The Old White Woman with Many Stories - Part III

Eve Ball and her mother, G.G., left Independence, Kansas and set off for the frontier after Eve’s stepfather died; people went west to survive, out of desperation, to reinvent themselves, to escape disappointing marriages, to perhaps achieve upward mobility, or to strike it rich. They escaped the social hierarchies and their histories; in the East, who one was related to often counted more than merit. 

Those who were content with their lot stayed where they were.  Eve’s husband, Harry, stayed; he remarried (or married - no marriage or divorce certificate has been found in any Kansas courthouse for Harry and Eve). Harry had a daughter with his new wife and lived happily ever after until he died in 1975 still living near his birthplace; he had been a salesman all his life.

Eve and G.G. traveled to Tucson and lived with family, then moved to Wink, Texas, then Hobbs, New Mexico.  After G.G. passed and Eve moved to the Sacramento mountains, the autobiography she gave to those who lived around her was that she was raised on a ranch in Kansas and then on a ranch in Texas, that she was a widow, and that her mother had been the first female doctor in Kansas. It was probably easier to enhance a good story and leave out the struggle.

The term “BS” most certainly was invented in the West.  BS translates into bunk, baloney, hogwash, hooey, poppycock, and malarkey.  BS is synonymous with nonsense, deception, foolishness and trickery-talk. Before this technical Googley age, few would bother to check a hyperbolic lineage - and what did it matter?

In 1908, a man named Clarence Van Nostrand left St. Louis, Missouri and arrived in Roswell, New Mexico at the L.F.D. ranch to work as a ranch hand.  He introduced himself as Tex Austin and said he had been raised on a cattle operation in Victoria, Texas.  

When he later went north to work on the Vermejo Ranch near Raton, New Mexico, he claimed to have been employed by Don Luis Terrazas, the Chihuahuan cattle baron of the Creel-Terrazas family. Tex claimed he had been a captain under Pancho Villa’s revolutionary forces against Diaz - as had Tom Mix before he became a famous cowboy movie star in his fancy duds and Stetson ten-gallon felt white hat which featured a tall crown and a wide, flat brim.

Tex Austin, BS' er extraordinaire, produced his first rodeo in El Paso, Texas right after the Mexican Revolution ended.  In Wichita, Kansas he promoted the first indoor rodeo in 1918; two years later Austin organized rodeos in Chicago Stadium, New York's Madison Square Garden and in Hollywood.

 Tex Austin, aka the “King of Rodeo rode his promotional high horse through the Golden Age of Rodeo. In 1924, Austin took his newly created International Rodeo to Wembley Stadium in London, England to the massive British Empire Exhibition.

Nearly every former or present commonwealth nation participated in the British Empire Exhibition; one that blatantly did not participate was the newly established Irish Free State which did not give a fekkin’ flip about joining the bloody limey pom Brits' extravaganza.

At the time, the British Empire held sway over nearly 25% of the world’s population - 412 million people, and covered 13.7 million square miles - 24% of the Earth's total land area. The United Kingdom told the world that "the sun never sets on the British Empire.

On St. George's Day in 1924, one hundred and one years ago, King George V stepped up to a BBC Radio microphone at the newly created Wembley Stadium to open the British Empire Exhibition. His opening statement was the very first radio broadcast given by a British monarch. The King sent a telegram that traveled around the world in one minute and 20 seconds before it was read back to him over the radio by a messenger boy.

There were pavilions from every corner of the world. Canada exhibited a statue of the Prince of Wales carved from butter, the United States dodgem cars (bumper cars) were a favorite as was Egypt’s copy of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Other popular attractions included Queen Mary's Doll House, dance pavilions, an amusement park and the extremely popular Tex Austin’s wild west rodeo.  Twenty-seven million people from around the world attended the Exhibition during the two years it was open.

 Daughter, Roberta and wife, Thelma      Bob Crosby, World Champion Cowboy

Bob Crosby and his wife, Thelma, sailed across the Atlantic with his roping team of horses to perform in the International Rodeo. The rodeo featured ten events including bareback bronc riding, fancy roping, cowgirls' bronc riding, steer wrestling, cowgirls' trick riding, cowboys' bronc riding with saddle, cowboys' relay race, wild steer riding, cowboys' trick riding, and wild horse races. They performed twice a day.

Bob Crosby performed his roping skills before King George V and the Royal Family - and 27 million other people from around the world. Mystery writer Agatha Christie and her husband were among the observers as well as most celebrities of the day.

The U.K. post office issued commemorative postage stamps, envelopes, letter cards, postcards and the mint struck medals for the Exhibition;; a glut of many other souvenirs were produced as well, the most common being a tea towel. (If sold today it would probably say, "My grandmother went to the British Empire Exhibition depicting 400 years of British supremacy and all I got was this lousy tea towel").

