A note from the author:

Perhaps you are a cultured person, and you know all about supper clubs and the proper liquor to make an old fashioned with. If you know it’s brandy, you can skip this note in its entirety, the shibboleth has proven you. I refer to the Ephraimites among you. Now, there is a cocktail called an old fashioned, which you churlish ruffians insist upon using whiskey for. You are to use brandy, as I have previously indicated. In addition, one must muddle some cherries in the bottom, perhaps add an orange slice, and you are free to add water, or soda, should it please you. No matter what choices you may have made up to this point, you will add a concoction called Angostura bitters, just a few dashes. If bitters are not used, you are not drinking an old fashioned, but something else entirely. The bitters make the drink. That being said, bitters are a mysterious substance, with an alcohol content near to liquor, and an herbal recipe that is not known to anyone save one member of the German family that first brewed it in this infant hemisphere. It cannot be drunk on its own without a good deal of effort and a decided lowering of standards, due to its noxious taste. Not even the worst terminal drunkards attempt it. Remember this.

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There are creatures on this earth who cannot be forestalled, not by the society that produced them, nor especially by the government that selfsame society has foisted upon itself. They are too strange to be defeated, and too entertaining to die. We treat with such a specimen in the pages that succeed. Her name was Tomasina Schoengarth, but she was called the Captain by any that knew her, and she was known. She had never been a moment in the service, but had achieved rank through her peculiar refinements, and it was not to be challenged, and indeed, none did dare challenge it. The Captain did not brook disappointment and she did not suffer fools quietly. To be truthful, she did not do anything quietly.

She was a stout and robust, bareheaded blonde woman, with a red-face, and a cackle formed by years in a smokey bar. For, bars were her trade. She had built a large tavern next to a sparsely populated lake in the great forest near the Great Lakes called, the Ship at Sea. It was the only establishment for miles in any direction, and was the regular for all of the locals. It had a large dance hall in the old style, built for a time when folks still danced, and I mean danced proper, with all the steps known years in advance, and everything carefully prescribed. The hall saw the very best polka and waltz bands the time had to offer, from Romy Gosz to the Jolly Bohemians. Real music if you ask me, with instruments and everything.

Captain Tomasina did not have a husband, because they were wretched, ridiculous creatures. Her friends had them for the same reasons. She reasoned, and I’d wager rightly, a husband is of no use to a female taveneer, for what could such a man conceivably add to such a wife’s situation? She had her own steady and edifying income, she owned her own property outright, children would have interfered in her operations and her habits (if they were lucky), and if she ever had a fleeting taste for romance, well, she worked in a tavern every night, and could have romance easy when she wanted it, which she almost never did. She was a hard-baked women, the Captain, and she ran a sharp ship.

She kept a dogsbody named Davey Schneider who handled every odd job needed. He waxed the dance floor, painted the boards, raked the sand, washed the glasses, and if things were desperate, he would be thrust behind the bar, which was only a last resort. For Davey was an old Navy man, and even for his rustic surrounds, was a rough customer with everyone but the Captain, who he admitted ranked him. She was right hard on Davey, but perhaps because of his martial rearing, he never took ill to it. If she had taken it to her head to call him Seaman Schneider, he would not have fussed, for he called her Captain. He still wore an old dirty hat in the naval fashion.

Captain Tomasina may have been born a character, as locals would put it, but she had become an institution by the time we find her in our little history. Everyone in the town knew her, and she knew everyone in town that she cared to. In small rural communities, especially at this young age of the nation, nothing great or small ever occurred whose report did not pass through the local tavern. It was here that gossip and tales took their shape, and presiding over all of it, was Captain Tomasina with her unsleeping vigilance.

Far beyond this quiet place, in lands disturbed by various campaigns and initiatives, and large groups of people with lots of time on their hands, a ban on the sale and production of alcohol was passed by the beleaguered Congress. You might imagine that this would have seriously dented the tavern business, but for the fact that the local authorities in places like we find our tale had no particular interest in enforcing this damned law, passed against nature and indeed the Bible Itself-for was not the Lord Himself a winemaker? No, these German Catholic burgers did not think it suitable to enforce such strange notions in their communities. Well, as all bad laws go, when those on the ground will not implement their onerous dues, those in the air take it upon themselves to do so, and so authorities from the state and the federal governments issued forth like black riders, scouring the countryside for the trinkets their lords dispatched them to collect, namely, the booze and its proprietors. How a state formed, in the main, by German Catholics, who drank as a matter of course and religion, why such a state would take to its head to enforce the laws of Protestant grumps who hated themselves as much as they hated fun or any Catholic, I say why such a state would devote itself to enforcing such sacrilegious laws is a matter for another tale, and at any rate, you’d have to tell me.

