North Star Lane — Hooch

A series of regional stories with your host Michael Goldberg.

This week on North Star Lane we have two stories about one of the world's oldest folk crafts: home brewing. Jesse Bearheart lives in Cook MN. She learned from the very different cultures and perspectives of grandparents on both mother's and father's sides of the family. On today's show, Jesse shares a family story from her Norwegian grandparents during the Prohibition era. Then we'll hear from world traveler Rich McClear, who started his broadcast and storytelling career when he founded KAXE FM in Grand Rapids MN. His family story is one he thought he knew, growing up, but learned the story behind the story just a few years ago.

Music provided by Sam Miltich.

For more information including links to accompany this discussion see:
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Transcript

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Michael Goldberg 0:00

Hi there, I'm Michael Goldberg, collecting stories on North Star Lane. Although they're not traditional stories, I like to think of all the tales that we have here as being folk stories, all of our stories as folk stories, because we are the folk, are we not? One of the most ancient of all folk arts is the fermentation and distillation of beverages ever since some teenagers in Mesopotamia forgot to clean out their cooler and left soggy bread sitting in the sun until some brave soul took a sniff and said I wonder what that tastes like. Nowadays, our local home brewers club gets together at the local tap room of the local brewery to taste each other's latest creations, swap tips and recipes, and just generally enjoy the fellowship. In my town and in little towns everywhere in Minnesota, the taprooms of the local craft breweries serve a vital social function. They lubricate celebrations, of course, and wakes and retirement parties too, but more importantly, they provide a commons, an opportunity for ideas and viewpoints to be exchanged, plans to be hatched about what we, those of us sitting at this table and the community at large, what we could do to make something in our lives better. It's democracy at work. Speaking of which, part of America's anti-immigrant fervor of a hundred years ago, took expression in the long campaign that had been waged against the demon drink. Civic minded reformers, the Protestant churches, the women's temperance union, and especially the Anti-Saloon League, heavily supported by Henry Ford, wanted the government to do something about all those immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Central Europe Catholics, who were supposedly drinking up their paychecks and getting up to God knows what all something had to be done. Their champion, Congressman Volstead of Minnesota, eventually succeeded in putting a cork in it for a while. With the National Prohibition Act of nineteen nineteen, which, as we know, immediately created a whole new industry and not at all in the way its sponsors imagined, helped to fuel the roaring twenties. Today on North Star Lane, we have two stories about illicit brewing back in the day. First up, from Cook, Minnesota, Jesse Bearheart.

