What comes to your mind when you think of a saloon? If it's rowdy fights, poker, and dancing girls, you've got small town Iowa confused with the movies. Many people at the turn of the century felt that saloons in Iowa should be outlawed. As a compromise around 1894, the state allowed saloons, but under laws that regulated them so heavily they were called Sunday School Saloons. The windows could not be completely covered so people could look in from the street and make sure that the customers behaved. To keep customers from lingering and drinking too much tables and chairs were not allowed. No pictures could decorate the walls. No music could make the place lively. Most important, no women were allowed at all.

Our saloon was built in 1895 in Czech Village and served the men who worked at the meat packing plant. They came for "Nickel Beer and a Free Lunch." Of course, the free lunch was usually something cheap and salty like pickled eggs that would make the men order more beer.

In the evening the children in the family would come to the saloon with a tin bucket to get a bucket of beer for the family's supper. Some bartenders would fill the buckets mostly with foam. To fix this, the housewives would smear the inside of the bucket with lard to cut the foam and insure a full bucket of beer.