Well one bright, cloudless summer day, a mighty fine car pulled up to the tavern. The car was finer than it should have been, and a good deal mightier, and that attracted folks’ attention. It was a new model, had all of its components still attached, and not with cord or tape, and there was not a scratch on it. Out of this unearthly vehicle emerged a man with a pressed suit, a steamed hat, and fashionable spectacles. It was immediately obvious that this was a city man, but through what unholy sequence of circumstance he washed up on this sequestered shore, will be revealed presently.

Actually getting into the Ship at Sea tavern was a process that is difficult to describe to a lay person, but which, owing to the naval traditions of the proprietor and her lieutenant, involved a series of whistles and flags and what Davey Schnedier called, “blowing on.” For the establishment was surrounded by a rather diminutive moat, across which a sturdy wooden plank would be lowered and the arrivals could board the tavern, upon the completion of all attendant ceremony.

Davey was minding the bar when the stranger entered after all of the whistles and flags and plank lowering and so forth. It was between meals on a weekday, so the place was nearly empty. The precise conditions for Davey to be successful in a customer service role had been achieved, namely, no customers. The stranger sat on a stool and made eyes with Davey, who came over to him with a scowl upon his face as he wiped his sweaty brow with his dirty hat.

“I’ll have a beer.” the man said.

Now we must state, the folks of this little village knew some such law banning alcohol had been passed somewhere far away. They had a dim knowledge of this, but it seemed like something happening far away, and had nothing to do with them. No one spoke of it as something that was actually happening here, maybe in the cities. Anyway, no one with any local authority would begin such proceedings as would net them and all of their deputies to begin with.

So the man at the bar with the steamed hat asked for a beer, and without being too saccharine about it, Davey gave him a cold beer from the tap, golden and shimmering like the gates of heaven, fluffed high with a dripping effervescent foam. It was God’s own.

Well what did this Mede of a city man do? He placed the beverage in a bucket-I did forget to mention he had a bucket with him, but this was not to be wondered at by you, I, or any one who would have been in that bar-I say he had a bucket with him, and he placed the mug in the bucket and sealed it.

“Hey Chuck, if yer lookin’ to take beers out fishin’, I’ll fill the bucket fer ye, but ye can’t have one goddamned mug!” This was sailorly language from Davey, since they were discussing matters nautical after all. We must excuse a professional his jargon.

“Sir,” the suited man said, talking just like they do in the pictures, “I have no intention of fishing on your wretched pond. Nor will I return your mug. It is state’s evidence, and soon, you will be too.”

Davey cracked his knuckles and guffawed, “Okay, well, that’s fine. We had ways of dealing with your types in the Navy.” Which is exactly how naval types react to this sort of language, so that was true. Davey made as if he was to come around the bar to address the matter without any barriers to their discourse.

“You stop right there, you hickish brute!” the man yelled. “I’m from the government, and you are under arrest!”

“Arrest?” Davey heaved, “On what charges? Serving a meal? A succulent German meal?”

“For possession of alcohol with intent to distribute!” with those words a troupe of men, all wearing suits in various shades of gray, stormed in, and the gaggle of government men attempted to wrangle Davey in a confused melee.

While this heaving mass of humanity rolled around in her bar, knocking over stools and tables, shouting and cursing, and everyone bellowing various commands to a myriad of purposes, the Captain herself emerged from a curtain leading to the back rooms, a very ship’s mast in this heaving galley. The men all heard two thunderous foot stamps, looked around, and beheld the Captain standing with all the mad fury of Ahab. She was wearing a bright green jumper dress and a scowl such as only Beelzebub wore, her greasy black hair falling freely about her face like Medusa’s locks.

“And what is this business in my bar?” she howled, and quite amazed at themselves, the men actually did stop their brawling. The gray suited men looked at each other in a deep disquiet. Then their chief plucked himself up.

“And who may you be madame? Does your husband own this establishment?”

“Husband! Why, damn you!” We may perhaps interpret this as sailorly language from the captain, and we were, as I said before, upon the brink of a lake, so everyone was rather nautical in their bearing.