At the end of October 1925 when the exhibition had its finale, even after receiving 27 million visitors in two years and grossing nearly 151 million dollars, Variety Magazine claimed that the Exhibition was the world's biggest outdoor failure; the UK Government was $90 million dollars in the hole.

The closing ceremony was presided over by the Spare, who eventually became King George VI, even though he was second in line to inherit the throne. His brother, whose full size figure the Canadians carved out of butter, decided to marry an American divorcee and had to abdicate. 

The 2010 movie, The King's Speech, is based on the British public’s reaction following the then Duke of York’s radio broadcast on 31 October 1925. King George V had been the first Royal family member to utilize the newly invented radio when he gave the opening speech for the British Empire Exhibition. His son, the future King, (future King George VI) was an embarrassment and an abhorrence to the Royal Family when he gave the closing speech. It was the first time Britons realized a Prince - chosen by birth by the Divine - had a debilitating stammer and could barely stutter his way through a speech. 

        King George VI Coronation 

The patience of some of the public in the British Empire was wearing thin for the expense of the pomp and circumstance of royalty. P.G. Wodehouse's fictional character, Bertie Wooster, that the Exhibition’s only and greatest accomplishment was the Green Swizzle, a frothy, crushed ice, citrusy rum and absinthe drink served in a frosted commemorative glass.  

Musician and conductor Edward Elgar  said the self-importance of the Royal Family’s exhibition was "vulgar" and overdone. Writer Virginia Woolf was unimpressed; she called it "an outmoded piece of antiquated fiction." The Daily Herald wrote, "to this debased spirit we owe many unnecessary wars, the loss of much valuable blood,” after the reporter witnessed huge military bands, historical reenactments of battles, and a simulation of an air attack on London by firing blank ammunition into the stadium and dropping pyrotechnics from aeroplanes to simulate shrapnel from guns on the ground.

However, the genuine International Rodeo was the top event at the Exhibition. The cowboy and cowgirl bronc riders, fancy ropers, steer wrestlers, trick riders, wild steer riders, and wild horse racers caused quite a sensation in civilized Great Britain, but no good deed goes unpunished.

The rodeo was not popular with animal rights activists who attempted to get a court order to stop the event on the grounds of animal cruelty. Public and parliamentary debate followed for ten years after the rodeo arrived in Merry Old England and ultimately caused the passage of the Protection of Animals Act in 1934 which banned rodeo events deemed cruel. 

Bob Crosby arrived home from England and became the three-time World’s All-Around Champion (1925, 1927 & 1928) and permanent holder of the Roosevelt Trophy (on display at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He did so at the peril of breaking every bone in his body except his left leg and spine. His right leg was little more than an atrophied shank that he strapped into a specially made boot. 

        

               Bob Crosby, painting by Peter Hurd

"Half the fun of being a cowboy is the stories you can tell later in life." a veteran cowboy once said.  Wild Horse Bob, King of the Cowboys, had his share.  He told a reporter he was born riding.  He said his mother was being chased on a pregnant mare by the Comanches just before he was born.  They got far enough ahead to stop for a minute; the colt foaled, and Bob’s mom birthed him at the same time.  He said he got on the colt and they all rushed away to safety.   Crosby said his mother was a schoolmarm and he told the tale of his father winning her in a poker match.  The winner of the game would have the opportunity to propose to the schoolmarm - apparently she accepted. Their son Robert was an abstemious man - he did not chew, smoke, drink hard liquor, gamble or curse. He attended church and was known for his courage and physical fortitude. In 1930, a horse fell on Bob at the Phoenix Rodeo and tore his knee from the socket.  A month later, a steer ran a horn through his thigh.  He stuck his thumb in the puncture which was bleeding profusely and went to his camp wagon and poured coal oil into the wound.  The next day he returned to the rodeo and won first place prize money. A few weeks later he got in a fight with five cowboys at a rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas. They broke his nose and his cheekbone so badly that his wife did not recognize him when he got home, but he had won the calf roping prize right after the beating. Three weeks later Bob was flanking a steer and was kicked in the eye.  He needed 17 stitches in his eyelid and he could not see out of it for several months. When he recovered his eyesight, he entered a rodeo in Prescott, Arizona where his right leg was broken for the fifth time.  Gangrene set in because of a cast that was too tight.  He was shipped to Mayo clinic where he was set to have his leg amputated. Crosby was being wheeled to surgery when he suddenly sat up, said he was homesick and was going home.  He got off the gurney and went to his brother’s house in Roswell, New Mexico.  He told Harold to find the worst doctor in town; the physician came to his house and sliced Bob’s leg open from his knee to his ankle.  They both took pocketknives, heated them, dipped them in alcohol, and scraped the gangrene out down to the bone.

