The Palatka daily news. (Palatka, Fla.) 1884-1888, 1888-02-22
C0C0ANUT WHlSKEY.
He's Refreshments Prepared in New York
for Prohibition Communities.

siis, the four great prohibition States, ,,
said Front street wine and liquor mer-
chant, ''but the trade is not what it used
to be. The danger of losing the goods
| by confiscation and of having agents ar
rested, fined and imprisoned is so great
| that but very few of us care 10 take the
risk. A few of us, however. enjoy the
| fight and keep it up. The great point of
the trade is sending liquor in
such form or disguise that the
excise constables and temperance spies
will not recognize it. The best idea we
got from the soldiers on Governors Is
land. During and after the war the
rules were very strict against bringing
liquor there from the city. Nevertheless
the men got drunk all the time in the
most unaccountable manner. After
awhile the commandant got tired and
or dered an investigation, and he found
that the men took their muskets with
them each time they visited the city and
had the barrels filled with rum or what
ever they preferred. We applied this
idea to the Maine trade and sent gas
pipes, water-pipes and even sewer-pipes
with Jersey lightning and securely
plugged in the best style.
1.-The best system was the filled cocoa
nut. You know probably that some
times the contents of cocoanut will
ferment and produce sour beer of some
sort. / never drank it myself, but am
told that it is not so very bad, and that
it is strong. We took natures hint,
tapped the nuts through the eyes,
washed or scaldsd out the interior, filled
it with liquor and sealed the eyes with
wax that was a wonderfully good imita-
ton of the natural substance. We packed
these whiskey cocoanuts so that the bar
rel contained three rows of ordinary
nuts at the top and bottom. Any one,
especially constable, opening barrel,
would get an ordinary nut, no matter
from what end he started. This scheme
lasted quite time. You can still see
traces of it down in Maine in the vast
ndmber of cocoanut drinking vessels,
soup dishes. -four scoops and the like.
Some smart individual in Portsmouth,
\. H., tried to initiate it and plugged
some five or ten watermelons ON the
same principle. The first melon that
went across the river into the Granite
State had its plug and half its contents
fall out. The constable who made the
discovery laid in wait for watermelons
and confiscated all that came over that
were whisky filled. That ended the
brief career of the humble watermelon
as portable saloon.
The next plan, and the one that ran
tie longest-it is in fact being used to-
day-is the packing of demijohn keys,
runlets and little puncheons in barrels,
which are then filled with flour, corn
meal, salt, rock salt, sugar or potatoes.
There Is hardly any grocers article
which goes in barrels but has been used
in the Maine trade for harboring five
gallons and upward of fire water The
grocer in the little town receives the
barrel and opens il late at night or very
early in the morning, and when no dis
ciple of Neal Dow is around conveys the
precious package that is concealed inside
to some place of safety.
Another branch of the trade, and
much safer one, is the bottle business.
This consists simply in bottling cheap
whiskey, adding some harmless color
and fiavoring matter, pasting on label
with some medical name and formula
and sending it off by the dozen or gross
as medicine. l said cheap whiskey just
| now, and meant it. The dealers in
Maine can't afford to buy a good whis-
| key. Their customers can't afford it
| either. in turn. All that the latter wants
is TO get drunk as cheaply, quickly and
| thoroughly as possible. For that reason
| they want the cheapest and rawest stuff
| they can buy-something full of fusel
| oils and proof spirits. This rule applies
| to all the prohibition States and explains
| to my satisfaction why they have more
intoxication there in proportion to the
population than in the great cities,
where more liberal policy is pursued
| by the State Government. OF the bottle
| l.. - l.. e..
ture. But when they got to selling gin
cocktails as Pine Tree Bitters' and rum
| and molasses as 'Opodeldoc Bitters' that
was too much for the temperance agi-
| tators. They appointed chemist, who
| analyzed each brand and classified them
| into medicinal and non-medicinal
| beverages and condemned all the
| latter. The liquor men got even
with one of the State chemists assis-
| tants, though, who, although he drank
on the sly, bothered them more than
any one else. They gave him some fine
cordial, to which they added croton oil.
| The assistant came very near dying af-
| ter drinking one sample. There is still
good demand for gin, tansy and fem
mel. This is very much like the gin and
| tansy of the past, and is a good drink
as well as a good medicine. Uncolored
| whisky, cinnamon and alkanet root
makes very superior bitterness and is
also a splendid Iiniment for colds and
rheumatism.
.'The tendency nowadays in this strug-
| gle between New York brains and and
| Maine morals, so called, is TO fight law
with law. Thus, while il is a criminal
| offense to sell liquor in these prohibition
States, such a sale in an adjacent State
Is legal, and under the national constitu-
| ton becomes legal in Maine A club OF
| fifty send an agent to us who buys q
| heavy invoice. We express it to them
and the authorities can do nothing.
"A second scheme invented by our
lawyers is the loan system. / own lot
of wine IN Bangor. You come ard bor-
row some, giving me receipt like this:
| Borrowed from j. s. &, Co one basket
marked 'Mumm," valued at $32 Signed
| A. F. If, now, you use that basket you
have got TO make it good In Bangor
| you do so with a check. after three or
| four borrows. A third is the storage
system. You keep a hotel and store
with you for safe keeping or aging, a
large consignment of assorted liquors,
for which you give a storage receipt, in
which an agreed value of the stored
| goods IS inserted. If at the end Of six
months call for my goods and find that
through breakage or other cause tn ~
have been lost / hold your storage re-
| celpt and sue on that for its face value
and not for the liquor sold.
Despite all opposition and legislation
the trade keeps on about the same. The
war against the traffic deteriortes the
quality of the stuff consumed on the
one hand and increases the cost on the
other. People will have their drink,
whether they buy it in sewer pipes. CO
coanuts, medicine bottles or through
gilt-edged, high priced lawyers.