I believe it was Will Rogers who said, "If you think this country's wet then watch folks vote. If you think it's dry then watch folks drink!" This was pretty much an accurate description of Muhlenberg County for many years. Before Central City voted wet a few years ago (actually it was re-voted wet as it was legally wet in the forties), bootlegging flourished. For you "Northern Folks," the term "bootlegging" refers to "purveyors of illegal untaxed alcoholic beverages." This totally isn't true, however because in order for the bootleggers to sell it they had to buy it. This was usually from a legal alcholic beverage retail outlet and the taxes (both federal and state) were paid on it at that time. When they re-sold it, usually for a profit, new taxes weren't collected. Didn't matter...the judicial system considered it illegal. Those selling "untaxed" liquor had to manufacture it and they were called "moonshiners." There was a few of them around here too.
Wet & Dry never was a "I can take it or leave it" issue around these parts. You were either "Wet" or "Dry." There was no gray area and those who formed either opinion did it with all the enthusiasm they could muster. A friend of mine once told me he got in an argument with another fellow at a local gas station during the wet-dry election in the mid-sixties. Seems he was a "Wet" and the other fellow was a "Dry." The more they discussed the issue the more heated the discussion became until they nearly came to blows. When he told me the story I asked him "What could he have said to get you to come around to his way of thinkin'?" "Nothin' he replied, "I'd never agree with him!" "Exactly," I told him, "and he feels the same way you do so why don't you all just drop that subject and talk about the weather or somethin'?" I might as well been talking to a mule.
In days past there were a lot of bootleggers in Muhlenberg County and most of them were in Central City. I can remember at least ten operating within our city limits at any given time. It was pretty open too. They really got competitive even to the point that some ran a delivery service to your front door. Several had drive-in windows and one had a drive through garage complete with an automatic door on each end. When you pulled in, the door came down behind you. After you had made your purchase and put your stock away, the front door opened and you drove around the other side of the house back to the road. Then the door shut behind you while the original door re-opened for another customer and the system went on and on.
I remember seeing a sign in the front yard of one prominent Central City bootlegger that said "We will be closed Thanksgiving Day!"
Some of these establishments had stages with bars and bands. In the old days these were commonly called "Roadhouses" and a lot of fighting and a few "killings" went on at them. I have heard some of the stories from "old timers" and it makes me understand why Muhlenberg County is dry and Central City stayed dry for so many years. Things like that remain on peoples brains for most of their lives.
Most of my buddies in High School were familiar with some of the bootleggers. You've got to remember there wasn't a lot of "alcohol education" back then and what you learned you learned at the "school of hard knocks." I remember 5 or 6 of us would pile into a car and "dibby" up fifty cents each for a couple gallons of gas and another fifty cents each for a quart of Falls City beer. We usually purchased it from a nice lady in Pattontown named "Polly." Polly, like most bootleggers, never asked us our age. We always sent the tallest one to the door and had them talk in a deep voice. She couldn't see them very well in the dark and she usually was more interested in their two bucks anyhow.
Falls City was a beer that originated in Louisville and was named for the water falls just down river from what is now the Galt House. On a scale of one to ten (for taste) it was about a one and a half. We would purchase a quart bottle from Polly and head for the "stripper pits" to drink it. There were plenty of haul roads that were about six lanes wide so we figured it didn't matter if it slightly impaired the ability of the driver. Designated drivers hadn't been invented yet!
We never told each other (until years later) but none of actually liked the taste of beer. We would pass that old bottle around in the car and we'd all pretend to take a big slug out of it. Unbeknownst to each other, we'd stick our tongues up into the neck so as to not swallow much of it. After we passed it around the car a couple of times I couldn't help but notice that there wasn't much of it missing. I was sitting in the back seat, passenger's side and was the last of the six to get a drink. I asked the others if they wanted any more and the answer was "No, I've drank enough...go ahead and polish it off!" I stuck my tongue up in the neck and turned the bottle straight up and held it for about forty seconds. When I returned it to upright, I asked again if anyone wanted the last drink (which was pretty much the full bottle). Again they said, "nope, polish 'er off!" We came upon a directional sign on the side of the road and I threw the bottle out the back window at the sign and hit it. When it busted the foam looked like one of those scenes you see on the news when a plane makes an emergency landing. It was snow white for ten feet around that sign. We started acting "happy" and singing and giggling and acting plum' silly. We then headed back to town where we'd be sure the girls around the Dairy Maid could smell it on us and realize just how "manly" we were.
Smoking was sort of the same way. A few guys smoked in high school but most that I hung with waited until we were out of school. I never smoked regularly until I went to college. My roommate there smoked and it wasn't long before he taught me how to do it and I, in turn, taught most of my buddies how to do it. My cigarette of choice was Marlboro in crush proof boxes. I could purchase an entire carton for $2.20. Someone told me the other day that they visited Las Vegas and cigarettes there were $6.00 a pack....and they still bought 'em!
I can remember driving to town one weekend when I was home from college and I intended to "impress" my little brother who was a sophomore in high school by smoking in front of him. As we drove towards town, I casually pulled a cigarette from my pocket and stuck it in my mouth. I could tell he was staring at every move I made. I reached down to the cigarette lighter in the car's dashboard, pushed it in, waited a few seconds until it "popped" out and lit the cigarette. After I replaced the lighter, I reached up to remove the cigarette from my lips but when I attempted to pull it out , the cigarette stuck to my lip but the "fire" on the end of it came off and rested between my fingers. I was trying to act like a "tough guy," but it burn't too bad so I uttered a profanity and "slung" the fire away from my hand and onto the carpet in the front floorboard.
