Oral History Interview with Nancy Guthrie McKay

NANCY MCKAY March 23, 1988 [Begin Interview] Interviewer: 1988, and we are going to interview Nancy McKay. And we’d like to ask Nancy McKay if she’d tell us something about her date of birth, parents, education, things of this sort.

McKay: Oh. Well. My birthday is April the eleventh – you all remember it – 1916. I was born in Early Times, Kentucky, a little, I don’t think it was, I don’t know what it was. It was just a post office (?) and a distillery. And I went to school briefly at, well, for several years, at the country school across the way. And then at the age of six I came to town to Bethlehem, where I stayed until the eighth grade. And at the eighth grade, I went to St. Catherine’s Academy. And 1:00from there, I went a year to college. And then I joined the convent and taught in various places throughout the country. And then came back to Bardstown in 1944.

Interviewer: Okay. And you married.

McKay: I married Phil McKay and have had seven children. Fourteen grandchildren. And still live in Bardstown.

Interviewer: Were you living in Nelson County at any time during Prohibition?

McKay: Sure.

Interviewer: How old were you at the time?

McKay: Well, if it was 1919, I was three years old. 1920, I was four. But we did have a distillery at Early Times. And my remembrance of the distilling industry is after Prohibition apparently. Because I can remember the bottling room was very active. They had a (gainter?) there who lived on the place. I can remember him, one gainter, very vividly. I remember 2:00falling into a batch of broken bottles where they used to throw the bottles out. They all piled up. And I fell, the little walkway broke, and I fell into it. And I really didn’t get hurt too bad I don’t think. And of course my father had, after Prohibition, he had in my house cases of whiskey that he was permitted to keep. And we had the robbery where people came to steal the whiskey.

Interviewer: Okay. Who was your father?

McKay: Oh, okay. My father was S. L. Guthrie. Guthrie, who went to work for Early Times Distillery at the age of seventeen. And at that time, Mr. Jack Beam was the owner. And it was run by Mr. J. W. Shawnee. And Mr. Shawnee, after Mr. Beam died, I guess Mr. Shawnee continued to run it. I don’t know, he must have owned part of it. And then when 3:00Mr. Shawnee died, my father, by this time, had bought the farm that the distillery owned. And was, I guess, a partner in the distillery business at that period.

Interviewer: So he actually was a partner, you think, during Early Times, during Prohibition.

McKay: Mm hmm.

Interviewer: And before Prohibition.

McKay: Probably.

Interviewer: Do you remember anything he might have said later in conversations about the time before Prohibition? And the idea that they were going to lead up to this shutting down the distillery?

McKay: No. I don’t have any recollection of any discussion really about prohibition, but I three or four years old, you’re not– Interviewer: Yeah. I thought he might have said something years later about what was going on before. Kind of hearsay thing.

McKay: Well, of course we all thought it was a terrible mistake, and I’m sure he expressed that opinion more than once. 4:00And he knew that one day it would be repealed. He was really sure of that. And of course it just ruined Bardstown. I mean, Bardstown became a ghost town.

Interviewer: Like the buildings? Or the people?

McKay: Well, you know there were just not jobs. There were so many distilleries around here that it kept people in work and it was a very depressed area before Depression came, really. Because there were so many people out of work. And there was just the feeling that there was just not a whole lot to do in Bardstown.

Interviewer: Before Prohibition, because we had a lot of saloons and beer joints or whatever in town and all over the county, do you remember any of them 5:00being closed or any, you know, stores downtown being boarded up, or anything like that?

McKay: No. But I was an old country girl. I didn’t get to town very much. [laughs] We lived out. No, I don’t remember any saloons. I don’t even remember much conversation about saloons. I don’t know where they were.

Interviewer: They were mostly on the main street before Prohibition. But I mean, again, and maybe later– McKay: I guess Uncle Joe’s was one saloon. That was later. Uncle Joe’s.

Interviewer: Well, let’s see. You said you were born in 1919? Oh, 1916. So you were four or five years old. But then you were fifteen years old in 1930, then, or thereabouts. Fourteen years old in 1930. So as a teenager, do you remember any, when you were in Bardstown, did you ever hear any sermons or any talks about the repeal 6:00of Prohibition? Or that it was good? Or did you have any feeling about the clergy and how they felt about it?

