Prohibition Powerpoint - LS Home Page

Grandpa Was A Bootlegger• My Grandpa was a bootlegger. In fact, his father was a stern, honest farmer. NowGrandpa, he was the black sheep of the family, a bit of a rounder by all accounts, butfriendly, outgoing and generally loved by most of his acquaintances. Well, the Revenueagents didn’t like him much … he thoroughly enjoyed being a bootlegger, and reveled inoutrunning or outmaneuvering the ‘revenuers’. A family folklore surrounded those years,that Grandpa went to prison for bootlegging. A little digging brought up the prison record,which listed the charges as ‘petty larceny’, for stealing a barrel of gas. When his daughterShirley was asked about this, she chuckled and said, ‘Oh yeah! Dad used to laugh about that.He was delivering a barrel of whiskey in Phoenix when the law started chasing him.Realizing he would be caught, he raced into a gas station, dumped the whiskey, grabbed abarrel of gas and raced out. He was stopped shortly after, and the revenue agents mainlywanted his list of customers. Well, that list included certain judges, attorneys, even theattorney general, and he wasn’t about to give them up. Enraged by his lack of cooperation,the agents saw to it that he was sent to prison for stealing 25 gallons of gas, worth less than5 dollars.’ He spent a year there, in 1924, for a petty offense, not a felony! Needless to say,there were many well placed politicians and professionals that deeply appreciated hisdiscretion, and they remained his friends all of his life.