Stateline 1107 Master Script

When the first soldiers came to Fort Gibson they brought with them a little something to stave off the boredom and cut the chill of the frontier nights.

Saloons in big cities and boomtowns kept the tap open and the liquor flowing until idealistic pioneers rallied to keep the demon rum out of Oklahoma. When the two territories became a state the party was over.

Bob Blackburn

14:29:53     C0006     S-403

To really understand prohibition and alcohol and public policy in our state you have to go back deep into our history to the 1820's. The federal government passed an act called the intercourse act. And it prohibited the importation of alcoholic beverages into "Indian country.” / It was all decided by the Five Civilized Tribes and it was against federal law to import alcoholic beverages.

Bob Blackburn

14:30:25    C0006     S-403

And so what happened is that people still tried to bring alcohol in they would bring it in on rivers on river boats. They would bring it over land. They would import it. And U.S. Deputy Marshals and tribal officials fought this for years.

Bob Blackburn

14:31:07     C0006     S-403

Well this prohibition of alcohol in the Indian territories of course only stayed with the Indian country. / So you had an open society in first the unassigned lands which would have been everything from about Stillwater to Norman, Shawnee to El Reno.

Michael Dean

15:55:11    C0004    S-204

Guthrie just exploded on the day of the Land Run as did other towns in central Oklahoma. With those towns came the saloon operators, the saloon owners operating out of tents and then they built buildings and there were breweries.  

Bob Blackburn

14:34:38     C0006     S-403

Well that posed a problem for the people who framed our constitution in 1906 and 1907. Half of the territory the Oklahoma territory part had legal Alcohol. The eastern part The Indian Territory had prohibition because of the federal Law and a tradition of no alcoholic beverages.

Bob

Blackburn 

14:30:00     C0006     S-403

Which way do you go? Do you go open State or Closed State on alcohol?

The citizens of the new state may have voted dry, but they drank wet and more than a few Oklahomans wouldn’t let a little thing like the law keep them from their comfort.

Michael Dean

15:26:07    C0001    S-204

The constitution for the Oklahoma territory that ultimately was approved by the voters, approved by congress, and approved by President Theodore Roosevelt was largely the constitution that had been written for the state of Sequoyah.

Michael

15:26:46    C0001    S-204

That constitution included a provision on prohibition.

Bob Blackburn

14:36:37     C0006     S-403

The Guys at the constitutional convention said we will be a dry state, and so prohibition is applied to everybody not just Indian Territory but the old Oklahoma Territory.

Gene Wallace

18:39:50    C0005     S-520

The state of Oklahoma is the only state that came into the union of the United States that actually had a constitutional provision written in it's constitution for prohibition to not serve any type of alcohol within the state of Oklahoma.

Michael Dean

15:28:12    C0001    S-204

There was a pretty strong anti-saloon league. There was a pretty strong prohibitionist Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Gene Wallace

19:14:08     C0005    S-520

The Methodists were primarily the driving force behind having the state dry. The Episcopalians and the Catholics were probably the driving force for some temperance for alcohol use in this state.

Michael Dean

15:28:12    C0001    S-204

Those were very strong organizations within Oklahoma. Kerry Nation had moved from Kansas to the territory and had a log cabin here in the territory, and she was leading the WCTU.

Michael Dean

15:28:44    C0001    S-204

There were marches in the streets, not in Oklahoma City and Tulsa per say, but in some of the smaller cities of people denouncing demon rum and protesting against the legalization of demon rum.

Bob Blackburn

14:38:44     C0006     S-403

Now the chamber of commerce during the time who represented those people who owned the saloons who owned the retail and hotel establishments they would have been very much against this, this was not good for business it was not good for the convention business.

In cities and towns in Oklahoma Territory business was booming. Decent church going citizens didn’t dare go into notorious neighborhoods where the party was always wide open and wet.

Bob Blackburn

14:32:04     C0006     S-403

There were saloons in downtown Oklahoma City In fact the City Hall was above one of those famous saloons downtown. We had Hells half Acre between California and Grande.

Bob Blackburn

14:32:04     C0006     S-403

Every little town like Perry and Woodward had its fair share of saloons this was the wild and wooly west.

