cordilleran
Posts: 760
Joined: 2/13/2008
From: Washington
Status: offline
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Good thing we abide by a standard dictum grammatically. The bottle could have held anything and probably did -- several times over. Reminds me of the so-called Chinese"opium bottles" found throughout the west. Dammit if opium isn't a thick substance and those users would've had to break those small bottles to retrieve same. Those "opium bottles" likely contained quinine, a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic (fever-reducing), anti-smallpox, ****gesic (painkilling), and anti-inflammatory properties. 19th Century folks, particularly recent immigrants, were a diseased lot. Granted, blackstrap is not as thick and could have been doled out from a crockery container at leisure (mix in a little well water to the solution to get the last bit). Poor people are practical, if not simply financially destitute.
Being the sad sack living on the lean side of the railroad tracks that I am, I suspect the container was used for multiple purposes over many years. No use in discarding a perfectly good earthen ware jug. With prohibition (Volstead Act), more illicit purveyors of home-distilled squeezins' were created than ever before. Those licit jugs could now be used for holding less-than-legal commodities.
I bought a rag-tag house in the country a few scant years ago. In the basement was a small, concrete enclosure joined by a tunnel away from the domicile of some 10 feet which was vented. The Victorian-era house across the street had a similar arrangement. As you might suspect, the small room, hidden for all the would to see, was used as a distillery. A jug of this description could hold $3.00 or $4.00 worth of 190-proof liquor (depending on distillation process) in 1920's currency if it wasn't used for personal consumption or to throw a shindig with a few close friends. No use in discarding a perfectly sound container, so the logic holds, even today.
One thing about prohibition. It caused more problems than intended. Couple this with the psychological detritus of World War One veterans, women just coming into their own, a mobile, Henry Ford-driven social order and later, the Great Depression, and you have a sure-fire combination for Folks Gone Wild without the video camera (the so-called Lost Generation).
< Message edited by cordilleran -- 3/22/2008 3:02:59 AM >
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Not a bottle, but a moonshine jug! - 
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