A Haven for Marine Wives, Girlfriends : Support: Saloon watches over women while men from nearby Camp Pendleton are in the Gulf.

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

At the famed watering hole of ranch hands, bikers and Marines, even yuppies shun designer clothes and nobody dares play anything but country music on the jukebox. 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 whose men are 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.”

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 Marine wives and sweethearts to their cars at closing time. Bartender Adele Frascella writes to dozens of Marines who were regulars.

“They hold your hand, they give you a kiss, they support you,” said Lisa, 25, the 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 set 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.

“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 on their first wedding anniversary in two weeks. Part of its appeal to wives and sweethearts of Marines is sentimental: they met their soldiers and fell in love at the Swallows.

It is Valentine’s Eve and Lisa passes the 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 take a band break, couples drift from the dance floor to the wood-shellacked bar, CNN reports war news on a silent television and Patsy Cline plays on the jukebox. Lisa speaks of meeting her husband at the Swallows two years ago. It is 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 says, 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. And he did.”

They got married in 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.

Husted, 49, did four tours in Vietnam, and is one of several veterans working at the Swallows. This seems to comfort the Marine wives.

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

“Hi, Sugarlips!” Husted says, hugging and kissing her affectionately.

“When did anyone ever escort you to your car at a Red Onion?” Husted asks. Marine wives nod in agreement.

Two guys wearing American flag headbands rumble up on Harley-Davidsons. They nod 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.”

When a Camp Pendleton Marine died a year ago, “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.

“Now don’t start to cry,” Husted says, “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 nights at the Swallows, days at a hospital’s payroll division.

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

Jeannie Baldwin recalls of Frascella: “She took me out to dinner. It was just the sweetest thing. I’ve known her awhile. My husband used to dance with her.”

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

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

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

It’s not all “Melancholy Baby,” though.

“We’ve got this joke among the women,” Lisa says, grinning. “That if we all got PMS (premenstrual syndrome) at the same time we could go over there and get the job done in one day.” Her friends laugh.

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