THE KNIGHT BEFORE LAST

“Get out! Get out! Get out!” Daisy Dibbins  ordered at the top of her lungs. She swung a broom over the ducking heads of three members from the  town’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

“Get on home ya nosy busy-bodies!” Daisy screamed from the front door of the Great Foods grocery store on Page Avenue. “Ain’t no moonshine in here today, weren’t none in here yesterday and won’t be none in here tomorrow. Now get off our property ‘fore I knock some sense into yer heads with this here broom stick!”

“You better watch yourself, Daisy Dibbins!” one of the Temperance women yelled back. “We know what’s going on in there! You can’t fool us! We’ve got ways of knowing what’s going on behind closed doors in this town.”

Daisy held the broom out as she would the shotgun, which she kept handy just inside the store’s front door. “Now ya hear me, Hilda Washburn, and hear me good. If yer kind come pokin’ yer noses around here again, I’ll shoot ‘em right off those stuck-up faces of yers! And, I won’t be usin’ no broom the next time neither!”

Hilda backed away, hand-in-hand with her two companions, the Pixley sisters, Wilma and Maxine. “We’ll be back, Daisy Dibbins,” Hilda vowed. “We’ll be back with Sheriff Timble. He’ll teach you to obey the Prohibition Law.”

“I know all about the law, Hilda darlin’,” Daisy shot back. “Best yer nosy union learn about the law of this here no tresspassin’ sign!” Daisy rammed the broom’s handle up against a “No Tresspassing” sign nailed on the store’s front door. Underneath was printed “Paying Customers Only”.

Daisy swung her broom back at the three women. “Now, go find yer hubby, Hilda! I bet he’s gulpin’ it down at the blind pig up the road.”

“You’re a liar!” Hilda screamed. “My husband’s lips wouldn’t dare touch liquor.”

“I’m surprised they can even touch yers!” Daisy snorted. “Ya never keep yer mouth shut long enough to get pecked.”

Hilda glanced up Page Avenue, where numerous blind pigs were operating. She knew her husband had finished his day’s work over in the New York Central Railroad’s freight yards. It was hardly a town secret that many of the railroad workers frequented the blind pigs, But, her husband wouldn’t dare patronize such an establishment. Hilda was sure of that. Besides, Wilma and Maxine were spinsters, having never married.

Sheriff Timble’s men had raided several blind pigs along Page Avenue since the Prohibition Amendment had been passed by the U.S. Congress in 1917. But for every blind pig which Timble closed down in Jackson Junction, two or more new ones had sprung up.

By the year 1930, Timble saw any attempt to control blind pigs as a losing cause. He often told his deputies that not even Eliot Ness could stop the flow of moonshine into Jackson Junction. And, he was probably right.

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