Turning Points
Life is a journey. It has a beginning and it has an end. All along its path are events, places
and people who are turning points. Here, I relate some of these turning points in my own
journey. Hopefully, the stories will illuminate and maybe entertain some of those who care
enough to read.
Life is a journey. It has a beginning and it has an end. All along its path are events, places
and people who are turning points. Here, I relate some of these turning points in my own
journey. Hopefully, the stories will illuminate and maybe entertain some of those who care
enough to read.
| Scorchie March 10, 2006 |
In the fifties, New Haven was like every
other small community in the country on
Sundays. Everything was closed, except
churches. And there was one more
exception in New Haven. Cars would be
lined up on the street behind ours at
Scorchie Greenwell’s front door. Scorchie
ran a booming business retailing bootleg
whisky out of his home.
other small community in the country on
Sundays. Everything was closed, except
churches. And there was one more
exception in New Haven. Cars would be
lined up on the street behind ours at
Scorchie Greenwell’s front door. Scorchie
ran a booming business retailing bootleg
whisky out of his home.
As you might guess, there were others in on the enterprise. For you see, even bootleggers have to
have bottles for their stock. And that’s where I came in. Scorchie would pay a penny apiece for all
the half pint bottles you could get for him. And Sundays were the best days to collect them
because the alley behind Main Street was littered with the castaway bottles from a Saturday night
of rollicking fun. And in the days before Daddy started giving us a weekly allowance, these bottles
were my main source of income.
I don’t know where Scorchie got his stock for bootlegging but Daddy might have known. Daddy
and his half brother ran a blacksmith shop before he later got a job with the government. Horses
had pretty much been replaced by cars by this time and business was slow. So Daddy made
night calls occasionally when a local moonshiner's still needed repair.
Scorchie’s son was a constant source of jealousy to me. Lee was a squirt of a kid, always
wearing blue jean coverall pants just like his daddy, with horn rimmed glasses and black hair
slicked over, just like his daddy. What he lacked in size, Lee made up in arrogance. Lee owned
the only Red Ryder pump B-B gun in town. But the thing that really got under my skin is that Lee
always had a coke in one hand and a Hershey bar in the other. Where did he get the money?
Cokes cost 5 cents and so did candy bars! That was ten bottles right there. Lee never scrounged
around for old whisky bottles.
But then, he had a Daddy who sold a lot of the stuff that came in them.
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| And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 KJV) |
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