The Stockade's secret bar

I spent last night at a restaurant/bar named the Stockade in Deadwood, South Dakota. Unlike the Stockyard in Mountain Home that used to be Joe's Club, this Stockade actually used to be a stockade.

Deadwood was once a mining town but is now mostly a tourist trap lined with casinos and famous for being where Wild Bill Hickok was killed and "dead man's hand" was born.

My table was on the patio, right in front of the singing guitar player who sounded a little like Willey Nelson and liked to make jokes about customers, people walking by, the French and his music career. When we walked in, I asked him to play some Johnny Cash and he immediately played "Folsom Prison Blues."

As I was eating, I looked up and noticed a guy coming out of the bathroom carrying a few shots. I didn't think too much about it, but when I noticed it again, I had to find out what was going on.

I asked the lady who was sitting on the edge of the group how the guy kept coming out of the bathroom with shots and where he was getting them from. She said she didn't know and asked me to investigate for her because she'd been wondering the same thing.

I walked into the men's bathroom expecting to find a door or hallway that would lead in the direction of the bar and found a wall where I looked.

Then I noticed another door and opened it up.

I was shocked to see the door took me into a casino whose bar was located just inches away from their men's bathroom door. It was like walking into an alternate universe where secret words exist in bathroom doors (insert Larry Craig joke here).

Seeing the shock on my face, a couple at the bar asked me what was going on and I explained to them I was trying to figure out why a guy kept coming out of the bathroom with shots.

The couple was from Coeur d'Alene and told me they had been wondering why the same guy had kept getting shots and walking into the bathroom and if that was where party was.

I walked back though the bathroom doors to our table in the Stockyard and reported what I had discovered.

This made our table friends with their table.

Their table consisted of two couples who had children about my age from Austin, Texas, who were visiting the area on a bike trip.

One of the ladies attempted to teach me how to two step. The other one taught the 19-year-old I was with how to do the jitterbug, which made his night but we had to keep reminding him the name of the dance. She would later trade me a kiss on the cheek for a bite of my ice cream cone I acquired from the adjoining ice cream parlor.

Before we left, they bought our table a round of shots, which came from the men's bathroom.