 

       Bob Crosby's leg after gangrene

The infection appeared again in Bob’s big toe a few weeks later so he took his wife’s sewing scissors and snipped off the toe.  Gangrene appeared one more time; he cut up an old tire inner tube, slipped it over his leg and filled it with cow manure - the red centipedes of blood poisoning disappeared after a few days of poulticing.  A couple of months later he won $2700 in a steer cutting competition in Winslow, Arizona (about $52,000 today). The "King of the Cowboys" was interviewed by Life magazine because he was among the best and most colorful steer ropers and rodeo contestants and held three world championships. A multi-talented performer, Bob also founded the Cross B Band and the musical group sometimes performed at dances with Ray Reed from Maypearl, Texas. Bob always put on a good show at whatever he did or whoever he talked to. At the age of 49, nationally and internationally recognized Bob Crosby retired and settled into ranch life. Bob's old friend and promoter, Tex Austin, bought the 5,500-acre Forked Lightning Ranch near Pecos, New Mexico after his financially successful International Rodeo ended in England. Tex turned his new spread into a dude ranch offering wealthy and famous guests riding parties, picnics, tennis, golf, croquet, horseshoes, polo, motor trips to nearby attractions, and polo. He held cattle drives between his ranch and Las Vegas, New Mexico, and in Tom Sawyer fashion, had wealthy customers pay him to drive his cattle to the railhead.

The Forked Lightning was heavily mortgaged as Tex was trying to build up his operation; the ranch fell victim to the Great Depression and in 1933 was placed into court receivership. Oil magnate Buddy Fogelson and his wife, actress Greer Garson, bought the property (which was later owned in the 1990s by actor Val Kilmer). Tex and his wife opened a restaurant in Santa Fe called “Tex Austin’s Los Rancheros."    In 1938, Tex’s wife, Mary Lou, came home to find stacks of photographs on the couch from his old rodeo days when he was “King of the Rodeo Promoters.”  A few weeks before, Austin had received a diagnosis that he was losing his eyesight. Mary Lou found Tex in his car in the garage with the motor running. Apparently, he was not willing to live without being able to see.

The International Rodeo at the British Empire Exhibition made Tex Austin a wealthy man but the entire hoopla left British taxpayers $90 million dollars in debt. They paid up for the King’s extravaganza and their commemorative tea towels hung in their kitchens for years. The Duke of York became King George VI; he worked with a speech therapist and was able to give encouraging speeches during World War II. His brother who abdicated, along with his American wife, Wallis Simpson, greatly embarrassed the Royal Family because they seemingly preferred Hitler to English democracy.

“Wild Horse Bob” Crosby. King of the Cowboys” was driving to his Cross B Ranch near Kenna, New Mexico, north of Maljamar and southwest of Elida when he met his Maker. Cosby was driving his jeep and approached a one lane bridge when he saw a car headed toward him. Bob veered and plunged 30 feet into the dry Pecos River bed.  He was wearing his battered black hat. He had his boots on. The bridge over the Pecos River on U.S. 70 between Roswell and Kenna was named in his honor, as was a nearby draw.

Bob Crosby died at the scene of the accident on October 20, 1947 several months after Eve Ball’s mother passed away.  Nearly twenty years later Eve and Bob’s wife, Thelma, would publish a book about his life: "Bob Crosby: World Champion Cowboy;" published by Wild Horse Press.

The Old White Lady with Many Stories

     After I finished high school, having taken all the secretarial courses, and having some college courses under my belt - literature, creative writing, and history, my father suggested to me, since I was rather aimless, that I might want to go up to Ruidoso and meet Eve Ball and ask her if I could help out and learn about writing from her. She was an author who wrote Western stories and did oral history interviews with the Apaches who had been prisoners of war in Alabama, Florida and Oklahoma.  

My father, Clif McDonald, had lived for a while as a young boy at Bent, near the Mescalero Reservation. He herded goats and got to know some of the young Apache boys he roamed the mountains with. When he became a politician, he always enjoyed going to Mescalero to reconnect with the families he knew and ask for their votes. He thought Mrs. Ball was doing the Lord’s work writing down the old warriors' stories before they were gone forever. 

At the time, I thought to my young, ignorant self, “I would rather poke a stick in my eye than hang out with an old woman in her 70s every day, writing down what even older people are saying,” and I hightailed it off to San Francisco to work as a secretary for an import company - rods and reels and creels.

