Whiskey Rock

The universe seems to contract in the North Country. 'Breaking news' in the outside world, such as the mess in Ukraine, seems rather trivial compared to, say, protecting the garden from deer. I recall an article in Adirondack Life about a man who lived alone in the Adirondacks and kept a journal for decades, throughout the 1940s. There were no references to World War II in it.

Decluttering is essential to the pursuit of happiness. At first it seems counter-intuitive, because all that stuff is supposed to make our lives easier. But soon you realize that the things we think we own actually own us. It's the same with events, tragic as some may be, there's usually nothing we can do about them so we become merely event-collectors and spectators. But spectating enables the news industry to exploit catastrophes by charging more for advertising based on higher ratings. 

The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, condemned the "habitual indulgence" of news, calling it a stimulant. He said it was important to know about important events but not "in the fresh condition as news".

Thomas Merton (1915 -1968)

When you lose the need to hear about events immediately you have a different perspective on them. It becomes easier to separate the clutter from the few truly important news stories. Dwelling on tragedies that we don't control adds empty complexity to our lives; there's no value in them, except perhaps entertainment. And to be entertained by someone's tragedy is as wrong as making a buck off of it.

The Number One Story on CNN

Around here deer, weather and taxes are more important than a celebrity's misstep or a accident halfway around the world. Even a big ol' rock is more newsworthy than today's most popular news story on CNN - Michael Jackson's hologram performance on the Billboard awards.

An Adirondack rock star

We have an intimate relationship with rocks here, gardeners and hole-diggers encounter a prodigious number of them. The boulder in the above news article is a glacial erratic (so named because its composition differs from native rock). Upstate New York was covered in a mile-thick glacier 50,000 years ago. We get so much snow here that you can actually visualize managing a mile of ice, by the way. 

The receding glacier

When the Laurentide Ice Sheet finally melted it not only created one hell of a mud season (we can visualize that, too) but it left the small rocks that we line our garden beds with and stupendously massive ones that we can only marvel at.

That rock on the front lawn of the Saranac post office is impressive but we also have a giant erratic within morning-walk distance from Woodman's Lee. It's called Whiskey Rock, although it's not marked anymore. It has an interesting history. 

The Prohibition Party was active in this area a century ago, often fielding candidates for local elections. Back then there were big temperance meetings where bottles of alcohol were rounded up and ceremoniously destroyed.

Whiskey Rock

That's where Whiskey Rock came in handy. They'd come for miles, the stern-faced abstainers, the sinners who'd just swore off 'John Barleycorn' and curious onlookers. I suppose they'd light a big bonfire, wood being about as abundant as rock, and the leaders would get to preachin'. Then the bottles that the newly-converted purged from their pantries would be ceremoniously smashed against the rock.

True patriots and kid lovers don't drink

All this fervor died out after the 18th Amendment was ratified in January, 1919. New York and (of course!) Vermont were opposed to ratification. Those were the quaint old times when the Constitution had to be amended to authorize the federal government to usurp our freedom. Now it's normal for the government to just interpret the Constitution, yielding our right to privacy (warantless surveillance, NSA's domain), permitting corporations to essentially make candidates their employees (Citizen's United ruling), eliminating the rights of due process (targeted killings of US citizens), etc. The  last ratified Constitutional amendment, involving Congressional pay raise protocol, was in 1992. It was filed, no kidding, in 1790. There are many proposed amendments (including one that addresses Citizens United), but none can survive our currently polarized system of government. 

Our neighbor, Canada, also got caught up in the temperance movement but their Prohibition lasted only a year and was repealed in 1921. Quebec never banned beer or wine.

Those Québécois are as fiercely independent as Adirondackers - these are French-speaking, inherently defiant, people. They didn't go along with Dry Canada: 78% voted to permit the sale of beer and wine. Because Canada rescinded Prohibition a decade before us, anyone who needed a drink could head up there and drink legally. They might also run some liquor back to the US while they were at it. 

So, despite Prohibition, booze was readily available. As for demand, well, alcohol seems to be awfully popular in the high latitudes. The Scandinavians say that when the sun shines late at night everyone is so happy that they stay up and drink. But when it gets dark early, everyone is depressed...so they drink. The law that implemented Prohibition, the Volsted Act, didn't ban the consumption of alcohol, just the sale and distribution. Once a bottle made it to your hands, you were free to drink it legally. Smuggling became a huge business and soon big operators organized into mobs. 

Just as today, the North Country simply disregarded current events. Most went about their lives as if Prohibition was only applicable for city people downstate. There were many unguarded border crossings at the time, so smuggling was a convenient way to supplement income during the agricultural depression that preceded the Great Depression. 

Legs Diamond, a couple of weeks before he was murdered.

Occasionally a romanticized mobster, such as 'Legs' Diamond, would be sighted around Saranac Lake. Legs was a Brooklyn mob boss but his brother was up in Saranac recovering from TB, so the North Country became his territory, too. 

The untimely demise of Will 'o the Wisp

Big time local smugglers, such as mason (and race car driver) Pete Tanzini, dubbed 'Will o' the Wisp' by the cops, lived in Saranac Lake. He ran the Adirondack Booze Trail - Canada to Saratoga, and beyond, clear down to Albany. Mythology asserts that NASCAR was inspired by hillbilly bootleggers outrunning the law in the Appalachian mountains, certainly not little Italian immigrants in upstate NY. Anyhow, Pete changed tactics soon after he was nabbed (by a 14 year old police dog). Either the cops found a fast car and driver up to Pete's skill or (more likely) Pete's car was loaded down with booze. So he bought and operated the largest still in New York, out of a secret room he (the mason) crafted in his Saranac Lake basement. By the early '30s, organized crime was manufacturing so much alcohol in the US that they were actually smuggling it into Canada. 

Unfortunately Pete got crosswise with Legs and he disappeared, probably rubbed out, in 1930. Legs was offed in Albany soon after. They say the cops did it but everyone suspected that a rival, Dutch Schultz, was behind it. As customary, both widows eventually died of gunshots, too. 

But Whiskey Rock silently awaits its continued transport whenever the current (Anthropocene) interglacial period ends. Until then it silently remains the object of bottles and folklore.