I could smell burning flesh followed by burning carpet. As I reached to pick it up and flick it into the ashtray, I burn't a different finger and dropped the fire back on the floor where it rolled under the driver's seat. I guess it finally burn't itself out as the car didn't catch fire but my pride sure was hurt. I looked over at my "impressionable" younger brother and he was bent double with laughter. So much for being looked up to.
Getting back on the subject of bootleggers, it was amazing how quickly they could get re-opened after they were raided. I remember a gentleman who bootlegged along with two of his sons. He was one of the more popular bootleggers in our county and always did a lot of business. He got raided about every other month. About a dozen policemen and sheriff's deputies, state police, constables and any other law enforcement personnel would go out there with a warrant, place the poor fella in the back seat of a cruiser and fill up about three pickup trucks with illegal whiskey and beer. They'd all take off for the county jail in "parade fashion." They'd no more than get out of sight before the two boys would re-open and it would be business as usual. You see, out in the woods, about a hundred feet behind the house they buried several old refrigerators horizonically in the ground and filled them with liquor. When the police left, they'd head back there with a pickup truck full of #9 washtubs with ice in them and retrieve the remaining stock. Regular customers knew this so they'd go back out there about thirty minutes after a raid and were never disappointed. Next morning, "Pap" would return and the next night it would be "business as usual!" If any bootlegger ever went to prison for selling illegal liquor, I never met them. I'm sure they paid out several dollars in fines, though, not to mention the inventory that was always "poured down the drain" for the benefit of the local papers.
As soon as a guy turned "twenty-one," he graduated from bootleggers to "Mannington." Mannington was a town in Eastern Christian County that had a population of about 100 people. Of these about 50 either owned or worked for someone who owned a liquor establishment. There were several in the little community including Holmes (first one on the left), Renshaw's (first one on the right), Mushie's (down under the viaduct -it had a bar and pool hall and shared it's parking lot with a Baptist Church). There were about seven or eight others whose names escape me.
On a Saturday night the two lane road going through town was packed with tourists, even though most were only in town about twenty minutes.
Madisonville and Hopkins County were dry as was Muhlenberg County. Most of these "tourists" came from those areas.
I had a friend (he'll go unnamed here) who had gotten so many tickets going to Mannington via the Western Kentucky Parkway that he was one citation from losing his license. He never drank and drive...he always got the ticket ON THE WAY to Mannington, not on the way back. One night another friend and myself were partaking of a hamburger and fries at the "Y" when this buddy came in. It was about 11:30 on a Saturday night. He wanted us to ride to Mannington with him before the liquor joints closed at midnight. We told him he couldn't get down there by 12:00 and he bet us five dollars each he could. We agreed to go. He drove out to the Parkway, deposited his twenty-five cents into the toll booth and headed west. In no time he was going about 90 miles per hour. We told him he was going to get caught and lose his license if he didn't slow down. He then proudly pointed to his sun visor to a "box" clipped up there. It looked like what an "automatic garage door opener" looks like today but they weren't invented yet. He told us it was a "radar detector," (which we had never heard of). He got it by sending in an order form he found in "TV Guide." "How do you know it works?" we asked, to which he replied, "You just watch!" He continued to drive at 90 MPH.
Again we warned him to slow down and he said, "Here comes a car in the left lane....I'll fall in behind him and follow and if there's a cop up ahead, he'll get the ticket! That way I can also test my radar detector!"
The car he was talking about kept gaining and pretty soon pulled alongside us. About that time, he also turned on his red light! The "radar detector" let out a resounding "beep!" Our friend pulled over into the emergency lane and stopped. The State Trooper came alongside the car and asked for our friend's driver's license. He then returned to the cruiser. In a few minutes he came back to the car we were in and asked our friend to join him in the cruiser where he would get a ticket for driving in excess of 90 miles per hour. Our friend opened the driver's door, stood up, reached for the radar detector on the visor and as he turned for the long walk back to the cruiser, he "threw" the device as far as he could into the woods.
To keep from losing his license he had to attend "traffic school." He attended a lot of "traffic school" to the point he nearly had a degree in "traffic school." To my knowledge he never got another ticket, and as far as I know, he never went back to Mannington.
Bootleggers are pretty much a "thing of the past" these days. Some of it is due to Central City being voted "wet" a few years ago. Most of it, though, is due to the ease of getting to larger "wet" cities in these modern transportation times. Beer and Wine are sold in most larger grocery stores or convenience stores and it's just too easy to get. If there's any such thing as a "town drunk" anymore, I don't know who they are. We had a lot of them in the fifties and sixties including some regular visitors to the old Central City Jail....just like "Otis" on Mayberry RFD. You can actually go to the post office without stepping over them, as nowadays, there's just not any down there. Most of these wayward fellows were harmless, except to themselves and most were pretty friendly.
As for the bootleggers, most of them have died or are too old to practice their trade anyhow. I just finished re-reading the autobiography of Pauline Tabor and how she made her living as a Madame in Bowling Green for over forty years. The story was more about how she succeeded as a businesswoman during the depression and thrived for many years in the illegal business. She obviously was an astute business person and would have succeeded no matter what business she got into...even a legal one. Most bootleggers I remember were the same way. They had to make a living and had to compete for the business. This brought about the resourceful ideas that made their establishments thrive with regular customers. Like river ferries, they're becoming a "piece of history!"
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