rum runners

…outlaws, bootleggers and dusty old names…

Grigory Nikolayevich Malov - 1923

Malo, Washington

‘Grisha[1] start the bloody car!’ yelled Konkin as he slid around the corner from behind the back alley of the Curlew saloon, frantically running, holding down his cap to his head with his right hand as he scrambled forwards. Clutched in his left fist was a wad of dollar bills.

            ‘Shit na palachki[2],’ George exclaimed in muffled tension as he pumped-in the clutch and turned over the motor. It stuttered and spat but didn’t catch. He wiggled his ass deeper into his seat, bearing down into his task. ’Shit!’ He tried again, pumping the gas pedal with his right foot like a wild pianist as he turned over the starter engine yet again. It sputtered and belched louder and then the pistons caught, the motor was running. Just then Eli Ivanovich slammed into the side of the Packard and fumbled for the latch on the door.

            ‘Drive!’ He yelled, half hanging outside the car. Behind Eli were two American deputies running after him with their truncheons thrashing wildly above their heads. One was blowing from his whistle as he ran. The other was struggling to unleash his pistol from its belt holster as he rounded the corner from the alley.

            George floored the gas pedal of the Packard twin six, its rear wheels kicked up a hailstorm of dirt. A cloud of dust and rocks showered the cops, blinding them in their pursuit. The engine roared as the rear axle began to fish-tail on the loose gravel road.

            ‘I love that fucking sound!’ George yelled with a smile on his face, knowing that they were rapidly about to leave their problems behind them. 

            ‘Drive, come on, drive!’ Screamed Eli as he closed the door and checked behind his shoulder, looking at the ground swell of dirt they had kicked up. A few gun shots rang out like thunder from the dusty cumulus. Perhaps they fired into the air in frustration, perhaps they fired in warning, perhaps they fired to kill and simply missed.

            ‘You really pissed them off this time huh,’ George said, with the staccato chuckle of a locomotive gaining momentum.

            The Packard was loose, like a thoroughbred out of the gates. The engine began to purr as they gained speed, floating wildly along the rolling hills south of Curlew. It was their race to win now. George held his hands firmly on the wheel, absorbing its movements as he slid the powerful car around the corners, doing his best to keep the twin-six square in the middle of the road. It was a mere twelve miles to their secret hide-out and they were starting to push forty miles per hour.

            It was the era of prohibition. The Americans appeared to be a society that found itself caught-up in a time of debauchery and debasement. Apparently, all social ills were caused by the consumption of liquor. George and Eli didn't heed Peter Vasilyevich or his ukaz[3] from Siberia. Recently the United States Congress had passed the Volstead Act[4], which often humoured Eli and George as it was announced a mere two days prior to the anniversary of what they called, the Peter Vasilyevich Act some twenty years prior. The day when Peter Verigen announced his decree that the Doukhobors in Transcaucasia would no longer drink alcohol. This abolition of alcohol apparently was to follow George Nikolayevich twenty thousand versts[5] across the globe.

            There was opportunity for those who lived along the border. At first most locals ignored the pleas coming from their southern neighbours, but it soon became apparent that there was money to be made smuggling whiskey across the line. Just south of Grand Forks, Spokane Washington was quickly becoming the central hub for rum-runners and speak-easies

            ‘Are they following us?’ George asked, as Eli kept his eyes peeled on the road behind them.

            ‘They will be.’ Eli shuffled himself to face forward in his seat. He looked down at the money clenched in his left hand. Carefully he counted it, using his right hand to separate the edges. ‘Nine bucks!’ He was happy and smiled at George. ‘Nine bucks for Andrushka’s[6] samogon[7]!’

            They both howled with laughter. ‘Those poor bastards are going to burp fire tonight,’ George added, and trained his sights on the road as it snaked in and out of the countryside before them. ‘That’s nearly a month’s wages for piss poor moonshine.’ They roared again with laughter. 

            It was a bright day and they were bona fide outlaws blazing a trail under the sun, chasing freedom from their growling lap of luxury. There were two more wooden crates of samogon packed tight with shredded paper, nestled in the folded-out rumble seat of the Packard. One crate was low quality samogon from Zibin’s still, destined for the saloons in Republic. The other was proper high-quality Canadian rye whiskey destined for the Sprague Valley Speak-Easy in Spokane Washington. Both men were beaming. They owned the road and they knew it. The cops would never catch them in their 1923 Packard twin-six. It was the fastest car in the Ferry County. Most rum-runners would use modest vehicles with souped-up engines so to not draw attention to themselves. It was a cat and mouse game. Some of the rum-runners no longer bothered to hide their endeavours. They relied on the speed of their engines and the use of wily back road routes for success.

            At first the rum-runners used wagon and followed the pack trails and railroad grades. In the beginning of the prohibition era there was a steady caravan of men and mules servicing these routes, however this was barely the trickle needed to quench the thirst. The West had been lubricated with whiskey and other such libations, the majority of Americans rejected the puritan ethics being administered from their capital out east. These were the days of hot pursuits and hide-a-ways. 

