Bootlegger's Granddaughter

I was raised by my grandmother...my mother was there, too, but not involved in my care. Nan (as I called her) was the neighborhood bootlegger so our little apartment was filled with beer drinking men every Sunday. For most of my young years it was always the same men who knocked on the door around 10 A.M. on a Sunday morning looking for the comfort of a glass of beer and some friendly conversation. I used to love to sit in a corner and listen to the stories told and the Irish songs sung...it was always lively and pleasant, not what you might expect in a bootlegger's house. My background is Irish and most of our visitors were also of Irish descent.

My grandmother used to embarrass me, not because of the bootlegging, but because of the orange red hair she sported. Once every few months, when the white hair at the roots measured an inch, she'd use a henna rinse and emerge
with what I thought of as clown hair. She always wore housedresses and only for Christmas day would pull a treasured box from underneath the bed which held her one and only bra and dressy dress. Nan would slave over Christmas dinner and then disappear into the bedroom for her transformation. Soon, the door would open and Nan would walk into the room regal in pink lace, rosy cheeks, and rhinestones. She felt like a queen and everyone would ooh and ahh and tell her she was beautiful. Not me, though, because I was a mean teenager. I wish I could go back and change that!

Nan told me she'd started bootlegging during the depression because money was difficult to come by. She actually made bathtub gin in those years...sorry, I don't know the recipe!! Nan also made hundreds of bottles of preserves during the summer...pickles, fruit, jams, sauces. None of our Sunday visitors left without being given a few bottles to take home. I used to wonder how much this cut into her beer profit.

Over the years, the face of our visitors changed. I remember some of the famous Washington brothers being there...the only black people I knew in those days. Nan wasn't in the slightest racist but had a unique way of expressing it...she'd say they had black skin but a white heart. I never faulted her for her naive views because this was in the 1950's and we were just emerging from the years when blacks were terribly treated. Anway, the Washington brothers seemed to me like exotic creatures because of their musical talents, not because of their skin color.

Near the end of Nan's bootlegging career she began allowing strangers into her home and too many were there to drink into oblivion and then become abusive. All of a sudden our pleasant Sunday get-togethers became drunken arguments between people we barely knew. One even broke a beer bottle and scarred my grandmother's precious diningroom table. That was the day she realized the few dollars she earned wasn't worth the danger she had put herself into.

My grandmother died at the age of 72 in 1961. She was a character to the very end, leaving behind a 46 year old boyfriend.