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This
show was suggested by a show one of our customers built down
in Georgia, and called it moonshine museum. He charges the
tourists a dollar to go through it, and he wrote us
what a dig success it was. I figured it would also be
good for the fair midway, and judging from the number who
wrote for it while it was in the catalog marked in process,
they thought so too. However a show on the fair midway
had to have action. No one is in the mood on fair days to
visit a museum of dead artifacts so we recreated a still in
action as it was in the days of the moonshiners. Whether you
ever finish a batch of whisky is between you and the
Treasury Department, butt have the cooking and mash odors in
action to make it lifelike.
When we became a reporter in 1924, it was still prohibition
and Peoria, without a doubt was still the whiskey capitol of
the country. There was still good whiskey around, even
though it was 5 years after prohibition. The gangsters
around Peoria had a co-operative set-up. On alternate day,
rival gangs would siphon off the whiskey from the barrels in
the warehouse, thus there was no gang war it was a peaceful
settlement. They used the 5 gallon square cans and siphon
hoses. Some say they refilled the barrels with water, so
when the government Gagers turned over the barrels in the
rack house each month, t hey would still weigh the same..As
whiskey is put in the barrels at 100 proof (50% alcohol),
the charred oak barrels absorbs the liquid, and there is
never the full 50 gallons in the barrel, but what is in
there is usually 110 to 117 proof. So when they first put 5
or 10 gallons of water in the barrels The whiskey was
still plenty strong. In later years when they continued to
draw off and refill, the whiskey became weaker, but they
doped it up with illicit alcohol, some of which was
poisonous. One week- end 18 people in Peoria died from
liquor. Some who drank the same liquor didn't even become
ill. But that's the way it was during prohibition.
I had become a
country publisher in Feb. 1927 at the ripe age of 19, and
the following September, when I was already 20, I had
taken delivery on a grand new Chrysler 58 coup-a big four
cylinder job, and as I didn't like the shade of green that
was standard for the coupe, the factory painted it a
beautiful buff for $50 additional. I could afford to be
extravagant a country newspaper publisher never paid cash
for anything, the dealer took it out in trade. In
advertising.
East Peoria  had a
flood in late 1927 and the city hall had moved into the same
office in which I was located. On that particular September
Monday morning I saw a big crowd milling around the office
and soon learned that Husky Tom the moonshiner in the cabin
boat on Farm Creek was shot in the back during the night
with a shotgun. A policeman was at the boat with the body,
but the crowd was waiting for the coroner and the state's
attorney to arrive for the official investigation. I pulled
my shiny new car in line behind the dilapidated touring car
the police used for a squad car. A dealer in wide open
Peoria’s leading gambling house, came up to me and
engaged in conversation after complimenting me on the new
car, he suggested we go to the scene of the crime. I told
him I wanted to wait for the officials, and he was still
insisting that we go now, when they drove up.
The state's attorney's first words, were" we are not taking
any newspaper men along" and he ordered me out of line. I
did follow the procession from a distance with the gambler
at my side, and I entered the boat, staying in the shadows.
My gambler friend immediately set about looking for
all the cans that lined the walls, above the mash barrels.
I asked him what he was looking for, and he said MONEY. Tom
did a cash business, and the money has got to be here.
Suddenly the rooms silence was broken by the ah's" of those
present.
The coroner has
just removed a huge roll of bills from the victim’s shirt
pocket under the bib of his overalls. They were mostly
yellow backs (gold certificates which were issued in
denominations of) 10 or more and were redeemable by the
Treasury in GOLD.)
The state's attorney looked around and saw me and complained
and insisted I go to Peoria, and locate Pete Sans one, the
fisherman who rescued a lot of people from the Illinois
River, to come tow the cabin boat to Pekin the county seat.
it was an order so I had to go.
For many years afterwards, I diligently checked the reports
of the county board of supervisors, and in no place did I
find an inkling of any money turned in on this case by the
states attorney. Tom had no relatives, and not only the
money, but the boat and a rifle were confiscated. The
murderer was never caught. The whole deal would have made
me as a 20 year old, turn sour on civilization, but there
was one redeeming point. The old policeman – John Hoffman,
was alone with the body all night, he could have taken the
money, but he wasn’t even tempted, as he told me later. The
State’s Attorney was a Sunday school teacher. I’ve been
told he is still alive but has been mentally ill for
years-that kind of money does not bring happiness. The
coroner purchased an airplane about that time, and that was
long before the doctor was the most wealthy man in the
community. As he lived in the far end of the county, I lost
track of him.
