Odd, Old News: More Portraits from Humboldt’s Prohibition Era ‘Still’ Life
Moonshine still in Knox County, Tennessee, USA, photographed by TVA in 1936 as part of its Fort Loudoun Dam surveys. [Via WikiCommons]
MORE STILL LIFE PORTRAITS
Humboldt County’s dry squad was kept very busy during the alcohol Prohibition Era. Accounts of raids were a regular feature in the newspapers. All socio-economic classes were involved in these illegal activities. As we have shared, blind-pigging was wide spread, the Postmasters of Indianola and Fruitland Ridge were both caught peddling alcohol out of back rooms. While men made up the great majority of arrests, women also got arrested. In 1917, before prohibition started, Eva Riley and “Jane Doe”, two resort keepers from near Rio Dell, became the first women to be arrested for “blind-pigging”. The following are just a few of the many news accounts of alcohol related busts.
LIQUOR “CEMETERIES” DISCOVERED BY SQUAD
Humboldt Standard, February 15, 1926
Post hole augers of two sizes have now become standard tools in bootlegging and blind-pigging, according to the discoveries made by the county dry squad. Large augers, say the squad are used at Wildwood for boring holes in the ground of gardens suitable for accommodating a gallon demijohn while smaller holes are bored for catching bottles. The soil removed is carefully carried away and disposed of after the receptacle is buried in a piece of turf, with grass growing on it is fitted over the grave. When the grass withers on the piece of turf it is replaced by a fresh piece, reminding one of the old song “See That My Grave is Kept Green”. The squad, accompanied by Deputy Collector of the Port, H.F. McGrath, raiding at Wildwood, Saturday afternoon found two such moonshine cemeteries…..
DESERTED SCHOOL HOUSE CONVERTED INTO BOOZE MILL
Humboldt Standard, August 20, 1920
Suspicion Thrown on Milk Cans
….Since the seizures yesterday the officers now are forced to look with suspicion upon the hitherto innocent milk can, for that supposedly harmless receptacle of lacteal fluid has been proven to be a receptacle for a fluid that has even more kick than Mrs. O’Leary’s cow which legend has it, caused the burning of Chicago some 50 years ago. Not only has the milk can lost caste but also the little red school house for it was in the former Ryan Slough school house that the young distillery was found.
School House Also
The still was a brand new ten-gallon milk can, such as dairymen deliver their milk in at the creameries, but it was not found on a dairy but on a hog ranch at Ryan Slough, conducted by A. Battini, whose premises also gave up the 60 bottles of home-brewed beer. The tight fitting cover of the milk can had been fitted with a copper pipe to carry off the alcoholic vapor from the mash, the outer end of the pipe fitting into the condensing coil made of three quarter inch copper pipe. Evidently the coil was home made but it was a good job…
….The fourth arrest yesterday was that of Mrs. Scatena, wife of the “King of Little Italy” at Rio Dell, who came in yesterday and gave herself up on the charge of having liquor in her possession. Like her husband arrested last week she was released on $1000 bonds to await preliminary examination next month. Last week when the officers raided the Rio Dell resort Mrs. Scatena was caught trying to empty into a sink the contents of a bottle of Jackass brandy, and the bottle was taken from her.
NEW BOOZE “AGER” IS TAKEN HERE
Humboldt Standard, May 14, 1928
Sheriff J. W. Runner has discovered a new wrinkle in the making of moonshine to imitate old whiskey. Where in the pre-Volstead days it required the sending of fresh whiskey around Cape Horn and back again in a sailing vessel to give that mellowness of age demanded by connoisseurs, a Eureka moonshiner has developed a method for making fresh moonshine four years old in four days.
The discovery of this new method was made by Sheriff Runner when he raided a house on Myrtle Avenue, between Sixth and Seventh street last Saturday and captured a distillery but no distiller. The distilling apparatus had been dismantled and hidden beneath the porch of the house but inside the house were two gallon demijohns of the raw product of the still and a five gallon keg of the same material undergoing “aging”.
As in so many other modern methods electricity was called into play and in this case a lighting current was doing for the moonshine just opposite of what monkey glands are supposed to do for human beings. The apparatus simply was one of those handy little electric heaters that are thrust into a glass of water or other liquid or into baby’s milk bottle to warm the contents.
In this instance, the heater attached to an electric connection in the house was thrust through a cork in the bung hole of the keg, the contents of which were bubbling merrily. Disconnecting the apparatus from the light socket, Sheriff Runner carried off the keg, contents, heater and electric cord along with the distilling apparatus and the raw moonshine. The owner of the distillery is expected to join the apparatus at the county jail today.
“SHAME TO JAIL ME”, SAYS MOONSHINER PROUD OF HIS WHISKEY MAKING PROJECT
Humboldt Times, June 7, 1925
“It’s a shame to put a man like me in jail. A man who has spent three years in experimenting and finally has perfected a process for making pure whisky by moonshine methods. If I do say it myself, I make the purest moonshine on the market. It is none of your poisonous stuff but just as pure and as good as the best Old Kentucky whisky of pre-Volstead days.”
