The Red Feather Saloon

The following is the history of the Red Feather Saloon which was recently built in my brother's home but had its' beginning a long time ago.

Here is a photograph taken when we were kids. That's me the second from the left. My best friend Mary is in the middle with the glasses and that's my brother Randy on the far right. One might be able to call us "The Red Feather Saloon gang". The others in the photo were our neighborhood friends. We had a big backyard that had different tiers. On one tier were big fig trees. We would climb on those trees and pull up and down on the long branches as though they were the reins of a horse. Other levels of our yard had peach, apricot, plum and pomagranate trees. On another level we had chicken coops where my dad raised chickens one year.

My brother loved to play cowboys and indians. He set up a makeshift saloon. He took some pretty shotglasses from my mother's cabinet and he would line them up and fill them with soda for the kids. It was Randy's place and he called it "The Red Feather Saloon." That was so long ago but he never forgot those times.

This past Spring Randy added a room addition to his house. He planned to install a small bar in one corner of the room.

Here' my brother and me.

And here's Jocelyn our sister with Randy.

A couple of months ago when the bar was finished Randy showed me something surprising. He said when we sold our parents home and cleared everything out he had found the shotglass pictured above. It was one of the very shotglasses he used to serve the kids soda pop at his "Red Feather Saloon." He said it was the only one left in mom and dad's cabinet after all these years so he kept it. I was so amazed because of this...

Unbeknownst to Randy I too had found one of the shotglasses when cleaning out our parents house and I had kept it as a souvenir. Neither of us knew the other had one.

Yesterday we had a birthday party for my brother at his home. Here he is busy at the bar preparing drinks for all the guests.

He was really happy we were all there. He joked with me and said, "and you didn't even remember I had the Red Feather Saloon when we were kids!" I just laughed because he was in for a surprise.

I had wrapped three gifts for him. The top one said "Open me 1st!" Guess what was in it?

Yup, the other shot glass that matches the one he had from the time we were kids!

The 2nd gift was a dvd of an old Walt Disney film that we used to watch together called "Old Yeller".

Well I saved the best for last. The gift that said "Open me 3rd" was this sign for his bar:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Randy! I could not have ever asked for a nicer brother than you!

*The custom wood sign is by two wonderful craftspeople, Peter and Dorothy Thale. They sell great wooden signs at Etsy and just happen to live in Belmont Shore California near me. See their creative work here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Thalewoodsigns?ref=pr_shop