More of Dad's Stories: Bethlehem Bootlegging Days
This is another story about Dad from the years before he ever went to work at the Steel. Well, it’s a story about the family, anyway, but I heard I from him.
Dad’s family had a lot of troubles growing up. His father had started out as a breaker boy in coal region and then went below at the age of twelve. He only lasted a few years before he got black lung and was thrown out by the mine that employed him to go and die somewhere else. That might have been the end for someone else, but not for Pappy Hinkle. He had a way with jokes and music and could get people to listen; as Uncle George said, Pappy could tell you joke after joke for hours on end without repeating himself and have everyone listening rolling on the floor. So he made his money working the local vaudeville circuit. Unfortunately while he did make some money it just wasn’t a lot, and given the size of the family (there was Dad’s mom, Grammy Hinkle; his brothers George, Bill, Henry, and Francey; Dad himself; and his baby sister Beulah) and Grammy’s inability to turn away anyone who came begging by the door for food (“What God gives you, you give others if they need it more” was how she explained it once; and Dad and his brothers never minded the hobos who showed up, often with wild stories and exotic backgrounds that they traded along with work for their dinners) they were often short of cash and everything else. For Dad, going two or three days without eating wasn’t all that rare when growing up. And given the family’s already low regard for ‘polite’ society, over several attempts to ‘rescue’ the boys from Grammy for being an ‘unfit’ (read working) mother, it shouldn’t be any great surprise that they eventually went into bootlegging with the neighbor during Prohibition.
This also lead to them nearly getting murdered.
This neighbor, Mister Schultz, was an old hand at brewing homemade hooch. Many farmers were back then, seeing it as their perfect right to do whatever they wanted with whatever they could grow. And when Volstead bcame the law of the land, they quickly learned that they could get amazing amounts of money for their homebrew. They were often better trusted by local hotel owners and speakeasy operators, too, as dealing with the farmers avoided some of the difficulties that could come with buying Mob liquor. The local brand of gangster booze was called ‘Soda Pop Moon’, being one half soda to one half rubbing alcohol. There was a local self-styled gangster who wanted to get the farmers buying and selling through him, but more on him later.
Schultz was rather brazen in his efforts, however, often dumping alcohol-soaked mash out for his animals to eat. Once local Prohibition agents lead by a local cop ‘raided’ the farm, looking for the still that they knew was there. The found no still, but they did see the pigs, goats, and even one bleary-eyed old horse staggering around. The horse was apparently a sight to see, his eyes rolling and legs swinging far out to the sides as he desperately tried to keep them coordinated.
“What’s wrong with that horse?” One agent demanded of Farmer Schultz.
“Him? Ach, nothing,” Schultz said, “he’s just a little old. I guess I should shoot him, but he gave me good work for so many years so I’m letting him have his retirement. They say that God blesses those who show kindness to beasts.”
The suspicious agent leaned in close to the horse (which had fallen to the ground, all four legs splayed out to the sides), took a whiff, and winced. “That animal’s sloshed!” he yelled. “Just smell his breath!”
The local cop then went to look at the nearby feed. “Hey, this stuff has more booze in it than a federal man! Oops, sorry.”
“It’s turned to alcohol?” Farmer Schultz said as he fell to his knees. “Mein Gott, a miracle!”
The cop laughed, but the agents apparently lacked a sense of humor. They arrested Farmer Schultz and brought him before the judge, also a local man. Well, right before the trial Frau Schultz got Dad and his brothers together with her own half a dozen or so kids. “Frau Hinkle, I borrow your kinder for a little while, yes? Just to keep my husband out of jail.” Grammy gave her permission and Frau Schultz then told the boys to dress “in the dirtiest and most torn up old clothes you have. Don’t wear any shoes.” Then she rubbed dirt into their faces until they looked like the most desperate bunch of hillbillies you ever saw. And then she held cut onions by their eyes until they were tearing helplessly and lead them into the court, wearing her mourning dress and telling the judge, “Ach, mein herr, please don’t punish my poor husband because of me. He only made the liquor because our poor children are starving. Only to save the lives of our little ones would we ever break the laws of this great nation, even a stupid one like the Volstead. I implore you as only a poor mother of hungry children can, please spare my dearest husband…” and so forth and so on in finest “mellerdrama” fashion.
The judge laughed until he literally rolled on the floor. Before the furious agents, he said, “I find that Farmer Schultz is punished enough by having such a family. No go home and don’t break the law again, because if you do,” and now the amusement left his voice and he spoke in all real sternness, “next time I will put you in jail, and no mistake.”
