Day Drinking With The ‘Millbillies’ During A Power Outage

MILLS — Day drinking is underrated. 

It's playfully subversive, like eating dessert first. It's also a little edgy, like a statement that tells the world, “I do what I want, when I want!”

Notwithstanding strides toward social acceptability, courtesy patron saint Jimmy Buffett — for whom day drinking seems like more of a vocation than an activity — the idea of tipping 'em back during work hours still carries a soft taboo. 

Yet that’s exactly why the whisky throat-burn feels so thrilling at 2 o’clock, though we can still say it’s 5 o’clock, somewhere at least. 

Popular notions aside, it's not all tailgate energy, and you don’t have to be retired or wait for vacation to get in on the fun. 

Sometimes, the best day drinking is right around the corner at your neighborhood bar. Because as Cowboy State Daily discovered while tipping back beers with the “Millbillies,” the best part of a daytime coldie is the people you cheers.

Bayou Bar

The Bayou Bar on Platte Avenue in Mills is an archetypal Wyoming dive. 

It's an “every-body-knows-your-name” joint with cheap beer, good music and a tribe of eccentric regulars who are friendly and foreboding at the same time.

On a Thursday afternoon, for instance, you may find yourself next to an older buddy who's kind enough to show you his .38 Special on request, which he fishes from his leather road vest and places fully chambered and gleaming on the bar between you.

The gesture sparks a ranging conversation on constitutional carry, the strategic value of double action, and the way things have changed.

“When we was kids growing up, every pickup had a rifle rack with a couple .30-30 [Winchester riffles] in the back window. Right in the high school parking lot, and nothing locked up,” he said.

He has alert, narrow eyes and a mouth held slightly agape, giving the expression of a man who anticipates guff, which is befitting for a guy who pulled in on a loud-piping sportster. 

After all this talk of guns, in your mind, the two of you have practically become best buds. But that’s not how he sees it. 

Not after you tell him you're a journalist, anyway, because when you ask if he’ll be an official source for your story, he gives you his middle finger.

He’ll let you touch his loaded gun, but he won’t tell you his name.

Of course, by his own admission, “everyone knows your name here,” so you come to find his name is common, classically masculine, and rhymes with Timbo.

While he’ll snub a reporter, he won’t snub safety, as his approach to day drinking is uncompromisingly moderate. 

“Two wheels, two beers,” he says. “And that means only two beers spread across the whole day. Always obey that rule."

He closes out and leaves you with a piece of advice. Brushing his knuckles against your scruffy cheek, he says, “You need to shave. Won't get any girls like that.”

Now would be the time to return the middle finger, you think. But that doesn’t feel right, not least because he just put your drink on his tab. 

Power Out, Personalities On

Patrons like Mr. .38 Special see day drinking as a privilege of retirement. That’s not the case for Tina, who’s here after a full shift as a package handler at Amazon.

She has faded auburn curls tied back with a SpongeBob SquarePants bandana fastened in the jaunty manner reminiscent of Rosie the Riveter, an icon after her own personality. 

“I like labor work. Moving. Using my body. I sweat when I work, and I’ve been doing it for years,” she says.

She drinks Budweiser cans in a sleeveless pink shirt and speaks with the sweet, soft voice of a librarian as she describes day drinking as like a coffee date with the girls.

But then the power goes out, and suddenly a different side of her personality starts to peek through.

We’ll later learn that two high-voltage transmission lines were tripped near Medicine Bow, causing tens of thousands of customers across Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota to lose power.

But for now, what we’re learning is that when the lights go out at the Bayou Bar, patrons can get weird. 

Before long, Tina’s asking others to pay a $10 cover charge, and a larger charge for a supposedly forthcoming pole dance.

Erin, the bartender, tries to keep heads calm and suggests telling ghost stories. But the day drinkers seem more interested in trolling, and amid the dimness the joint starts to resemble an anonymous comment section online. 

Here is a sampling of the things you hear when the lights go out at the Bayou Bar: 

• “What’s wrong with you girls? Why do you think everything’s about sex?” 

• “I’m the one with a big butt and little tits!”

• “Pole dance time! Can we get a pole dance song?”

• “Why do you guys encourage her?”

At some point, the sound of disturbingly wet flatulence rips through the darkness. You hope desperately that the noise is facetious by design.

Dead Pecker Row

At the end of the bar, the cherried ends of cigarettes glow in the murky light, like campfires on a distant mountain side. 

