Oral History Interview with John Stiles

[Begin Interview] HIBBS: Now it's moving. Now we're testing again to be sure it's playing, again. The following is an interview with Jack Stiles by Dixie Hibbs of the Kentucky Oral History Commission. The name of our project is the Prohibition and its effects on Nelson County. The interview was conducted outside of Bardstown, Kentucky, at, on Harrison Fork Road on July the thirty-first. All right. Would you like to give me your name and, and when you were born, Jack?

STILES: I, you want to call it Jack?

HIBBS: Or your full name. Whatever you want to call yourself.

STILES: Actually, Jack Stiles.

HIBBS: When were you born?

STILES: 1914. January twenty-second.

HIBBS: 1914. Was your family, what business was your family in during Prohibition?

STILES: During Prohibition? 1:00HIBBS: Uh, huh.

STILES: Well my father was more of a buying and selling farms, kind of an entrepreneur. He already had made his money selling the whiskey out of the distillery at Clear Springs, which was originally Jim Beam distillery. Then he went into different things. He bankrolled people in different things, like the Stiles, Guthrie, And-, outdoor, outdoor paint-, sign painting company out of Lexington. And my, my mother's brother furniture business in Maysville. And he bought farms.

HIBBS: Mm, hmm.

STILES: And he bought real estate in town. He bought the ( ) store, and the drugstore. And the original pool room, I don't 2:00know what's there now, and the jewelry store.

HIBBS: Well, Prohibition was the period from 1920 to 1933.

STILES: Yeah.

HIBBS: And you mentioned your father selling whiskey out of Clear Springs distillery. Did he own that distillery at the time?

STILES: No. Jim Beam owned the distillery.

HIBBS: Owned the distillery.

STILES: And Prohibition came in. And Mr. Beam thought the government was going to confiscate all of the whiskey in the warehouses. Well, my daddy didn't think so. So he borrowed ten thousand dollars at the bank, and bought the whiskey from Mr. Beam.

HIBBS: Mr. Beam, ok.

STILES: And a few months later, or maybe a year, I don't know exactly, but he sold it for four hundred and some thousand dollars to Gurn, Groves and Schwartz off out of Chicago who built the Bernine distillery in Louisville.

HIBBS: Huh, that sounds like… STILES: And he kept the property. He sold the whiskey, but he kept the land, which was later the Bardstown distillery after Prohibition was over. And he kept land. We owned the land. 3:00They just sold the whiskey. The warehousing just stayed there and decayed.

HIBBS: The, if you were born in 1914, then you were about seven years old or so then when Prohibition really went into effect. But do you remember hearing family talk about it, or hearing about any distilleries closing, or anything like that? When you we younger? Or just… STILES: No. I can just remember what my daddy told me, later on. I do remember some Prohibition because I, I remember the Prohibition officer, that used to catch him going out of Bardstown, Jim Wakefield. He was a Prohibition officer. And he would tell them that he would let the cars go through. Most of them went to Louisville. He would let them go through and they'd pay him so much money. But then he would stop them after that. I never will forget that. 4:00HIBBS: How did they, anybody try to retaliate against him for doing that? Or he just got away with it?

STILES: Well he never did operate any of them.

HIBBS: Oh.

STILES: He never drove anything. He just bankrolled it. Just like Johnny Lawrence, like Johnny Lawrence, he had his son, brother ( ) driving for him. And I think Ogden Stiles drove for Daddy a while. But practically everybody from New Haven, New Hope, were selling whiskey. So… HIBBS: Well, you said they're selling it, where were they getting, it to sell?

STILES: They were getting, they were getting it from moonshine stills.

HIBBS: Ah. Okay. So everybody knew--

STILES: Then they would sell it to people in Louisville who would then sell it over the counter to bars or liquor, or dance halls, or whatever used it. Like in Bardstown, the two big, the two big bootleggers in Bardstown were two black men named Charles Henry Hammond and Gene Smith. 5:00And when you'd go to dance in Bardstown where you wanted whiskey, you'd say to somebody, "Go down to Charles Henry's and get a pint."