Jesse Bearheart 2:40

So my maternal grandma came directly from Norway. Her dad had had they decided that they couldn't they couldn't live there anymore. They were always getting run over by the Swedes, and the economy was was hellacious back in the early 1900s. So her dad decided, well, okay, it's time to go to America. So he got on the boat first, came over, got a job as a streetcar driver in Minneapolis. And then when he got enough money together, he sent for the rest of the family, which meant my gr my great grandma and my grandma and her sister, Sylvie. And my grandma's name was Oget. On the way over on the boat, Sylvie, my grandma's little sister, got sick with scarlet fever and died on the boat. And so what they did was they buried her at sea. They wrapped her up in a sheet and tied her up and put her on a board and slid her off into the ocean. And it made a huge impact on both my grandma and my great-grandmother, obviously. My great-grandmother never got over her depression. But my grandma, because she was then all of a sudden became the only child, just started running wild. She was allowed to do whatever she wanted to do, whenever she wanted to do it. She was tired of school at fourth grade, so they said, okay, you don't have to go anymore. So so anyway, she she grew up in the she grew up, this was in like they came over in 1906. And she was just kind of running around, you know, in the she fell in with this group uh that she she just wild people, and she found this guy that worked at the railroad, my grandpa. So those two met up at a party one night, and um, I think that I'm not sure if she had to get married or if it was just like major lust or whatever, but anyway, they just kind of fell in love with each other, started setting up household or whatever. And then they they went through the roaring twenties, and they they would just they would party, you know, they would party, party, party all the time. Grandpa had this little business on the side during prohibition. So he would go down in the basement and he had he he gathered all these things from from the dump. He would he would go find find found objects around town that would that would help him put together like a a brewery of a sort, you know. So he he brewed beer in the basement of their house, and they what he did was he painted the windows, and so all of and he he'd put up a little sign, you know, he'd put up a little flag someplace or he'd just hang a handkerchief over the over the fence or whatever, and it was kind of like the sign onto the neighborhood that you know grandpa grandpa was had a batch ready, and that if they wanted to come knock on the window and slide a dollar bill through, you know, that he'd be willing to slide a bottle up and close the window real quick. So he had this little business going on the side. He did not want anybody knowing about that money, didn't want anybody knowing about that business. I mean, like the deal was you had to have like almost like a passcode in order to, you know, if you could bang on the on the thing, but you had to say you had to say a word to get there, you know. And everybody liked his product so much that they kept coming back for more and they kept their mouth shut. So anyway, he was working at the railroad during the day and he was busy brewing all night long and he'd be selling on the weekends, and then what he did was he had he then he got himself a safe and he put that in the basement, and that's where all the money went. Money went in the safe because he didn't want anybody knowing he didn't want to alert the banks to you know or the financial institutions that he was saving, where was he gonna get where was he getting all this all this money all of a sudden, right? So we're just gonna just we're just gonna cat cash only, we don't trust the government, right? So he's busy doing that. They go out every weekend and they're partying like crazy. And in the meantime, even though she, you know, she liked to read like she she we would get these Norwegian um newspapers. He was able to come to the house every week or you know, and he did she would just read the Norwegian newspapers, but she was also oh god, she was terrible. She would like she would read these um magazines, you know, like the the like that you that you get at the dime store or at the grocery store, you know, the star, the star and globe, and you know, all these, you know, she liked movie star magazines, right? So she then somehow or another, she also learned how to play piano. So my cousin and I, she and I would go over to grandma's house, and we would love to go over to grandma's house because in the summertime we'd we'd just get to sleep while we're on the porch, we would have bubble baths, and we would go, we would walk over to Minihaha Park, and we would listen to the these Norwegian guys playing all this music, and we'd go, you know, watch the watch the falls and watch this and watch that. Anyway, we had really a ton of fun. And then and then she'd send us to the corner store, we'd get ice cream or spend some kind of special treats or something like that, and we'd have just like a full day of just fun, you know. Then if we were really good, she'd sit, she we'd sit there and go, Graham. She had a piano in her house. She said, Graham, we say, Graham, can you play the piano for us? Oh, she would just light up like crazy. She'd sit down and she would play ragtime music, and you know, like I mean, she could play Scott Joplin tunes, all the rest of that, and she learned all this stuff by ear. So she was busy playing and playing, we'd be dancing around and having a good time. It was just a good time. Well, my grandpa died, and then she decided because she he worked for the railroad, she got free tickets to go anywhere she wanted. Well, she had all these friends that were part of that, they were all railroad wives, you know. And they would go, they would go on these wild trips. They would go to Las Vegas, they would go to Seattle, they would go to Los Angeles, they would go all over on the train, and they'd take these wild trips. And every time, you know, she'd go on this trip, every day, she would send me like one of those posts, you know, a picture postcard, and I'd get a whole bunch of picture postcards coming in. She'd be telling us what we were, you know, what what she was doing, and what she was, what was she was thinking, and what she saw, and how she saw Liberace, and how she saw this and that. I was just goofy. And uh, but that's how she, you know, that's how she did her life, and it was just kind of joyful. I mean, it was kind of like kind of unencumbered. I mean, it just was kind of like unencumbered. She would sit down with with with my cousin, and I could sits there, goes, you know, I know how to handle men. I said, Oh, you do? I said, Well, why do you need to handle them, B Bud? But you know, go ahead, tell us the story. She'd sit there and go, Yeah, you know, grandpa come home. And oh, he'd just be so drunk and everything like that, and I would be so mad at him, and I'd go in his pockets and I made I counted out the money from payday, and I it was every payday he did this. I would make sure that I had enough set aside for the rent, and I had enough set aside for the lights, and enough set aside for the heat, and the rest of it, I took downtown the next day, and I bought myself a new pair of shoes and a new dress I'd be eyeing in in the department store window. And she goes, I go, cram, that's pretty, you know, that's pretty radical, you know. Like really you do that? Oh yeah, yeah. That's how it that's how you deal with men. You you let them know, you let them think that they know what they're doing, and you let them go have their fun. But in the end, we all know who sees dirt, we all know who does the cleaning, we all know, you know what what the real story is behind all these different things that they do, so the best way to do it is to get even.