McKay: Well, the people I associated with thought the repeal was great. No, I don’t think, course I never heard any clergy except Catholic clergy. And that’s one thing I don’t think Catholic clergy have ever been against. [laughs] They haven’t been against liquor. I mean, I’ve never heard a clergyman, a priest, ever say anything about Prohibition was a good thing. And I think the general feeling was that you just can’t regulate, you can’t (the law) regulate morals. Which is what it comes down to. And of course my father was very interested in the repeal of Prohibition because he planned to go back into the whiskey business.

Interviewer: When you say go back in the whiskey business, how did he keep himself above the water then, if that was his business, what did he do– McKay: (?) wonder. He, 7:00course for a while we had the farm, which was, I guess, lucrative. And then he made some bad investments and he had to sell the farm, and we moved to Bardstown. And he worked at the Farmers’ Bank. I think how in the world he managed, 125 dollars a month I think is what he made. He may have had something else on the side, but I wasn’t aware of it. We really didn’t think about it, I don’t remember feeling depressed. Everybody was in the same boat, I guess. And material things weren’t all that important back in the ‘20s and ‘30s as they are now. We had a car. We had plenty to eat. We were all in school. I was in St. Catherine’s. My brother, one of my brothers was at Notre Dame. First at St. Mary’s (?) then Notre Dame. The boys were either at Bethlehem or St. Joe. 8:00We had a car. We uh, I think we entertained. Not lavishly, maybe. But I don’t remember ever feeling that we were, you know, underprivileged. But he worked there. And then think finally, later, of course then he bought Wickland. They bought Wickland. And then he worked in Louisville, and drove back and forth in Louisville until he got his distillery started. And at that time, they moved to Louisville for a year. Where we was, he first started bottling room down in Main Street, Market Street. He bought liquor from other places and bottled it. And that was in ’37, I suppose, they finally were building the distillery out here on the Burkeville Road.

Interviewer: What, you said that he bought whiskey from other places. Do you think that his contacts in Nelson County felt that he, did he buy whiskey from Nelson County or did you ever… McKay: I would say, I don’t know. Maybe the boys would know. See I was away from home. 9:00I’m not real sure. No, I don’t think Nelson County. I don’t think the Nelson County had started back, lets see maybe T.W. Samuels maybe had. I don’t know whatever in Nelson County they started making whiskey, any sooner he did at Fairfield. But somebody might know.

Interviewer: Well, what about, I’m thinking about the stored whiskey, and the fact that they would have had stored whiskey in the warehouse. Or was that all gone?

McKay: Oh, that was all gone. I don’t think he was permitted to have that. I think that was gone at that point.

Interviewer: Then how, to go back to Prohibition, 19, 18, 1920, and then those warehouses were full of whiskey. The Whiskey withdraw records show they still had whiskey in them.

McKay: They had whiskey in them, and of course some of them were sold off. There’s some other tales about some of those distilleries. And some of them, the owners siphoned them off and filled the barrels with water. And sold the…You 10:00know this was a time of moonshining. And a lot of people made money. I say that we were depressed, but there were quite a lot of people made money at that time, during, after Prohibition, by simply disregarding the law and selling off the whiskey that they had. But I don’t believe by the ‘30s, if there were whiskey, of course some of the distilleries burned. I can remember, I remember when the Tom Moore distillery burned. Now when that was, I don’t know, but we could see it from Early Times, we could see the flames.

Interviewer: Far away.

McKay: That far away.

Interviewer: (?) McKay: Oh, no. No. I’m talking about way back. While we were still at Early Times, so I figure it was in the ‘20s.

Interviewer: You were saying some people made money dealing, through the whiskey and all then. What 11:00do you think the attitude then of the general public was toward this? It was illegal. But… McKay: Nobody listened to it.

Interviewer: There wasn’t any, no ostracism there?

McKay: Oh, heavens, no!

Unidentied: Did anybody ever ostracize in Bardstown, [laughter] for anything.

Interviewer: Well, you legally could get medicinal spirits, you could get whiskey from a prescription.

