Grandpa Was A ..........Bootlegger?

One of my favorite songs that gets my toes tapping is "Grandpa Was a Carpenter" recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  It's one of those songs I pop into the car stereo when I'm on the road.  People passing by tend to look at me in a strange way.  Here's an old lady singing her heart out and tapping her fingers on the steering wheel.  They don't stay in the passing lane very long, but goose their vehicle quickly down the road.

In my family, Grandpa was a BOOTLEGGER.  Somehow it doesn't have the same ring to it ...  I've always known that Grandpa Bill Noss tended to enjoy his liquor and dabbled in bootlegging, but had only heard bits and pieces of the story.  Last month I made a trip to northern Iowa to spend a couple days with my mother.  At 94 years of age, she has good days and bad days; but most days she doesn't like to talk about her father.  It wasn't easy growing up in a large family of eleven kids with a father who enjoyed his liquor.

                                              William Noss  (1890-1979)  ca.1915

One Sunday morning, Mom and I sat around in our jammies, drinking coffee and chatting.  She started reminiscing and I dashed for my laptop to take notes .. hoping she wouldn't lose the mood by the time I was through booting up.  These are Mom's memories:

                                                          Julia Noss Kornegor Witter

It was 1929 ... the beginning of the Great Depression.  Grandma Angela Noss died in December of that year.  At the time of her death, she owned the farm where her youngest son farmed. The farm had to be sold as part of the estate.  Bill did not have the money to purchase the farm so he and his family moved down the road to a vacant farm house (one mile west of the home place).  They occupied that house for one year.  Then the family moved to the Ballhagen farm south of Rockford on the Shell Rock River and Bill started farming again.

These were hard times for farmers and everyone moved from farm to farm trying to make a living and provide for their family.  Most men did not own the farm they lived on, but only rented from the owners.  When they couldn't come up with the rent money, it was time to move down the road to the next vacant farm.

During this time, Bill started bootlegging.  The large family needed to eat and this was the only way he knew how to make money.  Grandpa had very little education.  He was a good farmer, but a farmer needs land.  Bill turned to what he knew best ... booze.  Bootleggers were making good money as those were prohibition years in Iowa (1920-1933).

 
Of course, he spent most of the money on himself as he drank most of the profits.  Mom and all her siblings had to help wash the empty bottles and crocks.  Grandpa fixed up the basement so men could stop by and drink beer.  Some days there were several cars parked in the farm yard.

Mom remembers one day when her folks and all the kids left the farm for the day.  She couldn't remember why or where they were going, but it must have been a special occasion since they didn't go many places all together as a family.  She remembers that her oldest brother, Toby, stayed  home; but that he later left the farm for a few hours.  As he was walking down the road on his way back home, he noticed the farmyard was full of police cars.  The police were breaking all the jars and crocks that Bill used in the brewing process.  Toby just kept walking past the farm quickly so the cops wouldn't notice him.  Then he crawled down in the ditch so he could spy on them, but they couldn't see him.  He watched one of the policemen use his pistol as target practice on the liquor jars.  Later this would prove to be very helpful as they were informed by the lawyer this was illegal.  Officers were not allowed to use their pistols to randomly shoot in this manner.

Grandpa Bill was arrested for bootlegging and went to trial.  During the trial, Toby was called to testify.  He showed the judge a piece of crockery that had lead residue on the side.  This proved that the officers had used their pistols improperly.  End of trail.  Billy went home.

Of course, this did not deter him from bootlegging. The family moved into the town of Rockford.  Bill had a thriving business as the men no longer had to drive out to the farm to buy their beer.  He knew how to make good beer and there were men with money waiting to buy his product.

Later he was again nabbed for bootlegging and this time he was convicted.  He worked off his sentence by helping with farming at the Floyd County Home in Charles City.  He stayed there until his  sentence was complete. My mother still remembers how embarrassing it was as everyone in town knew her dad was in the hoosegow for bootlegging.  Thankfully, prohibition was winding down and his special services were no longer needed.

I need to find someone who can pick a banjo ... hum along with me:

Grandpa was a bootlegger - he brewed beer for all his friends - drank up all his profits - now he's in jail again ......twang.

Grandma

I've received several warm welcome messages in the past couple of days.  Thank you all for the wonderful encouragement.  Guess it's time to swallow the butterflies and jump in.

One of my fondest memories growing up in small town Iowa revolves around my Grandma Kornegor.  She lived just about 3 blocks away and I loved to walk down that dirt road to her house and spend the afternoon.  She had a great playroom upstairs filled with old dolls, small china dishes and assorted girly things that her youngest child and only daughter, my Aunt Genevieve,  had played with years before.  Many of the doll furniture pieces had been handmade by my Grandpa.  It was a lovely, quiet room tucked away beneath the eaves where a small girl, with a vivid imagination, could wile away the afternoon. 

She also had a great old piano that I would pound away on.  Of course, I could not play a note, but I would sit on that bench and sing, "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine" and pretend.  Now I realize why Grandma would also pick that exact time of day to work outside in her garden. 

One of my least favorite things was when she would send me out to the hen house to gather eggs.  Oh, how I hated those darn chickens!!  They would squawk and peck at me when I put my hand up to gather an egg.  Then I would run back to the house, crying and whining that I couldn't get the eggs.  Grandma would sigh and walk out with me, gruffly telling me to quit crying and she would show me how.  She would push those nasty hens off their nest and gather those eggs with no effort whatsoever all the while telling me how easy it was.  I tried to do it many times, but just could never overpower those hens and they knew it!!  They would lay in wait for me.  Finally, Grandma quit asking me to do the eggs.  She knew it was futile. 

She always wore a huge apron over her housedress.  It wrapped completely around and buttoned in the back.  She would use that apron for everything.  It made a perfect basket to carry the eggs back to the house, wipe a tear from a little girl's face, and even a quick dust of a table if company pulled into the yard.
Around the house, she always wore her stockings rolled to the knee with a garter to hold them in place along with the standard oxford shoe with a 2" heel.  I think all grandmas wore those shoes in the 40's.  In her later years, she had an old pair of trousers she wore in the garden.

Grandma always called a bicycle a "wheel".  She would stop by my house and say, "Evelyn, will you take your wheel and run to the store for me?"  Usually it was for a loaf of bread.  She would give me a quarter and since bread was only .20 that would give me a nickle to buy a candybar.  Big money in those days!

Grandma was born Isabel Stockman in March of 1884 in Boone County, Iowa.  She was the third child of William and Kate (Birmingham) Stockman.  She had a 6th grade education as was normal in that time.  I found her on the 1900 census of Boone County. She was 16 years old, listed as a servant, living with a widowed lady. She is listed as "Bell" which gives me the image of a vibrant young lady who enjoyed a bit of fun.  This photo was probably taken about that time.

She married my grandfather, George Kornegor, when she was 19 years old and they raised a family of four sons and a daughter.

In all the time I spent with my grandmother, I don't remember ever asking her about her parents or siblings.  I knew she had a siblings and once in a great while, one of them would visit; but they lived several miles away and people did not travel as they do today.  Now that I'm nuts about family history, I kick myself for not asking her a thousand questions while following her around the house and yard.  I now know her father came from Denmark.  What could she have told me about him?  I would love to have heard the story about why he came to the US when he was only 16 years old.  Her mother's family were all Scottish coal miners who emigrated to Ohio and then on to the coal fields in Boone County.  What glorious stories she might have told me if I had only asked. 

And then there was the day she caught me and my cousin Marge smoking ... but that's for another day.