The Good Old Days
Letters from my Grandmother
 
 
April 21, 2001
"I think I told you of the revenuers coming at night time, first night while we were sleeping after moving into a rented house in March, 1937, where we were to farm the river bottom fields.  Was off the main Road 52 between Brookville and Metamora. "The house was freshly papered but we could still smell where some people had been making moonshine in the house so the revenue agents got there too late.  There was one at each door and they were flashing a light into the window of our bedroom.  Was scary for a while but we told them we knew nothing about moonshine making since we had just moved in that day.  So they were satisfied and believed us I guess. "The dirt road went a short ways from our house to a small house that was empty.  Only at night...the same people probably was making moonshine in the house.  Our chickens and sometimes two sows with pigs would get out and go there.  That's how we found out, the chickens and pigs would come back staggering and drunk from eating the corn mash they would throw outside.  That went on for quite a while that summer and then one morning when we got up we saw the house was on fire and that ended the moonshiners with it burning down. "At that time was what was called Prohibition and no alcohol was allowed, the reason of the illegal making of alcohol.  That is how the Kennedys father Joe Kennedy knew when later Roosevelt would allow alcohol to be lawful.  Joe Kennedy was ready and made a fortune on alcohol..."
This is from one of a series of letters my grandmother wrote about her life in Indiana in Michigan.
Hord and Ida Bravard in the 1970s
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