HIBBS: Get a pint… STILES: And he ran a charge account for some people, Chicken Smith especially. He'd always go down and have a charge account. And he'd get a pint of whiskey. Cost around two dollars for about a pint. And Gene Smith was not, that was the only two bootleggers that sold it in town that I really knew about. But there were others, of course.

HIBBS: Did you ever hear people talk about whether the moonshine was acceptable? Or how, what was people's attitude about moonshine?

STILES: Moonshine in Bardstown was very accepted, then. Everybody would, everybody would have their own. Everybody would go to dances, bring their bottles, and sit it right on top of the table. Which you couldn't do hardly in Louisville, but you could in Bardstown. It was more or less practically legal, 6:00as far as they were concerned. Since they had so many distilleries, had so many distilleries, they just, nobody paid any attention to it. Nobody was ever, nobody was ever bothered for it. You could sit it right on the table in the sweet shop or ( ).

HIBBS: The situation you were mentioning about selling it in Louisville and so forth, was there contacts that Louisville people, or out of town people who would contact local people to have them run whiskey to them? Or any kind of an organization with that?

STILES: Well, I don't know it no, there was no organization. You'd know somebody or relatives of somebody even in Louisville. And he would sell it. And get his commission. I had one man, Gene Dawson, lived down in the west end of Louisville. And he got, ( ) and they would deliver the whiskey to him and they would store it 7:00in his barn in the back. And then he would deliver it to whoever was come after. That's the way they'd do it. And then they'd store it. In fact, my daddy stored some whiskey. I don't know whether you want to hear it or not, but he stored a lot of whiskey in Bert Crume's warehouse, barn, when he lived out the old Muir place. And he was a distributor for, I believe, Guilfoil (?). So he stored the whiskey up there for my daddy. And course he was going to get so much for doing it. But he sold the whiskey and kept the money.

HIBBS: Okay. That sounds like a hijack, huh?

STILES: They never got along.

HIBBS: No, I guess not.

STILES: That was little Harry ( ) granddad… HIBBS: Grandfather..

STILES: The one he got his money from, ( ).

HIBBS: Yeah, how many, what were the, who were the prominent people in Bardstown during Prohibition? I mean, who 8:00are the ones who had control or money or influence? You know I say prominence… STILES: I don't know about who had control in Prohibition. I don't think anybody had control of Prohibition. But my father, Louis Guthrie…trying to think, ones that had money, you mean?

HIBBS: Well, the people, any of the government officials, the county officials, the people that, that you went to toget things done kind of thing. You know… STILES: Well, they didn't have to go to anybody to get anything done. Nobody bothered them. Judge Will Fulton, he was on the circuit court or some appeals, he was a judge. Old man Fee-, Freeman Curruthers' daddy was the chief of police, chief, was a judge in Bardstown on the main street there by the firehouse. Henry Johns (?) was the chief of police. And then had a night cop 9:00named Floyd Vernon. That's the only two cops they had. And nobody bothered them. They didn't pay any attention to it. And nobody knew anything or when it was going out or how much was sold or, I don't even know. I just know that everybody in the town that was able, that had enough money, bootlegged. Anybody did it that had the money to buy the whiskey. But most of them were broke. After Prohibition, most everybody went broke.

HIBBS: Went broke. Well that was… STILES: Mr. Samuels went broke. And the Beams were broke.

HIBBS: Yeah, because they, they were stuck with all that whiskey in the warehouses, no way to get rid of it?

STILES: They had all that whiskey in the warehouses, and they thought the government was going to confiscate it, see? But the government didn't confiscate it. They allowed it to be sold so it could be put out for medicinal purposes.

HIBBS: Ah, ok.

STILES: And you had to have a prescription from a doctor to get it. You'd buy a pint. Usually you'd buy, most I ever saw was T.W. Samuels. T.W. Samuels prescription whiskey. And you'd go to a doctor, and for medicinal purpose you'd get it. Of course, if you 10:00knew an illegal doctor or one that didn't have too much scruples about him, you could get all the 'scriptions you want.

