By William Peck

The Hillside Store and Bar has passed through several owners over the years and history shows that eventually they all resorted to the sale of liquor to stay in business, which just as regularly brought them down since they invariably ended up as a bar. 

Are you old enough to remember when you could enter any bar and other establishments in Yavapai County and play the slots? It was about 1946, (don't hold me to the exact date), when Jerry Butler was Sheriff.

I was working as a kid for Bill Warrell who, with Bill Carson, owned the Hillside Store and Bar at that time. The bar occupied the east side of the building and was built on as a lean-to in which the floor sloped precipitously eastward. Unnoticeable to most of the customers, this allowed any spilt beer to run out through the east wall, and was the garnering place of the drinking class of Hillside, which was most of it. 

Nickel and dime slot machines stood on two pedestals opposite the bar. There may have been a quarter machine also; I don't recall, except that a quarter was beyond the means of most of us except for Charlie Hotelling who was the night agent for the Santa Fe R.R. 

The railroad paid its wages in cash once a month to the tune of $200 all of which Charlie would bring to the bar and change into coins. There was a definite haste in his transaction and, with a fresh beer beside him, he would begin his monthly ritual of disposing of his pay. This was a systematic thing involving giving the bartender twenty dollars for his living expenses for the next month which he was instructed to hold for Charlie just in case it took longer than he expected to complete his disposing of the remainder and his beer tab mounted up beyond the limits of sobriety. By ten o'clock, the $180 was usually gone and Charlie would go to the bar with a look of satisfaction on his face. He would examine his pockets so that no coin might escape undetected and sigh in a laissez-faire manner while killing the dregs of his final beer. 

I was carrying the dime machine out the door by its handle to the pickup truck one-day when the disks began to whirl from a dime left in the machine. Being somewhat on its side, it scattered dimes all over the ground as it hit three plums on the dial. I gathered my winning out of the dirt - sixteen dimes! That was the most money I had seen in the two years I had worked for Bill Warrell. 

We were taking the slot machine to Prescott where the present basement bakery is located on Gurley Street beneath the St. Michael Hotel. There was a peephole in the door and this was my first experience of being scrutinized by an eyeball as a gruff voice answered from within asking our mission. Finally, the door opened and we were let in by a tiny Sicilian-type man, straight out of Gang Busters, wearing a sleeveless undershirt with a rod under his left armpit. It was fairly dark inside and rows of slots in various-stages-of undress lined the benches. I set my burden down while Warrell dickered with the man over the proceeds. 

Interestingly, soon afterward, Bill Warrell went on to run for Yavapai County Supervisor on a reform ticket and he won that election. But later, when running for re-election, his platform included overhauling the County Road Department, but that proved too big to swallow and he was badly beaten. 

Such was life in Hillside and Yavapai County in the 1940s. 

Note: From the beginning, gambling was rampant in our part of the west, but it was nearly eradicated prior to the institution of the Arizona State Lottery. Beginning on July 1, 1981, Arizona became the first state west of the Mississippi to have a legal, State administered lottery. The 21.4 million tickets that went on sale over that July 4th weekend in 1981 sold out in 10 days! Apparently gambling had not completely died. 



Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb059f10i3)
Reuse only by permission.
The Hillside Store and Bar as it was in 1980. 


Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po0907pa)
Reuse only by permission.
This 1940s Chamber of Commerce picture on the courthouse steps shows Bill Warrell, then a Yavapai County Supervisor, third from the right.