You trek that direction to find a man named John Smith, who belongs to that subset of day drinkers who give zero f***s. 

He’s the kind of guy who slips out his dentures and grins by way of introduction, staring at you crazily while prosthetic gums dangle from his mouth like a piece of glistening fish flesh.

He has a long, white beard that he claims he’s never once — ever, ever — bothered to trim: picture Duck Dynasty meets Saint Nick. Together with his IDGAF attitude, the sum of John Smith brings to mind Billy Bob Thornton’s “Bad Santa.”

His jokes are bad, too. 

“What’s the difference between an anal thermometer and an oral thermometer?” he asks you.

Admittedly, it makes you smile, but it also makes you want to throw up your beer.

John Smith, it should be noted, is only John Smith until he learns you're writing a news story, at which point he becomes no one at all. Go figure, the other gentlemen around him are suddenly happy to volunteer names.

“I’m John Smith. Nice to meet you. Feel free to use my name in your story” repeats one guy after the next, shaking your hand in succession.

These men belong to a uniform demographic and, as you might have expected, it’s a demographic ripe for ribbing in the eyes of  Smith No. 1.

“Meet Dead Pecker Row,” he says with a tone of importance, as though introducing political dignitaries.

It doesn’t take long to compute his lewd meaning. Your thoughts flash back to something Tina said earlier about dances; don’t suppose she’ll drum up much business today.

The ‘Millbillies'

Smith takes an inventory beyond the Row.

“I know everyone here, and I can tell you that almost every person you see is retired,” he said.

On the one hand, it makes sense, because half these folk are likely to be in bed before the sun goes down, so if not now, then when? 

On the other hand, day drinking is a prized American pastime, so why should the older crowds be the only ones to get in on the fun? 

Just as you’re wondering if titanium hips might be the only hard things here, you realize that on the stool right beside you sits a decidedly fit-and-firm woman named Rae. 

She’s tangibly firm, as a matter of fact, as is revealed during an impromptu lesson on the principles of Pilates, which she professionally instructs.

“It’s all core. It wraps all the way around, from here down, and you activate it by scooping it in and pulling it all up, like this,” she says, demonstrating with a pelvic motion.

It’s moments like these that reveal the promise of day drinking.

To your left is a Pilates instructor drinking vodka Red Bulls, going on about some carriage-like apparatus called a reformer while shooing away the cigarette smoke that attacks her from all sides.

While on your right is a chain-smoking former roustabout who ran away from home at 14 and never looked back on a journey that now finds him on a bar stool telling cringe jokes over daytime beers — and also explaining the technicalities of conspiracy charges that may or may not have put him behind bars for 10 years.

Differences aside, with equal pride they each declare themselves “Millbillies,” an endearment reserved for locals only.

“We’re just a bunch of Millbillies hanging out in a Millbilly bar,” Rae says.

Perhaps the dichotomy is not so strange, but when you're day drinking in the dark at the Bayou Bar, moments like these seem to flip on a subtle insight, a light bulb, so to speak.

The timing couldn’t be better.  

“Wow, I can see! Power is back! ” someone shouts. 

“I like it better in the dark. Turn the lights off,” shouts another.

‘Second to None’ In Giving Back

The Bayou is among a dying breed of community bar, say locals who believe that gentrification and generational change have made places like this fewer and farther between.

With the diminishing presence of such neighborhood bars, what’s at stake is more than cheap drinks and good conversation, say owners Rachel Carson and Josh Carson, who took the bar over in 2018, continuing a legacy that began at this location with a liquor license in 1939.

The building burned down twice during the 20th century and, similar to the way it’s been rebuilt, the Bayou community has helped rebuild the lives of patrons who’ve fallen on hard times.

The bar nowis hosting a raffle-donation to raise money for a local resident who lost their home in a fire. It's the latest in the bar’s long history of community fundraising.

“All the people that come to this bar pitched in, bought raffle tickets, and donated money to help my family during a hard time,” says one of the John Smiths on Dead Pecker Row, referring to medical bills from cancer treatment. 

“People might give me shit for [day drinking] at this bar, but they don’t understand the type of friendship and camaraderie here. It’s family,” he says.

A regular named Dan co-signs the sentiment.

“In terms of giving back to the community, the Bayou Bar is second to none,” he said.

In addition to giving back, they may also start powering down, by popular demand.

“We’ve had people tell us we should shut the power off on purpose at least once a month,” said Carson, the owner. “Apparently, they really liked it.”

Contact Zakary Sonntag at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com

Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.