Mark Gibbons began his "relationship with booze" at "watering holes, western bars, those dens of iniquity, as integral a part of the western landscape as horses or teepees...Fueled by alcohol late into the night, bars surely held unpredictable wildness, danger and vice; but in small western towns, the bar was the social center of the community." Poet Ed Lahey recalls a working-class Butte bar in "The Ballad of the Board of Trade Bar:"
"Coal Oil Belle
was a red lamp legend
in a brown town.
She worked her trade
behind a smelter stack
in the echo
of the night shift whistle.
Her polished symbol,
the hurricane lamp,
red as a Black Widow's belly,
swung in bronze relief
- an evening star -
above the dark oak door
of the Board of Trade bar..."
(Broadcast: "Reflections West," 12/10/14. Listen weekly on the radio, Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m.)
