It is a cool and rainy day on the Upper Texas Coast. It is the type of day that must’ve been good for liquor stores and the bootleggers before them in the little East Texas Pineywoods town just up the road where I was raised.
Back in the day the big bidness in my hometown was the woods. People made their living cutting and hauling timber, mostly pulpwood and logs. It’s funny watching that reality show, Ax Men, about loggers on the History Channel because the loggers on the show are so alien from the woodsmen where I grew up.
The show is set in Oregon and these dudes cut some heavy-duty wood in some very rugged terrain. East Texas logging and pulpwood hauling takes place in relatively flat or slightly hilly pine forests. There are other differences including cultural and racial ones between those in my part of the country and in the Northwest. Even the lingo is different. Those who cut trees in the TV show are called “Fallers,” or so I think. Where I grew up the people who fell trees are called “Flatheads.” I think the reason why should be obvious.
Getting back to my primary thought, those who sell liquor where I was raised should have made good money on rainy Fridays like today. At least that was the case when I was a kid. The why stems from the inability to get into the woods due to the wet ground. The roads in the woods, where they exist, are hardly Interstate 10 and of course the rain just makes matters worse. Thus, the hands might go in long enough to get paid, it being Friday, then skedaddle because they can’t work. And once you can’t work you certainly have to talk it over with your friends and co-workers over a six-pack or three or a bottle of I.W. Harper.
The pine forests of East Texas have long been home to what some refer to as the “Buckle on the Bible Belt.” Because of the heavy religious influence legal sales of alcoholic beverages in most areas there are a relatively new phenomenon. Portions of my hometown first voted in sales of beer, wine and liquor for “off-premises consumption” slightly more than 30 years ago. Before that one’s choices were limited if you wanted a “snort.”
One could drive across the river into Louisiana to such scenic places as Leesville (home of Fort Polk or as some soldiers who trained there called it, “Fort Puke.”) Then there was DeQunicy or Vinton. The nearest legal liquor in Texas was in Silsbee, just north of Beaumont until Browndell in northern Jasper County went wet. Browndell is a whole different story, being one of what I call “liquor towns” which sprung up in Texas over the years. These are tiny little incorporated cities which exist for no reason except to sell booze in otherwise “dry” areas. Such cities in East Texas include Seven Oaks on U.S. Hwy. 59 in Polk County and Cuney on U.S. Hwy. 175 in Cherokee County.
If one didn’t care to make the haul out of town or ran out of hooch before legal liquor came to town the only choice would be to buy from a bootlegger. Now when I say bootlegger I am not talking about the long-bearded hillbillies who make corn squeezin’s and play hide and seek with the “revenuers.” No these were men and women, in my town who sold hooch at inflated prices.
These bootleggers operated with the full knowledge of local authorities back then. Once in awhile the state would bust them and sometimes the local yokels would tip them off while other times John Law would let the illegal booze merchants take a hit for appearance’s sake. I remember one summer afternoon while at a bootlegger’s place, I saw a flat-bed truck drive up with its bed filled with jail inmates from the adjacent county. They had been doing some work for a certain county official and stopped to get some refreshments for the ride back to the slammer.
Well, I certainly rambled on from a simple little comparison about the rainy Friday afternoons of my younger days and the present day. I am sure some of my story must sound foreign to people who always had a convenience store or liquor store around the corner, but that’s just how it was. I am also sure rainy Fridays in places where alcoholic beverages have always been sold likewise produce some good business with construction workers who are rained out as well as other folks who just want to start the weekend early. Rain, rain go away? No thanks.