McKay: And of course there were some, now that’s what they did at Early Times at first. I know that they sold whiskey as medicine. I mean, it was a medicinal thing. And of course Mrs. Shauntee, I can remember it, Mrs. Shauntee was she still, she still owned the whiskey after he died. Some of it. And of course that was also a problem. Tried to get her to do what Dad thought they were paying her to do. And then in the meantime she got mixed up with some man that I think she sold off a lot of the whiskey 12:00and gave him the money. And then they went to, I guess they went up to Atlantic City to get married, and he went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never came back. So those are some stories I can tell you about– Interviewer: Yeah, wonderful.

McKay: She called my father from up there, and he had to go up and get her and bring her back to Bardstown.

Interviewer: This wasn’t a young lady, then. She… McKay: Oh, no. No. But she was, well she was, I thought Mr. Shawnee, I can see him just plain. I thought he was older than God. And I found out, we loved him dearly, but I found out he died at fifty-four. But he was the oldest man I ever knew. And so this was, he died in, I’m going to say 1921, maybe. So she was about that age. She was in her sixties, I’m sure. This man was much younger. Lord, I’ve forgotten his name. It’ll come to me..

Interviewer: You never had to deal with him.

McKay: I 13:00can remember him. I can remember being at the distillery when she was down there at the bott.., you know where the things were stored. And I can remember Dad sort of arguing with her, I think. And finally seeing that I was there, I was a great one for being kind of back in the corner and trying to get into everything. And he discovered me and sent me on my way, so I never did find out how all that happened. But he did discourage her, apparently. I can see him, too.

Interviewer: We’re trying to get a feel for not only how people reacted to Prohibition in terms of the whiskey, but also things like your social life. You mentioned that it was depressed here. Anything to do and no future kind of thing.

McKay: For a lot of people. But they (?) a lot, and we were all, you know, we served whiskey. I mean, 14:00Dad had, like I say, Dad had this whiskey in the basement in a vault. He had a vault like a walk-in, like a bank vault. And they came in the middle of the night, robbers came in the middle of the night and made him open it. And Mother had always been afraid. She was so afraid they were going to come sometime when she was there alone. And she didn’t know how to open it. But we always, and then after that supplier ran out, Dad got moonshine whiskey. He got bootleg whiskey. I never remember, and you it was a (?) thing. I never remember in my house that there wasn’t whiskey.

Interviewer: That’s part of the whole story that we’re looking for. Your personal reaction, as well as your family’s tales.

McKay: And I don’t know about the other people that they ran around with. I suppose there was always something available. I can’t imagine, you know, that we were the only household. But 15:00we were real popular, I can remember that. [laughter] I remember Sunday people came out from Louisville, or cousins and near cousins and connected cousins, that we had dinner for, seems to me, always, there was always for Sunday dinner, just gobs of people. And I don’t know whether all were invited. I’m sure they weren’t. And they lingered.

Interviewer: Well, do you remember anybody being arrested? Or any big hullabaloo over something going on, somebody getting caught stealing? Besides the robbers. Did they ever catch those robbers? I should have asked that.

McKay: Oh, yes, they did. They got some of the whiskey back. Which is another item. If it hadn’t been for Heavy Tone and Mr. Virgo and Chuck (?) and a few people here in Bardstown, they would never have caught them. It was down in Louisville, that was where they caught some of the men. But the police 16:00in Louisville were in cahoots with the robbers. And they, that’s something that you… Interviewer: That’s on our list here.

McKay: Pay off police. And I’m sure Dad got out of a lot of things with a bottle. You know, back in those days. But definitely they were, they had taken it to various, they took it to a place, and then they could get onto it. Investigators from here would get onto it. And then they’d get there, it was moved. And the police hadn’t let them know. They finally found, they finally got them all. One man was a Fairfield man. He was soft of the one that had cased the joint beforehand. And that was what was so awful. They knew exactly where to go. I mean, they turned on the light in the basement. They knew exactly where to go.

Interviewer: When you say the vault of whiskey, how much are we talking about? Are we talking about several cases? Or 17:00a hundred cases?

