On the last day before the taps ran dry, the streets of San Francisco were jammed. A frenzy of cars, trucks, wagons and every other imaginable form of conveyance crisscrossed the town and battled its steepest hills. Porches, staircase landings and sidewalks were piled high with boxes and crates delivered just before transporting their contents would become illegal. Across the country in New York City, Goldâ??s Liquor Store placed wicker baskets filled with its remaining inventory on the sidewalk; a sign read, â??Every bottle, $1.â?
On the first day of Prohibition, January 17, 1920, Bat Masterson, a 66-year-old relic of the Wild West now playing out the string as a sportswriter in New York, sat alone in his favorite bar, glumly contemplating a cup of tea. In Detroit that night, federal officers shut down two illegal stills (an act that would become common in the years ahead) and reported that their operators had offered bribes (which would become even more common). On the Maine-Canada border, reported a New Brunswick paper, â??Canadian liquor in quantities from one gallon to a truckload is being hidden in the northern woods and distributed by automobile, sled and iceboat, on snowshoes and skis.â?
The crusaders who had struggled for decades to place Prohibition in the Constitution celebrated with rallies, prayer sessions and ritual interments of effigies representing John Barleycorn, the symbol of alcoholâ??s evils. â??Men will walk upright now, women will smile and the children will laugh,â? the evangelist Billy Sunday told the 10,000 people who gathered at his tabernacle in Norfolk, Virginia. â??Hell will be forever for rent.â?
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