About 1928 during prohibition many people who had been not much interested in beer and wine now felt that they should get into the act. The prohibition law was being broken all over the U.S. After talking with a friend I decided to get into the act. The prohibition law was being broken all over the U.S. After talking with a friend I decided to get into the act too. Under my friend's direction I got a 50 gallon oak barrel. To this I added 50 pounds of ground figs. Next I added about 75 pounds of sugar and several cakes of yeast. The barrel was then filled with warm water and stirred well twice a day. I set it up in my unfinished basement near my sawdust burning furnace.
The brew churned and boiled and clouds of tiny flies came around. I wondered where they came from. Possibly the environment was responsible for producing this modified little fly from some other species.
After about 10 days of action the boiling of the brew quieted down and most of the sludge settled. I then began to siphon the wine out into gallon jugs. The dregs were put into a flour sack and drained. This wine was very potent and I had some parties which were well attended, often by complete strangers. Soon some of my guests became customers. I charged $3.00 per gallon and did a good business for a while.
Ed. note: My brother Ed and I participated in the manufacture of the fig wine. Dad would set up the food grinder on the basement steps and Ed and I would grind the figs, one cranking the handle and the other feeding the figs into the grinder.
The parties were great. Mother would play the piano and everybody would stand around the piano and sing. Usually toward the middle of the evening Dad, who wrestled in college, would get into a wrestling match with Russ Olcott.
One time a couple of guys came to the front door and said they were Federal Agents, and that they had heard there was a bootlegging operation going on at this house. Dad had disappeared and someone discovered him down in the basement emptying jugs of wine into the sawdust bin. The joke ended quickly at that point - the jokesters didn't want that wine wasted!
My most persistent memory of Sunday mornings after the parties was that of the phone ringing, then Dad saying to Mother "I've got to go down town and bail Paul (or Russ) out of jail."