Why would an Old West saloon have white towels on the front of the bar?
Chuck Terry, Columbus, Ohio
Bartenders hung towels on the bar so that imbibers could wipe the beer foam off their mouths. They were “community towels.” You can imagine how easily drinking buddies shared afflictions, such as colds, the flu or tuberculosis.
Marshall Trimble is Arizona’s official historian and vice president of the Wild West History Association. . His latest book is Arizona's Outlaws and Lawmen; His

December 2016
In This Issue:
Features
Western Books & Movies
More In This Issue
- A Babe on the Battlefield
- A Western Dynasty: Winchester
- Let’s Hang This “Damned Nuisance”
- Deadly Enemies in Trinidad
- Happy Belated, Will Rogers
- The Doctor Doolittle of Rattlesnakes
- Old Vaquero Saying
- Thank You, November
- The Magnificent Robert Vaughn, 1932-2016
- The Life and Legend of Hugh O’Brian
- If You Can’t Lynch a Cattle Thief, There’s Always Plan B
- Dora Hand
- Why Would an Old West Saloon have White Towels on the Front of the Bar?
- So Billy Sidles Up to the Bar Next to Wyatt
- Bitter Friends
Departments
- Western Events for December 2016
- What History Has Taught Me: Ron Hansen, Author
- Emperor of the United States
- Were Cowboys Superstitious?
- Hand Over the Ice Cream
- Forewarned & Forearmed
- A Pistol For Dragoons
- Hollywood’s Texas Ranger
- How Fast Could a Stagecoach Travel?
- Portrait of a Mountain Man
- North to Montana
- Why Do Westerns Feature Guns That Didn’t Exist at the Time Period?
- What Happened to the Bodies of Those Killed at the Alamo?
- The Last Stage Robbery?