Temperance
I
August, 1834
I am half-blind but I know une bonne transaction when I see one and I see one coming. The smoke filtering through the cottonwoods across the river is a sign. He is coming—soon as he can get away without being caught. It is a good day when my young friend from the Fifth Regiment comes to buy my whisky. Anyone who wants a jug or two here I am, Pierre Parrant, at your service. My still across the Mississippi from Fort Snelling is perfectly legal, though hauling spirits into the fort is not. Because my eyelid droops on my useless eye, slant-wise they make fun of me, call me “Pig Eye” but I know how to distill the whisky. And running the whisky is good for the soldiers, good for the immigrant families, good for the native Indians, and good for me. So why am I no longer welcome on Fort Snelling property? The wise ones in Washington abolished the daily gill given to all soldiers. They called it progress, taking away the benefit of alcohol from the poorly paid and harshly disciplined soldiers. Now I sit here at the water’s edge—exiled like Napoleon Bonaparte—because I used to sell whisky on the fort’s land.
All the better for me. Now I live across the river, free from interference, in the luxe area of this cave, one of the finest in North America. Steady temperatures summer and winter. Abundant clear cool water. I can make whisky out of anything, corn, wheat, barley. The only problem is when I run low on grain. Then I cut it. Sometimes with pure water or sometimes with another, more potent alchemy. My still can make whisky or it can take the sap of the pine trees and percolate turpentine: in small doses a powerful medicine, known for thousands of years.
They even started a Temperance society at the Fort, made several soldiers take the pledge. Mon dieu, take away the only relief there is for toothache, a broken back, heartache or grief. Makes no sense. But I must hurry now, here he comes—I see him paddling. He tells the guard, “It is my day off, I will go to the Cave and see if there is mail at Pig Eye Tavern.” Or he promises a thirsty guard a nip, no charge. But if the commander catches him he’ll be in the stockade for a month. Sometimes we hide the jugs in the bottom of a bucket of apples. Once, out of desperation, we soaked woolen blankets with whisky, put them in the bottom of a laundry basket. He walked the sauce right past the guard, wrung the blankets out and had woolly tasting whisky for a week. They say the Indians have a problem with the whisky. But the Indians have a problem with the Americans, who want to starve them out. I have heard them. They think I don’t understand because my English is not good but I understand more than they know. The Indians and the half Indians, like myself. That is why I am anxious for the wily little fifer to paddle over here. Once I sell enough whisky, I can leave. Leave my little tavern. And go where? I don’t know. I could take an ox cart north or maybe back home, to Sault Ste Marie. I am too old to live like un voyou, a renegade, as if I am the one who does not belong here.
II
May 5, 1852
I, Harriet Bishop, am St. Paul’s first school teacher. I started with five students—only one of whom spoke English—in a mud-daubed blacksmith shop. Now I have a schoolhouse with 2 other teachers, and a proper Protestant Sunday school besides. I am a welcome guest in the finest homes in the area. But that is very little compared to today. Today is my greatest achievement and the church bells are pealing. It is the beginning of Temperance, true temperance, in our territory. My heart leaps with joy and thanksgiving.
After pleading and ranting, after much work and heartbreak, the Temperance Bill goes into effect. The manufacture, sale or possession of liquor is now illegal with stiff penalties for those who disobey. The Sons of Temperance, that I helped to found, did this, along with many others. I can smell it in the air, the refreshed spirit of those who have labored under the influence of rum. Let the bells ring out the feted miasma of illness and infirmity. Ring in the devotion of our forefathers, the New Englanders, stalwart souls, brave and true. VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY!
November 27, 1852
A most unhappy day for me. After so much hope my dearest dream has sunk in the muddy water of the Mississippi before it was given a fair chance at life. Temperance, the law that went into effect under the sunshine and blue skies of May, has been declared unconstitutional in the dreary month of November.
Five years ago, when I found myself unmarried at the age of thirty I volunteered with a missionary’s zeal to journey from Vermont to this barely inhabited outpost of St Paul. When I arrived some people still called this trading post of a thousand souls “Pig’s Eye,” after Pig Eye Parrant, a slew-eyed man who got himself evicted from Fort Snelling property for selling spirits to the soldiers in a most careless, swine-like fashion. But the law meant to relieve the tendency toward drink in the Minnesota territory was declared unconstitutional today and more men than I care to count are celebrating. They mounted a steamboat bell on a scaffold and are bringing it around the town, Ringing, ringing, ringing until I can barely stand it. The seven hills of St Paul echo with loud ‘Hurrahs’ and mock all we have endeavored to accomplish.
There are men and women who fight valiantly for Truth. This blight will be rooted out. We will not stop. We will establish a true—Puritan—city here one day.
III
September 4, 1921
Last week the good people of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, asked my husband Scott and I to find accommodations elsewhere. It wasn’t Scott’s fault about the fire—nor mine neither—but there it is. The continuance of our renting a cottage near the yacht club is untenable. Imagine, a belle like me from Montgomery, Alabama in her fifth month of pregnancy being asked to leave the premises. We have been tossed out of better places as the saying goes. Why just last year we were asked to leave the Biltmore Hotel in Manhattan after our rambunctious party celebrating a picture of us, Mr. and Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald on the cover of Vanity Fair.
We reside here, now, in St Paul at the Commodore Hotel. I feel somewhat at home. I can stand at the top of Ramsey hill and see the northern most port on the Mississippi—about as ‘at home’ as I wish to feel. St Paul is not Manhattan and certainly not Paris but it isn’t anywhere near my Daddy, Judge Sayre. He can judge all of Alabama but he can’t bring his gavel down on me, never could.
My gracious god, St. Paul is provincial. Mrs. Mary Hill, the wealthiest woman in the city and one of the dozen wealthiest women in America, invited me to tea in her brooding pile of stone that is the James J. Hill mansion. I garnered this sought after invitation because Scott’s grandmama is a great friend of Mrs. Hill’s. I wanted to attend—who wouldn’t? We had tea and cake and a positively reckless little sip of cognac cherry cordial. Grandmama glared at me like I was Medusa in full serpentine coiffure when I asked if I might have my glass refreshed. But I forgave her. She has her reasons. Her daughter married Scott’s father, a man who drank so much and so often he could not hold a job and depended on his wife’s fortune and his own Eastern “good breeding” to see him through. Which explains why Scott grew up living in so many houses in this neighborhood. Evictions and lack of funds for rents is nothing new to my tender lad. His family lived in nearly every fourth house all up and down the avenue.
And what was the scintillating talk at Mrs. Hill’s tea you may ask? Not scandal and gossip, parties and fashion, no. I learned that Mrs. Hill, who is doing quite poorly health-wise, managed that very week to help her cook make three dozen jars of raspberry jam and go fishing while out at their farm north of the city. Grandmama congratulated her on her accomplishments while I almost wilted away from disappointment. Scott promised me that when he is done writing his new novel—and I am finish carrying our child—we will move to Paris, France. Merci, mon dieu.
I forgot to tell you that our pied à terre, the Commodore Hotel, is rumored to have a speakeasy in the basement. Convenient for evenings when we just don’t feel up to venturing out.
Mari Wittenbreer is completing an MFA at Hamline University. She is a playwright and works as a theatre critic in the Twin Cities. She has had two of her plays produced. She is a Norcroft Writer Award winner.