Quick Grannie the Revenuers are Coming

by Norman A. Rubin

The incident with our grandmother was during the time in the recent past when the opportunity of a lifetime was offered to organized crime. It was the era of Prohibition, a 'noble experiment', submitted by a legislator by name of Andrew Volstead. Hoods smuggled the golden beverage of Scotland from the borders of the north to the parched citizens of the fair land; and in our hometown of Chicago rattling tommy guns insured the safe runs of beer trucks. Blood ran like bubbly streams in our municipality as well as throughout the other cities of the States.

Despite the steel and shot, the hoods never found out they had a source of competition to their lucrative trade. One unknown supplier that competed with these ferocious gansters was our grannie who supplied hootch, or in simple terms fermented wine, to the needy. The converts to the ancient faith in Chicago increased to nearly one million and wine was required for their religious rites; the legal brew was in short supply and entrepeneurs, like my grannie, supplied the demand. In the bathroom of our apartment grapes fermented in the bathtub and bottled red wine was offered to the supplicants in exchange for the coin.

Yet, during the years of her operation, our dear grandmother was neither threatened by the bosses of the illicit trade nor of the law. Somehow Al and his boyos who considered the trade to be their sole right overlooked her. Even Elliot Ness and the G-men paid little attention to her when they upheld the banner of prohibition.

Grandma Bessie was quite spry in her elder years despite the shortness of her rotund body. Her clear gray eyes on her wizened features told of her cunning in the acumen of the liquor trade. The orbs twinkled as she busied herself in the production of her illicit trade. She never revealed her secrets of producing a 30% proof alcholic beverage that was quite enjoyed by her many customers.

Fresh grapes, during the season were used in her production and bottles with fermented juice crowded the bathroom floor. Grannie, when fresh produce was not available, relied on bottled grape juice, which was in plentiful supply at the groceries. All she needed to do was to pep up the non-alcoholic beverage with a bit of rubbing alcohol, which was also in plentiful supply; she a bad case of rheumy and her clever doctor supplied her with sufficient legal prescriptions. It was a coincidence that the good physician happened to be one of grannie's best customers; he claimed his religious right to have the wine for the benediction as prescribed by the Good Book.

But there was one fly in the ointment. Grannie's production and storage facilities were in the bathroom of our family's five-room apartment. Grandma Bessie, mom's blessed mother, was only a boarder in our flat. She had the back room and father, mother and their five children from ages 16 to 3 years, squeezed in the other rooms. Mom and dad had a proper room, the three girls shared the parlor and the two boys fitted in a former storage room.

Yet grannie took liberties in commandeering our facilities for her quite lucrative business in illicit booze. Since money was in short supply at that time we were forced to submit to her takeover.

We had to endure the odour of fermented grapes even though dad had invested in an electric fan and installed it in the bathroom. Mom opened the bathroom window wide with the hope that the second-hand ventilator would clear the air, but the contraption was creaky in age and did little to force the fumes through the open window. There was always fear that the vapours would be sniffed by the curious, but mom solved that problem by hanging ripe garlic on the window frame. So, instead of suffering only the fermented smell, we had to endure the ripeness of the cloves. Yet, somehow, we survived.

But there was another problem that ensued, namely the needed facilities to bathe. The tub was filled with the grape and the floor in the bathroom was lined with bottles. Only when grannie's production was closed down for repairs, namely she was aching in her rheumy attacks, did we have the use of the bath. But, despite the infrequent closures, the bathroom was in constant operation in the concocting of the hootch and we had to find alternate sources for bathing our bodies.

Dad, a rough-hewn laborer, made the weekly pilgrimage to the Turkish bath emporium where he was more or less scrubbed and washed. Fortunately for mom and her little girls they were able to have the use of a neighbor's bathtub on a weekly basis; the woman, alone and in widow's weeds, also needed the wine for the Sabbath blessing. So, for the gift of a bottle of grannie's special, a slightly weakened brew, mom and the girls were quite respectable.

But, the good widow would not allow the two boys of the family to strip and use her tub. She was adamant in her demand in not allowing grown naked men to wallow in her tub's water.

Luck was with my brawny big brother; as he was a top athlete he was able to shower in the high school locker room after practice or a game. Well, he was quite handsome in his sixteenth year and a clean well-groomed body was an attraction to the cooing coeds, especially in the billing and cooing in the late evening hours.

For yours truly, a wiry freckled-faced boy in the thirteenth year, sluicing under the kitchen tap was my only way of bathing. True, during the summer months, I had the fun of splashing in the spray of the water flowing from the nearby fire hydrant, courtesy of the fire department. The winter months were a problem as I couldn't face the cold flow of the tap water on my shivering body; mom did her best by heating up a kettle but still it was an ordeal.

During the long winter days I could be smelled from a mile away. I thought the other kids were shunning me because of my B.O., not realizing I was considered a loner. Until that cold winter morning when the school nurse examined me and she found I was a companion to a large population of lice. Well, I was sent home with a note telling of my unwashed and pesty condition, along with a threat to notify the health authorities.

Before you can say the blessing on the wine, mom invested a goodly sum on a tin tub and a couple of tins of kerosene. She shooed her little girls away and grabbed hold of my body and divested me from all my clothing. The galvanized tub was filled and ready with cold water. My mother's flabby arms grabbed me and pushed me in feet first. When I felt the cold water with my toes, I struggled in her stout body, screamed and yowled blue murder, but to no avail. With a hefty shove I was flung in the tin tub's cold water. Her florid features showed anger and disgust as she wielded the hard-bristle brush and scrubbed the suds of the laundry soap on my shivering thin body. My frame was quite reddened when I was allowed to leave the cold and very dirty water.

But, that was not the end of my agony as she scalped me to the bare flesh throughout and fiercely applied the stinging kerosene, even to the plucked skin around my loins. Later I learned that she went on an inspection tour of herself and her family and any sign of lice was quickly eradicated with a goodly dose of kerosene. Even the rooms of our flat felt the scourge of the liquid petroleum.

The smell of the kerosene was a third odour our family had to endure. My brothers and sisters punished me for that curse through dirty looks and nasty remarks. "Stinky, stinky," was the name called out to me.

Immediately following that incident my mother had enough of grannie's enterprise and she had words with her. But it was not necessary as the law was onto the illicit winery. The sight of two burly men in blue put the scare into us as they entered our flat after a loud knocking. "Cossacks," my grannie screamed as the officers confiscated her wares after they presented her with the writ. It seemed that grannie had added a wee too much alchohol in her mixture and a couple of her customers had sickened to the point of being taken to the hospital.

Afterwards in the coming days, baths were in order in our household, albeit in cold water with a touch of hot fluid from the kettle. As for grannie ... Well, she was seen sneaking about with copper tubing and loads of potatoes, and heading to a locked wooden shed adjacent to our apartment building ...

Copyright © Norman A. Rubin 2003