatures of order and system, narrow, limited, restrained. They
were without greatness, without imagination, without camaraderie. It was
the good fellows, easy and genial, daring, and, on occasion, mad, that I
wanted to know--the fellows, generous-hearted and -handed, and not
rabbit-hearted.
And here is another complaint I bring against John Barleycorn. It is
these good fellows that he gets--the fellows with the fire and the go in
them, who have bigness, and warmness, and the best of the human
weaknesses. And John Barleycorn puts out the fire, and soddens the
agility, and, when he does not more immediately kill them or make maniacs
of them, he coarsens and grossens them, twists and malforms them out of
the original goodness and fineness of their natures.
Oh!--and I speak out of later knowledge--Heaven forefend me from the most
of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold
of heart and cold of head who don't smoke, drink, or swear, or do much of
anything else that is brase, and resentful, and stinging, because in
their feeble fibres there has never been the stir and prod of life to
well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet
these in saloons, nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the
adventure-paths, nor loving as God's own mad lovers. They are too busy
keeping their feet dry, conserving their heart-beats, and making unlovely
life-successes of their spirit-mediocrity.
And so I draw the indictment home to John Barleycorn. It is just those,
the good fellows, the worth while, the fellows with the weakness of too
much strength, too much spirit, too much fire and flame of fine
devilishness, that he solicits and ruins. Of course, he ruins weaklings;
but with them, the worst we breed, I am not here concerned. My concern
is that it is so much of the best we breed whom John Barleycorn destroys.
And the reason why these best are destroyed is because John Barleycorn
stands on every highway and byway, accessible, law-protected, saluted by
the policeman on the beat, speaking to them, leading them by the hand to
the places where the good fellows and daring ones forgather and drink
deep. With John Barleycorn out of the way, these daring ones would still
be born, and they would do things instead of perishing.
Always I encountered the camaraderie of drink. I might be walking down
the track to the water-tank to lie in wait for a passing freight-train,
when I would chance upon a bunch of "alki-stiffs." An alki-stiff is a
tramp who drinks druggist's alcohol. Immediately, with greeting and
salutation, I am taken into the fellowship. The alcohol, shrewdly
blended with water, is handed to me, and soon I am caught up in the
revelry, with maggots crawling in my brain and John Barleycorn whispering
to me that life is big, and that we are all brave and fine--free spirits
sprawling like careless gods upon the turf and telling the two-by-four,
cut-and-dried, conventional world to go hang.