When Your Horse Smelled Better Than You

 

 

Close your eyes and picture a typical frontier town.

 

You hear the muffled snorts, whinnies, and nickers of horses. Wagon wheels creak over rutted streets while buggy seats squeak in protest. Conversations overlap—some in English, others in German, Spanish, or any number of immigrant tongues. A blacksmith's hammer rings out as he shapes a new horseshoe for Old Dollar, while somewhere in the distance an out-of-tune piano struggles through Oh Susanna !

 

Lining the street are weathered wooden buildings: a feed store, a telegraph office, the barber, the blacksmith's shop, a general store—and, of course, at least one saloon.

You've seen this town a hundred times.

Maybe it was Laredo.

Maybe Tombstone.

Maybe Dodge City.

 

On a Hollywood backlot.

But before we go any farther, let me ask you a question.

 

Where are all the houses?

Television westerns rarely showed them, but people had to live somewhere. In many frontier towns, homes were built toward the ends of the business district or on quieter side streets. Respectable families generally preferred a little distance from the saloons, gambling halls, brothels, and the occasional Saturday night gunfight.

That wasn't the only thing Hollywood cleaned up.

It also neglected to mention what Main Street smelled like.

 

The dusty streets of the Old West weren't simply dirt roads. They were shared by horses, mules, oxen, cattle, wagons, stagecoaches, and pedestrians. Every day they collected fresh layers of manure, urine, tobacco spit, discarded food, dead animals, blood from butcher shops, and just about every other kind of refuse a growing town could produce.

 

On a hot summer afternoon, the aroma was unforgettable—and not in a good way.

 

When it rained, the dust became mud. When it dried, wagon wheels and hooves pulverized everything back into dust again, sending a fine coating over storefronts, merchandise, clothing, and homes alike. Housewives fought a never-ending battle to keep their homes clean. Shopkeepers swept their sidewalks daily, knowing tomorrow's mess was already on its way.

 

Even the saloons employed a worker known as a swamper. His duties included emptying spittoons, scrubbing floors, cleaning up after bar fights, and trying to keep the entrance presentable. One Tombstone hotel even provided its swamper with a room in the basement.

 

As frontier towns matured, sanitation slowly improved. Citizens were encouraged to haul refuse to designated dumps rather than simply tossing it into the street. But for many years, keeping a town clean was a full-time job.

 

Even the town marshal pitched in.

When he wasn't chasing outlaws, collecting taxes, or locking up drunks, he might be found shoveling horse manure from Main Street. Suddenly, those old movie lines about a sheriff promising to "clean up this town" take on an entirely different meaning.

Hollywood gave us dusty streets, dramatic gunfights, and fearless cowboys.

It forgot to mention the smell.

Perhaps that's just as well.

 

Some memories are best left on the silver screen.