Ego bruising at the A-D Saloon

The Rock Springs of the 1970's was a wide open town, drugs flowed like water, prostitutes worked openly on the streets and bars were the only home many men had. Rock Springs was a boom town that had grown from a sleepy little berg of eight thousand people to twenty thousand people in five short years. The were people living in tents in the twenty below winter weather, and everyone had money. It was known as sin city and the television program 60 Minutes did expose on the corruption to be found there.

It was my kind of town and my shift mates and I on the Wyoming Highway Patrol gravitated to be there there to assist the Rock Springs City police officers who were sometimes overwhelmed, a shooting or stabbing happening at least once a week. In my rookie year on the Highway Patrol I worked hard to develop a reputation for being the first one in the door any time I had occasion to be called to a fight. Needless to say I became a little cocky and sure of myself and perhaps a little careless as well because I luckily always seemed to prevail in a fight. We tried to be near town on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night because these were the nights when the action took place and I was always ready to back up the city officers when there was a fight in a bar. K-Street in Rock Springs was where all of the prostitution, drugs and bars existed and as I explained before it was truly a dangerous place to work as a cop. One Saturday night I received a call to assist city officers who were embroiled in a fight at the A-D Saloon that was located in the rough area. Being close to town I arrived at the A-D Saloon first, quickly bailing out of my car in front of the bar and running to the front door.

The A-D Saloon was a narrow but very long saloon that had a bar over twenty feet long along the east wall of the building. I saw through the large old fashioned glass windows of the building that the bar was full and I estimate that there were at least two hundred very drunk and rowdy people inside and it appeared that they had several officers pinned up against the wall. I threw the front door to the bar open, and just as I cleared the doorway someone on my left side hit me over the head with a table. I was smashed face first into the floor and the lights went out.

I do not know how long I was unconscious, but when I came to I was in the fight of my life. While I tried to gather my thoughts, my fingers were being stomped on by booted feet and my ribs were being kicked in by unseen persons. I heard people screaming, "Kill the pig, kick him to death." My hat was gone, someone tore my badge off of my chest, my clothing was ripped, but I still had my gun belt and along with it my pistol still in it's holster under my belly. I attempted to gain my feet, but the number of people having a go at me were too numerous and so I decided the best thing I could do was to retain my pistol at all costs and attempt to crawl through the crowd and hit anything with my left fist that came into range.

The first one I struck was a drunken woman who began pulling my hair. I hit her in the face and she collapsed on the floor, everything that happened was a blur, but I fought with all of my strength because it was life or death and I intended to go home to my family. I threw a lot of punches, some landing and others going wild, but my fury seemed to back them off to the point that I was able to crawl completely through the length of the building without anyone being able to knock me out completely. There was several times when I thought I was going to black out from blows to the head, but I was able to keep on crawling. The crowd that surrounded me seemed to diminish, especially after I began to fight back, I showed them that I still had teeth even though I was down, but there were several men continuing to strike me in the head with their fists and still were delivering staggering blows to my ribs, backside and arms with their booted feet. I began to weaken from the affects of the blows and I feared that I might not have the strength to crawl out of the back door.

Then a black angel came to my rescue in the form of Delbert G an investigator for the county attorney, who had been in the area when the fight started. He happened to see me go down and he went out the front door of the bar and ran around to the alley behind the bar, entering the back door with a 12 gauge shotgun in hand. He began butt stroking my assailants away from me with the butt of the shotgun and pulled me out of the back door and to safety in the alley. Delbert stayed by my side and my assailants melted into the crowd of the bar and I was out of the action, but I was glad to be alive and very angry that this had happened to me.

I was taken to the hospital where they checked me out, discovering that my injuries were bruising to most of my body. I was there issued pain killers for the massive pain and released to go home. My poor long suffering wife cried when she saw me. I was covered in blood, tobacco spit, my face, arms and hands were swollen to a much larger size and both eyes were almost swollen shut. The pain pills helped me to sleep, but the next day I truly knew the extent of the bruising, there was not a place on my body spared the beating including the rectal, scrotal area. I truly gave serious thought to discontinuing to my present line of work, but eventually the pain went away and I went back to work. The funny thing is I do not have any rememberance of much of anything that happened after the fight, or of anyone being prosecuted for committing a battery on a police officer. It is as though my mind has blanked it out of my memory, this is probably just as well. Neither my hat and hat badge, nor my chest badge were ever found, or returned. I am sure that they reside in someones trophy case where someone is bragging to his grandchild about the time he kicked the cops butt.....single handedly