McKay: Oh, we’re talking about, I guess maybe 250 cases.

Interviewer: We are talking about a lot.

Unidentified: Someone had told me that you were allowed to, for your own personal use, keep– McKay: That was what the man said when he came to the house when Dad opened the door and the fella flashed a badge. He had been been arrested and had been back. And he flashed this badge, and he said, “We have permission to search your house.” And Dad said, “You’re lying,” and shut the door. But the door was half off, half glass, and we didn’t have anything to lock it. And the man had a gun. So he opened the door right away. But he knew immediately, because the agents, I mean, everybody knew he had the whiskey and he had a right to the whiskey. They weren’t– 18:00Interviewer: Was that early in Prohibition, or later on?

McKay: That was in April of ’26.

Interviewer: ’26.

McKay: And he still had quite a bit of that. Course we used it up before he went into the liquor business.

?: I’m going to have to leave. I’m really sorry. I’ve got to meet somebody at 12:30. And that’s exactly what we need is an idea, of course, you’re a very good subject in that you just go right on. We’re trying to figure out people who give us a one word answer, how we’re going to keep– McKay: Oh, you want me to stick to one word?

Unidentified: No, no, no, no, no. [laughter] Interviewer: That’s what we don’t want.

Inidentified: That’s what we don’t want.

McKay: Do you think what I was doing is kind of (?) [several talking] Of course you wouldn’t get one word out of me. But, you know, people (at home?). But I’m sure there were bootleggers that were arrested. And I also know that there were a lot of, I know some people who made a lot of money bootlegging. I mean, they got their start that way. Well, I can name them off.

Interviewer: But you think really it was an acceptable profession?

McKay: Oh, yeah! Yes! Well, my (?) I can remember back to the Spaldings 19:00over at Harristown, they made their money bootlegging. And were sort of indignant when they were arrested. I mean the whole, the feeling was that they had a right to do that if they wanted to.

Interviewer: That’s exactly what we want to know is things like those feelings. (?) Unidentified: I’ll talk to you later.

McKay: This was, maybe in Baptist areas they wouldn’t feel that way. In the area, (?), I’m sure of it. Of course (?) kind of mad that some of them get away with so much. [laughs] But others (?) But I don’t recall that bootlegging or and it was, you know, as long as it was good stuff, nobody been poisoned by it. And I can remember my dad saying how much better it was. It was a lot of people that drank wood alcohol. You know, killed themselves with stuff in those days. And I remember my father I can remember shaking his head and saying, “Look, you know this is terrible. Those people are so desperate that they’re 20:00into this stuff, instead of good whiskey.” Oh, shoot, I can remember white moonshine. White lightning, they called it.

Interviewer: I’ve told people , course I don’t remember much, but I would always make the comment that my feeling was that in Nelson County, the Depression didn’t hit people so much, because they’d already been through the depression.

McKay: Yeah. But I don’t remember, you know, I don’t remember, you know, any talk about gangs or people breaking windows. Or you know, that sort of thing, course like I said we had a couple of real tough cops here. But they were good. 21:00I think everybody liked Heavy Tongue and Mr. Burdock. I don’t know what Mr. Burdock’s name was. But you know, their just wasn’t a lot of nonsense. And (?) and everybody knew everybody. And I just remember that it was a very nice place to grow up. And you don’t have, of course, you didn’t have television. I guess I’m very narrow minded, but very prejudiced, but I think television was responsible for three-fourths of our ills today. I really do. The way they, could you read John Ed Pearce the other day in the Sunday paper? He must be about my age.He felt the same way. I just think it’s terrible. And it could be so good. There’s so many good things on that the kids don’t watch. 22:00Interviewer: Right. Yeah. It could be so much more… McKay: So, and of course, when Prohibition was repealed, there was great rejoicing around here. I don’t know whether Bellfield or not, but I’m sure that it was. That’s one of the big things that Roosevelt won on, one of the issues, I’m sure.

Interviewer: Course I wasn’t surprised about the repeal, but I was surprised in my reading about..

McKay: How many people were..

Interviewer: People were, that Kentucky was one of the first states to ratify it.

McKay: Well, yes. I was aware of that.

