wearmanyhats

It was evening when the regulators came.  They pounded on the door and the man fled out the back door.  He could hear his heart pounding hard as he ran toward a small recess in a hill.  Here he could hide and still watch the farmhouse.  His wife stood outside, the kids crying at her side and the G-men scolded her for not telling where he had hidden.  They carried parts of his still, and the angry voices echoed over the pastures.  He knew his batch was gone, and with it the money he would need to make the mortgage payments for the year.

After they left, he came out again.  She didn’t say too much.  Times were hard and she was grateful for any money coming in.  A week later when he went to town to buy some flout and other items that they needed, he sat on the runner of his truck in a parking lot outside the store. Too late, he saw the government men standing nearby talking.   He carefully pulled the pickup door open and hid behind it.  But this time his hiding wasn’t didn’t work; one of enforcers came walking from a different direction.  The agent noticed the suspicious move, and soon the game was up.  After he was arrested, he served eighteen months in the penitentiary for running booze.  This, during Prohibition and the Depression.   While he did his time, the family lost the farm and had to move in with relatives.

He wasn’t the only man to make white lightening to get money.  While Dillinger shot up Chicago, and speakeasies were common in the bigger towns, small towns sold the home made liquor for a seventy-five cents a pint.  Kids collected those bottles later and turned them in for a nickel. The pint was half water and half alcohol, and if you couldn’t get to a well to water down the alcohol, rain water would do.  The alcohol killed anything living inside, and after a few sips you didn’t care.

Breaking the law to help the family survive during difficult times is nothing new.  Crime has gone up in the past eight months, especially robbery, as more men face the difficult decision to risk jail or watch a family go without.   They lie to their wives as to where the money came from, or sometimes the wife knows, and chooses not to say anything.  The poor, who already have been struggling during good times in this nation, are now hurting beyond the comprehension of most people.

It’s hard to understand why anyone would break the law until you know the desperation these people must feel to risk incarceration, the loss of their good name, and the loss of respect of the local community members.  Being without work puts the main breadwinner into a terrible mental state, forced to make choices that s/he doesn’t want.  It will be interesting to see how high crime goes during this economic downturn.

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