Oral History Interview with Elizabeth Walls

[Begin Interview] Hibbs: Interview by Dixie Hibbs for the Kentucky Oral History Commission, Prohibition and its effects on Nelson County. The interview was conducted in Bardstown, Nelson County, on Templin Avenue, on September the twenty-sixth, 1988. Liz, would you like to tell me something about yourself?

Walls: I was born in Bardstown, July 6, 1916. I've lived here all my life. My parents are deceased. They were Alfred Smith Watson and Teresa (Sissel?) Watson. My mother was a native of Larue County. My father was born in Nelson County and spent his entire life here. As a young man, he became an apprentice printer at the Kentucky Standard, or published by the Standard Publishing Company, which was an organization formed about 1900. 1:00As time went on, he came into the ownership. And by mid 1920s, was the sole owner of the business.

Hibbs: Then he did operate the local newspaper, then, during the Prohibition period.

Walls: Yes. He was the publisher of the Kentucky Standard during the Prohibition era.

Hibbs: Do you remember maybe the first time that you heard any reference to the term Prohibition? Or when did you realize that Prohibition was a situation going on in Nelson County? If you were born in '16, you weren't very old in 1920. But it would go on for thirteen years.

Walls: In 1920, I wouldn't have been but four years old. And I was in my teens when I remember, well, I remember that 2:00making home brew was sort of a pastime for many people. And persons didn't think anything about discussing it. And of course that was an illegal operation, any type of alcohol they were producing in homes for their own consumption. Now I assume there were, sure there were people who sold it. But in my own home, my dad liked his bottle of beer and so forth, and so they had this big, I think it was a maybe a ten or twenty gallon crock. And I don't remember anything about anybody cooking anything, but my mother must have brewed it up on an old coal range she had in the kitchen, one of those cast iron ranges. And I remember as a child, my daddy in the evenings, when it was time to bottle it, he had his own capper. And I imagine many other people did, too. There were bottles and I don't know, I guess it had to age some. 3:00It wouldn't age much in bottles, though, would it?

Hibbs: Shouldn't have. But then again, the carbonation, maybe you had to put it in the bottle to keep the carbonation from (?) gas aspect of it.

Walls: I remember, I'll go back and tell you a little bit more about myself. I told you I lived here all my life and graduated from Bethlehem Academy, as it was called at that time. Two years to National Junior College. And I planned to teach. I'm qualified to do that. But wasn't able to get a job the first year. So (?) out of school, so then in the middle of the winter, Wallace Brown, who had been county judge and he was actually was the first editor of the Kentucky Standard back in 1900, was elected to the legislature. And we were only praying, the Standard was only about twelve pages a week, it was a very small publication. So my dad asked me, he said, "Go run and find someone 4:00to do some of Judge Brown's work while he's gone at the legislature. Would you like to try it?" Well, it so happened that my best subject in school was English, and I'd always liked to write. So I just started working there, and I liked it very much. So then the next year I was offered a teaching job over in (Booneville?) by a man named (Creston Shelton?), but I decided I wouldn't take it. I liked what I'd been doing, and I would just continue there. So after two or three years, if I was going to stay in newspaper work, I needed to get more education in that field. So I started going to university (a little?) at night. And I went to night school quite some time. And then later, National College, National Junior College, became a four year college. So I lacked just a little bit of having enough credits for a college degree and (?) cooperation. I went back and went to school on the Saturdays and took one four hour course in science through the week, and got a college degree. 5:00I had done a lot of work in music, so my degree is in English and music. And I've always been a person that likes to study. And I kept saying I was going to continue to take more courses. But actually, I've altered some things (?) to do anything else for credit, for college credit. But I found out that, in fact I associated recently with a young man who tells me he wants to improve his writing, I assume for a job of his. And I'm going to ask him when I see him if he ever thought about just going to U of L and taking some writing courses. It's right at your doorstep. Or maybe over at (?) community college. That's not anything to do with this. But one thing I did want to tell you that was always interesting to me, one of my father's good friends was a man named John Marshall. He was vice president of the Louisville Paper Company. And we bought paper from them. And not only business friends, but a social friend. And he would call out here, as I remember, 6:00I remember just going to Standard offices as a kid maybe to get a nickel or dime from (?) You'd be getting a call from this John Marshall saying, (?) get me two dozen eggs. And that was his symbol for--

Hibbs: His code.

Walls: His code for getting a certain quantity of moonshine.