I began to date a bicycle messenger who delivered and took documents around the city; he frequented our import warehouse waiting for signatures, we began to meet for lunch and ate our sandwiches in the park across from City Hall and eventually I met his parents.  His mother was a member of a tribe from near Yellowknife, Canada.  She liked my turquoise and silver jewelry and I told her my mother and grandmother often bought jewelry from the parents of Navajo students who visited their children at the New Mexico School for the Visually Handicapped.  

We talked about the recent occupation of Alcatraz by Native Americans and the American Indian Movement and I told her about Eve Ball interviewing Apaches in Ruidoso and how my dad suggested I go meet her and offer to help her.  “What are you doing now?” she asked.  “Secretary, taking shorthand and typing letters,” I said.  “I think you should have listened to your father,” she replied. 

Now I am an old white woman in my 70s who missed out on meeting Eve Ball and the warriors who fought the longest war in American history: 36 years, from 1849 to 1886 (with some minor conflicts until 1924).

 Eve Ball

The Old White Lady With Many Stories, as Eve Ball was renamed by the Apaches, did not start writing stories until she was sixty years old.  She had been a school teacher in Ruidoso, though she was not from there. She had an adobe house built along a trail that women walked along from Mescalero to Ruidoso to buy supplies.  They would stop at Eve’s house to ask if they could use her garden hose for a drink of water.

Eve did one better - she put a table and chairs outside with glasses and a pitcher of water and a pitcher of lemonade. She would go outside and sit with the women on their trek to or from town.  Eve learned that some of their husbands and fathers had spent nearly three decades as prisoners of war of the United States government - they were Chiricahua and Lipan Apache, not Mescalero. She also learned from Mescalero descendants of the escape from Bosque Redondo of nearly 350 Mescaleros who made their way “illegally” back from the concentration camp to return to their sacred Sacramento Mountains.

It took many years for Eve to gain access to interview descendants and relatives of Geronimo, Victorio, Nana, and Juh.  She made friends with their wives and daughters who she spent years convincing that they should convince their husbands and fathers to let her interview them. 

Ramona Chihuahua Daklugie finally got her husband, Asa Daklugie, after four years to agree to come to Eve’s home.  Ramona and her daughter chaperoned Daklugie on his Thursday morning visits because it was not proper to talk to a white woman or any woman alone. Ramona was the daughter of Chief Chihuahua and met Asa at Carlisle Indian School; they married in 1896 and had several children.

Daklugie had been a young teenager when he fought alongside his uncle, Geronimo. He was so young that when the Apache warriors surrendered in 1886, he was eventually allowed to go to Carlisle Indian School rather than suffer in the hell hole prisoner of war camps in Florida and Alabama.  

At first Daklugie pretended not to speak English to Eve but his English was excellent after spending twelve years in school. His comments often displayed stinging hatred of the White Eyes (Anglos) and Mexicans; 5000 U.S. Cavalry and Mexican military had tried to capture Geronimo’s small band of warriors. He described how his Chiricahua family were POWs for 27 degrading, miserable years. In 1913, they were given the choice to remain in Oklahoma with land allotments or relocate to the Mescalero Reservation but were not allowed to return to their homelands.

Eve was intrigued with how consistent her interviewees’ stories were.  There was no Apache written language; storytellers told stories around the fire at night.  A storyteller needed to have their story straight as it would be passed down to the next generation in oral tradition - verbatim.  Eve used shorthand during the interviews. She would read her notes back to her interviewees to make sure she had the correct information.  She did not ask leading questions; she let the person talk to ensure she got the Apache point of view.

When Eve Ball began documenting the “oral history” from the last living Apache warriors, many academics dismissed her. They saw her as a teacher pretending to be a historian, not using primary written sources, writing on a “side of the story” that wasn’t yet valued because history is written by the victors. 

Eve had to pay for her first publication herself; publishers weren’t interested, but once it was released, people saw its value to history. In 1982, Eve Ball won the “Oscar of Western Writing,” the Golden Saddleman and was also inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.  A year later, she was nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom and received a special joint U.S. Congressional Resolution honoring her work on the history of the west. 

To be continued…

Taxes, Tariffs, Tarantula Juice and Unintended Outcomes

                                            Sheriff Howard Beacham  

 

During the Civil War, President Lincoln’s administration put a tax on alcohol to pay for the war and the tax persisted until 1920. By the early 1900s, nearly 40% of the United State’s national government’s income came from liquor, wine, and beer taxes. 

In 1910, the federal government took in $200 million in taxes from the sale of spirits; the rest of the United State’s budget relied upon the sale of federal lands and tariffs collected at customs houses from American wholesalers who purchased goods coming into the country.  