Farmer Schultz took the boys home and bought everyone some ice cream to celebrate. Then he talked to Grammy Hinkle and said, “You and yours came through for us. I want to do you a favor. I sometimes take some, well, some drinkables in to the Sun Inn in Bethlehem. Your two oldest boys George and Bill are big enough to help. If you let them make these late runs with me I promise I’ll pay them good.” It didn’t take Grammy long to decide for it. The family needed the money and it seemed harmless enough.
George and Bill didn’t mind the work at all. They played no part in the actual brewing. They simply helped load cases filled with bottles into a big car (which was amazing enough to them; cars were for rich people) and then after sundown drove with Farmer Schultz along a ‘road’ that consisted of two ruts in the dirt through the woods into Bethlehem. Uncle George was probably about 15-16 by now and Bill would have been only a year or so behind him. Neither were tall, but both had already been doing hard labor for a few years and looked it. Bill, especially, was rough looking. He already drank, chewed tobacco, smoked, and got in more fights than the rest of his brothers put together. He was only about five nothing tall, but everything from the breath of his chest to the size of his fists was about half again as big as any other person. He was lightning fast with a punch too. If he had enough room to throw a shot, the fight was over then and there.
Anyway, the boys were delighted to share their stories with everyone else after the first trip. “Oh, mom, the Sun Inn is a wonderful good place. It’s like two or three houses put together, and even though we came in the back with Farmer Schultz everyone must come by that way because there were all these men in suits and pretty women with their faces painted up. They teased us a little but they liked us. I think they must work for a vet.”
“Boys, what makes you say that?”
“Why, they said that when we got some money together, we should go and visit them at the cat house!”
Grammy Hinkle had a talk with Farmer Schultz afterwards and he promised no visits to any cat houses. The money the boys got was very appreciated. They gave it to Grammy Hinkle, she gave them some back, and for a while everyone was eating regular. However, other problems were rising. The aforementioned gangster was getting some leverage over the Sun Inn, or trying to. Since they refused to play along (and had the pull with local government and law enforcement to make it stick) he decided to try the suppliers again. So the next time Farmer Schultz, George, and Bill got out to the Sun Inn, they found Scarface there with two of his associates, giving them that sort of nasty-friendly smile some people do so well.
Farmer Schultz said, “We’re here to sell tonight’s load, where’s the manager?”
“He ain’t handling it tonight,” was Scarface’s response. “I am. Here’s your money.” And with that he tossed a few dollars on the ground at Farmer Schultz’s feet. Schultz and George and Bill all looked. It was less than a third of what they normally got.
“We were promised more than that,” Farmer Schultz said heavily.
“I don’t care what you were promised,” Scarface sneered back, “that’s what you’ll get. Of course, I do have the rest right here,” he waved a thick handful of bills at them, “so come and get it if you think you can take it!” And with that he laughed, and his two friends laughed… and Bill took one step forward and punched him right in the face.
Scarface’s laughter stopped instantly. He took a step back and then one forward. Uncle George later said he could see the blood already flowing from his nose and mouth, and his eyes looked completely unfocused. Bill simply gave him another punch, a right cross that would have drawn the admiration of Joe Louis. Scarface dropped senseless to the ground and lay in a heap.
Bill then idly reached down and started to pick the money up. Then several things all happened at once. The two hoods began reaching inside their vests. Farmer Schultz reached inside the car and drew out an old railroad man’s pistol George didn’t even know he had. And the back door of the Sun Inn opened and about half a dozen men spilled out, guns in their hands and wearing only about half of their local police uniforms. When the hood saw them, they froze and made sure to put their hands where everyone could see them.
“What’s going on here?” One of the officers said. “Hey, who started this?”
“He did,” Bill said, pointing at the still unconscious Scarface. “He tried to cheat us on what we were promised and dared me to take it from him if I could. So I did.”
“You sure did, didn’t you?” the officer said, sounding more amused then anything. He then gave Scarface a kick and said, “Go on, get him out of here, before I arrest you for being a public nuisance!” The two hoods, neither of whom had said anything through the whole thing, sheepishly picked their boss up and hauled him away.
As Uncles George and Bill found out years later, word spread quickly about how the man who wanted to be the Bootlegging Kingpin of the Lehigh Valley had been beaten senseless in front of his own men by a teenaged boy. He became a laughingstock, and the few businesses and people he’d been able to intimidate just plain ignored him. He wanted revenge, but Bill and George and Farmer Schultz just ignored him. After all, what was he going to do?
