At the Sept. 13 society fundraiser at the Leach house on Sawyers Island, rum punch, a popular drink for centuries, will be served. I thought readers might enjoy a couple of local stories about molasses and homebrew rum — first a context.

Maine goes dry — 1851

Prohibition was nothing new to Mainers when it was instituted in 1918. Maine had been "dry" since 1851, when it became illegal to sell alcohol except for medicinal purposes. The law was variably enforced, more stringently after it became a Maine constitutional amendment in 1884. Though Maine was dry, there was no difficulty getting liquor. It could be ordered from Massachusetts and sent by steamer or rail. The only face-saving measure taken by the shipper was the container chosen — it usually arrived in gallon varnish tins.

Judge Cyrus Tupper of Boothbay Harbor often dealt out summary justice when townspeople were caught with liquor in the early 1900s. There was no need to go to the courthouse for justice; Cyrus's office was official enough.

A standard question to the red-handed was, "Where did you get it?" The invariable answer to protect the supplier was, "I found it under the sidewalk."

The wooden sidewalks had a bottle-sized space underneath. At times Cyrus would be awakened in the night by the night watchman because of someone's drunken disturbance of the peace. Cyrus would hear the particulars and instantly mete out justice in pajamas from his bedroom window.

Patent medicine substitutes

Besides sending away for liquor, there were remedies closer at hand. Johnson's Anodyne, a popular patent medicine, was 90 percent alcohol. People who looked with horror at liquor passing their lips cheerfully took their medicine.

Before 1900, many Americans regularly and unknowingly used now-illegal drugs. Most Americans had no clue that the vast array of heavily promoted soothing syrups and cures were loaded with alcohol, opiates or cocaine.

Public health officials estimated one in 300 Americans were opium addicts in 1900, and about one in 375 were cocaine addicts. Coca-Cola took its name from the product's cocaine, and in the 1890s, the official remedy endorsed by the Hay Fever Association was cocaine snuff. Also, vanilla and Jamaica ginger ("jaky") flavorings were about 45 percent alcohol and a handy intoxicant during the dry years.

Home brew

In terms of homemade remedies for dry states, there were three varieties of hard cider: red, white and blue. Red cider was a mixture of hard cider and home-made wine; white was hard cider alone; and blue was hard cider and home-made wine made from only blue grapes.

My sister's attempt to make hard cider at the prep school we attended in the early 1960s, by just letting a gallon of cider fester, resulted in its blowing its top in her dorm closet. A big clean-up!

One of the easiest routes to intoxication was homemade rum. Molasses came in barrels (perhaps ranging from 40 to 60 gallons) to local stores, and it was doled out to customers in bring-your-own jugs. It was the much-used sweetener for centuries, in coffee and tea (my father for instance), cereal like oatmeal (me), cookies, candy, molasses ginger, cakes, apple pan dowdy and so on.

People I knew born here in the aughts poured it on bread for a Sunday supper or dessert. Maybe some still do. Molasses was often turned into rum in homes, sometimes by distilling, which yielded a higher alcohol content; sometimes by letting it ferment in the barrel with ambient, wandering yeast; and sometimes by boiling with added yeast.

Molasses stories

Asa Tupper, born 1898, told me a little molasses story.

In the 1910s, Aunt Sadie Knight, who had a rooming house in the Harbor, sent young Asa to Will Hodgdon's grocery store to get a jug of molasses. As Asa watched Will, he saw a rat in the funnel between the jug and the barrel. Will said, "That won't do no harm," and continued filling.

Cecil Pierce of Southport, born 1906, was one fellow I knew who liked molasses on bread. He told me a story about his days working at Pinkham's store on Southport in the 1920s. Mr. Graves had a still and made his own rum. He came to Pinkham's and saw a spoiled barrel of molasses with a layer of dead flies an inch thick. He declared it was just what he wanted and took it home to make rum.

Another time Graves acquired an intact barrel of molasses but couldn't figure out how to get into it. He asked Cecil for advice who eventually got hold of an oil pump, cleaned it, and installed it in the barrel. A few months later, Mr. Graves called him up, saying that the pump didn't work anymore. Cecil went down and found the barrel was empty, not faulty. Maybe Mr. Graves lost track of time.

We guarantee no rats or dead flies in the rum punch at the Leach house gathering!