Wednesday, July 19, 2017

BOOZE, BOTTLES and PARLORS


NORMAN  V.  KELLY


I was recently part of a TV Documentary on Prohibition here in Peoria. In my opinion it missed the point and concentrated mainly on local myth. I will give the Producers credit for not telling the viewers all about the Speakeasies we were supposed to have had here during Prohibition. The simple truth is that they were correct; we had none. In September of 1917, The Lever Act, a phony Conservation Act, written and perpetuated by Wayne B. Wheeler, the Anti Saloon leader, shut our distilleries and breweries down.  This was during the First World War, and it was said to be a temporary act.  Of curse that was a lie and when our Doughboys came back home to Peoria their jobs were gone.  Those jobs would not return until Prohibition ended with the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933.   Your relatives and mine suffered a tremendous financial burden during that time, I can tell you that.

 

Next came the Eighteenth Amendment, the Volstead Act, and the Alcohol Capital of the World, Peoria, Illinois was gone; it happened that quickly.  Thirteen long years of the most corrupt, dangerous, murderous period of time in America’s history followed.  It spawned political corruption in our government, both locally, statewide and across the United States. Our enforcement officials came close to allowing the country to disintegrate; some say it most definitely did.

                              

                             THE  SOFT  DRINK  PARLOR

 

Booze flowed into Peoria like a dam broke lose up north in Canada, and

Mayor Woodruff worried about the lost revenue from taxes and the sale of his precious Liquor License.  He allowed the taverns to open.  That’s right!  All those dark fun places suddenly had a chance to wake up the downtown area and that is exactly what they did.  Remember they could not sell whiskey or beer, except for some watered down versions that Peorians called ‘Colored Water.’  But open they did and in fact I fear I might bore you but here is how that happened. One by one the saloons magically opened and turned into Soft Drink Parlors.  1921-66, 1922-147, 1923-161, 1925-115, 1926-22, 1928-22, 1929-4,  1933-38 and when 1934 rolled around Prohibition was over and we had 4 left open. By 1940 Peoria was back in the booze,  beer, gambling and prostitution business with 242 taverns and a population of 105,010 people in our city limits of a little over 12 square miles. In 1941, we were in another World War, and just over 23,000 of our young people went off to save the world once again.

 

                              100  BOTTLES  ON  THE  WALL

 

The truth is I have written very little about the role the manufacturing of the simple bottle played in Peoria’s history especially about the time Peoria’s Saloons closed and were reborn in the guise of a Confectionary.  Here is another secret. Confectioneries and Soft Drink Parlors were one in the same.  If you look them up in our old City Directories you will find that to be absolutely true.  The buildings were the same, only the facades were changed to protect our youth.  Anyway that was the word from the ‘City Hall’ back in those days.  They sold soft drinks like Coke, Seven Up, root beer, tea, coffee and much more.   You could buy cup cakes and cookies, and take your kids with you.  As I said they were Confectioneries/Soft Drink Parlors and they woke up downtown Peoria during a dark and dismal period of time here in Peoria, Illinois. Later in the evening the ‘Night people and the Flappers’ came out and visited those Parlors and they were not interested in cookies.

 

Bottling companies sprung up in Peoria, and fruit juices were on every shelf.  We had stills scattered around and by 1921 many of the local breweries and distilleries were in the fruit juice business and the ‘Certified’ distilleries distilled Peoria Whisky for all kinds of purposes approved by the Volstead Act.  Also, did you know that physicians could write prescriptions for a pint of whiskey which could be filled at all the local drug stores with Peoria Booze?  A lot of local physicians became wealthy on that little scheme alone. The bottle makers made bottles in all colors and shapes and by the beginning of 1922, if you knew where to go and when, getting all the booze you wanted was no problem.

Oh, we had ‘Dry Agents’ that enforced the Volstead Act and certainly did some arresting, but the fix was in and the word ‘Joke’ pretty much summed up those enforcement efforts.

 

                                   THE  BOTTLE  DEMAND

 

Those bottling plants supplied jobs for a lot of desperate Peorians and as Prohibition continued our population grew 28,848 people during that first decade. Companies like Chero-Cola Bottling, Coca-Cola Bottling Works, Arrow products and Independent Bottling Works, often worked around the clock.

 

We had several bottle dealers including Singer Bottling Works and Dennison-Harry Bottle Dealers. We had three ‘Cereal Beverage’ companies: Atlas, GIPPS and Star Union Brewing.  Does that surprise you? I mean after all it was Prohibition…I think.  They made something called Near-Beer, but remember everything made in this line was meant to eventually hold alcohol. If you look at the Peoria City Directories during those thirteen years you can read exactly what was going on here and the theme was simple.  Buy and sell material and booze and don’t get caught; it was all that simple. By 1925 Koru Brothers, Singer Bottling, Watkins Beverage and Whistle Bottling Works joined the ‘March of Glass.’ Prohibition hit Peoria, Illinois harder than any other city in America, but Peoria not only survived it all…Peorians thrived.                               norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net

 

 

 

 

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