Audio Recordings

EK Gaylord

Track 3

That block across from the Huckin’s, it wasn’t the Huckin’s then of course, was called Battle row. / And in the “Two Town Saloon” that was next to this restaurant Bessie Mulhall, Rode her horse into the saloon and had a whiskey straight without getting out of the saddle.

The party was in full swing when out of nowhere somebody turned out the lights.

Michael Dean

15:12:53    C0001    S-204

On admission day, the day that Oklahoma became a state, the day before that the County Attorney and the County Sheriff of Oklahoma County decided that because prohibition was going to become the law of the land that at 11:50 that evening / all of the saloons in Oklahoma County would have to close.

Bob Blackburn

14:36:52     C0006     S-403

Suddenly the wineries, the distilleries, the breweries were all out of business.

Drinkers flooded liquor stores buying as much as they could carry, a mad dash in the minutes before midnight to snatch up every bottle…stocking up for what they hoped would be a short dry spell.

Overnight, hundreds of bars were out of business and thousands of employees out of work.

In downtown Oklahoma City the New State Brewing Company borrowed fire hoses to run beer out the second story windows to the street below.

Audio Recordings

Track 1

Risk Thompson

When they dumped this green beer out in the street. People came with every conceivable vessel that you can imagine, and scooping up this beer out of the gutter. And some of the thirstier ones were lying on their stomach drinking beer out of the gutter.

Some saloons became dance halls and social clubs where a drink could be had on the quiet, and business owners found that for a few dollars local lawmen would look the other way.

Anti-alcohol groups praised the move as a step forward, but the change wasn’t as well received in the boomtowns.

Michael Dean

15:17:01    C0001    S-204

Well, the roughnecks who were working the oil wells all wanted some form of entertainment. Certainly there was widespread availability of, not only women of ill-repute, but also of intoxicating beverages for them to drink and enjoy while they were conversing with these women of ill-repute.

Audio Recordings

0:54

Bud Harder

They were in dance halls there is no doubt about that.  And you couldn’t call them Saloons because you had to go out to your car if you wanted to take a drink.

Audio Recordings

0:19

Bud Harder

You go down and give the girls 25 cents to dance with them.  And that is what I did, all of us did…and it was a lot of fun.

Gene Wallace

19:37:19    C0005     S-520

In some cases they would build the bars on the county lines where on half of the bar would be in one county one half would be in the other county. And so which ever county law enforcement rushed in theoretically everybody would move to the other side of the room.

Michael Dean

16:01:41    C0005    S-204

Bill Tillman, who is one of the great U.S. Marshalls from the territorial days, later served as a state senator, later was police chief in Oklahoma City had retired. And at the age of seventy-two in 1924 came back to service as the Police Chief in Cromwell, Oklahoma.

Michael Dean

16:04:54    C0005    S-204

The ironic thing is that Bill Tillman was shot and killed one day in the streets of Cromwell where he was the Town Marshall, where he was trying to enforce the law, state laws and local laws, and yet he was gunned down and killed by a prohibition agent. Somebody who was there specifically to enforce prohibition. The guy was drunk and gunned down Bill Tillman.

In eastern Oklahoma a much smaller operation was about to get underway.

Joe Prichard

16:36:57    C0002    S-303

My grandfather, Pete, came to this country as a small child, went to work in the coal mines, injured in the coal mines as a young adult. Had to have some way to make a living for his family, so in 1919,

Joe Prichard

16:40:28    C0002    S-303

He started brewing in his home--in the basement of his. When I was a little kid they were still brewing in the basement of the restaurant and bottling it.

Joe Prichard

16:54:48    C0002    S-303

But we were pretty small. We'd siphon the beer out of the vats that they'd hold it in, and we'd put the cap on it and all that kind of stuff just by hand.

Joe Prichard

16:39:02    C0002  S-303

The legend has it that the Choctaw Indians that were native to the land taught the Italian immigrants to make beer.

The men that came to Pete’s place for beer were as hungry as they were thirsty.

Joe Prichard

16:37:27    C0002    S-303

He opened up his home to the miners when they'd come out of the mines in the evenings to drink the beer. And he saw them bringing cold cuts and cheeses and stuff like that to eat with the beer. / He figured out relatively quickly that he could sell them some of those food items.

