Saloon Society Update

December 24, 1958, Vol. IV, No. 9

by Bill Manville

Last week, on one of those black, rainy days that do so much for the local suicide rate, I got a letter from somewhere, Ringworm, Oklahoma, some terrible place like that. The guy wrote me that I had a lot of nerve spending all my time in saloons, and even worse, making it sound inviting and glamorous. Everyone in Ringworm (Oklahoma), when they went into a saloon, why at least they had the fundamental decency to be ashamed of it.

It made me feel down and depressed, and I went over to the College of Complexes saloon for a little encouragement ("A glass of encouragement, please, Terry"). I took out the letter and re-read it over my second glass. The stamp, appropriately enough, was canceled with one of those slogan that mean so much to people like my correspondent: "The family that prays together, stays together."

That seemed fair to me, and even, if it were true, you might say, a break for the rest of us. But why can't they just hang in there, in sweaty togetherness, and not write letters to me?

[Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956.]