And what has
this to do with the show? The set-up shown on page 2 was
drawn from memory. The Peoria Historical Society has the
files of my paper, The East Peoria Courier say that really
makes one feel old. Containing the picture of the boat.
The Peoria Star files in the Library on Micro-film has the
picture also, but I never will forget that day, or that
scene. It could have changed my life and made me a crook.
I’ve seen many stills in the years that followed. I also
edited a paper in addition in Bartonville, Illinois where
the mayor was in jail for bootlegging, and once I was
grabbed by the prohi’s and forced to help destroy a huge
wooden vat, a pickle brine barrel containing mash, because I
happened as a reporter to wonder on the scene. Many
moonshiners used the wooden vats, the same ones the pickle
processors used. The vats where shipped knocked down and
assembled on farms where a canner had purchased the pickle
crop, and assembled, filled with brine to preserve the
pickles till they could be picked up and bottled. A local
moonshiner had used one of these vats. They were two inch
grooved lumber surrounded by steel rods with turnbuckles for
tightening. Later I wrote advertising and bought labels
for-a small distillery in Peoria. Although I do not
drink—If it is whiskey, I’m full of the subject.
On Page 2,
drawing 3 through 8, was the set-up on the boat. It was
probably repeated in many barns in the country. There were
two stoves, two copper boilers, and the walls lined with 50
gallon barrels containing mash in various stages of
fermentation, and some 5 gallon cans of liquor. You can
duplicate the boilers at any antique shop for about $15.
They were used for washing clothes, the top of the boiler
was not the usual boiler lid, it was a sloping lid, about 3”
high and if fit snuggle into the boiler, so no fumes
escaped. It was topped with a funnel like affair as shown,
to which a copper tube was attached, the connected to the
copper cooling worm. The worm rested in a small steel drum
filled with water, and dripped into a 5 gallon crock. That
was all there was too making moonshine. You cooked the
mash, the steam went in to the worm, came out at the
end—alcohol, which you cut and colored and bottled.
I want to tell
you about the lids - which had to be made – there was no one
stamping them out. Burring the summer of 24, when I got out
of high school before the paper had an opening for a cub
reporter, I worked as a Tinner’s helper in a sheet metal
shop where these domed lids were fabricated.
When I saw on two different occasions two different furniture
dealers come with their one horse wagons in which they
deliver furniture, pull up and pick up the lids, which
carried shop tickets made out to Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones, I
went home and told my mother about it, as any good 17 year
old boy would do, as these men were friends of the family
for years. My mother shushed me and told me not to repeat
it as no one world believes me. Today their son’s carry on
huge furniture businesses and live on the “drive.” As very
highly respected citizens and pillars of the church.
You can easily
reproduce the setting, tom had. The kerosene stoves in
working order may be a problem, but if you find a Junker,
you can install a gas burner using a hidden bottle of gas.
If you can’t find them, drawing 10 shows small coal and wood
burning stoves, Montgomery Ward’s catalogs still carry. You
can place a gas burner in these too. Actually moonshiners
in the hills used wood burning stoves because fuel was
available outside their door and kerosene would have had to
be brought in.
This set-up is
your actual exhibit-the show, what they pay to see, what you
have advertised, an actual moonshiner’s still making
whiskey, However you should give them more. The worst
advertising for a show is to have the people hurriedly
return to the midway. Have something to keep them inside.
Starting with
drawing 26, you can make in full size or miniature, or even
on large drawings-showing how the bootleggers carried
whiskey in fake gasoline tanks on their jalopies.. How
bootleggers delivered smaller quantities in the legs of
their boots-that’s where the name comes from.. In 28, sa
drawomg pf method beach front bootlegger hid his stock. He
had a small house in which he lived and under it was a
hollowed out place from the whiskey. There was no trap door
when he received or sent out a shipment, two men pushed the
house aside, opening the hole, and then pushed the house
back again. He was never discovered.