            The Packard wasn’t actually George and Eli’s, it belonged to their wealthy patron, William Peddington of Spokane Washington, but he had signed it over to them as an investment in lieu of their ongoing services. These were the twenties and they roared to the hum of that twin-six engine.

            ‘Shit, they’re on us,’ Eli exclaimed as he swiveled about in his seat.

            ‘How far behind,’ asked George, mindful of the distance to their hide-away. ‘We will lose them once we hit the forest road to Franklin’s farm.’

            Eli and George had been running this route now for almost two years. They had established inroads with the locals who were fond of their products and services. The Franklin farm was a cattle ranch operation with several hundred heads, over fifty farm hands and thousands of rolling acres. It was located within a small township of farmers between Curlew and Republic. In the previous year the proprietor Simon Franklin had dug out a sunken garage underneath a false hay stack big enough for Grigory Ivanovich Malov to park his Packard. There was a trap door that could be pulled up, once lifted, it revealed the entrance ramp that exposed the sunken garage. It was a sly and well-engineered solution as the police often prodded the hay stacks with pitch forks. Many rum-runners had been caught crying out when a tong pierced their flesh as they hid buried in the hay. Even if one didn’t cry out, the sensation of a thrust meeting a body and the sight of blood on the tong was enough to give one’s location away. Simon Franklin solved this by out-witting the authorities with his sunken garage and trap door hay stack.

            More than a few police were in on the illegal action and typically rum-runners knew with some degree of certainty if their routes were secure. That being said, there were always overly zealous police officers or those looking to profit for themselves on the side. There was even one officer they knew of who would escort contraband deliveries right into the Sprague Valley Speakeasy for 20% of the load.

            It was not a game to be taken lightly though, everyone was aware of the fate of W.A. Rutherford of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho who died from the beating that the police administered to him when he was caught transporting Moonshine from Montana into Spokane. It really was a gamble, anything could happen and there were many ways to lose your cargo, your freedom, or your life.

            ‘Here we are, honk the horn!’ shouted Eli, as they rounded the final curve out of the forest and raced into the open pastures of the Franklin farm. George gave the horn on the Packard two quick bursts. The farm hands were alert and ready with the trap door raised. George quickly brought the car to a halt and then slowly inched down the ramp. Before he could kill the engine, the farm hands had lowered the trap door, raked the tire tracks, tossed out some seed in front of the hay stack and released a penned-up brood of chickens in front of the hay stacks. This was a well-oiled routine and they enjoyed every last bit of their deception. Once the scene looked normal, the farm hands would scatter to their nearby work stations as if they had never been disturbed.

            Simon Franklin sat on the porch of his farm house, reading the paper, smoking his pipe and waiting for the police to arrive. Sometimes they were there within minutes, sometimes they never came at all. The police knew that somewhere, somehow, George and Eli were hiding but they were never able to solve the mystery of where they managed to stash themselves. In those days, police didn’t pursue rum-runners with canine units.

            Franklin and Malov established quite a strong friendship due to the circumstances of the prohibition era. They had spent many a night together playing cards, smoking tobacco, drinking samogon and sharing stories of their youth. Simon was always fascinated by stories of the Tatar raiders from the Transcaucasian region and he was always begging Malo, as he affectionately called George Nikolayevich to stay and visit with him as long as possible. The surname Malov, is pronounced with a soft and fleeing ‘v’ in the Russian language. The Americans being fond of abbreviations and nicknames would call George simply Malo for short. Which further entertained a few of the Mexican farm hands, because in Spanish, ‘Malo’ translates to ‘bad’, or personified as a bad man. To this day there is a small city with twenty-eight inhabitants located between Curlew and Republic Washington that bears the name Malo. A secret namesake lost to history. A name the reveals the location where Russian rum-runners would hide-out from the law with the assistance of their American comrades.

            Everything comes down to circumstance. Circumstance in and of itself is simply a record of any specific time and space upon which any specific human may find himself. The endless combination of such factors can have interesting effects on history itself. These are the living ingredients that make up the distillation of life.

            So, it was for people who lived in the Kootenay Boundary country through the 1920’s. Canada and America were separate nations, but for those who existed on the border, men often rolled as waves of wheat do with the wind, fluid as boats on the open oceans. These were the salad days for George Nikolayevich Malov. How he loved the growl from that twin-six engine of the Packard, he loved the thrill of defiance and the joys of earning good money for his risk during a time when most men were struggling to find soup. It was during roaring twenties that he was able to enjoy life the most. He transported samogon from a Canadian village nicknamed after a crazy woman who came from a Georgian village to a tiny American village that was named after him.

[1] Shortened nickname for Grigory, in English George.

[2] Colloquial mixed language swearword. Literally means, shit-on-sticks. Implying an uncomfortable difficult task.

[3] Russian word for an order from the Czar or a religious leader that had the power of a law. Referring specifically to the ukaz that prohibited Doukhobors from consuming alcohol.

[4] Formally known as the National Prohibition Act. It formalised the prohibition of alcohol in the USA in 1919.

[5] A traditional Russian unit of measure, approximately 500 sazhen, or about 1.06 kilometres.

[6] A nickname for the male name Andrei.

[7] Russian word for moonshine. It comes in many flavours and is distilled from a variety of ingredients.