Growing up I used to find old bottles around the farm. There were buildings dating back to the turn of the last century for me to explore. I found many interesting bottles, some having the lettering cast into the glass. A few still had an aged cork stuck in the mouth. What a story they could tell.
My grandfather had a story that displayed his dry wit. This tale would have taken place around 1920. He was not a drinker so this was an unusual story about a dry fella. My grandfather, as the story goes, was heading to Mantorville with the horse and wagon for supplies one morning. He asked the hired man if there was anything he wanted from town. Mantorville was five miles south of the farm but with a horse drawn wagon that would take over an hour and a half each way. There would be some livestock minerals, farm supplies and household goods to return with. Is quite interesting to think of Mantorville as a shopping destination where one could purchase everything needed for a farm family.
The hired man usually wanted a plug of chewing tobacco and a bottle of whiskey brought back on the weekly trip. A hired hand would usually live in a small shack or a simple room inside the farm house. Prior to the 1920’s radio had not been introduced to rural America, and electricity was still a decade away. Probably not much to do for entertainment after a long day of work on the farm.
My grandfather picked up a bottle of whiskey for the hired hand, before he left town and proceeded homeward. My grandfather loved to talk. He stopped at a number of the farms along the way home to visit with the farmer and let his horse get a drink at the stock tank beside the windmill. Being a social and friendly guy, he also offered his host a nip from the bottle. At the last farm he realized that the bottle was getting about half empty. The solution was to refill the bottle from the well pump and press the cork in like nothing had happened. Once home he delivered chew and the whiskey to the hired man.
The next week when he inquired what he could pick up for the hired man in town he received the same order, but with one caveat. Please get different brand of whiskey than you brought home last week. That one was quite weak.
When I was a young lad, it was customary to give Christmas gifts to the milk hauler for the holiday. My mom usually made Christmas sugar cookies and fudge wrapped in a festive looking box. That Christmas the Maple Island milk hauler left a bottle of wine as a gift. Now my parents were teetotalers as well so the bottle was put in the back of the cupboard in the house. My curiosity got the best of me. To avoid suspicion, I knew I couldn’t drink the bottle and dispose of it so I came up with a plan. I carefully opened the bottle, drank the contents and then refilled it with grape soda, sealed the cap and put it back in the cupboard. No one was every the wiser. Forty-five years later at a family gathering my sister confessed to my mother that she had opened the bottle of wine and tried it, only to find it totally disgusting. Wine may get better with age but grape soda definitely doesn’t.