HIBBS: Yeah.

STILES: Like Joey Tharp knew a fellow back in Louisville, he could get all he wanted. But as far as any of the doctor in Bardstown, I don't know about any of those. Because I just, I just ran with Joey and he could get all he wanted from this Doctor Shawnee was his name. And I don't know where he was any kin to old man John Shawnee who was Joey's grandfather. Of course, Joey was adopted by them.

HIBBS: Yeah, Yeah. The, so sometimes the doctors were strict in giving prescriptions, sometimes they weren't, then. Like you said.

STILES: Very. Yeah. As far as I know. I imagine some people that had money could probably get some, you know, like anything else. As far as some ordinary person 11:00going in asking (?) he had to have proof from somebody that he, that he was using it for medicinal purposes. Then you'd get a pint and that's it.

HIBBS: Did the people who were wheeling and dealing or whatever--

STILES: And it sold for five dollars a pint. That, I remember.

HIBBS: Five dollars a pint, medicinal?

STILES: Prescription.

HIBBS: Prescription. Gosh, that was more expensive than moonshine.

STILES: Oh, yeah. But that, that was real whiskey made in a distillery.

HIBBS: Legal, legal whiskey.

STILES: Yeah. Good whiskey. Aged whiskey. The moonshine whiskey was anywhere from thirty days to a year. And they colored it.

HIBBS: I was going to ask that. Was it clear or was it colored?

STILES: It was all white when it was made, like all whiskey. But they would color it.

HIBBS: What did they use to color it with?

STILES: I don't know what they colored it with. They could put some charcoal in there, because that's what charcoal does in the legal. I think they put charcoal in. They'd put anything in it. In those days, they'd shove anything. 12:00I have, I have bought whiskey in Bloomfield that was almost purple one night. With Freeman's brother Bill.

HIBBS: Well, okay. Did anybody, did you know anybody that died or got sick from drinking some of this raw whiskey or anything like that? Did that ever happen?

STILES: I don't know if a lot of them did. Not that I know of, except my cousin Ogden, who drank heavily, die-, had a stroke. And everybody said it was from drinking moonshine whiskey. That, I wouldn't know whether he did or not. Nobody's ever proved it. But he got old, his whole left side got paralyzed. And he drank constantly and he stayed drunk. Of course, he quit later in life. He quit after he was paralyzed. But they used to say you'd get the jake leg, that's what they called it.

HIBBS: Jake leg, okay.

STILES: That's when you'd get paralyzed from drinking moonshine whiskey, if you got on some bad.

HIBBS: Yeah. You wouldn't know it was bad until after you drank it, right?

STILES: No, you wouldn't know it no. You wouldn't know anything about it. Because plenty of it was in, plenty of it happened 13:00in the United States in big cities. ( ) got it, but Bardstown being so small, it was kind of rare to have somebody have a stroke there from drinking. And they usually get pretty better moonshine whiskey in Bardstown than they did in these other, like Louisville and places like that.

HIBBS: Why do you think that was so?

STILES: Well, because they knew how, they knew where to get it.

HIBBS: Ok.

STILES: They knew who was storing it, they knew what kind of care they were taking of it. But people in Louisville or these big cities would just put anything in. They made gin in the bathtub.

HIBBS: Call that liquor, huh? Did, you mentioned about the law not bothering anybody. And, but I know we had cases where lots of people were taken to court for moonshining or bootlegging, different things.

STILES: Oh, yeah. That was a little later on. That was a little later on.

HIBBS: Okay. Okay.

STILES: In fact, there have been quite a few that wasn't paying attention-- They'd go for about a year. That's about the length of time they'd get. 14:00But they'd only go if they were, because it was their fourth time.

HIBBS: Oh, okay. Wasn't a first time thing.