Hibbs: Two dozen eggs. (I like that?) Walls: Or however many dozen he wanted, that was their code. When he got it, my dad would let him know. Whenever he had it ready, he'd come get it. But that and making home brew, in our home, for home consumption, were really the only two things that I ever heard my father say anything about. But how I ever, he did used to talk about saloons that we had had, and how many families, a number of families, 7:00whose livelihood came from working and operating and owning saloons. They had moved away, one family who was named Conley. And we always, they toasted those people that came back and visited them. My mother and dad (?) down in Louisville. But it took them away, it took numbers of families away from here. Because when the saloons closed, there was no occupation.

Hibbs: Same way with the distilleries, you think, too? Do you think some of the distillery people--

Walls: Oh, I'm sure so. Mr. Joe Beam, who was a master distiller, made whiskey in Canada for a while. He just left his family here, went up there and lived, came home maybe every six months or so. (?) there were numbers of people whose livelihood was just gone. And Bardstown was about fifteen hundred people, I think. And I had this (?) saying, something referred to that Bardstown being dead so long. (?) 8:00everything so dead, he said when the spirits went out, it just changed the whole character of the place.

Hibbs: There wasn't a lot of traffic in and out.

Walls: Of course the illegal part was going on. And there were certain people who were pocketing a lot of money. There were one or two persons that we told about. One of them was (Leon Canns?) who, I think, made periodic trips to Louisville, supposedly going to, I guess going to (?). I think he was supposed to be going to (?). He was taking a load of whiskey every time he went. There are various people, but many of them were very secretive about their money, and I don't blame them. But as far as something that local economy generation, Prohibition (?) Hibbs: Well then do you feel like the atmosphere of acceptance of the illegal whiskey (?) Do you think people criticized these people who were running whiskey, or they just ignored them? 9:00Did you get a feeling about--

Walls: Well, I really wasn't old enough to get very much of that. I don't think people felt anything about it, really. From what I've heard, what my memory, my dad talking about. People didn't look down on those people. It was just one of those things they had to put up with.

Hibbs: One of the ways they survived. Well did they take, you think that money that they would have made, they had to, they were either buying something, or maybe they hid their money. But still, if they bought clothes, or automobiles or food and things, that would have helped the economy some.

Walls: I guess it did. And I imagine there was a tremendous amount of money (flowing?) cash. There were plenty of people who didn't--

Hibbs: So the banks really didn't (?) Walls: There was plenty of money that didn't get into banks. They would be fearful that it would show up in their bank account. It would be disposed of, some illegal operation going on.

Hibbs: Do you think, well, of course you say you don't know how much investigating people did, the revenue people did, trying to find out 10:00who had sums of money and who didn't.

Walls: I just don't know. They called them revenuers, you know. But you know, I'm sure you've got that story on there about this warehouse, I mean, (?) that was sold out of the warehouses. You've heard that, haven't you? Sneaked out that whiskey and filled those barrels.

Hibbs: Filled them with water?

Walls: With water. And then they stopped (?) won't burn because there wasn't any whiskey left.

Hibbs: The water kept putting the fire out, right?

Walls: Yes. I remember one time, too, it seems that Daddy, what we called (Barton?), the old time (?) I don't remember how, what caused the whiskey to be on the river, but it was. It was just burning, you could see those flames--

Hibbs: On the river.

Walls: Uh huh.

Hibbs: Do you think that when the barrels broke, they ran down a stream, or drained into the river?

Walls: Probably so. Mm hmm.

Hibbs: One of the stories we were hearing was Jack Muir was talking about 11:00all of the uproar that they could see that the distillery was on fire, and they ran down there. And he said that one of the first things was this call, "Watch out for the cows!" And he said all the cattle were stampeding up the road because of the fear of the fire. And they were all cattle down there that had been in the holding pens, you know, be fed (?). And that was something you just didn't get in your mind, that we were going to have a cattle stampede in what we now call the middle of Bardstown, you know?

Walls: Yeah.

Hibbs: Most of the transfer of liquor, then, actually was out of the county toward Louisville? Or just in any direction?

Walls: No, I think it was mostly toward Louisville.

Hibbs: Toward Louisville.

Walls: And possibly moved on from there, maybe to Chicago, or some of these other places.

Hibbs: I know you have connections in the southern part of the county through your mother's family. And that part of the county has 12:00always been very independent, the families and all. And we still talk about moonshining and so forth down there. Did you ever get a feeling about that attitude of independence, or anything like that, come through any of your family conversations?