Joe Prichard

16:38:03    C0002    S-303

He ended up in the end with a restaurant run out of the spare rooms of his home. And that was the start of Pete's Place in 1925.

Soon people started coming to Krebs from all over the state to eat the fried chicken and drink the Choc beer, including Governors, Senators and even movie stars.

Joe Prichard

16:43:33    C0002    S-303

The local sheriff in town, in Pittsburgh County, when his family would come to town for holidays or something like that, he would come and arrest my granddad and put him in jail so he'd have to cook for his family.

Joe Prichard

16:47:25    C0002    S-303

Two agents from the alcohol, tobacco, and firearms showed up and attempted to order beer with the dinner. It just so happened that they were out of beer that night--Cause it was made in a very crude, very imperfect science and they'd run out all the time.--and they did not buy any, but they left two dollar bills on the table as a tip and their business card in between them. So my dad got scared and quit.

Pete’s stopped serving Choc beer in 1979 and didn’t start brewing again until 1995. Today Choc beer is back and brewed next door to Pete’s Place with Pete’s great grandson keeping the family’s recipe intact.

Joe Prichard

16:58:23    C0002    S-303

My son's operating the brewery now so that'll be the fourth generation to operate it, and my daughter is working in the restaurant. 

Joe Prichard

16:51:43    C0002    S-303

It went from the little brewery in Pete's Place we talked about which sold…a thousand cases say, something to that effect, and this year we're probably going to sell fifty-thousand cases, sixty-thousand cases. Seven states, or will be seven states when that beer that's setting out there in the warehouse goes to Alabama later today.

Gene Wallace

18:42:23    C0005     S-520

It was not a product that you could not get alcohol it s just that you had to know where to go to get the alcohol.

Bob Blackburn

14:44:59     C0006     S-403

If you could make a copper pot with the coils and have a source of fire which was the local woods and you had corn for mash and some sugar and could afford some bottles well you were in the liquor business.

Bob Blackburn

15:03:00    C0006     S-403

But then to keep the County Sheriff from coming in and confiscating or shooting holes in the still might require a pie or a few bucks or a couple of bottles itself.

Gene Wallace

18:49:09    C0005     S-520  

Prior to my birth my father who, I guess not so proudly claims that during that period of time he was one of those infamous bootleggers. He was kind of the chemist of the day at that time.

Gene Wallace

18:49:58    C0005     S-520

Moonshine actually got its name from it was a product that was primarily made at night. So the smoke wouldn't be visible to the law enforcement out there.

Stills were constantly guarded from IRS agents or “Revenuers” and thieves and locals were warned not to wander out in the woods.

Bob Blackburn

15:02:20    C0006     S-403

Generally the local boys knew what creek beds not to walk down.

Bob Blackburn

15:02:42    C0006     S-403

Or in western Oklahoma you knew what canyon not to go to. You could smell it.

Gene Wallace

18:59:27    C0005     S-520

Each one of them had their own claim as to how good or bad this product was. / One of the old sayings was the larger the bead or the bubble in the bottle the better the product was.

Gene Wallace

18:52:54    C0005     S-520     

I remember one of the guys saying well ours was special because it was aged in charred white oak barrels.

Gene Wallace  

18:53:19    C0005     S-520

They would then laugh and say but not much of it got aged. 

Gene Wallace

19:22:40    C0005     S-520

And there was a lot of bad products sold. There was a lot of people that they called it rot gut.

Gene Wallace  

19:02:46    C0005     S-520

My dad always contended that what you never have to worry about son is running out of gas. If you ever run out of gasoline you just open up a bottle of my good product and poor it in the tank.

Gene Wallace

18:58:04    C0005     S-520

It was something producing income that the family desperately had to have.

Gene Wallace

18:57:15    C0005     S-520

He said he became his own best customer and as a product of that I think my mother just dictated that he was going to have to find something else to do.

Bob Blackburn

14:43:22     C0006     S-403

My father who was a highway patrolmen at the time. They generally knew who the king pins where in the illicit business of importing alcohol they knew if they really want to bust somebody they would know where to go.

The law Bootleggers cared about the most was supply and demand. They would haul moonshine from a still into town or bring in bonded liquor across state lines in specially equipped cars.

