Tales from my Ancestors

Tales from my Ancestors

    Someone was shooting at him. He wasn’t sure who, but he knew why. He felt something hit his arm and his head was killing him. His only thought was to get out of there as fast as he could. His car was loaded with cases of whiskey, but he would worry about getting rid of that later. He needed to get help, but if it was the Feds, they would be checking the area hospitals for him. Henry was a bootlegger and it could be the Feds or rival bootleggers that were trying to take him out.
    The day had started like any other day.  He had a few deliveries to make in the city, so he left home and went to the garage and loaded his car. He stayed and tinkered around in the garage. He had time to kill and he liked his things to be neat and clean.
He had finished cleaning up and it was just starting to get dark, so he decided he better get going. People were waiting for him. As he was closing the garage he heard what he thought was a car backfire.  He felt pain in his left arm and knew someone had shot at him, but he had no idea where it came from. Henry jumped into his car and felt something hit his head. He just drove. He drove as fast as he could until he was sure he had not been followed. He stopped to assess his wounds. He was bleeding from the back of his head and it hurt like crazy. He seemed to have a bullet in his arm as well. He stopped the bleeding from his arm the best he could and started driving. He just headed west, out of the city and away from the people that were after him.
    Being born a middle son in a family of ten into a farming family from Kansas, Henry was often overlooked .Until he started getting big, then they noticed him and all the heavy work fell to Henry; because he was the largest and strongest of all the boys. He worked hard all day and even into the night. The farm was large and productive. His grandfather was a German immigrant and early settler in Kansas. He worked hard day after day, up before dawn and to bed when it was dark. By the age of 16 he knew farming was not for him. No excitement or adventure, just work everyday. Henry dreamed of going out into the world and seeing things and making something of himself. He wanted more than to be a farmer like everyone in his family before him.
He left home and never looked back, not contacting his family for many years.  He first went to Saint Louis, Missouri, where he met and married a girl and had a son. After a few years of marriage, Henry felt tied down and wanted to go out on his own and start again. So he left his family and went west to Reno, Nevada. He found a job in a club, bartending and working his way to manager. During this time he met a lot of people that had many varied connections that could be of use in the future. Not only did he make a lot of important contacts at work; he also made a good amount of money. Having no family he felt responsible for, he saved most of what he made. In just a short time he became a partner in the club. Henry made real money from then on. Things were going great and Henry started to invest some of his hard earned cash.
    Prohibition was passed and the flow of cash ended. At least that was how it seemed at first. Henry started talking to his partner and some of their contacts. They formed a group and worked out a plan to import and unload shipments into the country. Once the booze made was in, each man had his own operation to pick up their share and distribute it. They figured it was the safest way to go.
    So it was all planned and they became bootleggers, whiskey runners really. They were in to make as much cash as they could, for as long as they could.  It wasn’t everyday that there was a chance to make more cash than an ordinary person could make in a lifetime.
    They set up a connection from Canada to ship in Canadian whiskey into the U.S. They arranged for the people to smuggle the whiskey through the border by truck without getting caught. They arranged for a warehouse to store the cases of whiskey until they would pick it up, it would be thousands of cases at a time, and then they’d move small amounts and store it somewhere else. Henry liked double garages; he kept a car on one side and booze on the other, which looked like just a storage area. He had put false walls in to hide the whiskey or whatever he wanted.
    Each man had his own set of customers. Most of the customers were well known, rich families but some were owners of small clubs that sold the whiskey in back rooms. After awhile each man had more customers than he could take care of. Henry was making money, lots of it. He thought it best to move his operation before he got caught; he had some connections on the east coast. He set up the same operation he had in Reno, bought a garage in Philadelphia and a house in Atlantic City. He bought a lot and built a shack on it, on State Street in Camden N.J. and had his pick up points there and in Toms River, N.J. and started running whiskey again. Things were going well and the feds were easy to get around and not really a threat, since there were so many places to get by unnoticed. The daily threat was with gangs and other runners. Henry still kept his guard up, not trusting anyone he hadn’t known for years. If caught he would go to jail. That was not something he wanted to experience. He decided he was going to get rid of the stock he had and retire. He liked life too much to continue living the way he was, it was becoming too much of a risk. He woke early one morning and went into the city to get ready for that evening’s deliveries. He also wanted to take stock and decide when his final deliveries could be set up and made. He really wanted out before his luck changed.
    Blood was everywhere, but at least it seemed like it was slowing down. Henry wasn’t sure where to go. He got out of there a fast as he could. He wondered who had shot at him. He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t go to a hospital either. Then he remembered that his wife’s sister, Peggy, was a nurse and lived in Pittsburgh. He drove all night, stopping only for gas and coffee. Thankfully he had a hat and clean shirt and jacket in his car. He changed in a gas station rest room at his first stop. He managed to get there just before dawn. He must have looked awful when she got up in the morning and saw him, bloody and exhausted, on her back porch. She brought him in, saw his wounds and started to clean him up. When she looked closely and saw how severe his wounds were she begged him to go to the hospital. He refused. He was more afraid of jail than he was of his wounds.  He talked her into getting a doctor from the hospital to come to her house and look at him and see what he could do. She didn’t promise anything, she was not sure she could get the doctor to come. She did manage to convince the doctor to come, mostly because the doctor could not believe any one could survive a bullet to the head, let alone drive all night.
    The doctor came to the house and checked his wounds. There was dried blood everywhere and a bullet in his left arm and in the left side of Henry’s head. The doctor told Henry he needed to go to the hospital, that he needed surgery to remove the bullets. Henry flat out refused to go. He told the doctor to do what he could and the doctor got to work and did his best. He looked at Henry’s head and decided it would be best to leave the bullet where it was, the bleeding had stopped, and Henry had been conscious since being shot. As long as the wound healed and the bullet stayed where it was, he thought Henry would live. He then removed the bullet from his arm. The doctor did what he could. When he finished he tried again to get Henry to go to the hospital, he still refused. The doctor told Peggy to keep the wounds clean and ordered bed rest and nourishment. The doctor came by daily to check on Henry and to make sure he was not getting an infection. Peggy did her best to care for Henry and did for a few weeks until he finally got better. The doctor checked on him one last time and told Henry he was a living miracle, not many could walk away after being shot in the head or survive such a wound.
    Henry knew his luck was going to change. Too bad he didn’t get out sooner. When he went back to Philadelphia he went over his inventory again, made a few calls and got rid of all the booze he had left. He did contact a few of his most prominent and private customers and explained to them what had happened and they all understood. He gave them a few names of guys he knew that would be discreet and more than happy to have them as customers. That was the end of Henry’s itch to wander and experience adventure. He had had enough adventure to last him the rest of his life. He got remarried and settled down with his wife and lived a respectable, law-abiding life until he died of old age at 90.