Where Each Night Is Ladies’ Night

The Swallows Inn has a reputation as salty as a sailor’s.

At the famed watering hole to ranch hands, bikers and Marines, even yuppies shun designer clothes and nobody dares play anything but country on the juke. There’s a Harleys-only parking spot out back. Panty hose dangle over the dance floor. Polaroids of patrons mooning the camera decorate the men’s john.

But the saloon with the bad-boy image knows how to treat the ladies, especially those with men at war.

“It’s really hard to believe, but it’s really like a family atmosphere, and it’s one of the few bars I would go to alone,” said Jeannie Baldwin, wife of a Camp Pendleton Marine in the Persian Gulf. “One of the lady bartenders called me at home the other night because she hadn’t seen me in for a while. Just wanted to see if I was OK.”

Like the bar itself, supporting the local troops has been the down-home work of individuals.

Bouncers like Rich Husted keep a protective eye on overzealous suitors, and escort the Marine wives and sweethearts to their cars at closing time. Bartender Adele Frascella writes dozens of Marines who were regulars, even took one wife out to dinner.

“They hold your hand, they give you a kiss, they support you,” said Lisa, 25, wife of a Marine in Saudi Arabia. “If I didn’t have my best friends and these people here, I’d have gone crazy.”

Although the San Juan Capistrano honky-tonk found fleeting celebrity in Clint Eastwood’s movie “Heartbreak Ridge,” it is militantly no-fuss, beloved by those who wouldn’t step foot in a fern bar. And like any good local lair, it caters to its faithful.

Until last summer that meant Marines, largely those stationed at nearby Camp Pendleton, who represent an easy third of the mainstay crowd. Despite reputation, it’s a hassle-free place where beefy bouncers in cowboy hats keep trouble to a minimum and Marines and bikers, cowboys and accountants hoist beers and two-step harmoniously.

“I like to be here because it has a small-town feeling,” said Sherry Stone, 23, a San Juan Capistrano bank teller whose Camp Pendleton-based husband is in the Gulf. “Everybody knows everybody.”

“It’s a working-class crowd, regular people,” added Baldwin, 28, an office manager whose husband, Walt, will be in Saudi Arabia when they celebrate their first wedding anniversary in two weeks. “Nobody cares what kind of car you drive, what kind of house you live in, what kind of job you have. That’s not something you find at most bars.”

Part of its appeal to wives and sweethearts of Marines is sentimental: They met their soldiers and fell in love here at the Swallows Inn.

It was Valentine’s Day eve, and Lisa passed the romantic occasion puffing Marlboros out the back door of the saloon with a girlfriend, under the protective gaze of bouncer Husted. Patty and the Hired Hands took a band break, couples drifted from the dance floor to the shellacked-wood bar, CNN reported war news on the silent television screen and Patsy Cline played on the jukebox. And Lisa waxed nostalgic about meeting her husband at the Swallows Inn two years ago. It was a bittersweet memory on a night like this.

“He was this big ol’ cowboy country boy in a plaid cotton shirt, blue jeans and boots, sittin’ drinkin’ his beer,” she said wistfully, shoving both hands into her jeans pockets. “I never thought I’d marry a Marine. I remember everything about that night, dancing with him. We went to Denny’s afterwards. He wasn’t sure whether to kiss me or not, but he told me he’d call me in two weeks when he got back from the field (training). And he did.”

They married last May.

Husted, a one-man welcome wagon and former Navy corpsman, ambles over to Lisa and squeezes her tight.

“Hi, doll, how ya doin’?” he asks.

Having done four tours in Vietnam, Husted, 49, is one of several veterans working at the Swallows.

One of the bartenders was a fighter pilot in Vietnam and another also served in that war. Three bouncers shipped out in August. This seems to comfort wives of the Marines.

Lisa’s friend April, also married to a Marine, arrives at the back door a few minutes later.

“Hi, sugar-lips!” Husted says, hugging and kissing her affectionately.

“These guys look out for us,” says April, whose husband trains Marines at Camp Pendleton.

“When did anyone ever escort you to your car at a Red Onion?” Husted asks.

Wives of Marines nod in agreement. They are probably safer here than at a more upscale, more anonymous nightclub.

Two guys rumble up on Harley-Davidsons wearing American flag headbands. They nod in a restrained greeting to Husted and his friends.

“You can feel tired, frustrated, depressed, lonely. And anger. That’s a lot of what we go through with our guys gone,” adds Lisa. “But we are our own family here, and people just understand how we might feel. They take care of their own here.”

When a Camp Pendleton Marine died a year ago, for instance, “we had a service for him here,” she said. “It wasn’t an organized thing. We just sort of did it. And you know, every band here plays a song for our troops over there and has a moment of silence.” She brushes away tears at the sentiment.

“Now don’t start to cry,” Husted says sweetly, “or I will too. God that would be ugly!”

Inside the tavern, Frascella is having a beer on a break from bartending duties. She works during the day in a local hospital’s payroll division and part-time nights at the Swallows.

“We miss them, and we worry about them,” Frascella, 42, says emotionally of the Marine customers. “They’re like little brothers, and this is their home away from home.”

Having worked at the Swallows Inn nine years--as much for the camaraderie as the extra income--Frascella has come to know her customers’ wives and lovers.

“She took me out to dinner,” Baldwin recalled. “It was just the sweetest thing. I’ve known her a while. My husband used to dance with her.”

That was before Baldwin and her husband surprised everyone and, after a 25-year friendship, left the bar at closing time, drove to Las Vegas and married last June. The next night they drove back to the Swallows Inn for a reception of sorts.

“It just seemed like the place to go,” Baldwin said with a giggle. “He was in his dress blues, and I was still in my wedding dress.”

Now it can prove difficult to return to the place solo, she said. But friends like bouncer Mike Bass ease the pain. The other night, Bass, a former Marine who now heads the Swallows security, requested Walt Baldwin’s favorite song and led Jeannie Baldwin to the dance floor.

“It’s hard to explain how that helps,” Baldwin said. “But where else could I find that?”

Although gestures of support have largely been personal, occasionally the Swallows launches an organized pro-troops effort, like the times when the whole bar signs cards to Marines in the Gulf. And the Marines write back.

“Tell ya what,” Lisa says. “This place will be packed when they come home. It’s gonna be one big hellacious party here.”