Michael Goldberg 10:55

Thanks to Jesse Bearheart. Up next, one of my favorite storytellers and radio hosts, Rich McClear. He worked on air in Minnesota and Alaska and all over the world, really. Here he is with a special Christmas cider story.

Rich McClear 11:29

When I was a kid, my great-grandfather had a general store in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was the last fully clerked general store in the New York metropolitan area. And a lot of people would go to the AP or would go to the Safeway and do their shopping. But once a year, then one of the New York papers would write a feature about my great-grandfather and his fully clerk store. There are a lot of newspapers in New York, so you know, um, it didn't take much for get a feature once a year. As a kid, one of my memories is sitting in the back of the store around the potbellied stove with all the other great-grandkids, and it was a coal-burning stove. And there's a certain sweet smell that coal has. Uncle Everett, great Uncle Everett had a farm in upstate New York, and every Thanksgiving he'd send down sweet cider. And great grandpa would sell Uncle Everett's sweet cider. But he'd put enough of it by that pot-bellied stove that by Christmas it was Uncle Everett's special Christmas cider. Now, one year, someone came in and bought some special Christmas cider, unbeknownst to him. He thought it was Uncle Everett's sweet Thanksgiving cider. The guy got drunk. And his wife happened to be the head of the local women's Christian temperance union, and the wife complained. And so after Christmas, the police came and arrested my great-grandfather and took him off to court. Now, this is a teaching opportunity for all the great-grandchildren, and we were hauled into court with uh my great-grandfather. My grandfather acted as a defense attorney, which at the time everybody thought was kind of a mistake. And he opted for a bench trial rather than a jury trial, which kind of puzzled everybody because there'd be no jury in Jersey City that would convict great-grandpa. Great-grandpa had carried half the neighborhood during the depression on the cop. But there it was, and the facts were laid out, the testimony given. And finally, the judge looked at my great-grandfather and said, John Augustus McClear, are you sorry for what you've done? Hell no. Well, let me put it another way, John Augustus McClear. What do you have to say for yourself? Been drinking this stuff man and boy for more than 90 years, it's never hurting me. The judge sighed, banged down his gavel, convicted. Because my great grandfather was 95, he got a suspended sentence for his very great age. And just a small token fine, but they closed the store. And my great-grandfather didn't live for another Christmas because the store was closed, and that's what he did. Several years later, I was visiting my grandfather when I was from college, back from college, and my grandfather sent me to the corner store to get a newspaper. I knew what newspaper it was, it was the New York Daily News. I'd go in and talk to Mr. Lyons and say, I'd like a daily news and I'd like a New York Times. He looked at me and said, College boy. I said, Well, yeah, I'm going to college. He said, Times. I said, Well, you're selling it. He looked at me and says, You remember that trial with your great grandfather? And I said, Yep. He says, Remember what he told that judge? I said, Yeah. Well, that comes from reading the daily news. It doesn't come from reading the New York Times. The New York Times, well, no, that's a daily news story. Now, daily news was good enough for your great grandfather. It's good enough for your grandfather. It's good enough for you, kid. I put the Times down and uh took my grandfather the daily news. Now that's normally the end of the story, but there's a coda which I did not know until 2019. My Aunt Janice was 95, and I was taking her to visit some of my cousins, picked her up at where she lived in Jersey City. And we were talking on the car, and she said, You know, Richard, there's more to that story. And I said, What do you mean, Aunt Janice? She said, Well, great-grandpa would carry a lot of people on the cuff even after the depression was over. The point is, when they had money, they'd go to the A and P in Safeway. We didn't have any money to go to great-grandpa's store and always make sure they got fed. And your grandfather, my dad, well, he had an ice and coal business. He later turned it into an oil delivery business. And the business was subsidizing the store. And great grandpa was driving the family broke. And so when this happened, grandpa approached the judge and they made out that he would be the attorney and it would be a bench trial. And in other words, as we say in Jersey, the fix was in. And so the store was closed, the business was saved. But I don't know whether great grandpa would have lived to be a hundred or not. Janice said, Richard, the fix was in. This is Jersey.

Michael Goldberg 17:34

Thanks to Rich McClear and to Jesse Bearheart for sharing their stories today. I'm Michael Goldberg on North Star Lane, sponsored by the Northern Civil Defense Network, NCDN Radio. You can find out more about the network and more stories at ncdn.work. And thanks to Sam Miltich for providing the musical interludes. Let's raise a glass to our grands and our great grands and keep telling their stories.