“They are haughty brigands, Captain!” said Davey, who had wrenched free during the captain’s debut. “I know it the minute they pulled up. They insulted the lake itself! A wretched pond he called it! They plan to make evidence of me!”

“Evidence? Of you? Davey Schneider? Fine evidence it would make!” the Captain howled.

“I must say,” interjected the suit, “I am not accustomed to speaking to a smoking woman.” For the Captain was ablazing away sure enough. The next one always succeeding on the demise of the last one, like so many princes and kings.

“What business it is of you to render your opinions on smoking, women’s habits, or anything else in particular?” asked the singular woman.

“We are from the government madame, and we wish to speak with proprietor.”

“The government hah! What government? And if she don’t wish to speak to you, where does that leave you?”

“Madame, are you aware that this man was caught selling intoxicating beverages to a government agent?” the man continued.

“Intoxicating beverages?”

“Yes. You are aware that under state and federal law that that is illegal?”

“Well if the government agent asked fer ‘em, I’d say he was a crook himself, at the very least.” the Captain reasoned coolly.

“You are aware that, if you do indeed own this property, you are engaging in an illegal trade, here in this tavern though?” the man persisted.

“I ain’t aware of nothin’ I ain’t minded to!”

So the lawman and the Captain chased each other around the tree for some time, the lawman asking the Captain of what she was aware, and the Captain denying she was aware of anything in the sort of vague way that would make a defense attorney’s heart swell. In the end the agents decided they did not dare take the Captain into custody. Not only had a sympathetic crowd of patrons begun to assemble around her, but her very person seemed to forbid such a thing. They thought it would be mighty low of them to arrest a woman on such charges, and the Captain thought rather low of them when she perceived this. She gave them a good inclination as to her opinion of their lakes, and what wretched establishments their taverns must be, and how that must surely contribute to their imperious impulses. In the end, they resolved to take only Davey Schneider to jail, and charge him with the crime described.

“Don’t worry about me Captain.” said Davey as they packed him up, “No good sailor is unfamiliar with the brig. In fact, no good sailor avoids it for any lengthy amount of time. Not if he has spirit!”

“I wasn’t worried Mr. Schneider,” said the Captain, who had adopted a more formal tone now that Mr. Schneider was a denizen of the criminal justice system. “I know you to be one to bear it. I know what you say is true, and I have often thought you have been out of custody for far too long. Perhaps it will prove an edifying experience for you and your cellmates.”

In the event, it did prove an edifying experience for all parties during Mr. Schneider’s short stay at the city jail. By the following day, he had all of his cellmates assembling for reveille, cleaning their small apartment with toothbrushes, in addition to various behavioral modifications that had been informed by the most rigorous naval sciences of the day. The cell became a ship at sea, and the cellmates hands before the mast. It is truly a wonder how far a naval tattoo and a gruff personality can take a man in the maritime service or a jail, a ship being merely a jail with the chance of drowning after all. After a few days the Captain did pay Davey’s bond, having decided that edification had been accomplished to the highest degree that could be hoped for. She did continue referring to him as Mr. Schneider, as she could not be too familiar with what she called, “a convict”, being a respected member of the community herself.

As the lawmen were leaving with Davey, they took hatchets to what kegs they could find. When they were gone, the remaining barrels were hauled up on the Captain’s orders, and rolled out the front door, down the pier, and into the lake.

“Ain’t this illegal now?” asked one of the barrel rollers of the Captain.

“Now when did you imagine you could figure what was legal and what wasn’t?” growled the Captain. “At any rate, we didn’t make this beer, and we ain’t selling it, are we’re sure fixin’ not to have it in our possession, so what problem is it? It will be distributed as God wills, and if the government wishes to take Him to court, I will be there to watch it!”

“That’s blasphemous!” said one of her merry Catholic men.

“Talk not to me of blasphemy man!” she heaved. “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”

A small windblown man with a prim face, an ill-fitting suit, and a hat that was decidedly not steamed, nor had yet even heard mention of the practice, turned up at the Ship at Sea a short time after Mr. Schneider regained his freedom. He was nearly bald, but what remained was kept so long and so blown about and standing on end, that his head looked like what was left after lightning strike. He was shown into the Captain’s office, after all whistles had been duly blown, and the flapping of flags had been accomplished.

