In 1920, Prohibition came to Detroit and its effect was like a plague. Who put it across was beyond me, but Americans occasionally go a little nuts and will try any so-called remedy that will promise super-natural results and we got them.

Detroit, being across from Canada with all its beer and liquor supply, was in a bad spot. The town became the center of the bootlegging business and it was big business and was run by our worst crooks with the help of other crooks from all over the country.

They fought and killed each other for the money there was in it. The waterfront, especially the Ecorse district, was a nest of ports of entry with speed boats, row boats and police boats chasing each other all over the river. Nothing much happened except for the beer and liquor that was dumped overboard, must be on the river bottom at this late date.

Then we got our speakeasy in the worst kind of places, some where in homes with a man and his wife getting in on the easy money.

Retired saloon keepers, bartenders, bums, crooks got into the racket by either running a speakeasy, making beer, gin or liquor, some peddled it in the offices. I've seen bums selling it from small bottles in alleys and I knew a taxi driver who always filled a medicine bottle and sold it for fifty cents a drink in his taxi.

Some built stills, druggists sold the ingredients for gin and beer, and some would come into your home and set up a batch of beer, or start grape juice on its way to furnish the drinks that everybody seemed to want. Most of the beer was terrible, the whiskey had thousands of flavors running from varnish to paint remover, and the gin tasted like a poor grade hair tonic.

Alcoholic poisoning was common and after a few drinks your stomach felt like it had been tarred and feathered.

Easy picking brought out the worst in some people, and many a fine saloon keeper, well known athlete or just a lazy guy with a likable personality and lots of friends joined hands with gangsters. They became partners or suppliers and started making more money that they could any other way, and we will feel it for years.

I'd hate to meet St. Peter, and have to tell him I had anything to do with putting prohibition across, as I think I know the answer. I hope I didn't vote for it, but sometimes it's hard to know what you vote for with these ballots you get now.

Near-beer was a legal drink which tasted like cold dish water, but who drank it, I never found out as it was almost impossible to learn to like it. It had its reason for being as the brewers, who made it, had to brew real beer and then remove most of the alcohol to make it legal. This made it easy for the brewer to miss an occasional barrel and if you knew where to get it, you could have a real party with real beer--without worrying about getting small leaks in your stomach and intestines. One place we found was a shipping department of a manufacturing concern, that was next to a brewery, and all you had to do was be identified by somebody in the office of the manufacturing firm.

Going to jail for selling alcohol or liquor was no disgrace at this time. I knew lots of druggists who served six months and came out in better health and were back selling bottled spring water the following day. In those days I saw many a dignified lady, and some grandmothers, ask for spring water and walk out of the drug store with that contented look.

I had one of those bottles blow up in my butler's pantry, spraying the whole place and what it did to the paint was a shame. The only satisfaction I got out of the druggist was that they didn't make bottles as strong as they used to.

It was quite a sight on the docks in Windsor Canada, and along the river, with cases of beer and liquor piled up with the good old names of Walker and Black Label all over them. It was a common sight in the daytime with a few men sorting and piling it and guarding it. The speed boats, usually painted a dull gray, tied to the dock waiting for the wonderful hours of darkness and those boys knew all about the moon--when it rose, when it set and when it didn't appear. Good fast boats with good tough sailors and plenty of adventure appealed to a certain kind of individual with a smell for money. This made an exciting time on the river that had been calm since the time the Indians crept along the banks looking for a Frenchmen's and Englishmen's scalp.

The Canadian Real Estate men got into the act selling land to the Americans as summer cottages--for drinking purposes, and believe me they sold a lot of land.

Smuggling, by visitors to Canada, was quite a game. Women carried three or four quarts under their dresses and auto had hidden spots built into them, but you had to be clever to fool the custom men. Plenty of the liquor got into the stomachs of American citizens.

The road houses, night clubs, hotels, golf clubs around Windsor did a wonderful business. During this period, a club for Detroit Policemen was built on the lake in Canada, but it died a natural death after prohibition died.

The effect of prohibition on salesmen and business men was a problem--when selling an order, it was usually fulfilled by satisfying the purchasing agent's hints that he was having trouble getting liquor for some party he had to give. I often got calls from outside Detroit to send a salesman. They had a job for us--a side remark that when he came out would he pick up a few bottles of good stuff which he would take care of. This made a lot of extra work for us hunting up the liquor and delivering it. Most of the time we had to slip the extra cost into our price and often it made a simple job seem to cost quite a lot to the buyer.

One trip I made was to Indiana for a family reunion. When I arrived all the men folks gathered around, and asked how much liquor had brought down. They sounded as if everybody in Detroit had a cellar full.

Eventually the large restaurants and night clubs developed an underground information service, and they knew when there was going to be a raid and when to lay low.