They found out a few weeks later. They were making one of their late night runs through the woods when someone in a long coat with a turned-up collar and packing a double-barrel shotgun stepped out of the woods in front of them. Uncle George said later that somehow no shotgun barrels ever looked so large as those when they were pointed at him.
“Get down, boys!” Farmer Schultz said. George dropped, Bill dropped, and Farmer Schultz sank down and floored the gas pedal. Uncle George remembered hearing the roar of both barrels going off. The glass windshield shattered. He heard the shot smacking into the car’s body and seats. And then a yell rising into a scream, followed by a very heavy thud and the car bouncing over something with a little give beneath it. As soon as that happened Farmer Schultz drove down the trail a little more and then stopped.
“Now, boys, wait here,” he said, taking the pistol out as he left the car and walked back to where something lay in a heap in the middle of the trail. George and Bill would have normally listened, but right now they were too scared to want to be away from Farmer Schultz. They walked back to what looked like a heap of old clothes and saw Scarface looking up at them. A broken shotgun still lay in his hands. What they could see of his face past the blood showed great surprise. Farmer Schultz stepped back, putting the pistol in his pocket, and almost jumped out of his skin when he bumped into George. He spun, grabbing at his pocket, only stopping when he saw who it was.
“Boys!” he said, “didn’t you hear me? Get back in that car, NOW!” George and Bill and the farmer went back to the car. George felt a bit weak when he looked at his seat and realized that three or four shot pellets had gone straight into the part of it behind his chest. If he hadn’t ducked…
Farmer Schultz tore down the trail that night at speeds he probably would never have dared at any other time. They got to the Sun Inn and when they did, Schultz went in to talk with the people there. Bill and George were told to wait in the kitchen and were given a quick meal by the staff. Despite not telling anyone what had happened -- Farmer Schultz hadn’t said anything, but they somehow instinctively knew to keep their mouths shut -- they remembered being treated with exceptional kindness that night by the staff. They must have looked scared half to death.
Some time later Farmer Schultz came out and took them back home over the main roads, Uncle George remembered it as the first time they’d ever done that. When they got back home, he didn’t send them in. Farmer Schultz went in with them and talked with their mother. Her voice didn’t rise, and she didn’t sound angry or scared, but neither of them were surprised to be told by her after he left that, “You’re not working for him any more.”
In a few more years Volstead got repealed and George and Bill moved away to get work until WW2, when both went into the Armed Forces. They never had any more trouble with bootleggers or gangsters, and they weren’t sorry to avoid it either.
Dad’s family had a lot of troubles growing up. His father had started out as a breaker boy in coal region and then went below at the age of twelve. He only lasted a few years before he got black lung and was thrown out by the mine that employed him to go and die somewhere else. That might have been the end for someone else, but not for Pappy Hinkle. He had a way with jokes and music and could get people to listen; as Uncle George said, Pappy could tell you joke after joke for hours on end without repeating himself and have everyone listening rolling on the floor. So he made his money working the local vaudeville circuit. Unfortunately while he did make some money it just wasn’t a lot, and given the size of the family (there was Dad’s mom, Grammy Hinkle; his brothers George, Bill, Henry, and Francey; Dad himself; and his baby sister Beulah) and Grammy’s inability to turn away anyone who came begging by the door for food (“What God gives you, you give others if they need it more” was how she explained it once; and Dad and his brothers never minded the hobos who showed up, often with wild stories and exotic backgrounds that they traded along with work for their dinners) they were often short of cash and everything else. For Dad, going two or three days without eating wasn’t all that rare when growing up. And given the family’s already low regard for ‘polite’ society, over several attempts to ‘rescue’ the boys from Grammy for being an ‘unfit’ (read working) mother, it shouldn’t be any great surprise that they eventually went into bootlegging with the neighbor during Prohibition.
This also lead to them nearly getting murdered.
This neighbor, Mister Schultz, was an old hand at brewing homemade hooch. Many farmers were back then, seeing it as their perfect right to do whatever they wanted with whatever they could grow. And when Volstead bcame the law of the land, they quickly learned that they could get amazing amounts of money for their homebrew. They were often better trusted by local hotel owners and speakeasy operators, too, as dealing with the farmers avoided some of the difficulties that could come with buying Mob liquor. The local brand of gangster booze was called ‘Soda Pop Moon’, being one half soda to one half rubbing alcohol. There was a local self-styled gangster who wanted to get the farmers buying and selling through him, but more on him later.
Schultz was rather brazen in his efforts, however, often dumping alcohol-soaked mash out for his animals to eat. Once local Prohibition agents lead by a local cop ‘raided’ the farm, looking for the still that they knew was there. The found no still, but they did see the pigs, goats, and even one bleary-eyed old horse staggering around. The horse was apparently a sight to see, his eyes rolling and legs swinging far out to the sides as he desperately tried to keep them coordinated.
