My family is farming today, in large part, because my paternal grandfather was a bootlegger/moonshiner during Prohibition.
Like many small, homestead farmers in the early 20th century, my Grampa Art would find off farm work for the months between planting and harvesting. In the early ‘20s the US and Canadian governments began the process of formally surveying and marking the border along the 49th parallel. Grampa had worked for a surveyor as a young man in Michigan before coming to Montana, so he got hired to work on the surveying crew, sometime around 1922, or so.
Over the course of several summers, Grampa became acquainted with a number of Canadians who were working on the border project, which presented him with the opportunity to start a side gig as a beverage importer. Grampa also ran a still, which he moved around to various locations to avoid drawing the attention of the Feds.
Grampa was prudent enough to keep a low profile and save much of his extracurricular income. When Prohibition ended, at a time when the Depression and dry weather were forcing many homesteaders into bankruptcy, he had built up enough of a financial cushion to be able to acquire land from the various lenders who were holding title to relinquished homesteads and just wanted somebody solvent to take the land over.
Grampa Art went on to become a gentleman farmer and reformed outlaw. He served several terms in the State legislature in the 1940s. I was a teenager in the mid 60s when Grampa passed away. I enjoyed his stories of life on what was one of the last frontiers in the Lower 48.