STILES: No. The J.B. Mauser in New Haven, I think, would have been four or five times. He went at least four times to the penitinery for selling whiskey. He sold it out of his house. He was, that was J.B., Jr., not the old man. The old man, of course, I imagine bankrolled him. J.B.'s the one that lives in Elizabethtown now, ( ) company. Plenty of them, they's a lot of them went to the penitentiary. I mean, around New Holt, places like that. I didn't know any personally in Bardstown that went. There probably were some. But usually, they usually just put on probation. And if you were caught two or three times, they'd give you a year, a year and a day, or something like that. And you was out in five or six months. 15:00And they'd be right back to doing it again. They were most of the people now that made the whiskey, not the ones that sold it.

HIBBS: Not the sellers.

STILES: They were the ones that had the stills out in the country. And they would raid the stills and take in the men. But never that I know of anybody that sold the whiskey in their homes they ever bothered at all. I mean, it was just open, you'd jut go down there and knock on the door and get it and you'd bring it ( ) and you'd carry it right in the sweet shop gymnasium with it, and I say, they only had two policemen. They didn't, they could care less. Unless you got dead drunk, then they put you in jail. Or if you got raising a lot of cain.

HIBBS: Yeah. Do you think there were, were there many bankruptcies, you said something about them losing their money because their whiskey was tied up. But do you think there were many bankruptcies?

STILES: There were a lot of people, I don't know whether they took out bankruptcy or not. But a lot of people that didn't have any money. And when the Beams had none, I was told by good sources, my father and the, and the dru-, and the grocery man (?) That 16:00was Mr. Beam, Jim Beam. And he T.W. Samuels didn't have any money. And a lot of them had lost their money, and a lot of them, that was during Depression days. Start of the Depression, almost everybody was short of money. And… HIBBS: Well, the people who were working at the distilleries when they closed down, or during the thirteen years there, the ones that would normally have been distillers and, and warehouse workers and things, what did they do, you think?

STILES: Well now, some of the old time distillers went on and came back after Prohibition went out, and got jobs back at the distilleries. Like out at one behind Nazareth, the Clear Springs distillery, a man named Craven was a streetcar conductor after Prohibition went in, in Louisville. And my father got him when he sold the distillery to the Bulova watch company who bought it 17:00in New York. They bought the distillery. Just the distillery only. They didn't buy the land. Just the distillery. They wanted to make whiskey. And Daddy got this Mr. Craven to be the distiller. And that's the man that taught me how to make whiskey. 1934. The distillery opened in 1934. It was the first one in Nelson County to open.

HIBBS: Back. Did it open as Clear Spring? Or what did it open as?

STILES: It opened as the Bardstown distillery.

HIBBS: Bardstown distillery.

STILES: And I was, that's where I learned how to make yeast and make, make, be a distiller. And I went from there over to the old Shawhan (?) distillery. And my daddy owned that land, and sold it. We sold it to the Pendergrass outfit out of Kansas City.

HIBBS: Okay.

STILES: And he kept the rights to that and slopped cattle on that, and also on the Bardstown, that's 18:00where he made a lot of money. He had fifteen hundred head of cattle and got slop free. It was in the contract, because they wanted to get rid of the slop, because they had nothing to do with it. And in those days, they weren't drying slop, at least not in small distilleries.

HIBBS: Right.

STILES: And so he had to get rid of the slop. So he got it for nothing, and they'd pipe it to he would sell it by the barrel and feed his cattle. But they kept the whiskey, but he's still owned the land. And Mother sold it after he died, the property, and to Jack Seals the thing for forty thousand. And he turns right around and sells it to the city of Bardstown. He got a hundred and some thousand, the Bird, the Bird Company got a building out there. I never have seen it. I knew they bought it.

HIBBS: Ok. We've got wet and dry counties all over Kentucky. Of course, to the east of us, we've got Washington County that's dry, but we had Marion that was wet.

STILES: Yes. Yes.

