Free Glimpses

When Globe Pequot Publishing informed me that I had to downsize my manuscript, the request felt catastrophic. 

Deleting about 20,000 words from the original 75,000 word manuscript for Frontier Madam was both daunting and irritating, but I realized early on that these deletions could be shared here, so here’s some of the deleted material …

 

Burr Bryant said that somebody turned his granddad in one time, they never knew who did it. 

But during the drought, land was so dry you could see any car coming on those dusty roads, and you knew it had to be the Sheriff cause he’s about the only one who had a car.
 
It was about a quarter of a mile of our road to the house and here we seen this car coming.  Father was just ready to make a delivery on this whiskey, had it all bottled up.  He seen this car coming, knew it had to be the sheriff. 

And what’s he going to do with the whiskey.  He had it right there. 

At that time, a man named Bill Hassed was the sheriff and he came in and said, “I got a search warrant for your place.”  Course old Bill was a good friend of father’s but that didn’t stop the sheriff.  If he had a search warrant for you, he’d arrest you.  He didn’t care how much of a friend he was. 

Mother was there doing the washing.  She had maybe three kids in diapers and she was washing diapers.  She had this tub full of water so she just moved the diapers over and threw the whiskey in the tub and covered them over with dirty diapers. 

The Sheriff come in the house and searched it, and he looked at that tub of diapers.  Two or three times he reached over like he was going to reach down in there but he didn’t like them dirty diapers so he didn’t reach down in there.  He left without finding any whiskey.

Then another time, there was a guy called Slim, who had some whiskey he was ready to run off.  He says to Burr’s Granddad, “They’re right on my tail.  They had me once and put me in jail, and they’re watching me closely.  I’ve got this mash ready to run off. I can’t run it off at home cause they got their eye on my trailer day and night. If you’ll take it and run it off, I’ll give you half.” 

That night Father went to the man’s place and got it.  He set it up in a tent by a water hole and run it off.  It took a couple three days.  And one day, the sheriff come by, wanted to know what the tent was. 

Father says, “Well we’re calving, and when one of the new calves gets cold we just put it in that tent and warm it up.” 

The sheriff looked at the tent, but went on without even looking inside. 

When Slim came back, he asked Granddad, “Did you get that mash ready?”

 “Yeah.  You rode right past it.  Did ya see that tent down by the water hole?” 

Boy, you never seen anybody run and get in their saddle as quick and get out of there as old Slim did. 

Then there’s the time Fred was working for Jess.  And Jess didn’t have any money to pay him, so he asked if granddad would wait for his money.

Fred said, “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to.”  Then he thought of something.  “I tell you what.  If you put on a dance this weekend and let me use one of your bedrooms, well, after it’s over we’ll call it square.”

In those days, it was a common thing to hold a party or dance at your house of a Saturday.  Good country entertainment and folks from all around came to visit. 

Well, Fred had his whiskey all bottled up and he brought it in.  He put it in that bedroom and sold it out the window.  After the dance was over, Jess asked, “Did you come out all right?” 

Fred said, “Yeah!  I done all right; you don’t owe me a thing.” 

Even children were drawn into bootlegging situations.  One day, while five-year-old Russ Christensen and his brother were playing up in the hills north of the house they found an old bucket with copper tubing in it.  They were delighted with their find and were sure they could clean it up and sell it. 

When they packed it back to the house, they discovered their dad was talking with revenuers who became quite interested in their find.  Thanks to the rusty condition of the bucket, they decided the tubing was not part of a still currently in operation and the Feds went on their way.  The boys later sold the tubing, happily making a good profit.

Another time, the Christensen children were sent out to gather the chicken eggs.  In a nest in the hay, they discovered two jugs of whiskey.  Undoubtedly left by a man who had visited the day before – just before the Feds came and picked him up.

The raucous roller coaster years of Prohibition created work, excitement and above all, financial and emotional relief from the depression and issues that bore down hard.

For some country families it was the only cash crop they had during the drought filled depressed years. 

Not everyone was excited about producing moonshine; there were some who objected strongly to what production and consumption of alcohol did to drinkers. 

Many who produced whiskey during the Prohibition era stopped making it when the prohibition was lifted and times got better.