Walls: No. I'll tell you the person I was talking to (?) was (Jackie Stiles?). He was a big operator, I understand, and I think controlled a little of everything. (Voting?) and just about everything. And I'm sure, I feel reasonably certain, that he was a big operator.

Hibbs: Over there. Mm hmm.

Walls: In liquor. In illegal liquor.

Hibbs: (?) contact.

Walls: Yeah, I think he possibly was.

Hibbs: The contact. I understand, of course I wasn't here, that they had warning that Prohibition was going to go into effect. It looks like to me, if I were a distiller, I would have been out there selling everything I could sell as quickly as I could, to people. If you had two years, or at least a year before it went into effect, wouldn't you have been selling all of your stock as much as you could, 13:00to try to get rid of it?

Walls: Well, it looks like it.

Hibbs: I don't know. It doesn't appear, the whiskey records we have don't show that they are bringing those stocks down very quickly. Didn't look like they were shipping out a lot. So I don't know whether that--

Walls: You know, I don't know. Do you reckon, did they use distillery slop to feed cattle?

Hibbs: Yes, they did.

Walls: Back there, later on, when they came back.

Hibbs: They used it, they were using it to feed their own cattle operation. They weren't selling it as much to the public as they were having the farms that always surrounded the distillery, they would have feeder cattle. And even back in 1920, which I was very surprised, not locally, but in Louisville, they had the cattle pens and the hog pens. They fed both hogs and cattle. Of course, it was very high in protein and very good feed.

Walls: This book I was telling you about, it's called Archie.

Hibbs: Okay.

Walls: And it's a little pamphlet type book. And it sold for five dollars and the person who wrote it, she had been a, well, she's a woman associate of this person. 14:00I don't know if there was ever any romance there. But I'm trying to think what Archie's last name was.

Hibbs: It's not (Falling?), I sit?

Walls: Archie (Spalling?). I said Jesse Stiles over there. It's Jesse (Spaulding?) Hibbs: Jesse (Spalling?) Walls: Jesse (Spaulding?). Well, Archie was his brother. And he had all kinds of, if you get hold of that little book, it shows how much of his, how often he tore up the cars of revenuers. He'd just run a car until those tires just burn up. Then the revenuers would be right after him. Next thing you'd know, he'd have a different car.

Hibbs: Do you think he got those cars out of town? Do you think that helped our economy any?

Walls: Well, I don't know.

Hibbs: I don't know, either.

Walls: I don't know. But there were certain people that the revenue officers, Prohibition officers, realized are (?) these people knew that they were right after them, but they tried to escape them and I think most times, did.

Hibbs: They knew all the back roads and where they were. Considering they didn't have radios and things like that, like we take for granted now, it's amazing how much they got away and ran around.

Walls: Well, see, I think one 15:00thing is the sympathies were anti-government. There wasn't anybody, well, you might find a few ministers or preachers who abhorred the fact that manufacturing liquor and drinking it. But for the most part, the sympathies were all anti-government. Don't you think they were?

Hibbs: Mm hmm. It appears from everything we're finding out that it was irritating that they had to go along with this, because nobody agreed with it.

Walls: And I don't guess anybody ever told on anything else.

Hibbs: I don't know. I wondered if there was every any, what they call turning state's evidence. In other words, if you got caught, would you get a lighter sentence if you turned in somebody else. I've never heard--

Walls: Never heard anything about any of that.

Hibbs: --on that either. In reading the old newspapers, of course they talk about people getting stopped and caught and how much whiskey confiscated and all this. But it appears there was a lot more 16:00of it done than actually appears in the newspaper. I mean, somebody would be picked up, maybe taken to court and maybe get off with a fine or something. But it usually wasn't over a lot of whiskey. It was minimal.

Walls: Well, I doubt very seriously those, I can remember when I worked, going to the courthouse to look at those records. Those records are nothing like they are today. I mean, it was hard to get that, to read about those records. They just drop it down to (?) I imagine plenty of things never got on those books. Don't you?

Hibbs: Yeah. I wouldn't be a bit surprised. The same thing with, I don't know who was mayor then. I should have looked that up before I started this.

Walls: In Bardstown?

Hibbs: Was it Cisco? Was he the mayor?

Walls: Cisco was mayor thirty years.

Hibbs: Thirty years. So then he would have been mayor then.

Walls: Yes, he was. And he would succeed, I think, (Bill Somerstead?), or T.W., or (Leslie?) Samuels.