One night we were in a well-known place with a city official. The owner of the place came and told us there was to be a raid in half an hour and it would be a good idea for us to leave as he did not want to put the official on the spot. He even told us where to go to spend the evening as the other places was safe that night. We left and drove past the place a half hour later and sure enough they had the Black Maria outside loaded with men and women and a couple of waiters.

There were lots of restaurants who let their waiters sell you a bottle on the side, which you kept under the table, and they soaked you for the glasses and mix. If the place was raided, you were supposed to kick the bottle over.

During all this time the old saloons, family places in the foreign neighborhoods ran the same as always with the one consideration, you had to be known or come in with people who were known. I knew a few places you could go in and call for a boilermaker and the bartender would have it ready in a minute. These places had a crowd every night playing pinochle, hearts or cribbage and the police paid no attention to them. I guess the reason was these people had votes; a pull with politicians who controlled the police, and were solid against prohibition and it would have taken the army to take their drinks away.

Birthday and anniversary parties in your home were quite an ordeal. Getting the beer and liquor was some stunt, and keeping the party under control was a job. I can remember the remark of two girl friends that came to one of our parties--after bringing their coats upstairs one said to the other, "Mabel, don't pass up any drinks just get them as fast as you can. You don't know how long the liquor will last at these affairs." That night the liquor lasted longer than they did--one hour later we had to put them to bed as they were dead to the world.

This idea of the period "don't refuse any drink as you never know when you'll get another" did nothing to improve the moral attitude and left bad ideas for the young growing-up generation as they knew what was happening all the time.

Of course there were a lot of small events, some sad, some exciting and some humorous that went along with this period. I was making dandelion wine, with great hopes, and our maid (a young Finn) invited her boy friend and another couple over while we were out looking for a new speakeasy. The fellows found the mash in a five gallon jar, decided to have a few tastes and must have liked it because when we got home a few hours later we had a couple of pretty sick young men on our hands--with the aid of a doctor and a stomach pump they eventually could walk home, but I lost all desire for dandelion wine and let it run down the kitchen drain. It cleaned the drain pipes as good as any drain cleaner I ever tried.

Making beer was a bugbear to me. I tried a few batches. The first acted like bombs, after having worked for a while, and the only way you could get the beer was to open the bottle in a wash boiler and let the beer shoot all over the inside of the boiler. After opening six or eight bottles you could empty the boiler into glasses, but the beer tasted flat by this time. I tried one stunt of opening the bottle and quickly sticking it in my mouth, but that almost blew me up and I hiccupped for a couple of hours. The next batch was worse and you couldn't keep the bottles corked at all. I was afraid to leave it in the keg as that acted something like dynamite and I didn't want to blow the house up.

I made quite a few batches of wine and had better luck with that. It was easy to handle, no explosives or anything and it tasted good. it was a little light on the kicks, but if you drank enough to appreciate it, it took a few days to get over it.

I remember one batch I pretty nearly lost. While it was still working, my wife got a laborer from the McGregor Mission to carry out our ashes (a job I hated very much). After a couple of hours, she called me on the phone and said the man had finished the job, but acted funny, being unsteady on his feet, seemed to be in a very happy mood and he had informed her that there would be no charge--she wanted to know what to do. In a short while my brain told me what had happened and I told her. She got excited and wanted to drain the kegs into the basement drain. I talked her out of that, and told her not to worry as I needed a vacation, and if I went up for thirty days I would see that she was taken care of which pacified her. In half an hour, I got another call and she informed me that the man had walked down the street about half a block, had taken his overcoat off and buttoned it around an elm tree and was on his back snoring under the tree, the neighbors were all out looking at him and eventually the police came and escorted him away in the patrol car. This left my wife in a very nervous condition, but I told her my promise still held and I would assume all responsibility. I wanted that batch of wine and it turned out all right as I never heard any more about it--or what happened to the happy working man. So you see prohibition made for lots of little troubles besides the big ones.

This was a good batch of wine as I found out a few weeks later. A friend of mine and his wife spent an evening with us and left for home in his car. He had to turn the corner at 14th and the Boulevard (a 120 foot throughway) but he missed the turn and ended up on the steps in front of Providence Hospital, not much damage to the car, but the police made him and his wife walk home--which proved I knew my stuff when making wine.

One of the saddest sights I ever saw was during these days. An artist names Schiebold had made himself a wonderful costume like a monk with the wooden sandals, rope around his waist with two long and narrow jugs on each end of the rope. These jugs contained supplies for an artist’s party at Yaeger's decorating gallery on a cold winter night. As my wife and I arrived, I found Schiebold sitting on the ground at the bottom of the stone steps with tears in his eyes (his wife quietly sobbing) and from what I could get out of them, he had slipped when near the top of the steps, rolled all the way down and smashed both of the jugs. The look on both their faces, the liquor all over the ice and snow and the aroma of the liquor in the air made it just about the saddest picture I ever saw.

This was the period when the people paid no attention to the government, laws or the Ten Commandments, but it was called "The Period of Normalcy."