HIBBS: Well, no, but that's (?) STILES: Springfield was wet at one time. Evidently, because (?) whiskey (?) in (?) County and I bought it from a man who had (two bars?) and he had the (?) liquor store and the one 19:00next door, Joe (Hearst?) had a liquor store. And this fellow (Camel?) from Springfield owned these two whiskey stores. And I bought the one next door to (?) And he had Springfield, he had some whiskey store. Then it went dry. I don't know whether it was ever voted back wet or not.

HIBBS: I know we were trying to figure out if Nelson County, since we were so much in the business of making whiskey, what were the other, the affect the other counties. Say Washington County didn't have a distillery, I think. Prohibition probably didn't affect them as badly as it did Nelson County. But I didn't know whether it was a market where you went over there and sold it.

STILES: Well, the market, I imagine, affected them. And in order to get their whiskey, of course, they would come to Bardstown and get it. Springfield or Bloomfield, 20:00they got to get. You could always go to Bloomfield and find a bootlegger, but he'd usually get (?) somebody had a still around Bloomfield. But over in (?) where they had most of it. (?) and New Hope.

HIBBS: Back in the (knob?) STILES: Back in the (knob?) In fact, that's where I got this bad cut on my hand, is going to one one time and this fellow tried to (?) and I was distiller at (Shawhan?), he asked me to come out to his still and see what was wrong with his mash, it wasn't fermenting. And I went out there with him, it was (?). (?) and on our way back I stopped at that tavern out of Bardstown which is run, I think now by, I can't think of the girl's name.

HIBBS: Maxine Graham?

STILES: Maxine Graham. She didn't have it at the time. A young fellow had it at the time.

HIBBS: You're on the New Haven Road, then.

STILES: On the New Haven Road, yeah. (?) 21:00He had it one time, I know that. And I got (?) and the soldiers were congregating out there. And I was having problems with my first wife, and she was there. And we got in an argument and someone put me out the door. One of the soldiers. And the guys turned around to look back at it, and one of the guys (?) my hand (?) New Haven. And old Dr. (?) but he didn't sew the (?) so I can't bend that joint there or that one right there. Oh, I had a big time. That was my own experience going to the still.

HIBBS: Went over and tried to see why it wasn't fermenting, okay. That's 22:00not something you can't diagnose over the phone? You've got to see what's going on, then, basically.

STILES: Huh?

HIBBS: You have to see what's going on when it's not fermenting.

STILES: Oh, yeah, yeah.

HIBBS: You can't just guess at it, huh?

STILES: You've got to see how much they're heating it and how far down they're cooling it. And how the (?) is working. The (?) is what makes all the (?) you're not going to have any in the mash.

HIBBS: Any of the distilleries, you mentioned T. W. Samuels as having medicinal whiskey. Were any of them allowed to produce whiskey? Or they just used the store of what they already had?

STILES: They just used it. I think, I'm almost sure, I know distilleries did not. They just used all the bulk whiskey they had in their warehouses, which they had (?), of course. And they sent it to Chicago or somewhere, and they'd bottle it. And these doctors would put it out as prescription.

HIBBS: You talked about taking a bottle 23:00with you every time you went to social events.

STILES: If you had the money.

HIBBS: If you had the money. Ah.

STILES: You didn't have the money, and (? chickens ?) you'd go back in the restroom and take a drink. You didn't take very many drinks when you're seventeen and eighteen.

HIBBS: When you're a young drinker, it doesn't take much.

STILES: No.

HIBBS: Let me ask you--

STILES: And you drank it straight in those days. We didn't fool with any, once in a while--

HIBBS: Any mixers?

STILES: No. No mixers. And when you bought it by the gallon, you put it over your shoulder and drink it out of the gallon like that. And sometimes you'd have a (?) if you did, you'd be five or six boys out on the road. You'd park on the side of the road, and everybody would take a sip out of the (?), there'd be no chaser.

HIBBS: What proof was this whiskey we're talking about? We're talking about drinking out of the gallon.

STILES: You hardly ever knew. You know it's a hundred, at least. It came right out of--

HIBBS: A barrel.