Hibbs: Okay. That sounds right. We were discussing that earlier, and I couldn't come up with, I knew that he had 17:00been mayor a long time.

Walls: I think he was the first mayor. Before that, they'd gone by Board of Trustees.

Hibbs: Right. He was mayor, yes, '96--

Walls: And he may have been chairman of the Board of Trustees.

Hibbs: 1896 or something.

Walls: (?) may have been chairman. But actually, the mayor, I think Mr. John W. Cisco was first mayor.

Hibbs: Well then, of course he had nothing to do with the whiskey business. But it, I'm sure, had a lot of effect on his community. But you know, the other, do you think there's any idea about, was the Stephen Foster, excuse me, My Old Kentucky Home here? 1922 it was purchased. It opened up to the public in '23. '23 to '33, about ten years. We did have tourism was really starting here. And people were stopping on their way south and north. And the idea that you did have this traffic through here. Of course, people could get drinks if they needed to or wanted to. Do you think that that tourist traffic helped save 18:00us those (?) considering we weren't able to--

Walls: Well, it made much sense. You see, the old (town?) tavern, of course, it had various names. It was called, my father said he remembered it as the Newman House when he was a boy.

Hibbs: Newman House. Right.

Walls: But see, it was a stagecoach stop way back.

Hibbs: Mm hmm. '35.

Walls: It had always hosted visitors. So that, in other words, our tourism sort of picked up there.

Hibbs: I think that the focus of My Old Kentucky Home really started the move.

Walls: It did.

Hibbs: But St. Joseph Cathedral had been bringing people.

Walls: Yes.

Hibbs: And yes, we always had travelers. I usually say our earliest travel writer was 1788, the person who came through here and wrote about his trips. The earliest trip account I have is 1788.

Walls: Who wrote that?

Hibbs: Oh, you would ask me.

Walls: I'm sorry.

Hibbs: He was a noble, he was a Frenchman who came through, and I can't remember.

Walls: Oh, yes.

Hibbs: But it wasn't --

Walls: Part of (?) entourage?

Hibbs: No, it was before that. 19:00It was before that. But (?) came in '97. But this one, it's somebody's travels. And I can't remember right now. But he does talk about what he found. And he even mentions the whiskey in this, the Kentucky corn spirits or something like that, he refers to that. But we were a spot that many people stopped. I think the distance of travel between us and Louisville or Lexington or the next little town made a big difference.

Walls: Our (?) was here, too.

Hibbs: Right.

Walls: This is (primarily town?) and you know the story about (?) find out over here they made more and (?) Hibbs: (Ben Horne?) Walls: (Ben Horne?) came out and (was over here?) Hibbs: That's right.

Walls: So it's one thing, (?) is always heavily, we're right in the (?) I guess you'd say. As a cultural 20:00place. And we have always had good schools. See, we have National Academy, and we have St. Joseph College. And we're not too far from St. Catherine College. And there was the (Louisville?) Academy. And then our public school system, see, started in 1910. And we've always had good schools. I forgot, the Baptist Union.

Hibbs: Right. And the Male and Female Academy.

Walls: Yes. The Male and Female Academy. I mean, we had Protestant and Catholic schools. And I guess the person, must have been the persons who were in here earlier, must have been persons of means, or come from good educational backgrounds themselves, or we never would have had (that?). Don't you feel that way?

Hibbs: There had to be--

Walls: They had to have some incentive or desire--

Hibbs: The desire. The desire.

Walls: --for education.

Hibbs: And I think that if we wanted to sit down and analyze, there's a lot of plusses we have here that people do come and stay. We're really not a place where a lot of people come and stay a short time and leave. It seems like if you sit down and talk to groups of people that are retired here, but I found a place I liked and we stayed 21:00 somewhere.

Walls: I think we're finding a good bit of that today.

Hibbs: Yeah, I think so, too.

Walls: Persons retiring. Like Mr. (Hussy?), some of these people, they like it here and they just stay. And of course, not too long after (?) came in here, for some reason I was out there with some visitors. And one of the administrators or executives out there just said, "You people don't realize this, but you've got the best of the two worlds here." He said, "You're within just a day's, or an hour's drive of Lexington and Louisville, where you have plenty of opportunities for educational, cultural advantages and this type of thing. And yet you have a small town atmosphere."