Figure 29 is a
hollow tree, with a hollowed out pit below it. Leading no
doubt to a bigger cave. The patron put 50 cents on a hollow
shelf on the tree, turned his back and in a few minutes
returned to find half a pint. No one saw anyone during the
transaction.
You can build
your show as big or as small as you like. We have drawn in
the big one to use on the back end of the lot. Any
semi-trailer will do, even a house trailer or long truck.
Square the end of the semi with angle ron on the side you
are going to place on the midway. To use as a show front.
Figures 23 and
14, show the set-up, which of course will depend on the
contour of your truck. Panels can be made of 1X3” wood as
shown in 12. Reinforce the corners with gussels or sheet
metal., or you can use plywood or masonite. You can cover
with aluminum; galvanize steel, or black steel. Be sure and
treat the aluminum or galvanized steel with the proper
primer, to keep paint from peeling. Black iron should be
will painted before and after nailing to the frame, paint
both sides. To prevent rust.
Today many sow
builders are using black steel square tubing, the kind used
by ornamental iron workers. 1/16” is thick enough for walls
of 1” tubing as the four walls make it really strong. A
cheaper item is thin wall conduit-that’s the round pipe
electricians use to hold electric wire in commercial
installations.
Attach the sheet
metal to the tubes or conduit with sheet metal screws or
one-way rivets. As shown in Fig 19. You can weld the black
iron to the bubing if desired-a one inch weld in every three
or four inches will do. You can also add welds on the
inside of the tubing, diagonal bracing on the back of the
panels, will be needed if the panels are large, to make them
rigid.
We think loose
pin hinges with a bent nail for a pin, is still the most
satisfactory connector for you hinged panels and braces. Of
course the panels that will be permanently connected can use
solid hinges, or just leave in the tight fitting pin on the
loose pin hinges.
Don’t
use wood screws-heavy winds put a strain on the show front.
Use bolts and nuts an batter the threads to keep them from
working out. Where the bolt goes through the wood, put a
big washer or another hing half to keep bolts from pulling
through. We can’t give you dimensions due to the variety of
sizes of trailers, but the schematic of how the show opens
is shown in drawing 15.
We have included
a number of drawings for the theme for the front. You can
get others from the same source we did-comic postcards.
These are prepared by better artists that you can usually
find on the midway, and you can enlarge them to the size you
desire, but a simple machine called and Opaque Projector.
Do not confuse with movie machines or slide projectors. As
Opaque Projector picks up the image from you postcard on a
mirror and throws it on the wall-like the old fashioned
postcard projector-that was a machine used in the old days
to show pictures you took on your vacation. However the
postcard projector had no mirror and reversed the image.
The Opaque Projector corrects this, lettering reads from
left to right as it should.
John-Smith
Novelty Co. Mt Clemens, Mich, 48043 sell them for $8.95
postpaid. It’s item 6007 in their catalog-delivery is two to
three weeks. Edmund Scientific Co. 300 Ediscorp Bldg.
Barrington, N.J. 08007 also have the mat $8.75 postpaid it
is stock nu. 70199H. Edmunds also have all kinds of lenses,
and drawing to build larger projectors. We’ve used various
types of opaque projectors all our life in advertising. One
elaborate job we have costs in the neighborhood of $500 and
has a blower to cool the bulb. The bulb which costs $9
seems to break about every time we move this elaborate
machine. The idea is to tape a large piece of paper to the
walls, turn out the lights and focus the picture on the
paper. Then you draw what you see. Carry a flashlight to
check what you have drawn-do not move or adjust the lense,
once all is in focus or it will change the size. The
farther back the machine is, the larger the picture. Then
when you have the picture
lay the
paper down on some corrugated box cardboard, and go over the
lines with a pounce wheel. A clock gear in a clothes pin
will do, or dressmakers have a similar wheel to transfer
patterns, and sign painters also have them. Then with a bag
made of cheesecloth )old timers used a “Bull Durham” bag,
filled with lamp black, powdered charcoal, or ground up
chalk, pounce over the perforations as it lays on your
painted panel. Remove the pounce and fill in the powdered
line with pencil. The rest is link painting by numbers. If
you have a pictures facing right, and you want it to face
left-merely turn over the paper and pounce from the other
side. I like to use the set-up used in the Funny Papers or
Comic Books. --- Solid colors in black outline. This is
easiest to reproduce, and takes less skill in painting.