Taxes on alcohol were so crucial to the budget that brewers and distillers didn’t take the possibility of prohibition seriously. They believed the government would never give up such a rich source of income. But another source of taxable funds was added in 1913: the 16th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified which allowed the federal government to collect income taxes from every employee in the country.

Surprisingly, the income tax was popular among most people.  The working class felt that the Gilded Age “robber barons” should be assessed proportionate to their wealth because it wasn't fair that the rich contributed little of their income and wealth to keep the country afloat.

“The New Man on the Job,” 1913. This cartoon depicts the “Idle Rich” joining the “Working Class” on the treadmill of “Governmental Expenses.” 

 Sixty percent of the federal budget came mostly from import taxes. Prices of imported goods were inflated because tariffs were passed along from the wholesaler to the retailer to consumers; therefore,  the smaller one’s income was, the more they paid as a percentage in taxes from their purchases. The regressive import taxes created a larger burden on the poor; citizens believed that the new income tax would mean everyone would pay taxes fairly. 

There were plenty of smugglers along the coasts and borders who snuck in goods to avoid paying the custom house fees. Since the vast majority of the federal budget came from import duties, the precursor to the Coast Guard—the Revenue Cutter Service—was part of the Treasury Department. The Revenue Cutters were established to prevent smugglers from bringing items into the United States without paying import duties.  

  

                                         United States Revenue Cutter Service

Sugar, cigars, French champagne and cordials, coffee and tea were transported in boats and also across Canadian and Mexican smuggling routes to avoid paying these tariffs. Sugar smuggling shenanigans alone amounted to American consumers saving around $6,000,000 per year in taxes. Offenders also sought to avoid the tariffs on protected manufactured goods - from lumber to iron, to machinery which was produced cheaper elsewhere and covertly conveyed across borders and beaches.  

Ironically, luxury goods, which only the wealthy could afford, were also illegally snuck in: silk, lace, furs, diamonds, and French fashions were popular. One economist claimed that $11.7 million in silk, or 25 percent of the total yearly silk imports, entered through the black market.  

The largest smuggling seizures involved imported goods from Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. English china graced carved rosewood Asian dinner tables in elegant homes; French haute couture swathed the bodies of chic women whose necks dripped with De Beer’s diamonds - snuck in tax free. 

In 1914, customs officials arrested millionaire glove manufacturer Lucius Littauer, a former congressman and adviser to President Theodore Roosevelt, for failing to declare a $5,800 diamond and pearl tiara imported from Venice, once owned by Empress Josephine Bonaparte. He pleaded guilty to avoid jail, but he did not avoid disgrace; his constituents demanded he be stripped of his right to vote - but that didn’t happen. 

                                                          The Empress Eugenie Tiara

Meanwhile, women were becoming a political force because they had few rights to protect themselves and their children and were not allowed to vote or run for office to enact pro-family legislation. At the turn of the century, married women could not own property, control their wages, enter into contracts, nor act contrary to their husband's authority. 

 It wasn't difficult for a husband to get a divorce, but wives didn’t have a separate legal identity unique from their husband's. If a woman wanted a divorce, the husband or a “next friend,”  usually a father or brother, would have to petition for it on her behalf.  

It was not until 1937 that laws allowed for divorce in cases where bigamy, desertion, insanity, and drunkenness were proved. Divorce had to be justified with a cause such as infidelity, gross neglect, abandonment, or abuse - which needed to be witnessed by someone other than the wife. The concept of "irreconcilable differences" didn't exist. 

A major concern about getting a divorce was  very few employers would hire women.  The jobs that were available meant women would have to leave their children to fend for themselves during the work day and females could not earn enough to feed many mouths.  

 But women began meeting with other politically active groups to not only get the vote for themselves, but also to outlaw the sale of alcohol which was often the cause of wives needing to divorce.  The alcoholism rate before Prohibition was three times current levels, and the addicts were mostly male - women were not welcome in bars.   

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union joined a coalition of southern Protestant churches, revival evangelist Billy Sunday, former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, the Anti-Saloon League, ax-yielding Carrie Nation, and curiously enough, the Ku Klux Klan. 

The evils of alcohol were clearly spelled out by Prohibitionists: poverty - addiction was a major drain on a family budget and the biggest hit to finances was when an alcoholic breadwinner lost their job.  Women and children had no recourse against physical, domestic and emotional abuse caused by the disease: insults, threats, physical violence, neglect, humiliation, intimidation, anxiety, depression and shame inflicted on families by a loved one’s addiction.  Social reformers were out to tackle these problems by outlawing booze! 