Hibbs: Yes. We have the medical and cultural advantages of the bigger communities close by. And yet we have the friendliness and the smallness of a small town. We don't have to deal with a lot of the pollution and a lot of the crime.

Walls: That's right. And we don't have the metropolitan atmosphere.

Hibbs: Right. Right. 22:00You walk down the street. Let me go back a little to Prohibition. We mentioned lawyers a little bit. Did you ever know anyone, any of the lawyers at the time that were kind of the ones you called if you were a rumrunner and you got caught, who did you call to come to court? Went to the federal court in Louisville?

Walls: I don't know anything about that.

Hibbs: Didn't know if you knew anyone who made most of their money on that. I do know there were lots of fines, and I know some people went to prison. There's no question they went to penitentiary for moonshining, mostly. Some of it was rumrunning, but most of it was actually making whiskey.

Walls: Making whiskey.

Hibbs: Making whiskey. There were different degrees of fines and penalties for the different things. There was some conversation I picked up at one time over someone going to prison, taking the fall, so to speak, for someone else. And while the second man was in prison, the first man supported the man's wife and children and 23:00paid the tuition to go to school and all. Now nobody knows, I hear the story, but I don't hear anybody else that's heard that same thing. So I don't know how much truth is in that. Prohibition was over in '33. We were just beginning, we were in the Depression years. So what would have happened here if Prohibition hadn't have come to a halt? I mean, the distilleries that started up, surely helped our Depression economy.

Walls: Oh, yes. I think many businesses were going under. My father said that if it had been just a little bit longer, we would have been, the Standard Publishing Company, the Kentucky Standard, would have folded. Because, well, there wasn't any business here to support anything.

Hibbs: No advertising and no printing.

Walls: I'm sure that (?) and so forth were minimal. There just wasn't any, I mean, the population 24:00was down to practically nothing (?) the fact that there wasn't any way to earn a living. And I heard him say after I started working, I started work there in 1936, that he owed the paper company quite a sum. And I remember I used to, for two or three years, (?) and we were paying them a little bit at a time each month. People knew that your heart was there, because you weren't expecting to, you (?) just do not have it.

Hibbs: Right.

Walls: And my father said many times that if it hadn't been that Prohibition was to appear when it was, you not only lost our business, but many other people lost theirs. It just about break the country. One of the reasons I think FDR realized this. And as I recall, wasn't that one of the first things that happened after he became president was to repeal Prohibition.

Hibbs: December of '33. They 25:00call it the Great Experiment.

Walls: You mean the Prohibition?

Hibbs: Yes. That's what they refer to as the Great Experiment, the fact that they restricted your alcoholic beverage manufacturing and consumption. But it didn't work. And it didn't work in the sense that people didn't quit drinking. They just bought it from people who had not paid government tax on it.

Walls: Yes, that's right. All it did, as someone said, (?) well, Father (Woodard?), who's our pastor here at St. Joseph for twenty-five years or more, used to say what it did is put whiskey in and put alcohol into the homes. Where it had not, it was a social change. Because before that, if a man was in town, say he was a farmer and he came in town and he wanted a drink, he went to the saloon and bought a drink and maybe that was the end of it.

Hibbs: Bought one or two.

Walls: And that was the end of it. Where it brought, it changed, it was a real social revolution because it put liquor into the home. And I think there was the forerunner of cocktail parties and all that, you see. They didn't used to have liquor served like we have it today. 26:00Hibbs: So that it not only didn't work, it almost backfired.

Walls: That's right.

Hibbs: In that it really perpetuated or expanded the drinking that way.

Walls: That's right. It just changed the whole atmosphere of people used it. And then, of course, some of the drugstores, I think, had license to sell whiskey or alcohol for medicinal purposes. And I imagine if you could get on that list, you were doing all right. I'll tell you another thing that I remember, we had this old (car?) fellow. Black man who worked at the Standard for fifty years. And I remember he'd get on these drinking sprees. Wouldn't show up for four or five days. And I remember my father referred to him frequently as being on the inebriate list. And the (corps?) had this list of these persons who I guess they were forerunners of what we would call today an alcoholic. A guy who was just going to be drinking all the time. And he gets on this inebriate list. Now what kind of 27:00preference he got in court, I don't know. Did anybody else tell you about that? The inebriate list?

Hibbs: Well, it seems like I saw a reference to it on the police court, on the city police court records. There's a list about public inebriation. And I think the idea if you were found to be drinking quite often, they'd put you on the list then. If they found you out, they pretty much just took you home or brought you on in. Didn't wait to see if you were going to straighten up, because you probably wouldn't. You were recognized as having this weakness. Maybe that's the way to put it.