“What’s wrong with that horse?” One agent demanded of Farmer Schultz.
“Him? Ach, nothing,” Schultz said, “he’s just a little old. I guess I should shoot him, but he gave me good work for so many years so I’m letting him have his retirement. They say that God blesses those who show kindness to beasts.”
The suspicious agent leaned in close to the horse (which had fallen to the ground, all four legs splayed out to the sides), took a whiff, and winced. “That animal’s sloshed!” he yelled. “Just smell his breath!”
The local cop then went to look at the nearby feed. “Hey, this stuff has more booze in it than a federal man! Oops, sorry.”
“It’s turned to alcohol?” Farmer Schultz said as he fell to his knees. “Mein Gott, a miracle!”
The cop laughed, but the agents apparently lacked a sense of humor. They arrested Farmer Schultz and brought him before the judge, also a local man. Well, right before the trial Frau Schultz got Dad and his brothers together with her own half a dozen or so kids. “Frau Hinkle, I borrow your kinder for a little while, yes? Just to keep my husband out of jail.” Grammy gave her permission and Frau Schultz then told the boys to dress “in the dirtiest and most torn up old clothes you have. Don’t wear any shoes.” Then she rubbed dirt into their faces until they looked like the most desperate bunch of hillbillies you ever saw. And then she held cut onions by their eyes until they were tearing helplessly and lead them into the court, wearing her mourning dress and telling the judge, “Ach, mein herr, please don’t punish my poor husband because of me. He only made the liquor because our poor children are starving. Only to save the lives of our little ones would we ever break the laws of this great nation, even a stupid one like the Volstead. I implore you as only a poor mother of hungry children can, please spare my dearest husband…” and so forth and so on in finest “mellerdrama” fashion.
The judge laughed until he literally rolled on the floor. Before the furious agents, he said, “I find that Farmer Schultz is punished enough by having such a family. No go home and don’t break the law again, because if you do,” and now the amusement left his voice and he spoke in all real sternness, “next time I will put you in jail, and no mistake.”
Farmer Schultz took the boys home and bought everyone some ice cream to celebrate. Then he talked to Grammy Hinkle and said, “You and yours came through for us. I want to do you a favor. I sometimes take some, well, some drinkables in to the Sun Inn in Bethlehem. Your two oldest boys George and Bill are big enough to help. If you let them make these late runs with me I promise I’ll pay them good.” It didn’t take Grammy long to decide for it. The family needed the money and it seemed harmless enough.
George and Bill didn’t mind the work at all. They played no part in the actual brewing. They simply helped load cases filled with bottles into a big car (which was amazing enough to them; cars were for rich people) and then after sundown drove with Farmer Schultz along a ‘road’ that consisted of two ruts in the dirt through the woods into Bethlehem. Uncle George was probably about 15-16 by now and Bill would have been only a year or so behind him. Neither were tall, but both had already been doing hard labor for a few years and looked it. Bill, especially, was rough looking. He already drank, chewed tobacco, smoked, and got in more fights than the rest of his brothers put together. He was only about five nothing tall, but everything from the breath of his chest to the size of his fists was about half again as big as any other person. He was lightning fast with a punch too. If he had enough room to throw a shot, the fight was over then and there.
Anyway, the boys were delighted to share their stories with everyone else after the first trip. “Oh, mom, the Sun Inn is a wonderful good place. It’s like two or three houses put together, and even though we came in the back with Farmer Schultz everyone must come by that way because there were all these men in suits and pretty women with their faces painted up. They teased us a little but they liked us. I think they must work for a vet.”
“Boys, what makes you say that?”
“Why, they said that when we got some money together, we should go and visit them at the cat house!”
Grammy Hinkle had a talk with Farmer Schultz afterwards and he promised no visits to any cat houses. The money the boys got was very appreciated. They gave it to Grammy Hinkle, she gave them some back, and for a while everyone was eating regular. However, other problems were rising. The aforementioned gangster was getting some leverage over the Sun Inn, or trying to. Since they refused to play along (and had the pull with local government and law enforcement to make it stick) he decided to try the suppliers again. So the next time Farmer Schultz, George, and Bill got out to the Sun Inn, they found Scarface there with two of his associates, giving them that sort of nasty-friendly smile some people do so well.
Farmer Schultz said, “We’re here to sell tonight’s load, where’s the manager?”