Interviewer: I guess it’s because we did grow up in a kind of a different atmosphere like here than what most of Kentucky was.

McKay: Don’t you think around in here that we are much more, we are much less, well, we’re more broad minded. I think we’re broad minded. We are less constricted. We are less 23:00restricted. And I tell you, I, in spite of, you know, some of the priests that have gotten crazy notions sometimes, I really believe the Catholic Church is responsible for all of that, the attitude of the Catholic Church. [laughs] I can remember Sister, some your relative, Sister Mary Burnard Spalding, Sister Mary Rose Spalding were up in St. Catherine’s. You know Sister Mary Burns was, I thought, not very old, I don’t know how old she was. But their sister was my aunt by marriage. Aunt Annie Tolliver was a George Tolliver, mother’s uncle. So I was from Bardstown and I knew the Spaldings and I was Aunt Annie’s niece and all that. So I was kind of a fair-haired child up there. And Mr. Tom used to come up always, always (?) Bible. And the sisters would have a little drink. Everybody would have a little drink. And 24:00then they’d call me in after they’d bring food up, I guess. Then I’d always come in and be entertained by, of course, in those days, you didn’t get back from school every weekend like used to. And then I was caught smoking on the grounds. Oh, my lord! Sister Mary Burnard, you would have thought I had committed a sacrilege. And she called me in and she said, “A girl that will smoke will curse. And a girl that will curse is no–” [pause] They just, we had three cars. Mother and Dad had a car, and we had gotten Mr. Shawnee’s car. I guess Newman drove that. He was about, of course, he was driving it to school when he was ten years old. They had disconnected the cars. They had taken something out of the cars, all the cars 25:00so it couldn’t be followed. So even when it crossed, they woke Newman up after they left. And he went across the field to a neighbor’s and got a car. Brought it back over to Dad. And then Dad took off. Well, the next morning we got up for breakfast and Dad wasn’t there. And I, that wasn’t unusual, I guess, because I suppose he did go off to work or did something early. I don’t remember worrying about Dad not being there. But I came out, we had one phone, and I came out into the hall and the phone, the wires are pulled out of the wall. The murderers have done that, the robbers had done that. And I can remember saying to Mother, “What happened to the phone?” And she said, “I’ve gotten in touch with the telephone people. They’re going to fix it.” She never did tell us what happened to it. And I don’t remember questioning her about it anymore. I mean, she, mother said things with such authority, you just accepted it. I didn’t even, I wasn’t real 26:00smart either I don’t think. [laughing] So anyway, as we were getting ready to get go to school, Mr. and Mrs. Stiles drove up. And she rushes in and she says, “Did they get your broach? Did they take your rings? What in the world–” And we’re standing there, John, Ben and I are standing there with our mouths open. And Mother said, Mother hadn’t said a word to us, and Mother said, “I haven’t told the children about it.” And if they hadn’t come and we’d gone on to school, we would have been the only people in Bethlehem that didn’t know what happened at our house. [laughing] I never, I said later, “How could you have done that to us?” And she said, “Well, you found out about it.” And I said, “Well, it wasn’t your fault we found out about it.” But everybody in school knew all about it. And they hadn’t, the man that guarded them had told Mother, he said, “Take your rings off.” And Dad had a ring, too. He said, “Take your rings off and up them away. I don’t want them, but some of the others might.” 27:00It was very interesting. [pause] Interviewer: We’re just talking about both of us. And she said she’s hungry, she didn’t have lunch. And I said I’ve got to go meet somebody. But we’re talking about, I was just planning to explain to her some of the McKay: But Grandfather would take a drink. I can remember, but I never saw him take a drink at home, at his home. Dad always had a supply. But when he’d come down home, he’d have his highball. But Grandmother, I don’t think ever, I don’t think she ever approved of . I think she was very much against it. I don’t recall that she’s– Interviewer: Well, that’s what… McKay: And I know his sisters were very much against it, because they just thought it was terrible. That he got back into the whiskey business and blamed my mother.