Walls: And my father also told me this interesting little thing. About this (?) was in court. And he was questioned rather strongly about where he was getting his whiskey. And he wasn't going to tell them. So he said, (I ain't saying, but a few knows?) Hibbs: (?) Walls: (but a few knows?) Hibbs: (few knows?). Okay. 28:00All right.

Walls: He wasn't about to let that out.

Hibbs: Let that out.

Walls: Or his supply--

Hibbs: His supply may dry up. So now, that's another interesting point. The money, it couldn't be any cheaper than it would have been in the saloon. Looks like illicit whiskey should have been more expensive than it would have been if you'd bought it right straight from the liquor store.

Walls: I don't know what people paid.

Hibbs: I don't know, either. It seems like, though, if you were taking all those chances and paying off the bribes and things that were probably there to try to move your whiskey around and things, that your product would have cost more.

Walls: Well of course, the legal tax today, being $10.50 or more a gallon, the whiskey itself doesn't cost anything very much.

Hibbs: No.

Walls: It's these taxes that you're paying. And I don't know, as you said, there was a certain amount of expense of operation, because you had to pay off.

Hibbs: We were talking a little earlier about the sugar moonshine 29:00versus the grain moonshine. That they would make whiskey, the moonshiners would buy cornmeal to actually make whiskey very similar to what you'd be doing it legally. Using the grains and fermenting them in yeast and fermenting them and then putting them, distilling it and putting it in a container. And then later on, they got to using sugar all the time, because it was quicker. But it wasn't the quality. They didn't like, most people didn't want the sugar moonshine, they wanted the grain, or the corn whiskey. But I didn't realize there was that much difference. I thought that it looked like maybe more trouble to make it out of the cornmeal than it would the sugar. Let me turn this over. [End Side A. Begin Side B.] Hibbs: Okay. Go ahead.

Walls: Mike Connors, who was the (?) of Jefferson County, and he had many friends out here because (?) custody in jail. (?) one time with a person named Mrs. Wallace 30:00Mudd. And she had, her husband or some of the (?) ran what we called, they called the depot store, or (?) store. Anyway, my dad got irritated with her and got to calling her (Sugar Liz?). Because, supposedly, she was selling illegal liquor to that store. And I remember him writing to Michael Connors (?) three or four different names that she might have used.

Hibbs: Oh, my. (?) Walls: He was so put out with her.

Hibbs: I've always asked about how many women were involved in this. And other people hadn't mentioned too many. I guess there were some.

Walls: Not too many women were proprietors at stores as they are today. But she was. She was the proprietor of that store at the depot, run by the Ballard family. She 31:00was a Ballard, Lizzie Ballard. But not too often. She married late in life. She married (?) I imagine she was every bit of fifty years old when she married. But women weren't running stores so much then like they are today. They just weren't in commerce.

Hibbs: I do know that in our public records, we do have lots of men and women cited for moonshining. Illicit distilling is the term. That and bootlegging. And there are quite a few women in that. Some of them are the wives of the men, and some of them are other people. Of course, the situation again, if you had a farm, and you couldn't make it on your farm, this was a way of making money. And if it wasn't a way that the public frowned on, which it appears from everybody I talk to that nobody really was very critically locally of it. Particularly as long as they didn't get caught. They didn't look down on it.

Walls: Well, I think that was true. Because 32:00people just didn't have any other way to live. Many of us.

Hibbs: Did you ever hear of any fights or running gun battles or anything that, the rum running, I mean, it's not like we had a mafia here or something, but maybe there was some kind of organized, I don't know whether there was any organization of this. You were talking about someone in (Harristown?) was kind of the boss. But I don't know whether locally there was anybody that came forth as a leader.

Walls: I don't know. I guess Nancy told you about that thievery out there at their house.

Hibbs: Mm hmm. I've had three versions of that. And they're all similar, but they're all from different things. But that has to be, I'm sure more of that happened in different spots. I imagine some of the moonshiners were robbed, too, as they were going from Bardstown to Louisville, somebody could lay in wait and hijack 33:00their cargo.

Walls: The Guthries were among those persons who had had the good living before Prohibition, and a real struggle. You know, they had (?) and ran that for a while. And various, (?) various things to make a living.