Gene Wallace

19:02:01    C0005     S-520

My dad would explain to me now you see those springs under that car son? Those are truck springs which didn't mean a lot to me but obviously later I learned it was to carry the additional weight. / He explained to me that on the curves with the flow of liquid in there that it balanced the load out and made his car more stable.

Gene Wallace

19:02:46    C0005     S-520

If he got into a chase with law enforcement or if he got driving too fast and went around a curve too fast.

Not all bootleggers burned up the back country roads, some took it nice and slow.

Barry Switzer

16:07:44     C0002    S-109

Daddy, wanting to make a living for his family, thought he'd go buy a few cases of whiskey down at Louisiana, Mississippi and bring'em back and sell'em and make a few dollars.

Barry Switzer

16:19:52     C0002    S-109

Daddy would take the back seat out of a car; we had an old 88 Oldsmobile. / You could look all the way through to the trunk. We could load about twenty-something cases of whiskey all the way up to the front seat of the car and it'd be level. Then we'd through a quilt over it and some pillows and I'd get back there on it and lay down like I was napping as we were travelling through the country and cover it up.

Barry

16:08:01     C0002    S-109

Well he found out it was a pretty successful business.

Barry Switzer

16:09:51     C0002    S-109

Daddy hid his money in Mason jar--fruit jars and buried'em in the ground, hid his whiskey in the walls of the shotgun house. I always wondered if a bullet hole went through the wall there it'd be squirting out whiskey--come squirting out of the walls.

Barry Switzer

16:11:29     C0002    S-109

You pull a base board off of the wall; you got those studs running up there...those two by fours. It made it just like a little slot machine, a vending machine. You take a half a pint, push it up...stick another in there and very carefully push it up, stick another one in there and push it up.

Barry Switzer

16:13:59     C0002    S-109

The people in the community didn't care Daddy was a bootlegger. Someone's got to do it for them. Daddy always said, "Somebody's got to sell those Baptist people their whiskey."

Barry Switzer

16:08:23     C0002    S-109

Daddy continued to be in that business for some time--through his entire career. He loaned money. He took care of families.

Barry Switzer

16:15:10     C0002    S-109

They always said, "If the Good Lord'll keep you out of the grave, Mr. Frank's gonna keep you out of jail." Cause if you owed Daddy money he's going to have to make sure you went to work.

Barry Switzer

16:21:23     C0002    S-109

The boys from Little Rock would come down, and Daddy'd always know it cause the local law enforcement would always let Daddy know that they were on the way. They were Daddy's friends.

Barry Switzer

16:08:55     C0002    S-109     

Daddy always looked at it as that he was doing a service. It was a dry county.

Michael Dean

15:37:58    C0001    S-204

You either arranged to pickup your bottle at a gas station or under a tree in the park or whatever, or he'd bring it to your door. Walk up to the door, knock on the door. "Here's your bottle." Here's your five dollars." How convenient is that?

Gene Wallace

18:44:21    C0005     S-520

Will Rodgers made the infamous statement that “Oklahoma would remain dry as long as its voters were sober enough to stagger to the polls.”

Bob Blackburn

14:53:23     C0006     S-403

Well When J. Howard Edmondson is elected in 1958. J. Howard Edmondson and the crew cut boys: / that decided let's settle this once and for all.

Gene Wallace

18:46:09    C0005     S-520

He had a Dept. of Public Safety director by the name of Joe Cannon who turned his highway patrol troopers, and they stopped cars they had road blocks they raided hotels they raided country clubs. They virtually dried the state up. And in 1959 Will Rodgers was proven wrong.

Bob Blackburn

14:54:18     C0006     S-403

Well it created such a reaction of people that could not get their beer or their bottle of whiskey and it started changing public opinion until finally it changed to the point that it went to a vote of the people and the people of the State repealed prohibition in 1959.

Overnight bootleggers were out of business. The self styled “King of the Bootleggers” Big Mac McCarty vowed he would make a new start selling cars using the slogan “…As good as our booze used to be.”

Gene Wallace

18:46:34    C0005     S-520

43 counties out of the 77 voted at that time to pass what was called not liquor by the drink but liquor by the bottle. And Liquor by the bottle meant that when you actually bought it at the package store you could take it to a place and put your name on it and go drink.

The new law established the Alcohol Beverage Control or ABC board whose first job was to license over 500 retail liquor stores across the state.