The KKK imposed their prejudices into the mix through the influx of German (Catholic) immigrants who arrived in droves and began brewing beer from grains grown in the Midwest  known as the German Belt. The newcomers opened beer halls and beer gardens instead of saloons. Italian and Irish immigrants, also Catholic, were wine and beer drinkers and were soon placed on the KKK’s and the “Know Nothings” aka “American Party’s” hit list. 

American Party candidates began winning elections in several cities. Their platform included banning languages other than English, requiring Bible readings in public schools, restricting certain types of alcohol like beer and wine and banning beer sales on Sundays. 

 When Know-Nothing party member  Levi Boone was elected mayor in Chicago, he raised the cost of a beer garden license by 600% and revived a law banning beer sales on Sundays - the day Germans took their families to beer gardens for food, music, and imbibing. The Anti-Saloon League said beer halls were owned by “enemy aliens” and even characterized brewers as “the worst of all our German enemies” during World War I. 

Beer producers were soon boycotted because of anti-German sentiments. Adolphus Busch, Frederick Pabst, and Joseph Schlitz were financially successful and this also bred resentment and jealousy among some white Protestants or “Native Americans” as they called themselves (they said they were here first). 

 A lack of support for Prohibition was deemed “unpatriotic,” and many Germans chose to Americanize their last names: Müller became Miller, Schmidt became Smith, and Braun became Brown.  

The forces were aligned: suffragists, anti-saloon prohibitionists, preachers, people with common prejudices, and politicians were ready with their agenda. With the 16th Amendment in place, funding for federal taxes could be transferred from liquor taxes to wage earners. The 18th Amendment was ratified thereby outlawing the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.  Hopes were high! 

Prohibitionists predicted the sales of clothing and household goods would skyrocket. Real estate developers and landlords said neighborhoods would improve and slums, poverty, and crime would be eliminated when saloons closed. Social reformers conjectured that domestic abuse and financial hardships would disappear when drunken husbands and fathers became sober. 

Chewing gum, grape juice, and soft drink companies ramped up production expecting drinkers would switch over to their products. Theaters anticipated larger crowds as Americans would look for new ways to entertain themselves without alcohol. 

Preachers believed divorces would plummet - down from 1 divorce in every 3000 marriages to no divorces. Church attendance would rise; tithes would increase.  Hopes were high! 

The first effect on the economy was that Prohibition led to the loss of around 250,000 jobs. These included jobs in brewing, distilling, barrelmaking, box making, bottle manufacturing, label printing, coppersmithing, vat making, trucking, bartending, serving, cleaning, stockers, clerks, salesmen, hops and barley farmers, bookkeepers, stenographers, as well as positions in venues like nightclubs and dance halls with entertainers and musicians. Upscale restaurants closed their doors without wine and cocktails to serve. 

The Volstead Act didn’t do what it intended - which was to stop people from drinking. Alcohol enthusiasts began consuming more hard liquor during Prohibition than ever before, and spirits accounted for a staggering 75% of all alcoholic beverages consumed in the United States because it was more cost effective to transport.  

Alcohol consumption before Prohibition had been gravitating towards beer, but a new drinking culture arose, giving birth to libations including mixed drinks to disguise the taste of alcohol, bathtub gin, and moonshine. Bootleggers and pharmacists became wealthy.   

The only legal distributors of alcohol were drug stores with a doctor’s prescription for liquor used medicinally. Charles R. Walgreen expanded from 20 stores to 525 stores during the 1920s thanks to medicinal alcohol sales. Walgreen said his success was due to the popularity of his newly invented milkshakes at his stores’ lunch counters. But drugstores provided the only legal source of liquor during all 13 years of prohibition, and many distilleries kept their lights on during Prohibition by selling to the Rexalls. 

Drugstores’ lucrative “secrets” are even alluded to in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby. Daisy thinks Gatsby is rich because he owns drugstores. But drugstore was also an euphemism for a bootlegger - and pharmacists were getting rich during the Roaring ‘20s. 

With the great alcohol abstinence experiment underway, Alamogordo, Otero County, and New Mexico’s citizens and visitors were among those who made a national cat-andmouse pastime between those violating the law and those who were arresting the violators. 

 The Twenties were ready to roar and Otero County had one lawman who intended to see that the roar was a non-alcoholic one. Howard S. Beacham, a strong law and order man who believed in Prohibition, was elected county sheriff in the 1920 election. He took the enforcement of Prohibition seriously and did his best to apprehend bootleggers, still owners, and others connected with the trade. Moreover, he pushed the courts to prosecute the cases according to the rule of law. 

Beacham’s effectiveness in the war on bootleggers brought him to the attention of the Department of Justice, and he was chosen to be a federal Prohibition Agent. As an agent, he had jurisdiction in four counties in addition to Otero County: Chaves, Eddy, Lea and Lincoln.  