STILES: They never would cut it, they run it down like they do in 24:00(?) and make it whatever proof they want it. Legal whiskey (?) 102 (?) and put it in the warehouses. Of course when it comes out, it's 160. They have to cut it down (with steel wires?) Then you put it in the barrel I think somewhere around 102, 103, if I remember right. And you let it stay in those barrels until you (thaw?) it out. Then you had to cut it to 100. (?) Then it would be four years old before (?) but if it's (?) four years old, (?) HIBBS: Well, let's see. Anything else to talk about? You're talking about the people who didn't have any money. Did they borrow any money against 25:00the distilleries? Or did they go under any contract or anything like that, do you remember?

STILES: There were still cases of the Beam and Samuels (?) because he sold it.

HIBBS: Hmm. They sold it.

STILES: They sold it to my daddy, Clear Springs. Behind Nazareth, they sold it, Jim Beam sold that to him. So it was my daddy's whiskey. He was gambling on (?) and had the land. The land off the (?) rich man in Chicago who, as I say, built Bernheim Distillery in Louisville. They bought the whiskey. And then in the case of the other one, (?). The other (?) and he was the one they put in the penitentiary for income tax evasion because they couldn't get anything else on him. He ran (?) He ran the whole state of Kansas.

HIBBS: Was he--

STILES: (? Pendergrass?) HIBBS: He doesn't sound very Mafia sounding.

STILES: No, he wasn't Mafia. He was a big politician. And he ran the 26:00state about like (?) did in Kentucky, only not as big a state. I mean, Pendergrass ran on a big scale. He owned all the (country?) out this way. He built a highway. He (?) HIBBS: Oh, okay.

STILES: And when whiskey came back in, he's the one who got the wholesale whiskey houses. And that's why he bought that distillery and used the whiskey to ship to Kansas City. And then the Fitzpatrick that used to live in Bardstown ran these trucks, (?) trucks, to Kansas City. And took the whiskey to Kansas City and they put it in their (?) and sold it to different places. None of it hardly stayed in Bardstown.

HIBBS: In Bardstown.

STILES: No. Or any of it, as far as I know. And the story was, like (?) distiller Shawhan, it was fairly easy to get a case of whiskey that was over. 27:00And they'd have whiskey over at the end of the day, they wouldn't fill a barrel. (?) and they'd have it in half a case or something, and you could get it.

HIBBS: That's raw whiskey, really. I mean, it was unaged.

STILES: It was all the same whiskey that would ordinarily be put in the barrels, but there wasn't enough to put in, they'd fill the bottles if they were bottling it now. It had already been aged in the (?) room to be bottled, I mean in the bottling room. And they'd have some left in the vat that wouldn't fill out a case. So they'd just bottle it up and keep it. And I could go up there and get two or three bottles or a half a case or whatever. But it got tougher later on and the government stepped in, and they wouldn't (allow it?). In fact, they used to give workers on the weekends, when they got off, they'd give them a quart of whiskey, something like that, to take home. They even stopped that. The government.

HIBBS: Yeah. The government doesn't want you to sell it or give it away. Yeah. Do you think that the moral, 28:00you know, what effect do you think Prohibition and what people had to do during Prohibition had on the morals of people?

STILES: I don't think they were any worse than they are now. I mean, we did the same thing then as they do now, and they do it more now.

HIBBS: Well, you said something about being acceptable, moonshiners being acceptable, and moonshining being acceptable. I didn't know whether--