“Ah Mr. Noveau, just the man I was awaiting on! How is the law and how fares Manetowak?”

“Both in shambles, for the same reasons that have visited your house madame.” Mr. Noveau said, placing a battered briefcase on the desk and producing a number of papers from it.

“Bad law makes bad times,” he continued, “And bad times make for a robust practice.”

“Well if the government men and you attorneys are getting rich while we low ones thrash about in the mire, I can only hope such prophecies as I have aheard about on Sundays may come to pass.”

“Through the Will of God madame, but first we have earthly matters to attend to. It is true madame, evil shall prosper until the Final Day, but that is why you have my services.”

“Yes, your services, that’s what I’m fixed on. You did get my note?”

“Yes, I’ve reviewed it and think I have a grasp on the matter.”

“Oh there’s a great deal of grasping, that much is true. Now, this whole mess was sitting heavy on my mind, so heavy my neck drooped. How in God’s name can an honest woman run a tavern in a dry country? I was sat in the bar the other night, just pouring myself on that fire, and looking around at the empty shelves and nooks, once brimming with beers and liquors. I saw those low faces trudging out my door, sober as the Devil, their faces pinched tight by noxious water. Good Lord who can drink it straight? I saw these phantoms swirl about me so. Then my eye come to fall on one last bottle that the government men did not take. It was the Angostura bitters, the last thing left of my old fashioneds, that did so use to warm the hearts of my hearties. Now my question to you Mr. Noveau, being the man of the law you are, why was this one bottle left, would you say? Most curious they would do that.”

Mr. Noveau picked up the bottle of bitters and examined the label, which was printed larger than the bottle, and was now tattered and ratty on the top, not so different from his own top. He set the bottle down, pulled out a large blue book from his tattered case, and began pouring through it in silence.

After some time he said, “Madame, I wish to here inform you, that in my legal opinion, this concoction is not subject to the law!”

The Captain’s eyes turned wide. “Not subject to the law? There’s more alcohol in that there bottle than a handful of beers.”

“You are a sharp woman, there’s no doubt about it. You run your business with good common sense, and that’s why you need me. You see, the law has little to do with commons sense, that’s where you trip up. Now, I wish to solemnly inform you that this is herbal concoction is, for legal purposes, a medical tincture, and not subject to the same regulations as your other offerings.”

“And what regulations does it still bear under?”

“It must be prescribed, but even then, it takes only a pharmacist to do it, not a physician.”

“Well, that leads me on to an important consideration sir: what does it take to get licensed as a pharmacist in this nation, still in the bloom of its first youth?”

“Precious little madame, precious little.”

So it was that the Captain became a licensed pharmacist through the-and he assures her and us entirely legal and above board-wiles of her attorney, Pierre Noveau, Esquire. Within two weeks she had the paper attesting to it under glass behind the bar.

Her tavern thus began a metamorphosis, not in its essence, but in its particulars. The sign on the outside of the establishment no longer read, “The Ship at Sea”, it was now “The Ship at Sea Pharmacy For Dyspepsia.” It was no longer filled with patrons, but patients, each with their own prescription in their pocket, given under the very hand of the Captain, Pharmacist. There was one medicine on offer, and one medicine that met the various medical complaints of all the patients in the county, Angostura bitters, and the bar tenders and maids started shoving them out as quick as folks would snatch them out of their hands. All day and into the wee hours of night the whistles blew and the flags waved with arrivals and, more rarely departures.

It was a sudden miracle, and a sure sign of Providence’s wise ends, providing succor when folks most need it and least expect it, that the entire parish found themselves beset by digestive issues, not quite grim enough to require a doctor, but a pharmacist was just the thing. Here was a dyspeptic, in such a state he had take three courses of medicine as soon as he sat at the bar. There was a man complaining of a stomach ulcer, a chronic condition that required a near constant presence on the premises, and he got loud! In every corner one could find an invalid at all hours, invigorated to the point of mirth and merriment by the wise pharmacist.

But fine times do not go unnoticed by the government. The moment fun was detected, the gray riders issued forth from their fastness to inquire. They rambled into the parking lot astride their glistening machinery, with their steamed hats atop their heads. They filed in over the plank, to neither whistle nor flag, rather unceremoniously, and demanded explanations from the pharmacist.

