"Saturday Night" by Keith Dyon

Keith & Carm in the early 20's

In the 20's, 30's and before that, Antler was a real boom town and Saturday nights are when everybody came to town - some by horse and buggy, some by horseback, bicycle, and even cars.  The streets would be full of all sorts of vehicles and people.  To us kids it was all very exciting and there were 2 pool rooms, one of which was run by my dad, Charlie.  The other was run by a man named Fred Johnson.  They were always both full until the wee hours of Sunday morning.  Both old Fred and my dad cut hair and they also kept busy on Saturday nights until 1 or 2 o'clock, standing in hair up to their knees.
  In those days, a lot of the guys got a shave as well as a haircut and the barbers were masters with the old straight razor.  First, the barber would pull a long hair out of your head and let it hang free and then see if the razor would cut it!  If so, she was good and sharp and he could dig right in.  There was no electricity for a long time so it had to be the old hand clippers and scissors.  The pool tables were never vacant either and there was usually a bunch standing out front gossiping.  We kids were going from one end of the town to the other to see what we could see and hear.  Earlier, during the 20's they used to have dances on Saturday nights above Hunter's store and there was a great string of steps going up to the dance hall on the south side of the building.  Occasionally a fight would get going at the top of the stairs and once in awhile some guy would come rolling down the steps.  I guess they were bruised frequently but nobody was ever killed.  Whilst these events took place, the band played on!  In the 30's Antler became famous for its bootleggers.  These places drew more people from further away and certainly increased night life activity.  One establishment became a real Las Vegas type casino where drinking and poker went on just like a big time operation.    Another Saturday night feature in Antler in tose days were the Gospel Singers. They were a group of devoted souls from north of Antler known as the 'Gillette Bunch', because Mr. & Mrs. Gillette
were the promoters.  Anyway, pretty near every Saturday night they would gather under a street light and one of them played a guitar while they all sang old Hymns.  They were good too!  So, you had your choice - you could see a fight and you could sing along with hymns.  I might add here that all the stores would stay open until the 'last dog was hung'.  Some were still open long after business had finished as very often some poor woman was waiting for her husband to come and get her and he was probably playing pool or often at one of the bootleggers so, the storekeeper had to be a baby sitter as well.

Antler in the 20s