STILES: Moonshining, I don't say the stills were acceptable. The stills were raided by government men. Marshals. But they never had enough marshals to raid them all. They would raid two or three, maybe, in New Haven (?). And they'd (?) the still up and then they'd move on. And they'd rebuild somewhere else. They'd locate in other places. You didn't have enough manpower to control all of these things. 29:00But as far as the people that were selling it in the towns, I never knew of anybody like John Henry or Gene Smith that was ever sent to penitentiary for selling. (?) I remember that. And as far as (?) drink it, or had it in their possession at a dance or something, nobody bothered them. It was unheard of unless you got out of line, got in fights or got drunk. It was just a normal thing in Bardstown to drink at the dances. Just like they do now if they go, it's legal but the same thing. Nobody thought anything about it. In fact some, like my father, he had some whiskey from the distillery that was legal. (?) And he always told me, "If you're going to have to drink, I'll give you half a pint." He always had a flask. "I'll give you half a pint so you don't drink that rotgut 30:00and get paralyzed." Of course, I never would do that. I wouldn't say, "Give me a half pint, I'm going to a dance." I'd go out and buy, if I had the money, but a pint of moonshine. If I didn't, I'd bum a drink off someone.

HIBBS: Well, let's see. What can we cover.

STILES: As far as anybody worrying about it, nobody worried about it. (?) It was just like it was legal, really. We never did think much of Prohibition. We may have had some (?) There were some people that didn't like it, but as a rule it was just as normal as legal whiskey. [End Side A. Begin Side B.] HIBBS: July 31, 1988. We have just discussed various aspects about Prohibition. Trying to see what other odds and ends left over here. 31:00We were talking about before the distilleries were closed in 1920, your father basically then was in the land business, or the farming speculator kind of thing. More than distilling.

STILES: He wasn't in the distilling business at all.

HIBBS: Until.

STILES: Until he bought the distillery at Jim Beam.

HIBBS: He bought Jim Beam. Right. Right.

STILES: He was what you call a horse trader, more or less. I mean, he saw something to buy and resell for a profit, he would.

HIBBS: So this was an opportunity, then, Prohibition gave him to sell that.

STILES: He was more or less a gambler on things. I mean, that's where he lost a lot of money. He gambled on people. (?) the money and never looked into it.

HIBBS: Right.

STILES: So he gambled that the government wasn't going to confiscate the money. I don't know that he knew that it was going to sell at such a high price or how it was going to be done, but he borrowed the ten thousand dollars and he went in with Lambert Willett. Lambert just owned a very small percentage, around 10 percent. 32:00And another fellow that was a bookkeeper named Garfield Barnes.

HIBBS: Yes, I remember him.

STILES: Those were the three. But Daddy put up, I guess, probably 90 percent. And when he sold the whiskey to (? and Schwartkopf?). And of course when whiskey came back in, Mr. Willett went into that distillery out there (?) HIBBS: Kept the light on and everything.

STILES: My daddy just stayed (?) Of course he died in '41. But he never was in the whiskey business after he sold his whiskey. Then after Prohibition, he was in the cattle business and real estate in town and farms. I think at one time he had about seven or eight farms. Mother sold them after he died and put her money in stock because she didn't know anything about farming, didn't want to fool with it.

HIBBS: 33:00Different people have talked about the situation here in Bardstown, Nelson County. And they talk about some of the distilleries burning, or the warehouses burning. Did you ever hear any stories about that?

STILES: Yeah, they burnt, the only distillery I know they burnt was the (Wolford?) distillery.

HIBBS: It was out on the Boston Road.

STILES: It was out on the Boston Road. And from what I hear, that was the only time my daddy ever got drunk in his life. They all went down, of course, and said the whiskey was running down the side of the road in the ditch and it was on fire. And I think he drank some. And everybody in town was there. That was the only distillery I ever knew of that was burnt. Who burned it, or if it was burnt intentionally, that I never knew. Some people probably knew. I never did. Of course I was pretty young then. 34:00But I heard them tell about the (?) distillery burning. And my daddy told me it was the only time he ever got drunk. And that was the only time I ever saw him drunk.