“It’s a pharmacy!” the Captain bellowed at them, “Can’t you read the sign on the front! Or the license on the wall? I’ve got a license to prescribe medicines such as I see fit! And I’ve full license to prescribe bitters, which, it just so happens, all these folks need, and they need it by the barrel. I’d like to see your license to defy me!”

The gray suited men could not produce such a license, not then and there at any rate.

“Well then, I’d say you were attempting to practice the pharmacological sciences without a license and should be thrown in irons!” the Captain howled.

“You maintain this is a pharmacy?”

“I do indeed.”

“And what kind of a pharmacy operates late into the night, hosting dances, playing loud music, and filled to the brim with drunken patients?”

“The best goddamned pharmacy in the state, that’s what!”

So far with all that. We must here lament that the pharmacological practices of the Captain have created no particular tradition within the science, a misfortune we must lay wholly at the feet of the schools, who have no understanding of these things, staring far down at them from their airy and desolate lofts.

The Captain thus prevailed upon the law, for a time. But the malice of the government does not sleep, and keeps no mortal softness to itself. One day, one of the unnamed men in gray suits sat at the end of the bar. He had attempted to be in mufti, but there is simply no way on God’s good earth that a city man serving as a footman of the state can disguise himself in a rural bar. He may have a slim chance of donning such suitable clothes as would be worn by a provincial, but everything about their person, from their hair to their shoes, is too coiffed and unsoiled. They never get the hats right either. Perhaps you have been so fortunate as to have seen a laborer with a clean baseball cap. I have not. And try as they might, the government men can never get the accents right. These men emerge from the homogenizing whirl of big city America, and little of the original fabric remains to complete the trick. It is not enough to look like a man of the earth, you have to be one too.

Well, that man sat at the bar just the same, and he was dutifully ignored by staff and customer alike. Every time an order for bitters was placed, he jotted a little note down, and continued this practice for several feverish hours. At last, he got up to leave, but not before confiscating a bottle of bitters.

Sure as rain, the gray suited men again arrived and arrested Mr. Schneider for serving alcohol the following day. He had not even been behind the bar, but he was well enough known to law enforcement to arrest, and seemed as if he could bear under confinement without undue difficulty. He affirmed as much with several remarks concerning the brig and his naval days, and his fitness for its features. Mr. Schneider did get out eventually, after reimposing order at the jail, and charges were filed against the Captain for running the establishment, though they dared not imprison her before her trial.

When the day for her trial arrived, the Captain entered the county courthouse to the warm cheering and hooting of her constituents, her attorney, Pierre Nouveau, Esquire in tow. I need not bore you with the petty details of a petty criminal case. Most horrid things do stalk about in broad daylight dressed in the most prosaic of costumes, so that their wretchedness becomes quite quotidian and comfortable to anyone it does not effect. In this vein, there was little to tell you of the courtroom, or its inhabitants that would prove enlightening. The judge was a disinterested old man, used to and by now quite tired of his little fiefdom, which offered no challenges to him, and indeed, if he ever more was challenged by anyone or anything, it was doubtful he could rise to it, so long had his native powers grown slack while festooned with the ribbons and machinery of state. The District Attorney was an unimaginative dimple of a man; there was outsides to him sure enough, but those outsides were all of him. Enough of those stiffs. We keep one of God’s own prototypes awaiting on us.

The Captain’s attorney based his entire case on one simple and undeniable fact, the drinking of bitters afforded no pleasure to the drinker, which was a demonstrable fact. Its foul taste and herbal ingredients clearly indicated it as a medicinal concoction.

“Why, your Honor,” he said, “If you will not take my proofs, perhaps I can tempt you to a dose of bitters. I say a dose, not a shot. You can make such judgments as your reason sees fit.”

The judge saw no reason why he shouldn’t do so, nor better, how anyone in courtroom could stop him. He took the proffered bitters and threw them down with a grimace. He needed little more in the way of persuading. He banged his gavel and declared that Angostura bitters were clearly not a beverage proscribed under current law, and were, without a doubt, a medicinal substance of some vile description. The case was thrown out with extreme prejudice. Now that’s law for you!

That night the Captain returned to her little tavern. The bar hummed as always, as folks nursed their difficult drinks, and dreamed of old happy days that were gone, and hoped for new happy days that might yet come. The Captain sat swaying in the galley, drinking an entire pint glass of bitters, for she had grown quite accustomed to it, and didn’t want for beer or whiskey. She had her own thing.