Latah County Oral History Collection

Rob Moore: Well, we were talking to Moody and have told us that you were the only guy around that he knew of that didn't have his still on a crick. Is that right?

John East: Where the carrier had it?

Rob Moore: Well, I don't think he just knew. But I think he knew he didn't have a right on a Craig.

John East: Well, that is probably true, but I. I didn't have a permanent place for it. I had many place and in different states.

Rob Moore: Idaho and Washington, you mean?

John East: Yeah.

Rob Moore: How long would you keep it in one place?

John East: Well, that depends on it depended on circumstances.

Rob Moore: What kind of circumstances?

John East: I didn't want to get too well known in any. Any particular place.

Rob Moore: Well, how come if have knew that you didn't have you're still on a creek or he had some idea? How come he wouldn't come out and look for it?

John East: Well, they was interested in my operation for two or three years at least. That was their business.

Rob Moore: Did you ever have any close calls with them?

John East: Well, yes and no. Let me tell you this. Summerfield was a hero and they were very crooked law enforcement. Now, is that what you wanted to hear?

Rob Moore: I want. I want to hear whatever. Whatever was right, you know, And if that's right, and I want to hear it. Sure.

John East: Well, you've already got it.

Rob Moore: Okay. Well, were they by crooked, you mean they would take payoffs or what?

John East: I couldn't answer that. I never offered them money. And I. But now we I'll I'll run into our situation now in law enforcement. They would in the drug situation now. Yeah. It for there's considerable the comparison is considerable. I in in the two situations I they bargain and the prosecutor bargain and well I think I would say maybe make some, fake cases, complaints and in their setup they got a man that's, what they call a pusher.

And, they will put charges second team that they doubt very much if they can prove in court. You following me. And it I think the alcohol situation was much too same because they didn't get convictions on only a portion of their, charges that they did up again. Yeah. Now that that's just common everyday occurrence, you see them put three or four charges and maybe one that is a felony charge and they'll drop it two misdemeanor or.

Rob Moore: well, what do you mean specifically that, that the law around here you think was crooked in those days.

John East: Well, that's a pretty broad statement to answer, because I am not a 30.

Rob Moore: I just wonder why you would say that.

John East: Okay.

Rob Moore: Do you think that like like Ulises, like Ulises Showalter seems to feel that that if you had a big enough operation as a moonshiner then and you made enough money at it, then you could go ahead and you could pay off or you could, you know, discourage the law from from looking too closely into your operation.

John East: Well, I will answer you last question. Yeah, I know about you. Year. And he was a very minor operator, and, I don't. I didn't consider that I was a major operator by no means or, major offer rate here or mostly around Spokane. And, well, they, What killed the business was a major operation. Cut the price so low that fellas like me weren't interested in it anymore.

Now, have you learned anything?

Rob Moore: Well, I'm learning.

John East: I'm learning where that's in my estimation, what killed the operation. Mostly the reason. Little of it going on now, I think. But, I'm not interested in it. I, I won't add one thing right here. When I moonshine, I tasted it with a teaspoon.

Rob Moore: You didn't. Didn't drink it yourself?

John East: No, sir.

Rob Moore: Was that common?

John East: Not involved and not among, fellows that manufacture. They generally was their very best customer. I run a beer parlor at Baylor and never for one year and never tasted. Never drank a bottle of beer. And, I was so disgusted with the business that, I sold that.

Rob Moore: That was your beer parlor? Yeah. How. How large did your moonshine business get? How much volume?

John East: Well, I think we'd better get that quick. Okay.

Rob Moore: when you got out of the moonshine business, you didn't sell out of that, did you?

John East: No, no, no. Good. Quit screwing.

Rob Moore: how did you get started? As a moonshiner.

John East: I sold it. I could be some money made in it, but that was a mistake. And, if I make a deal now in property and it's a mistake, I get out of it by selling or doing something. Now. yeah, I bought a house that was in the $20,000 bracket a year ago on fire between Lincoln and a and I started to work to clean it up and I only worked here four days to top down in my heart when bad.