Thus spoke John B Gronenschild, 38, of Walker Point, when members of the dry squad later yesterday afternoon booked him at the county jail on a charge of manufacturing liquor, after they had brought him in from his Walker Point bungalow following a raid on his subterranean distillery. The distillery was in a room excavated at the end of a tunnel run into the hillside close to his home, this entrance to which was concealed from casual observer by a screen of young saplings.
In this underground distillery was found the most elaborately and scientifically constructed distilling apparatus that has yet come to the notice of the authorities here and to one familiar with the process of distillation bears out Gronenschilds’s plaintive boast to the sheriff’s officers. Gronenschild calls his apparatus, which now reposes under lock and key at the court house, a compound, fractionating still. He might have added the word perfecting for the liquor when it comes out of the apparatus is rectified, purified and ready for the market, even to the coloring……
NEXT WEEK IN ODD OLD NEWS: SOUTHERN HUMBOLDT OLDTIMER FRED WOLF, JR. SHARES STORIES OF HIS BOOTLEGGING DAYS
Earlier Odd and Old News:
There are many more, but here are the most recent:
- Spotlight on Humboldt’s Moonshiners series begins
- Eureka’s China Town Drug Use Scrutinized in ‘Kill the Serpent in the Egg’
- Mad Cow Caused Chaos, or was it the children?
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Good article kym thanks 🙏🏻
This is such an interesting segment to run, thank you so much for sharing and please do not stop!
Always enjoy the moonshiners stories. Ty Kym
🕯🌳Good morning Kelley, really good morning read, thanks. 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Thank you Kym & David for these entertaining and interesting weekly tidbits.
I am delighted by the fabulous writing and incredible vocabulary used back then. That paragraph “Suspicion thrown on milk cans” is such a piece. Hah! A raconteur indeed! Are there bylines for these articles? Any of these journalists we might recognize the names of? I am curious.
Hi Dot, I agree with you about the fine writing style in these accounts. The writers of the articles didn’t sign their names to their work in the early days. And similarly to modern blog-times, when people wrote in to the newspapers with stories from their areas they all had make-up names. It was uncommon for anyone to use their real name.
oops, “made-up” names… beg pardon.
But it refreshing to see humor putting things in perspective. Or at least allowing us to view our neighbors a little more patiently. If we can’t love them, we should be able to get a laugh out of them.
The Mrs. Scatena mentioned in the Boot leg article, is my greatgrandmother. And the King of Little Italy is my great grandfather. There may be more to the story about these two citizens of Rio Dell that I may have.
Please do add more, the news doesn’t always get things right, then and now.
I read Julio Rovai’s two books about Wildwood/Rio Dell over and over when I was a kid. ..very familiar with the Scatenas through that.
“lighting current was doing for the moonshine just opposite of what monkey glands are supposed to do for human beings.”
So, what exactly are monkey glands supposed to do for human beings?
Monkey gland is a cocktail
Oh dear, — was sorta hoping it wouldn’t be me to cite Wikipedia on Serge Voronoff, whose, um, seminal work, set the stage for modern anti-aging therapy theory with his early experimentation:
“He moved on to transplanting the testicles of executed criminals into millionaires, but, when demand outstripped supply, he turned to using monkey testicle tissue instead.[8]”… (!!!!!!)
“Voronoff’s monkey-gland treatment was in vogue in the 1920s.[17][18] The poet E. E. Cummings sang of a “famous doctor who inserts monkeyglands in millionaires”…
…”The song “Monkey-Doodle-Doo”, written by Irving Berlin and featured in the Marx Brothers film The Coconuts, contains the line: “If you’re too old for dancing/Get yourself a monkey gland”. Strange-looking ashtrays depicting monkeys protecting their private parts, with the phrase (translated from French) “No, Voronoff, you won’t get me!” painted on them began showing up in Parisian homes.[36] At about this same time, a new cocktail containing gin, orange juice, grenadine and absinthe was named The Monkey Gland.[37]”. (warning–reading the whole wikipedia entry may cause your emojis to flee your keyboard!-not even going to link to it)
I need a gasping emoji. I’m almost wordless.
Anybody with an interest in the “Monkey Gland” craze should read “Blitzed” Norman Ohler. Hitler’s personal physitian Theodor Morell personally requisitioned several state-of-the-art Polish abatoirs in order to corner the market in snake-oil hormone elixers using pig glands. Starting in the late 30’s, Hitler received a rotating cocktail of opiates, amphetamines and animal hormone injections, with the thinking that he couldn’t become dependant on any one drug if he did a large enough variety of drugs. He suffered from infected and collapsed veins, mania, depression, paranoia and other health problems, and spent most of the time he wasn’t high needlessly hiding from his responsibilities in bunkers.
Extremely interesting. Thank you.
John B Gronenschild Sounds like a regular Nick Sand. Toiling away in his lab cooking up the finest product he can. Pure intention produces a pure product.
That’s why meth sucks.
The “King of Little Italy” mentioned was Arturo Scatena. He and his wife ran a hotel in Wildwood for many years.
To be correct, Arturo ran the hotel, bar, boarding house. Mrs Scatena took care of their home and the garden. My grandmother and her two sisters played a large role in the operation of the hotel.