If you have a
long enough semi-you can reserve the front part for living
quarters. Have the entrance on the side away from the
midway. If you want to have a view of the midway,
incorporate your window in a window in a building of you
drawing. It’s good to live right on the midway-you can
watch your stuff.
If you don’t
want to build a big back of the lot show, you can mount this
show in any size outfit. Our Small Trailer Show Plan,
Number 582, page 112 in our bible, or show on a Pick-up
truck number 583 on page 113 will also handle it. On our
panel front show Plan 577 on page 109 gives three more ways
of handling it.
It’s new and
novel and today’s kids have only heard of moonshiners and
bootleggers on the ;late, late show films, and are
interested.
You’ll save a
lot of wear and tear on your lungs if you use a P.A. System,
and a tape recorder. If the one outside describes the
elaborate stills, the public outside will think you have
them, instead of just drawings or models of them, and of
course you stress the still is in action, actually making
moonshine-which it is, the smaller one. Then when the tape
describes the bootleggers boots, the fake gas can, etc. It
will appear that you have ten carloads of stuff in the
semi. You can rig another tape recorder with cartridge or
loop tape to tell the patron what he is actually seeing and
how it works. If you use a cartridge with an hour on each
side, in a $30 tape recorder, you will only have to attend
it on the hour. You can also rig it to tell the story only
when people are in front of it, by a switch in the rug on
the floor.
The drawings on
page 5,6,7 can be reproduced on large cards and either the
type on the page, printed below them, or it can be on tape.
A more elaborate plan is to have smaller models of these,
and signs and type or on tape explaining how the simple
still, the simple direct heated still, the simple still with
rectifier, the Adams still worked. The Adams still had a
200 gallon capacity and could run four or five batches in 24
hours-a real thirst quencher. The curry simplified still is
a post prohibition project with three purifying plates,
giving a better clearer whisky the first time through.
Below we are
enclosing a chart of how much alcohol-and this will make
twice as much drinking liquor when cut, or even more, the
still’s get from various grains:
220 LBS of Wheat
Gives 7.0 Gallons Pure Alcohol
220 LBS of Wheat
Gives6.6 Gallons Pure Alcohol
220 LBS of
Barley Gives 5.5 Gallons Pure Alcohol
220 LBS of Oats
Gives 4.8 Gallons Pure Alcohol
220 LBS of
Buckwheat 5.5 Gallons Pure Alcohol
220 LBS of Corn
Gives 5.5 Gallons Pure Alcohol
220 LBS Rice
Gives 7.7 Gallons Pure Alcohol
As whiskey is
half the proof of alcohol, you get double the amount of
drinking whiskey at 90 proof than you do alcohol. That is
Blended Whiskey, straight whiskey is distilled by other
processes and cannot be called whiskey unless it is
distilled at 176 proof or less. Up to 1972, whiskey had to
be placed in brand new charred oak barrels in US, but not in
Canada. Alcohol can be placed in steel drums, which can be
used over and over again.
Flour of grain
is composed of starch, gluten, albumen, mucilage, sugar.
Table above gives properties under certain conditions the
albumen or gluten in grain had power of converting starch
into saccharine matter. This is better affected by dilute
sulfuric acid, or by “Distaste” is a principle developed
during germination of all cereals, especially of barley. It
has the property of reacting upon starch matters, converting
them in to dextrin and glucose or grape sugar. The action
of distaste upon starch or flour made into paste is
remarkable. 50 grains of distaste being sufficient to
convert 200 LBS (100 Kilograms) of starch into glucose. The
rapidly of this change depends on the quantity of water used
and the degree of heat employed in the operation.
White
Lightin’- how it got its name.
In 1900 Gar
White was distilling 160 proof liquor composed of corn,
weevils, wild yeast, sassafras, pok-berries, coal oil, prune
juice, wagon grease, slake lime and oak chips and 3 hairs
from his white mustang, It was 9 days old, when the
Revenuers came. The Revenuer took a swig at the same moment
lightning struck a nearby tree, burning off his clothes,
shoes and socks. He thought the liquor did it, and
pronounced the effect “White Lighting.”
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