Hibbs: Well, like you said, he was running the distillery out there, working at it. And had a place to live out there at (?) times. And once you shut that down, what do you do as far as income? It's not like you had your money in stocks and things. They were gone by '29. You really did have a problem in trying to overcome it.

Walls: Well, (?) T.William Samuels told me more than once that his father always believed that Prohibition would be repealed. And he tried to keep the distillery building (?) of his income. Of course, he had the means where some of us did not have it, I think. And he tried to keep those distillery buildings up.

Hibbs: Because he had faith that it was going to turn around.

Walls: He had faith that it would be turned around. And, of course, it was. And 34:00then, as you know, when it came back to get going again, why he sold half interest in the corporation that was formed to some people away from here. Well, basically they had control, and he didn't (?), he lost control. I don't remember a whole lot about that, (?) sold, they sold to (?) out there, one of the big drug concerns. I know Bill didn't want that, but his father did not have the controlling interest.

Hibbs: Well, you didn't just open a distillery up after being shut down thirteen years. You had equipment that wouldn't work, you had new ways and new equipment that you might need. And you just didn't go out there and start making whiskey.

Walls: Well, in most instances here, I think the record will show that outside capital 35:00came in.

Hibbs: Where do you think that outside capital got their money?

Walls: That's personal.

Hibbs: That's another, I don't know whether they were contacts that had been used, but that's an interesting thing there. Well, we saw the different people come in from Chicago and some other places there.

Walls: Well, like Mr. C.A. Newmann, and (?) double n. He was one of the first ones in--

Hibbs: New York.

Walls: I thought it was, I believe New York.

Hibbs: Ableson was from Chicago.

Walls: Well, Ableson came later. But anyway, Mr. Newmann was one of the first persons that lived up there in the house, pink house that's been torn down, where that service station is that's not in operation now. And they rented there. And he was one of the (?) Hibbs: Well the--

Walls: You know, and then they had a big thing over at-- this is after repeal. 36:00(Sopping cattle around?) big stench down there around (South Fifth?) Street, down in there.

Hibbs: Oh, yeah, because of tourism. Yeah.

Walls: Yes. And Presbyterian minister Reverend J.D. (?) picked it up and he had several of them in court. And I don't know where they were, I'm guessing some of them must have been (inventing???) That time in a restaurant started (?) Inn, and (?) Mr. Lewis (?) he and his wife were operating that, and interrogating some of these people in court. Asked Mr. (Seger?), said, "Well, what do you think about this smell? Isn't it terrible?" He said, "It smells like prosperity to me." You've heard that, haven't you?

Hibbs: That's good.

Walls: Everything had been so--

Hibbs: So down.

Walls: Down. So down. And it had come back. Well, there must have been a real hard period in those years.

Hibbs: Particularly when they knew how to make whiskey, or they knew their particular craft. 37:00And for them to have to find something else to keep them alive until, if they had faith it was going to be rescinded, then they had to wait and just wait and wait every year kind of thing. And then all this time, your whiskey's either sitting there in the warehouse being stolen, or evaporating, or whatever.

Walls: (?) drained down.

Hibbs: And you (maybe not?) buying as much, and you can't borrow on it. I mean, if you went and borrowed on it, they'd burn up.

Walls: (Turning to ?) the case of Mr. Les Samuels, I have a feeling he had a good bit of farm land down there. And they were able to nail (?) some people had, it was a very, very large family. And he only had the one, and was able to hang in there.

Hibbs: Well, do you think that it had any effect 38:00on our morals today? On what we are still dealing with, and the fact that it was a national law that we chose to ignore? I'm talking in terms of the community and the county. Do you think that our attitude now against following the law, or tax evasion, or marijuana growing or whatever, do you think that has anything to do with it?

Walls: The only, to this extent, I think a person said that social life changed when whiskey and other types of alcohol came into the home. Well, as you know today, I don't guess there was ever any kind of a social gathering where a person's telling me, "Don't think of alcohol."

Hibbs: Having a drink.

Walls: Uh huh. The first thing. My mother, my mother died in 1960, my mother thought (she abhorred the fact?) that as soon as a person came to the door, somebody asked if she'd like to have a drink. She didn't grow up that way. And yet she said that her 39:00grandfather, old (?) always had a keg in the closet. And his home over there, (?), the politicians came through in a horse and buggy, and (?) was the place they spent the night. And they (?) of course they'd always had to have a (full?) drink. But it wasn't a social thing like it later has become. I think, well, the industry, it's just turned it around, more or less. Don't you?

