Published: July 16, 2008 05:19 pm            

The Golden Age of Bootlegging

NEWTON — One does not hear very much about bootlegging today, but in the fairly recent past that was not the case.

When I came to Mississippi in 1955, the illegal sale of whiskey and beer was quite common. Shortly after I arrived, a friend suggested that we go to Jackson to the Hotel Heidelberg roof where there was an orchestra, dancing, and a good view of the city from the glass-enclosed roof of the hotel.

On the way to Jackson, my friend said, “We’ll have to go by the Gold Coast first.” The name “Gold Coast” peeked my curiosity, but I didn’t say anything. I soon realized that we were turning off old Highway 80 just before we reached the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. We stopped in front of a shotgun house and blew the horn. A man came out with something in a brown paper sack. My friend gave him some money, and we drove off. This was my first introduction to bootlegging in Mississippi.

National prohibition was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1919, ending the over-the-counter sale of spirits in the nation, including, of course, Mississippi. To stop the sale of spirits in the state was difficult. Since the great influx of settlers in the early 1800s, most villages and towns had a saloon. Tradition has it that Decatur had more saloons than any other town in East Central Mississippi, but that is open to discussion.

A. J. Brown in his History of Newton County (It should be remembered that Newton and Neshoba were the same county until 1836 when Newton County was formed from the lower half of Neshoba.) says “The use of spirits was very free among the early settlers, most of them using it without reservation. It was not uncommon to find spirits in the houses of most of the people, and all who visited were welcome to drink. Whiskey was openly sold in any part of the county, when a man wished to do so.”

Since people were accustomed to free traffic in spirits, prohibition was difficult to enforce. Those in the hill country simply instituted a thriving business in bootlegging. In the Delta, which has always been a unique part of the state, spirits continued to be sold openly from the shelves in many grocery stores.

The Mississippi writer Willie Morris in his memoir North Toward Home makes this comment on prohibition in Mississippi. “Mississippi was a dry state, one of the last in America, but its dryness was merely academic, a gesture to the preachers and churches. My father would say that the only difference between Mississippi and Tennessee, a wet state, was that in Tennessee a man could not buy liquor on Sunday. On the other hand, the Mississippi bootleggers stayed open at all hours, and would sell to anyone regardless of race, creed or color.”

People from outside Mississippi find it difficult to believe that as late as 1955 the state collected a tax on whiskey which, at the time, was illegal to sell.

Much humor is associated with the sale of spirits during those years before the state made it legal for towns and counties to decide whether to remain “dry” or to go “wet.” Bootleggers were quite casual about their trade, and most folks in a community knew who the bootlegger was but denied such knowledge.

A man who lived on a prominent highway in a nearby county was a known bootlegger. His neighbors noticed that he had installed a large plate glass window in the side of his house and wondered why he had put the oversized window there. It was humorously speculated that the purpose of the window was to watch for both customers and the sheriff coming up the highway.

When my brother-in-law was in high school, he and a friend went to a bootlegger’s house to buy beer. The bootlegger had them wait in the kitchen while he walked to an outbuilding for the beer. My brother-in-law noticed a pan of baked sweet potatoes, one of his favorite foods, on the stove. When they paid the bootlegger for the beer, he said, “Thank you boys and feel welcome to have a baked potato.”

Then there is the often-told story of the man who was drinking with his buddies, and one of them said, “This stuff is strong enough to cause a man to go blind.” The man went home and attempted to switch on the light by his bed. When the light didn’t come on, he panicked. He woke his wife and said, “Honey, I’m a fool. I’ve been drinking, and it has made me go blind. I turned on the light and I can’t see a thing.” His wife turned over and sleepily said, Go back to sleep and don’t wake me again. That bulb burned out last night, and I didn’t put in a new one.”

People don’t hear so much about bootlegging today. (And by the way, the term “bootlegging” came about because men once carried bottles of whiskey around in the top of their boots.) The great era of bootlegging has passed, but travel up and down any rural road in Mississippi and someone in the car who is more than fifty years old, will say, “I remember when a bootlegger lived there.”



Ovid Vickers, a retired East Central Community College professor, writes a weekly column for The Newton Record.

        

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