Ludwig the Bootlegger

Bootlegging Beer for the Saturday night Polka Dance 

Ludwig, my father-in-law, was the son of Bohemian immigrants.  They sharecropped around Moulton, that's near Shiner, a heavily Bohemian enclave in south Texas.  So heavily Bohemian that the Shiner Gazette was published in the Bohemian language into the 70's.  His momma couldn't speak English even after living in America for fifty years.

Back in the 30's, Lewdvee (the family's pronunciation), would make a batch of beer to sell each week at Polka Dance in Shiner.  He'd cook it up in the barn and sell it off the back of his farm truck Saturday night outside the hall.

Lewdvee, bought a farm outside shiner for his parents after the war.  The farm house was on a hilltop where the wind always blew.  It was miserably hot in summer or cold if winter.  Lewdvee went to work pipefitting at Humble oil & refining down on the coast.  As a young girl, my wife Hated to go up to that farm but they went almost ever weekend.  Dust everywhere, constant Flies (especially in summer when you slept on the porch to get cool), chickens trying to Roost in the house, warm milk fresh from the cow with debris floating on top of the cream, helping grandma wring a few pigeons' necks to stew for supper, cold Slop Jars in winter, being cold despite huddling around their one wood burning potbelly Stove and sleeping under a  homemade Feather Bed, and going to the Outhouse (she was afraid the spiders'd bite her butt); these were a few of her least favorite things.

She grew up a city girl - that is if Goose Creek, Texas qualified as city living - but knew farm life well enough know she wanted to stay put in town.