Hibbs: Mm hmm. I think there's more drinking in the privacy of your home now, allows you to drink more, because you don't think, first of all, you're not driving anywhere. You come in and if you drink or overindulge, you don't feel like you're hurting anybody but yourself. And yet, that's not good. I mean, that gives you an excuse.

Walls: I don't think, for the most part, I would say 90 percent of social gatherings--

Hibbs: There's some form of alcohol.

Walls: You 40:00have to have some form of alcohol.

Hibbs: I don't know whether it's, almost like the tranquillizers of the mind. It's just kind of the tranquillizer of the body sort of thing.

Walls: That's right.

Hibbs: You just don't feel like you're celebrating or socializing unless you do. State of mind, it's not real. It's not something you have to do. But you think so. Well--

Walls: You didn't get very much from me, because I don't remember a whole lot.

Hibbs: I'm trying to think of another way that, a question that might not, we talked about (Laws Brown?). Let me ask a question about him, something this morning we were talking about. He was county judge during part of the period, Prohibition. Now if I remember right, he was a Methodist.

Walls: Right.

Hibbs: So he would have been a teetotaler.

Walls: Oh, he was.

Hibbs: And I just wonder what his attitude would have been. Did he have to sentence any of these people? Or did they all go to federal court?

Walls: Well, they went to federal court. 41:00Never been in the circuit court. He was never in circuit court.

Hibbs: He was county judge.

Walls: County judge.

Hibbs: Okay.

Walls: Only misdemeanors would have come before him.

Hibbs: Come before him. Mm hmm.

Walls: Judge Brown came to our house fairly often. Always at Christmastime. He would just very politely turn down anything I (?) I imagine the man lived and died and never took a drink.

Hibbs: But he didn't, you had advertising in the Standard that the distilleries would pay for and things like that. He wasn't a person who didn't even, who wouldn't allow that.

Walls: I don't remember that we ever had any advertising (?) Hibbs: Well, maybe not then. I don't know.

Walls: I don't think so. I don't think there was any. I don't remember at all. You see later, I don't think saloons ever advertised. And that's where, that would be the retail outlet. I don't think they did. 42:00Hibbs: You couldn't go over to a store and buy a bottle of whiskey, then, basically? Or you bought it through the saloon?

Walls: No, no, no. You just, I don't think, I think it was all the saloon.

Hibbs: The saloon. Okay. I guess it's one of the things I never thought of. I just assumed you had a retail store.

Walls: No, I don't think so.

Hibbs: You're right. I don't think so, either.

Walls: I don't think they did.

Hibbs: I can't think of anyplace that would have, saloon must have been by the drink.

Walls: Well, see, they didn't have those big, the numbers of distilleries, and none of them produced very much. This massive production came after Prohibition. I've forgotten the big one. My grandparents had this place called (Willam's ??). I think it (back toward Boston?) And they make about twenty-five barrels. Actually, they start in making mostly for their own consumption.

Hibbs: Home use.

Walls: But theirs was a different, because they hadn't thought about that. You see, some are making it for their own consumption. And then I assume that they would sell it to the saloon operators.

Hibbs: They could. They also could, if you took your own corn to them and brought your barrel, they could make it for you.

Walls: Well, you know, over at Makers Mark, they had what's called the (courthouse?). You took your bottle and they filled it for so much, didn't they.

Hibbs: Right.

Walls: It was just a different 43:00type of operation than what they have today.

Hibbs: We have a journal that Franklin's great-grandfather, Dr. (Ramen?) kept. He had an expense journal and then a little handwritten journal. And one of the expenses he had in there was "whiskey for Josie." And Josie was his wife. And she liked a spoon full of sugar that was saturated with bourbon. And you could always tell when she was expecting a baby, because he would buy this whiskey for Josie to try to keep her stomach, her morning sickness down. And she would eat that whiskey saturated sugar. And I know for a while I didn't understand, why the whiskey for Josie. And then we found out through the family that that was her, what she did for morning sickness. But you look at these ledgers here, you'd see all of a sudden there's about two months there that he'd be buying whiskey for Josie. He didn't get it by the barrel, you know.

Walls: (?) Hibbs: Yeah.

Walls: And I think one of (?) is named Josephine Robin. 44:00And she's (?) and I guess still is. She'd be (Aunt Archie's?) age or a little older. A few years older than I am. (?) and I are the same age, born in the same year. Arch (?) [End Interview.] 22