Great+Depression+Story

=Prohibition=

Here i sit, cigar in hand, stiff drink in the other, talking to my buddy Joe. We talk about the business, the times, Prohibition, how we miss our legal drinks, and some other things that if i told you, I'd have to kill you. Being a member of a so called "Mafia" is risky business. Since the Prohibition of alcohol, running our underground brewery's has kept us on our toes, kept the dark circles under our eyes, and kept our wives nagging about, well, whatever they nag us about when our "business" keeps us up too late.

My buddy Joe makes a joke about how when this Prohibition rubbish blows over, us Rum Runners can up and join the Navy. I laugh and take a swig of beer, savoring the forbidden taste. In this damn age drinking is the devil, the rum in my coke is Satan, and the way i see it is this; If it keeps the roof over our heads, then smuggling Satan is worth the risk. Joe continues to drink and talk about money, and how the change in his pocket is worth as much as the poo in his toilet.

I talk about my wife Shirley, how she got robbed for her purse last week, they took everything, her lipstick, her jewelry, but not her money. Nope, nothing in this damn age is worth anything. People are dead broke, people are losing their jobs, and the liquor that takes all the depression in this great depression away, is illegal. I lit up another cigar and listen to Joe as he goes on and on about the stock market, how everything he's got his hard earned cash in is crashing. He says that if he didn't have a bit of booze in him, he'd go mad.

Joe pulls out a copy of The New Yorker and points to a cartoon where a lady is asking a poor man if the stock market was the cause of his misfortune. The man says "No lady, I was always a bum." The way people joke about The Great Depression makes me wonder how serious this really is. Maybe one day the people in power will decide that being drunk is better than being poor, and make it legal. Maybe someday Joes pocket change will be worth something. But for now, we sit, drink our illegal booze, and worry about the welfare of our nation.

Written By: Julia Easker

Information for this collected by : Melinda Krause