A Day in the Saloon and Setting up for a Movie on Sunday

 

   

 

Two pages of one of the catalogs into which Smith Sherlock Company Store invoices were pasted. Each page is 17x21" in size.

I walked down to the shop this morning and Gator and I drove over to the Miner’s Exchange Saloon to drop off sarsaparilla. Gator then was off to work on a small construction project at the stamp mill and I went into the archives to continue digitizing invoices from the Smith Sherlock Company Store. I am almost through my second book of invoices, covering a bit more than two years; however, I have seen a couple of things that I want to keep track of. First, I am noticing a bit of seasonal pattern in goods ordered as I expected. Also, they ordered a lot of butter- 120-132 pounds at a time. The invoices from the butter vendor are interesting, as they are directed to “Dr. to The Cheyenne Creamery Co.” The “Dr.” is short for Debtor. Seems a bit harsh.

 

Invoice from the Cheyenne Creamery Co.

 

At noon, I opened the Miner’s Exchange Saloon. Today was not particularly busy, but the timing of visitors coming into the saloon was irregular, making it hard to get much writing and research done. I did get a chance to do some reading, though. The day went along at an average pace. I had a total of 32 people and one dog come through today. I sold five sarsaparilla.

I closed the saloon at 4:00, Jesse and Meg picked me up, and we returned the sarsaparilla to the refrigerator in the shop. Connie and I then headed home. It rained for a bit as we prepared and ate dinner. After dinner, I fired up the pellet smoker and smoked a bottom round of roast for dinner tomorrow and Monday.

After dinner, we carried our projector and a sheet down to the jail. Connie and I have been planning to watch a movie or two in the old jail and the timing is about right. We found a way to secure the sheet to the wall and got the projector all set up and thought the quality of the picture was pretty good. We left the projector in the saloon and headed home. Once there, I thought it would be good to drive up to Atlantic City for a beer at the Miner’s Grubstake. Connie had a diet Coke. On the way up to Atlantic City we saw a small herd (eight) of pronghorn antelope and we saw one mule deer as we drove into town and another on the way out.