Nothing in Beacham’s background indicated that he would become such an effective lawman. Born January 27, 1883, he traveled west in his late teens and early twenties, making his way to Colorado, where he engaged in mining. On his way to South America to get rich at mining, he stopped in Alamogordo and Cloudcroft to visit friends. 
Beacham traveled into Mexico before he decided that he liked what he had seen in the new towns of Otero County and returned to live in the Sacramento Mountains in 1907. 

In Cloudcroft, he went to work for Mr. and Mrs. L.C. Jones at the Virginia Hotel. He became a cook of wide reputation, and he won the hand of Mrs. Jones’ daughter by a previous marriage, Juanita Chase. They were married in 1909.

 

Stutz Bearcat 

 The Beachams later moved to Alamogordo and operated the Hotel Alamogordo from 1913 to 1917. He remained a restaurant operator until his career as a peace officer began. In one of his raids, Sheriff Beacham confiscated a Stutz Bearcat, one of the fastest sports cars of the time. This car became his official vehicle, and no rumrunner was going to outrun the sheriff. 

Among the many arrests Beacham made, one was an individual calling himself Franklin Turner. When Turner was turned over to federal officials, his real identity became known: “Machine-Gun Kelly”! 

           Machine Gun Kelley

Sheriff Beacham’s most notable apprehension occurred by happenstance in Alamogordo. The Sheriff was working on his automobile at his residence on Indiana Avenue when a very unusual load of lumber came by, headed north. The lumber was of good quality, without knots, a fact that struck the sheriff as odd since lumber from the nearby Sacramento Mountains was never free of knots. Also, the lumber was dusty, indicating that it had not been cut at a local mill and freshly loaded. 

Bootlegger D.E. Sherry followed what he thought was a safer route, Indiana Avenue, and had driven right in front of the sheriff ’s house. The irony of the situation was that Mr. Sherry, the driver of the truck, had heard of Sheriff Beacham’s no-nonsense tactics and had avoided driving on the main highway through town. 

Beacham got in his car and followed the lumber truck; he pulled the truck over near La Luz. The sheriff found that it was a rumrunner’s truck, cleverly camouflaged with a load of lumber. D.E. Sherry was running his goods out of Mexico. The load contained 972 pints of whiskey, 60 quarts of Gordon’s gin, 60 quarts of tequila and cognac, 9 one-gallon cans of alcohol, and a ten-gallon keg of whiskey. It was valued at $7,000 (around $130,000 in today’s money).

On February 7, 1928, newspapers throughout the Southwest reported, “The largest single cargo of liquor ever captured by officials in the vicinity of Alamogordo was flagged down by Prohibition Officer Howard Beacham.” The load had been cleverly disguised in a fake load of lumber. Beacham promised the newspapers that he would avoid joking and “refrain from saying anything about wood alcohol.” 

                                              

                                   Confiscated Alcohol smuggled from Mexico 

 Another unusual capture of what newspapers dubbed “a booze plane” was effected by Howard Beacham on November 22, 1927. This was reputedly the first capture of a liquor plane in New Mexico. Beacham seized the plane and the five cases of whiskey on information provided to him by Special U.S. Customs Agent Juanita McDaniels. Ms. McDaniels often posed as a high-school student, a cover which allowed her to gather information on immigration and prohibition violations. 

                   Bootlegger Plane

Bootleggers were often very shrewd in concealing illegal goods. A 1929 Nash Coupe was seized near Alamogordo in January of 1931. The liquor in the car, which included 100 gallons of bulk bourbon whiskey and twenty-three bottles of French cordial, was cleverly hidden in “traps” under the car body and in the back of the upholstery. Thirteen specially made containers held the bulk whiskey. 

                  Rum Runner's Booty

The pursuit of “rum runners” traveling in fast automobiles was a dangerous undertaking. On August 13, 1928, Howard Beacham, chasing a suspected bootlegger, was speeding along when his car was hit by a truck, which necessitated a brief trip to the hospital. In his long career as sheriff and prohibition officer, Beacham had only two automobile accidents. 

Two moonshiners, J. Oral Whitefield and William M. Horton from Eddy County, who built and operated a 355 gallon still, were arrested and pleaded guilty in court. Mr. Whitefield, who was very proud of his workmanship on the still, insisted on being photographed with it before heading off to federal prison.

