Prohibition Days on a College Campus
(Home brew in our garage)
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The year was 1929. I was a freshman at Western Kentucky State Teachers College. My mother was a member of the music department faculty there, and we lived in a campus house owned by the College. Built many years earlier out of locally quarried limestone, this temporary home for our small family and several college students was commonly referred to as the "Rock House."
National prohibition was still in effect, and the only alcoholic beverage anyone could buy in Bowling Green was home brew--a beer of sorts. Even though illegal, home brew was made and sold secretly at several private homes. One of the most popular places where Western students went to purchase it was a small shack in the Delafield area on the west side of town. The quiet "law abiding" Negro man living in this shack with his three cur dogs had the reputation of making and selling high-grade, very potent home brew at a reasonable price; and every student so inclined knew exactly where he lived and the necessary password to give through a tiny peephole in his back door. His asking price of 10 cents for a large bottle of the tasty beverage seems now to be ridiculously cheap; but in 1929 the going student wage for part- time work was fifteen or twenty cents an hour, and therefore an expenditure of even 10 cents was not insignificant.
It should come as no surprise to the reader, therefore, that another Western freshman and I decided to make our own home brew. Not only would it be far more economical to make it ourselves, we thought, but our product would be as good if not better than what we could buy. At least, these were the predictions of two cocky nineteen-year olds who had never made home brew.
My partner in this scheme was Orville "Ham" Hamilton, a football player from a small town in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, an area well known for its "moonshining" activities during prohibition. "Ham" was a big fellow--very intelligent and studious--planning to major in history; but like many other freshmen, he wanted to do something on weekends in addition to studying. Due to his recent transfer from another college, he was not eligible to play football at Western in the fall of 1929 and was not, therefore, restricted by the usual training rules for athletes.
After some discussion about strategy, we decided to make the home brew in the old garage behind the "Rock House." With no automobile of our own, our family used this garage only for storage, making it an ideal place for the brewing operation we were planning. It was conveniently located and yet rarely visited by anyone. Even my mother went into it only occasionally, I told "Ham." Whenever she wanted something put into or brought out of the garage, my brother and I were the ones to do it.
With the question of "where to" settled, we began to think about the "how to." How do you make home brew? we asked ourselves, and what do you make it in? We had seen our Negro friend's brew standing in huge earthenware crocks, but we had no crocks. "Ham" said he would get one, and he did--where and how I don't know, but the next night he brought a very large crock to the garage. I hoped he had not stolen it, but I didn't dare ask him.
It then became my duty to find out how to make the stuff, and just by luck I found in one of the boxes stored in the garage a little pamphlet titled, Bathtub Gin and Other Recipes, which included a recipe for making home brew, as well as instructions for learning how to do the "Charleston," a popular dance of the 1920's. I later learned that my mother had brought the pamphlet back from New York, along with some other mementos, after a summer of graduate study at New York University. "Ham" and I had fun reading the recipe for making bathtub gin, but we didn't try that one, since there was only one bathtub in the "Rock House" and eight persons used it regularly for bathing: my brother, my mother, five college students who roomed there, and I. Needless to say, it could not very well have been used also for making gin.
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