HIBBS: Well--

STILES: But I imagine it was probably someone trying to steal, a lot of the warehouses in those days were broken into. People stealing whiskey out of them. Now whether the owner stole the whiskey, their own whiskey or not, I don't know. Some say that the owners stole their own whiskey. I don't know. My daddy never told me he did that. But some people did break into warehouses, warehouses were broken into quite a lot by people other than the owners, trying to steal the whiskey. And the government finally put padlocks on the door with those seals they had. But 35:00I don't know how much of that was done. I do know that one fire, that's the only fire I know that burned up, (Wolford?), but there may have been others. I know the Bardstown never burnt, as far as I know. And the one up at (Shawhan?), which was called the Old (Lancashire ?) distillery was what it was called, the (Lancashire?). It was never burned, as far as I know. May have been broken into.

HIBBS: You know nowadays we see drug running and all this kind of thing. The people that had the fast cars that was doing the bootlegging, I mean, could you tell a bootlegger by the type of car they were driving, or did people just know that? Did it make any difference?

STILES: Well, like a Prohibition officer, he would know who in town had the money and who was operating or who was sending people through. Like Jim (Whitefield?) was the one located in Bardstown. He's been to our house many times. And he would 36:00tell you he let your cars go through if you gave him so much money. And then you turn right around and you get halfway there and you stopped again. And what did you do? You couldn't report it.

HIBBS: Yeah. Yeah.

STILES: And then sometimes he'd let it go through. He was just kind of what you'd call a crooked marshal is what he really was. Prohibition officer.

HIBBS: I know your father, F.L. Guthrie was partners, or friends--

STILES: Great friend.

HIBBS: Great friend.

STILES: Great friends. I used to go out there and stay the whole summer with them. (?) when Louis was working. Old man John (Shoney?), who was (?) HIBBS: Yeah.

STILES: I used to go out there and stay with the family always. They always went together, to the races or anywhere. They were just like brothers, practically, with the Guthries. In fact the night they got robbed 37:00out there, with the robbers, my daddy and mother just left. They (?) and they had just left the (Early Times?) and were on their way home when these six or seven robbers out of Louisville tied Mr. and Mrs. Guthrie up. And looking for whiskey in their basement. And they brought one of them to Daddy's house. I'll never forget, they brought this one boy, nice looking man, the marshals brought him in from Louisville and they told him to stop by my daddy's house. And he was in, I'll never forget, he was in chains. He was sitting there talking to him, bring him back to put him in jail in Bardstown for the trial. And they had (?) (my brother's named Slater?), and they never caught him. I think they caught them all. But I don't think they got anything from the Guthries, whether they got any whiskey or not.

HIBBS: (?) STILES: That's what they were out after. And they tied them up, I know that. 38:00HIBBS: Well I just wondered how much, you know, we talked a little bit about whether anybody from out of town came in and caused any problems like that. And I guess that would be an example. That would be the only thing.

STILES: No, that's near as there was.

HIBBS: Yeah. Like that.

STILES: He thought there was going to, he thought (?) I guess they figured we had some whiskey in the cellar. Which some probably kept in their cellar (?) I know my daddy had a vault in his (?) I never knew what was in it. He never showed it to us. Nobody knew what was in it. Even my mother never did. And whether there was anything in it or not, but after he died there wasn't anything in there. So we always thought, well, it's probably some whiskey from the distillery stored in it. But (?) saw.

HIBBS: What about the, something went through my mind when you were talking there-- ah, shoot. Nancy McKay's on the tape about that robbery, too. She 39:00had some information on it. I forgot now what I was going to ask.

STILES: (?) eleven or so at night. Mother and them had just left from playing bridge, and they hadn't even probably gotten home. They were out there waiting for them to leave. They had a gate there in the rock wall. And I guess were waiting outside the rock wall. And they went in and robbed them. I don't know what they got or anything. But I know they were pretty tough customers, the (Slaters?) were, anyhow. There was one Vernon, they called him Vernon, that got into the house. He was a real nice talking, nice looking man. But they all got caught and sent to the penitentiary. But I think the Slaters had been in (?) most of them are Louisville residents. (?) out of state. Maybe that Vern was, but I know that Slaters are Louisville people.

HIBBS: Well, I think we've 40:00covered most everything there. We'll stop now, and if you think of something a little later, we'll put it on here.

STILES: All right. [End Interview.]