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
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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
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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
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sprawling like careless gods upon the turf and telling the two-by-
four, cut-and-dried, conventional world to go hang.
CHAPTER XIV
Back in Oakland from my wanderings, I returned to the water-front
and renewed my comradeship with Nelson, who was now on shore all
the time and living more madly than before. I, too, spent my time
on shore with him, only occasionally going for cruises of several
days on the bay to help out on short-handed scow-schooners.
The result was that I was no longer reinvigorated by periods of