“He ain’t handling it tonight,” was Scarface’s response. “I am. Here’s your money.” And with that he tossed a few dollars on the ground at Farmer Schultz’s feet. Schultz and George and Bill all looked. It was less than a third of what they normally got.
“We were promised more than that,” Farmer Schultz said heavily.
“I don’t care what you were promised,” Scarface sneered back, “that’s what you’ll get. Of course, I do have the rest right here,” he waved a thick handful of bills at them, “so come and get it if you think you can take it!” And with that he laughed, and his two friends laughed… and Bill took one step forward and punched him right in the face.
Scarface’s laughter stopped instantly. He took a step back and then one forward. Uncle George later said he could see the blood already flowing from his nose and mouth, and his eyes looked completely unfocused. Bill simply gave him another punch, a right cross that would have drawn the admiration of Joe Louis. Scarface dropped senseless to the ground and lay in a heap.
Bill then idly reached down and started to pick the money up. Then several things all happened at once. The two hoods began reaching inside their vests. Farmer Schultz reached inside the car and drew out an old railroad man’s pistol George didn’t even know he had. And the back door of the Sun Inn opened and about half a dozen men spilled out, guns in their hands and wearing only about half of their local police uniforms. When the hood saw them, they froze and made sure to put their hands where everyone could see them.
“What’s going on here?” One of the officers said. “Hey, who started this?”
“He did,” Bill said, pointing at the still unconscious Scarface. “He tried to cheat us on what we were promised and dared me to take it from him if I could. So I did.”
“You sure did, didn’t you?” the officer said, sounding more amused then anything. He then gave Scarface a kick and said, “Go on, get him out of here, before I arrest you for being a public nuisance!” The two hoods, neither of whom had said anything through the whole thing, sheepishly picked their boss up and hauled him away.
As Uncles George and Bill found out years later, word spread quickly about how the man who wanted to be the Bootlegging Kingpin of the Lehigh Valley had been beaten senseless in front of his own men by a teenaged boy. He became a laughingstock, and the few businesses and people he’d been able to intimidate just plain ignored him. He wanted revenge, but Bill and George and Farmer Schultz just ignored him. After all, what was he going to do?
They found out a few weeks later. They were making one of their late night runs through the woods when someone in a long coat with a turned-up collar and packing a double-barrel shotgun stepped out of the woods in front of them. Uncle George said later that somehow no shotgun barrels ever looked so large as those when they were pointed at him.
“Get down, boys!” Farmer Schultz said. George dropped, Bill dropped, and Farmer Schultz sank down and floored the gas pedal. Uncle George remembered hearing the roar of both barrels going off. The glass windshield shattered. He heard the shot smacking into the car’s body and seats. And then a yell rising into a scream, followed by a very heavy thud and the car bouncing over something with a little give beneath it. As soon as that happened Farmer Schultz drove down the trail a little more and then stopped.
“Now, boys, wait here,” he said, taking the pistol out as he left the car and walked back to where something lay in a heap in the middle of the trail. George and Bill would have normally listened, but right now they were too scared to want to be away from Farmer Schultz. They walked back to what looked like a heap of old clothes and saw Scarface looking up at them. A broken shotgun still lay in his hands. What they could see of his face past the blood showed great surprise. Farmer Schultz stepped back, putting the pistol in his pocket, and almost jumped out of his skin when he bumped into George. He spun, grabbing at his pocket, only stopping when he saw who it was.
“Boys!” he said, “didn’t you hear me? Get back in that car, NOW!” George and Bill and the farmer went back to the car. George felt a bit weak when he looked at his seat and realized that three or four shot pellets had gone straight into the part of it behind his chest. If he hadn’t ducked…
Farmer Schultz tore down the trail that night at speeds he probably would never have dared at any other time. They got to the Sun Inn and when they did, Schultz went in to talk with the people there. Bill and George were told to wait in the kitchen and were given a quick meal by the staff. Despite not telling anyone what had happened -- Farmer Schultz hadn’t said anything, but they somehow instinctively knew to keep their mouths shut -- they remembered being treated with exceptional kindness that night by the staff. They must have looked scared half to death.
Some time later Farmer Schultz came out and took them back home over the main roads, Uncle George remembered it as the first time they’d ever done that. When they got back home, he didn’t send them in. Farmer Schultz went in with them and talked with their mother. Her voice didn’t rise, and she didn’t sound angry or scared, but neither of them were surprised to be told by her after he left that, “You’re not working for him any more.”
In a few more years Volstead got repealed and George and Bill moved away to get work until WW2, when both went into the Armed Forces. They never had any more trouble with bootleggers or gangsters, and they weren’t sorry to avoid it either.