Saturday, January 1, 2011

A Story from the Days of Alcohol Prohibition

                                          Photo courtesy of Creative Commons


Memories of prohibition; as were told to me by a couple of Great Old Timers!


When it came to logging my Grandpa was the real deal he and his brothers owned and ran a logging company in the steam donkey days up until after the Great Depression, He had a great story of driving a model T to the log camp, before Rockport there was a long fairly steep hill, when you got there you had to back up that hill as the way the fuel system worked you would run out of gas going forwards up the hill.




One other story I love, they put the logs right on to train cars back when Grandpa and the Great Uncles were logging. Their log camp was at Bacon Creek and was the end of the railroad. They had great wood and logging was going good, they had one problem the train engineer was not bringing enough train cars to move the logs, this went on for a while.





Now it was prohibition at the time and Grandpa did some ask'n around and found out the engineer was a drinking man. Grandpa heard of a moonshiner by the name of Jim and bought some of his shine, Grandpa said Jim made some fine whiskey. After a few drinks with the train engineer, a deal was struck. A quart of whiskey twice a week (The Trains Schedule), and the log camp had all the train cars they could fill.




Just to make the story a little more fun I rented a cabin from old Jim, and he told me a few stories about his moon shining days. He had a story he loved to tell of how he doubled the price of his shine. He would choose a alder he could skin about 5 ft of bark from the trunk. He would make a tube of the bark that the shine would drip on then run down the length of the bark to a crock. The bark gave it a darker color and a sweet taste, he told everyone it was 12 yrs old and doubled his money!

And yes old Jim remembered Grandpa and the train car incident.

Another interesting thing about old Jim, one day a topic of growing pot came up. Now old Jim was quick to point out he never smoked any of the stuff, though it turned he did grow a few plants. He went on saying it was worth a hundred dollars an ounce and it came in pretty handy for trade'n! That was all old Jim had to say, he gave me a big smile and then changed the subject.



Both Jim and Grandpa have passed long ago,
but their stories were told one more time! 







It is a sad thing that the prohibition of of cannabis has not been lifted!

Free Cannabis,
End Prohibition Now!

1 comment:

Intelligent opinions and structured debate are always welcomed, but name calling and personal attacks do not belong here, have fun!