Interviewer: Well, see, this is one of the things that we’re interested in that most of us, that most us have grown up Catholic and you know and it accepted, and it was part of life. But yet there are many Baptists and other doniminations that were used to that. And yet, we’ve ever heard of them ever… 28:00McKay: Well, I didn’t realize how much, that they were very much opposed to Mother because, first of all, she was a Catholic. And she was responsible for Dad getting into the whiskey business or being in the whiskey business. And John married Julia Ramsey so they had great hopes that they could make a Presbyterian and an abolitionist I guess out of John. But that didn’t work. That’s just old ladies. You know, my grandparents age.

Interviewer: Well you know, we talk about things and we say we were fascinated, about again, we the town had to have just, not dry up, but it had to really have affected it , because all the tax base was gone.

McKay: Oh, yeah. [both talking] You know, there was (?) Moore. 29:00There was T.W. Samuels. There was Jim Beam, there was Jack Daniels. There were, when my grandfather was alive, he was a gauger, I guess. And there was a distillery out the Loretta Road out the, out the potter shop road. Now I don’t remember what the distillery… Interviewer: Was that the one that one of the Boones was into? I think that’s one of the Boones… McKay: My mother would sent out to take his lunch. This is before 1911. But Mother married in 1911. So she was a young girl. And my grandmother said take his lunch to him. And she said, “I don’t know how to get there.” And they said, “Well, you remember the old potter shop road , the old Springfield Road for you went around,” you know. And Babbling Brook was there, I’ve forgotten the old fellow that lived on it. But anyway, they said well, the minute you go across the street, the creek, you turn to your left. Well, Mother goes across the creek. 30:00And they meant, go on up until you come to a road. But she turns to her left and gets down the creek bottom. And goes as far as she can in a horse and buggy. And finally comes to the point where she can’t go any farther. The buggy can’t get through. And there was a man up, plowing. Up, up… And he came down. He said, “My God! How did you get here?” And my grandfather never did get his lunch. He had to hitch the horse and turn the buggy around. And I said, “Mother, you must have been awful dumb.” She said, “I did just what they told me to.” [End Side A. Begin Side B.] McKay: –they’d play, of course now they have all this machinery. But the girls had to put the paste on the labels. There was a group of girls that would paste on the labels. And then there were people that picked the labels up and put them on the bottles. And then there was another one down the line, and they smoothed them out see. And the caps, of course, caps were, 31:00the caps weren’t put on automatically, I don’t think. I mean, maybe they were fastened, the corks were fastened on that, but I can remember just was fascinated with the line that moved. But we have pictures, John, my brother, took pictures of Fairfield Distillery bottling. And Uncle J.B. is in them. He was in, well, he was foreman of the bottling room, I guess. And he was the one that emptied the whiskey into the thing that filled the bottles, you know. And Tom Medley saw them, and it was fascinating. I didn’t know much about it. He was, he was…We had this made into a tape, a VCR tape.

Interviewer: Oh, really?

McKay: Gigi did. Marie’s daughter did.

Interviewer: I’d love to see it! That would be– McKay: Oh, it goes back to Nancy Muir’s forth birthday and Newman, their little kids, Harry Samuels is in it, Bill 32:00(?) little kids in it. And then you can see them all the way up to the time, ’47, when John went to the hospital. You see him getting into a car to go to the doctor. And that’s when he was so sick. He doesn’t look so sick, but anyway, he was. But take, he took pictures of the cattle when they were slopping cattle out there. And he took pictures of our wedding is in it and it was real (?) But Tom was really fascinated. And knew all this stuff. Of course, he grew up around the distillery down in Owensboro. You know, even as a kid, I guess that’s– Interviewer: Did you ever work, did you ever actually work in the distillery?

McKay: Oh, no.

Interviewer: Or have any job at all– McKay: Oh, no. I never worked anywhere until I taught school. I never did any work. No. Miss Myrtle Allen, I can remember up in the office. I remember more about the office really. The people that worked downstairs, I guess, were the Tuckers and the Jameses. Mrs. James, I’m sure, or 33:00somebody. Some of the people all around there. I don’t… Interviewer: From the farms around?

McKay: From the farm people around there, I remember people came out from Bardstown. The people in the office or some they were Bardstown people. There was Miss Myrtle Allen was one, and– [End Session.]