When I was with people who did not drink, I never thought of drinking.
Louis did not drink. Neither he nor I could afford it; but, more
significant than that, we had no desire to drink. We were healthy,
normal, non-alcoholic. Had we been alcoholic, we would have drunk
whether or not we could have afforded it.
Each night, after the day's work, washed up, clothes changed, and supper
eaten, we met on the street corner or in the little candy store. But the
warm fall weather passed, and on bitter nights of frost or damp nights of
drizzle, the street corner was not a comfortable meeting-place. And the
candy store was unheated. Nita, or whoever waited on the counter,
between waitings lurked in a back living-room that was heated. We were
not admitted to this room, and in the store it was as cold as
out-of-doors.
Louis and I debated the situation. There was only one solution: the
saloon, the congregating-place of men, the place where men hobnobbed with
John Barleycorn. Well do I remember the damp and draughty evening,
shivering without overcoats because we could not afford them, that Louis
and I started out to select our saloon. Saloons are always warm and
comfortable. Now Louis and I did not go into this saloon because we
wanted a drink. Yet we knew that saloons were not charitable
institutions. A man could not make a lounging-place of a saloon without
occasionally buying something over the bar.
Our dimes and nickels were few. We could ill spare any of them when they
were so potent in paying car-fare for oneself and a girl. (We never paid
car-fare when by ourselves, being content to walk.) So, in this saloon,
we desired to make the most of our expenditure. We called for a deck of
cards and sat down at a table and played euchre for an hour, in which
time Louis treated once, and I treated once, to beer--the cheapest drink,
ten cents for two. Prodigal! How we grudged it!
We studied the men who came into the place. They seemed all middle-aged
and elderly work-men, most of them Germans, who flocked by themselves in
old-acquaintance groups, and with whom we could have only the slightest
contacts. We voted against that saloon, and went out cast down with the
knowledge that we had lost an evening and wasted twenty cents for beer
that we didn't want.
We made several more tries on succeeding nights, and at last found our
way into the National, a saloon on Tenth and Franklin. Here was a more
congenial crowd. Here Louis met a fellow or two he knew, and here I met
fellows I had gone to school with when a little lad in knee pants. We
talked of old days, and of what had become of this fellow, and what that
fellow was doing now, and of course we talked it over drinks. They
treated, and we drank. Then, according to the code of drinking, we had
to treat. It hurt, for it meant forty to fifty cents a clatter.
We felt quite enlivened when the short evening was over; but at the same
time we were bankrupt. Our week's spending money was gone. We decided
that that was the saloon for us, and we agreed to be more circumspect
thereafter in our drink-buying. Also, we had to economise for the rest
of the week. We didn't even have car-fare. We were compelled to break
an engagement with two girls from West Oakland with whom we were
attempting to be in love. They were to meet us up town the next evening,
and we hadn't the car-fare necessary to take them home. Like many others
financially embarrassed, we had to disappear for a time from the gay
whirl--at least until Saturday night pay-day. So Louis and I
rendezvoused in a livery stable, and with coats buttoned and chattering
teeth played euchre and casino until the time of our exile was over.
Then we returned to the National Saloon and spent no more than we could
decently avoid spending for the comfort and warmth. Sometimes we had
mishaps, as when one got stuck twice in succession in a five-handed game
of Sancho Pedro for the drinks. Such a disaster meant anywhere between
twenty-five to eighty cents, just according to how many of the players
ordered ten-cent drinks. But we could temporarily escape the evil
effects of such disaster, by virtue of an account we ran behind the bar.
Of course, this only set back the day of reckoning and seduced us into
spending more than we would have spent on a cash basis. (When I left
Oakland suddenly for the adventure-path the following spring, I well
remember I owed that saloon-keeper one dollar and seventy cents. Long
after, when I returned, he was gone. I still owe him that dollar and
seventy cents, and if he should chance to read these lines I want him to
know that I'll pay on demand.)
The foregoing incident of the National Saloon I have given in order again
to show the lure, or draw, or compulsion, toward John Barleycorn in
society as at present organised with saloons on all the corners. Louis
and I were two healthy youths. We didn't want to drink. We couldn't
afford to drink. And yet we were driven by the circumstance of cold and
rainy weather to seek refuge in a saloon, where we had to spend part of
our pitiful dole for drink. It will be urged by some critics that we
might have gone to the Y.M.C.A., to night school, and to the social
circles and homes of young people. The only reply is that we didn't.
That is the irrefragable fact. We didn't. And to-day, at this moment,
there are hundreds of thousands of boys like Louis and me doing just what
Louis and I did with John Barleycorn, warm and comfortable, beckoning and
welcoming, tucking their arms in his and beginning to teach them his
mellow ways.