Gene Wallace

20:19:14    C0005     S-520

I was one of the original inspectors. They were allowed to hire 20 agents and 20 inspectors with two chiefs. I got hired on as one of the original inspectors and I went to work on July the twentieth 1959. 

Gene Wallace

19:25:22    C0005     S-520

Well there are stories that there were actual bonded liquor trucks lined up at the state line because you know part of the vote was funded by the liquor industry that wanted to sell the liquor in the Sate of Oklahoma legally.

Tax money from alcohol sales poured into the state treasury, adults 21 and over could walk into a package store and buy what they wanted, but restaurants and clubs could not legally mix a drink.

Michael Dean

15:21:35    C0001    S-204

You'd walk into a club with your bottle in a brown bag, and you'd become a member of that club. They would sell you drinks out of your bottle.

Bob Blackburn

14:55:17     C0006     S-403

So it might cost 75 cents for a glass and some ice, but yeah I didn't sale him liquor that is his liquor. That is his bottle, see his name on it? So that was liquor by the wink.

Every waiter, every bartender in the state kept an eye out for the ABC inspector.

Michael Dean

15:22:24    C0001    S-204

They were going around to these private clubs, and some of them were pretty nice private clubs, too, and they were busting the clubs for selling drinks illegally, for selling liquor by the drinks.

Gene Wallace

20:28:14    C0005     S-520

We would arrest the individuals that were involved on the sale the waiter or the waitress or who ever was in charge the manager or the owner. We would go down and file charges on those people.

Gene Wallace

20:46:59    C0005     S-520

I remember one young man down at Norman we arrested him so many times he said, "You guys are going to have to hire me because I can't get a job with eleven arrests on my record.” 

ABC inspectors even arrested porters and the conductor on board an AMTRAC train for selling mixed drinks in the club car.

Gene Wallace

19:32:16    C0005     S-520

Well that actually was the law of the land in Oklahoma until 1984. And then they again had a statewide referendum on county option liquor by the drink. And that would open up the provision that you didn't have to have the bottle. You could actually go into an establishment and order across the bar.

Bob Blackburn

14:55:35     C0006     S-403

In 1983 by a vote of the people it was repealed and we had liquor by the drink county by county.

For 100 years, the battle over liquor in Oklahoma has been intense and emotional. No matter what happens in the future, the previous 100 years have given something to everyone in the state…a rich and unique history.

Bob Blackburn

14:44:07      C0006   S-403

We don't read about it everyday and it wasn't real visible but it was very much a part of who we are and who we were.

Michael Dean

15:53:28   C0003     S-104

We were never a dry state. We were not a dry state before 1933. We weren't a dry state from 1933 to 1959 when prohibition was repealed. We weren't a dry state from 1959 to 1983 when liquor by the drink was passed by the state voters. So we were never a dry state.

Barry Switzer

16:28:58     C0002    S-109

People are going to get their whiskey somehow. People want a drink; they're going to get it. 

TRT

BOOTH

WHITE WINE IN LIQUOR STORE

BEER IN LIQUOR STORE

LIQUOR STORE EXTERIOR

“RETAIL LIQUOR STORE” SIGN

? GENERIC LIQUOR STORE INTERIOR

GFX

SOME OF OKLAHOMA’S LIQUOR LAWS ARE WELL KNOWN INCLUDING REGULATION OF THE TEMPERATURE AT WHICH WINE AND STRONG BEER MAY BE SOLD AND OUR PROHIBITION OF WINE AND LIQUOR SALES IN GROCERY STORES.

OTHERS ARE MORE OBSCURE.  IT IS ILLEGAL, FOR EXAMPLE, FOR A PERSON TO OWN MORE THAN ONE LIQUOR STORE, OR TO OPERATE A LIQUOR STORE IN A TOWN WITH A POPULATION LESS THAN TWO HUNDRED.  AND SECTION 213-POINT-TWO OF THE STATE’S LIQUOR CODE PROHIBITS THE SALE OF LOW-POINT BEER TO PARTIALLY UNCLOTHED PERSONS.

ADVOCATES FOR REFORM BELIEVE THESE ARE LAWS THAT TRACE THEIR ROOTS TO A TIME WHEN OKLAHOMA HAD PROHIBITION AND LIQUOR TOO.