                                                            Whitefield's Still

Howard Beacham was credited in 1928 with the “invention” of a large banner, which rolled like a scroll and allowed officers to establish a roadblock at a moment’s notice. A December 12, 1928 newspaper article said of the banner, “In numerous instances autoists have believed that they were being held up by bandits and attempt to crash the bars. When a tourist sees [this] big banner...he will be reassured, unless he has some of the proscribed stuff that is alleged to circulate clandestinely.”

Beacham’s vigorous and successful enforcement of Prohibition appeared to be his undoing for a time. Towards the end of his term in office, 1921-1923, he was not renominated for Sheriff at the Democratic convention because of his undue diligence - no good deed goes unpunished.

Beacham, however, was still a federal Prohibition Agent and continued as a Prohibition Officer for the remaining nine years of prohibition, 1924 to 1933. He was again elected sheriff in 1935 and reelected again in 1937. After his terms ended, he went back to the restaurant business and operated the popular Plaza Café. He also served as municipal judge and justice of the peace.

Howard Beacham died on March 9, 1963, at the age of 80, respected and beloved by the law-abiding citizens of Alamogordo and Otero County, and probably some of the law-breakers, too.

Unintentional consequences always follow the best laid plans: the federal government lost around $11 billion in tax revenue during Prohibition and spent $300 million trying to keep America on the wagon. Doctors in the United States were paid an estimated $40 million to write medicinal whiskey prescriptions and bootleggers and the bootleg market saw earnings of an estimated $47 billion over the course of Prohibition, or approximately $650 billion in today’s dollars.

Al Capone alone was alleged to be making $100 million a year in the 1920s, and was never convicted of bootlegging - but he was sent to prison for non-payment of his income-taxes - thanks to the 16th Amendment.   

Rumrunners who managed to stay out of prison, such as Lansky, Siegel, Costello, and Dalitz, headed to Cuba and Las Vegas, Nevada to dabble in legal casinos and all the vices that accompany the vice industry.

President Woodrow Wilson changed his mind about supporting women’s suffrage when he saw how the “weaker sex” stepped up to work during World War I.  The 19th Amendment passed to allow women to vote and Maria C. Brehm was the first female candidate for Vice-President on the ballot in 1924 and women slowly trickled into the political arena.

Other strange consequences of Prohibition include the birth of NASCAR and the Border Town.  Moonshiners in Appalachia and the South took ordinary looking cars, modified the engine for speed, installed suspension springs to handle the weight of cases of liquors, removed the seats and filled the insides with illegal booze.

Good mechanics could make engines run faster then police cars.  “Souped-up” Ford flathead V-8 eight cylinders cars were used to stay ahead of federal agents and local police while transporting illegal whiskey on curvy mountainous roads in the dark of night. Bootleggers still sold corn mash hooch after Prohibition to avoid taxes and regulations. The back woods drivers became race car drivers several years later and NASCAR was born.

The Border Town was also a product of the Volstead Act. Tijuana, Juarez, Nogales, and other border cities ramped up their entertainment offerings.  Drinking, dog and horse racing, bull fights, boxing matches, cheap quickie divorces, and other forms of entertainment were just a short walk away from the U.S. border.  Celebrities made the towns popular with their mere presence and glorification in the movies and gossip columns.

A NOTE ON SOURCES: My history contributors were my father, Clif McDonald and Dr. David Townsend, my favorite history teachers. My dad grew up in the Sacramento Mountains. His family ranched, farmed, and sheared their way through the Great Depression. Daddy knew most of the families from Dell City to Mescalero and collected their stories and old photographs. 

Dr. David A. Townsend was a retired college professor, former Campus Director at NMSU at Alamogordo, a former member of the NM House of Representatives, and a well-known local historian and considered to be a leading scholar on the life of Eugene Manlove Rhodes and the State Constitution.

Sheriff Howard S. Beacham’s son, Arthur M. (Buddy) Beacham preserved many of his father’s papers used in this article. Gertrude Painter wrote an unpublished manuscript entitled “Howard Beacham, Alamogordo’s Own Sherlock Holmes.” A copy of the paper can be found in the files of the Tularosa Basin Historical Museum in Alamogordo at the Plaza Cafe on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the Corner Cafe and down the hill from the TB Sanitarium.

           Prohibition Poem

The Volstead Act's got us down,

No good cheer to be found in town.

But a glimmer of hope, a whispered plea,

Across the border, there's a place for me!

The rumrunners whisper, the moonshiners hide,

But freedom's calling, we can't be denied.

To Canada or Mexico, we'll make our way,

And raise a glass to a brighter day.

Oh, the border beckons, a watery line,

Where legal drinking is truly divine.

Pack the car, let's make the run,

'Fore the sun sets, and the fun is done!

So raise your glass, let the good times roll,

Across the border, to save our soul                                    

                            by Ella Wheeler Wilcox