By Charlie Bown
This little story
happened on Bell Island many years ago, in fact, in the 1920’s. This man was a
doctor, an uncle of mine, who owned a drug store. In those days, if a man wanted
a bottle of rum, he had first to go to my uncle, the doctor, who would then
write out a thing called a script. The patient would then take this script and
give it to the woman at the counter of the drug store, who in turn would give
the man a bottle of rum. This miner had already paid the doctor for the
“examination” and now had to pay the clerk another for the bottle of rum.
In those early days
on Bell Island everything came to the Island by boat or ferry. A cask of rum
would be picked up by a taxi driver, called Pete, in St. John’s and brought
out to Portugal Cove to be put on the ferry to be sent to the drug store on Bell
Island. In my uncle’s drugstore, there was a back room where two men would
fill cleaned bottles half full of rum, the rest being water The doctor had a new
well dug in his back yard, it was said to be the richest well before Texan oil
fields.
Anyway, one stormy
night the ferry did not make a crossing so that the taxi driver had to put the
cask of rum out in his shed. His son, about sixteen, and five of his buddies
using a gimlet, or small auger, drilled a hole in the bung of the cask of rum
and each drew off a cupful for himself and then sealed the hole with a piece of
chewing gum. Unknown to all these young men, this rum was 100% proof and very
shortly they all passed out. They were found by the father in the morning, very
sick to say the least.
Around 1931
prohibition was declared which meant that no hard liquor of any kind was to be
sold to the public except of course for medical reasons.
This was right up
the alley for my good friend, uncle doctor, the only thing was that he had to
hire on an extra girl on the counter of the drug store. The miner still had to
see the doctor, then he had to see the first girl for a script for the bottle of
rum $1.00, then go to the second girl with two scripts, one from the doctor and
one for the bottle to get his bottle of rum. It cost this miner three dollars to
get himself a half bottle of rum, the remaining being water from the back yard
well. If this little story sounds complicated 70 years later, think of the poor
miner who had to share this one bottle of rum with his buddies
Up until 1963 a
person could get only three bottles of rum per week, as we had no liquor store
on Bell Island in those early days. You had to give your liquor book and money
to a taxi driver in Portugal Cove to get it for you. An elderly gentleman, who
liked his little nip, tripped while coming off the ferry on Bell Island and
broke his bottle of rum. When he felt this precious liquid running down his leg,
he exclaimed. “I hope that’s blood”!
Stay sober, be good.