And what did I do? I sold the property I paid cash for. I told John Nash Grove contract so break me. But you couldn't do that with the moonshine? No, no, that's fairly well explained.

Rob Moore: What was the price of moonshine when you got into it?

John East: around $10 a gallon.

Rob Moore: Didn't stay that price very long.

John East: Yeah, And I would say good day. That good moonshine would still bring or should get.

Rob Moore: I bet it would do. Do you think most moonshiners were good businessmen?

John East: More of them were good drinking, man.

Rob Moore: What does it take to be a success as a moonshiner?

John East: Well, I doubt if they were any successes. Yeah, that's the question you're looking for. You have it.

Rob Moore: Okay. Okay.

John East: And that's all that.

Rob Moore: You want to get off the subject for a while.

John East: Well, what else is there to say?

Rob Moore: well, there's a lot of different things, you know, about. About the people who were sort of involved in that operation. They're kind of legends or tales, you know, have have sprung up around them like this. West These be the federal man here. Did you know him?

John East: Yes.

Rob Moore: What were what kind of a man was he?

John East: And that whole.

Rob Moore: Thing. I've heard some pretty bad things about it.

John East: Well, he was of I knew a lot about Bob with and, I won't make the shortage possible. He was a violator himself. So while I will say mostly and later, too, he had the five gallon in the big guns right out in his front yard. Then, you know, the round room kept the weed down. Now, maybe you don't want that.

Rob Moore: No, that's what is the. I've heard. Like I heard there was a time that West he was a Southerner, wasn't he?

John East: Kentucky, I believe.

Rob Moore: Yeah. Well, I heard there was a time that he got in a fight with the Negro here and beat him to death.

John East: I wouldn't credit know with all that I know with a cavity. I don't think that had that problem. I think that's fiction are.

Rob Moore: A little overblown.

John East: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I doubt that very much. Okay.

Rob Moore: Well, was he a violent man or was he a hard man?

John East: He was a very heavy man. Yeah. And I and when he was in Kentucky, he was a Democrat. When he'd come to Idaho, this town here was solid Republican. So he was Republican when he was here. Well, now, there some information you probably wouldn't get from anybody but me.

Rob Moore: Well, how did your were your folks acquainted with him back there or what? How did how did they know?

John East: No, we've close that right now.

Rob Moore: About about West.

John East: Yeah, that's enough. Are you.

Rob Moore: Okay? Well, that that's what you're saying.

John East: this town that did riff.

Rob Moore: Well, we're not trying to do any disservice to them. We're trying to really find out what the life was like here in the real early days. And we can't do that except by talking to people who were here and trying to, you know, get at the truth stories and, you know, and like like if I don't ask questions, there's no way I can find out was what was false.

John East: I have a question. Okay. but the deputy name.

Rob Moore: Moved.

John East: Moody. Has he been very helpful in his report?

Rob Moore: yeah.

John East: Yeah, I know. He could be. And, I would say this if you want to call moonshine in a business, you probably. It's, would go down in history as a porch business that I have been in.

Rob Moore: Who was it? Just so popular? Because everybody wanted to. I mean, it was such a big business, so everybody seemed like they were moonshine.

John East: Yeah. Wow. And it is no mean it was against the law and, our underworld, all the business is legal, and some of it is pay, you know, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I and maybe where they had a big turnover, big column, the stills hundreds and hundreds of jack sugar and the sugar that was used in the bigger ones was kind of great.

Drew These are little, operations around here was all cane sugar and, if you, you see molasses out of Barrow, you just got the amount of alcohol that it contained much less than a cane sugar, much less. You just got the percentage of alcohol that, no matter what it was, whatever. Now I know nothing about the corn.

And, like most of the Kentucky in and those operators in the Midwest, in fact, I consider alcohol moonshiners in the ABC to it. What do you mean? We knew very little.

