Scraping the topsoil away, he found some loose planks, and under the planks he found cases of booze! Old Log Cabin whiskey from Canada.
Rumrunners were bringing it across the lake and up the river, where it was stashed on Ben’s farm until it could be delivered Down Below. Well! Dad had three options: report ’em, ignore ’em, or join ’em. Prohibition was bringing prosperity back to Moose County. People were flocking north by the trainload, and everybody was smuggling contraband in from Canada or out by train and Model T. Some of today’s old families who claim to be descended from lumber barons or mining tycoons are really descended from bootleggers.
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Short & Tall Tales I can honestly say I’m the son of a stonecutter. Dad was too busy cutting stone to break the law. He said the tombstone business was very good during Prohibition. All I know is that all of us kids had shoes and went away to college.
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16.
The Pork-and-Beans
Incident at
Boggy Bottom
As Confirmed by
the County Historian
Homer Tibbitt, who taught in a one-room schoolhouse in the 1930s, knew the hero of this tale and also the junior-grade terrorist.
—JMQ
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Wesley Prescott was a good kid. Studied hard but would rather be playing baseball. Finished the eighth grade but dropped out because the high school was thirteen miles away, and there was no public transporta-tion. Also, Moose County had been in a depression ever since the mines closed before World War One. People had left in droves, to seek work in cities Down Below. So . . .
Mr. Prescott, a skilled carpenter and housebuilder, had gone to Detroit to look for any kind of work, leaving his wife and three kids in the small village of Isbey. He wrote to them weekly—no luck. They were living mainly on oatmeal and turnips. The church had a cow, and Wesley would go there with a jug—and stay to muck the barn.
Then the first money came from Detroit, and Mr.
Prescott wrote: “I got a job as a White Wing. You should see me in my white suit.” They never dreamed that he was 쑽쑽쑽
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Lilian Jackson Braun a street sweeper. Mrs. Prescott made out a shopping list for Wesley to take to the general store in Fishport. It was a three-mile walk in each direction, but he was used to that.
Now, at age fifteen, he was the man of the household and took his responsibilities seriously. It was Saturday afternoon, and he even offered to give up his weekly ball game with a scrub team in a vacant lot behind the church, but his mother said he could do the shopping after the game, if he didn’t dawdle. She knew how much baseball meant to him.
It was hardball, and he was a champ at hitting, running, fielding, and catching men off bases with a swift, straight throw. People predicted that Wesley would land in the big leagues but suggested that he change his name to something more shoutable in the bleachers.
So Wesley had his nine innings before hiking to the Fishport General Store with his list: more oatmeal, more turnips, but also potatoes, onions, flour, molasses, barley, and—for a treat—four cans of salt pork and beans with tomato sauce.
The groceries filled the largest brown paper bag in the store—about a bushel of them. And heavy! Wesley decided to take the shortcut home, although his mother wouldn’t approve. It was only a mile and a half but through back country. A trail ran through a wooded area and down into a gully called Boggy Bottom; there was swampland on either side of the footpath. Shadowed by ancient trees and tangled vines, it was gloomy at any time of day but scary at twilight.
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Short & Tall Tales It was twilight when Wesley reached Boggy Bottom.
All was still. And then he heard a moaning sound. Hugging the bagful of food with both arms, he plodded on. Then he heard a human cry, and an apparition rose from a clump of bushes—white except for two hollow eyes. It came closer, making unearthly sounds.
With great deliberation Wesley set the loaded bag down in the path, braced between his legs, and hurled a can of pork and beans swiftly and accurately at the pair of haunting eyes.
The apparition crashed into the bushes with a howl of pain, and Wesley picked up his load and trudged home.
As Mrs. Prescott unloaded the groceries, she said, “I thought I ordered four cans.”
“That’s all they had,” Wesley said. It was the first time he had ever fibbed to his mother.
Meanwhile, a youth with a broken nose staggered into Fishport. This was the end of the scary happenings at Boggy Bottom. This small-town terrorist had been spooking nervous travelers and causing them to drop everything and run.
As for the Prescott family, they eventually got back on their feet, and—yes—Wesley got into the major leagues, but he changed his name.
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17.
At Last, a Hospital
in the Wilderness
Ten Beds, Two Nurses,
Many Volunteers!
The early medical history of Moose County could not have been written without the support of the women’s auxiliary—those dedicated volunteers—sewing, visiting patients, supply-ing them with books and magazines, bringing fruit and flowers, and, of course, fund-raising.
—JMQ
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Those were days when women wore high lace collars and skirts that swept the sidewalk, not to mention hats of prodigious size. Horse-and-buggy traffic thronged the main street of “bright, busy, bustling Pickax”, as the picture postcards labeled it. This was the local scene when the auxiliary was formed.
The minutes of the first meeting still exist in a yel-lowed ledger, written in old-fashioned script with a nib pen. “At a meeting of the Ladies of the City of Pickax, held on June 25, A.D. 1906, the following ladies were present.”
There follows a list of forty names, a veritable Who’s Who of Pickax.
Dues were fixed at a dollar a year, payable quarterly, and officers were elected.
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Lilian Jackson Braun make gowns for the patients, and also for the nurses to wear in the operating room.
A Soliciting Committee got busy, and contributions started to come in from other organizations, whereupon the Purchasing Committee bought such amenities as cushions, hassocks, and a baby basket. The Work Committee covered the cushions and made leggings for the patients to wear on the operating table. They also covered two bricks, according to the minutes of August 6, 1906, the purpose of which was not disclosed.