Just a thought: things could be worse!
So friend, do you hesitate to turn on the tv because all you will hear Is political wrangling, arguments, and ongoing dissertations of politicians and political wannabe’s?
Are feeling left out of the democratic process, feeling as if the congress doesn’t have your interests at heart! Think how the folks must have felt in the years between 1913 and 1919. Within six short years people had they pocketbooks ravaged, and their booze grabbed right out of their hands.
In 1913 Congress passed the 16th amendment creating the first personal and business income tax. To say this was unpopular is an understatement for certain. Now for the first time Americans had to fork over part of their paycheck to the government, in fact using the withholding system the government got theirs before the people even got their paychecks. And if anyone didn’t pay up a group of friendly governmental workers called the Internal Revenue Service came and got it!
Then just 6 short years later, they passed the 18th amendment, which brought in Prohibition. Yes folks, first they dumped a tax on the people, then they took away their booze. The law didn’t make it illegal to drink alcohol, but it was illegal to make or distribute it. (Do you see the loophole here, I am sure you do.)
For the next thirteen years of civil disobedience spread from shore to shore and border to border. Bootleggers and rum runners -yes there is a distinction- became part of a major underground industry across the nation. It came complete with moonshine stills, clandestine breweries, fraudulent medical practices, smuggling, hidden speakeasies, corruption and even murder.
It was an exciting, wild, and wooly time to live here along the Jersey shore.
Learn more about Prohibition at the Jersey shore and take a trip back to the days of bath tub gin and flappers in
Ghostly Tales of Two Rivers: Curious Encounters Along the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers
In addition you will find two complete tales about the rum runners and local speakeasies.:
Mary & Me recounts the plight a fisherman/rumrunner-his encounter with organize crime- and the apparition that haunted him until his death.
Ghostly Spirits of the Twin Gables Speakeasy recounts the saga of a young man living at Twin Gables in the 1980’s, and his encounter with an specter of a speakeasy of bygone days.
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Available: amazon.com and barnes&noble.com as well as these local retailers:
Sea Bright: Bains Hardware
Highlands: Bahr’s Restaurant & Twin Lights Lighthouse
Museum
Rumson: Rumson Pharmacy
Fair Haven: Fair Haven Hardware and Canyon Sports
Little Silver: Sickles Market
Red Bank: O’Ireland and Shapiro Deli.