Rob Moore: There some people that have have told me that they, they feel that the area and the town of Moscow was a lot better place to live before Prohibition because the drinking was in the saloons rather than the home and stuff like that. How how do you feel about that?

John East: Well, I'll kind of go along with it, but.

Rob Moore: You don't have to if you don't want to.

John East: Well, I know. I know. Yeah, I, I, I think the prohibition was the biggest mistake that people ever tried to put it.

Rob Moore: What kind of effect do you have locally on the, on the way people lived or the kinds of people they were or whatever.

John East: Well, that's, that's a question for a pretty clear to me that raises this line of business. And he started and I think he usually would jump to conclusions. He didn't consider em adequate. good. Nor did I consider myself a judge. I knew very little of the situation.

Rob Moore: Was was the town you think a better place to live in the early days? Was? I mean, was it?

John East: I would say probably it was, but, right is worse now. I think in probably than a century ago.

Now there is, but I'm not a judge.

Rob Moore: Well.

John East: I mean, just a little. Moscow is just a dot on the map.

Rob Moore: But that's, it's, it's the dot that we're interested in right now. So. So we'll, you know, look at it pretty close. I've heard that a lot of the people in the foothills of the Moscow mountain area tended to be a pretty rough bunch.

John East: I doubt that. I think they were some damn good people.

Rob Moore: I'm not saying all of them. I'm saying, you know, some of them like the there was a bunch called the Patterson's Up There. Had you heard of them? There was Charlie Patterson and, a bunch other. There were supposed to be a real brawling kind of bunch. Was that, was that fairly common in the early days that there were a lot of pretty tough men around?

Well, I'm not saying mean or anything like that. Just, you know, real tough, able to handle themselves kind of men.

John East: Where I would probably agree with the I don't know whose idea it was, but, yeah, most of them did handle themselves pretty well in a and I don't know, I don't know if I should make the statement. You probably won't want.

Rob Moore: Well.

John East: But, boys and girls both over here in very now are students I and they're, they come from every state in the union. I doubt from character standpoint that they're as good morally as the girls and boys from the farms that made up the classes of the university at that time. And I think kids get plenty of potential.

Yeah. Well so that was in the mire and all the men left the town to go get it out and a small bunch of Indians growing up and they were always trying to find something to eat they'd see and but the Indians attitude, their young men, they called them brains and that was, and the schools were the ones that taught them young men to go out and pilfer and but anyhow, yeah, yes.

We bring out the Indians idea. She, he it was one smart Indian among a group that can or does and, and he was telling the woman there what he was going to do, He was going to shoot her and but finally he killed her in the heart, had to go away and he got to go to out she comes out with a butcher knife and gets part of a hero.

And now all of his the rest of the Indians who did and who did, they killed. He jumped on his pony and left and they said, Brave woman, very squaw. They called her she and they they just who did damn well or get no part of the air. And their estimate she was top. Yes, that was the Indians idea of their bravery.

Now, there was another incident that happened on that wagon train. And wagon train was the third one that come with two Oregon in 18 and 33. And they had a smart fella. And, he said, I want to kill an Indian. That when they was traveling along and he saw an old squaw sitting on a log and he up and shot her.

Now that's one reason that the Indians were not friendly to the immigrants. And, so, the next day, a lot of Indians overhauled the wagon train. Some man, your wagon shoot. An Indian woman came over. We want that man and the wagon master surrendered him. You know what? They don't. That man right there before all of of white people, they tied him to the states and skinned him alive.

Now, that's the story of what happened to the settlers. Commonwealth. But who was to blame? The man that was skinned in life? Yes.

Rob Moore: He got what was coming through.

John East: Yes. And his white associates really do. They didn't want him. And he they it was an example that red man put out to the white man. Don't do that to a.

Rob Moore: Was a good lesson. There was a good lesson, probably.

John East: Yeah. I won't take lead pretty far back for sure. But all word of mouth.

Rob Moore: Well, that's that's all we can get now. But that's, that's the only choice we have is word of mouth history. Yeah. In that, you know, to get a person's story.

John East: Yeah. To I believe that those people that and they were my ancestors and your ancestors as well was better of people. And well, we didn't have many people in our penitentiary but we got a lot of them go,

Rob Moore: Well, do you think part of that could have been because there was less law enforcement here in the early days?

John East: It possibly could have been because we'd now I'll quote my mother when she was in her nineties and she never let no, Some of these folks think they're tough. I've seen them step right out in the street and one of them go down and sometimes both of them go down with their gun. That was her view.

Rob Moore: well, that didn't happen much in Moscow.

John East: no, I don't think so. But she was. They have to know her again.

Rob Moore: Is do you think in general, a man or a boy would have to fight to prove himself in in those days? Like if he joined a new crew of men or something like that?

John East: I doubt that very much. I think that's mostly pocketbook novel history. Don't get it right.

Rob Moore: You think people cooperated pretty pretty well.

John East: Yeah. Yeah. It was the day that, they piled a whole family in to a wagon and went to a neighbor's for a Sunday dinner or something like that. That was more the way of visiting than now. You don't see that now. No.

Rob Moore: How about jumping back to the moonshine times? Was there much competition between moonshiners?

John East: And. I doubt that. I doubt that very much.

Rob Moore: Like, would you, would you be on in those days? Would you have been on friendly terms with your listeners or would you have kind of felt like he was. No, no, he was in competition.

John East: You were protecting.

Rob Moore: You would.

John East: Yeah. Yeah. You would protect me.

Rob Moore: How could you do that? yeah.

John East: The law was in the neighborhood. You kick him all that. The Court One thing about that law at that time, it was like a bite dog. They were the faction that, when still that way, a pushers that are selling gun, they they're not friendly with the law.

Rob Moore: What do you mean? The law was like a biting dog. I don't understand. What would that what that statement means to be like a biting dog? What do you. What do you mean by that?

John East: They were treacherous.

Rob Moore: Yeah. Okay. I had heard that sometimes, even though you might feel the law in some way or give them a give a little bit of moonshine and say, Hey, why don't you, you know, take me if somebody's coming out of my area, that sometimes they would double cross you?

John East: Yeah, many times I'd say, Yeah.

Rob Moore: Was there illicit seem to feel that that there was a lot of problem with dual pigeons in in those days. yeah there were there were some around.

John East: yeah. No doubt that he is correct. Okay. And that exists today. That debate hasn't changed. No.

Rob Moore: Right. Well, those days where the stool pigeon try to buy from you or something. Yeah, yeah.

John East: Yeah, yeah.

Rob Moore: Yeah. Did that ever happen to you?

John East: No doubt.

Rob Moore: Could you spot a stool pigeon, you think?

John East: Well, we get that time. There was a lot of people that you wouldn't say. no, no. He.

Rob Moore: And how about painters? I I've heard that there are people around who, who just would, would paint up would buy gallons and pointed out is is I've really blown that.

John East: Yes. They, that was happened quite often.

Rob Moore: Do you think anybody came out a winner in the whole moonshine deal. I mean it sounds like, you know, if, if the law was crooked and it wasn't a good. Did anybody come out ahead, then the whole deal?

John East: I doubt that now. I doubt that very much. I mean, not I'd say I doubted that they had a substantial bank account From who did anybody. I doubt it. In this facility yesterday was a successful financially man from bank for a month. Yeah.

Rob Moore: Do you think most people still respected the law and respected law men, even though there was all this confusion about the moon sighting?

John East: Well, yes, I think so. I want to tell you this neighbor was just as good a man. That moonshine as it was in the church.

Rob Moore: I believe that entirely. I believe that completely, because the men I've talked to, the moonshine are. Are fine men.

John East: Yeah. So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with right. Well, let's see what time.