It's National Bootlegger's Day - City History

Bootlegging may not be a glamorous past but it's an undeniable part of the City's history. Many businesses and long-time residents have their own stories from the days of Prohibition and would likely be happy to share them over a pint. The City's Historical Commission has done an amazing job over the years collecting and preserving some of these stories, archiving the tales as a testament to this unique time.

This story, "Welcome to the Club," was published in 1986 in Heritage Magazine and preserved in the 1993 edition of Muskrat Tales.

Passwords, not membership cards, ensured entry to after-hours clubs during prohibition.

By Linda Sprinkle Jaglos

Club Lido - the place smacked of intrigue in the 1920's and 1930's. It had several entrances, but even more escape routes. And "everybody had his price," Hand Maison says.
Maison, a long-time resident of St. Clair Shores, remembers the club well; he loaded, unloaded, lifted, cleaned up, and did about everything there was to do in the days of odd jobs for nickels and dimes. Depression times. "People tell ya that there were lots of places along the water's edge where the water canals for the 'lugger' went right into the building, but Lido was the only one," Maison says.

Hank, a man in his 80's, shifts his big, six-foot frame rather uneasily in his chair as he recalls "those days of the luggers or oversized rowboats." A low-slung lugger, powered with a Liberty motor of aircraft fame, manufactured during World War I, would make its trek from Canada's shores to St. Clair Shores, any time, day or night. Beneath the dance floor with its glow of soft lights, a heavy wooden door opened to a gaping dark mouth, which swallowed the boat, bootleg and all. The door then slammed shut. The water outside grew silent once again. Cases and barrels of whiskey, gin and beer were unloaded as the boat was hoisted to rest until the next run.

Hank Maison saw it all; he even helped his father build the hoist at Club Lido. The chance to make big bucks in unfortunate times was not administered by age. Maison recalls a number of his neighborhood buddies in their early teens rowing their rowboats across the lake to buy Canadian booze to bring back to make a tidy profit.

Those times were a mixture of wealth and of sadness. Some folks won, but many others lost, lost at everything, often at the gaming tables. Mike O'Conner, a dealer at the Chesterfield, located on 23 Mile Road and Gratiot, remembers complaints from farmers when men who had bet and lost everything hung themselves from trees in nearby fields.

The Twenties and Thirties witnessed high-stepping times in the then tiny village of St. Clair Shores. Prohibition in the state of Michigan came into effect in 1918. Colorful and turbulent, the era was aglow with romanticism. From the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House along Jefferson Avenue in Grosse Pointe Shores to Harsen's Island and the St. Clair Flats, a story unfolds of speakeasies, roadhouses, blind pigs, rumrunners, fancy ladies, shifty-eyed gentlemen, gangsters, and Big Band sounds. Many remnants still exist today.

Begin at Nine Mile and Jefferson Avenue in St. Clair Shores, at the point where Lake St. Clair tickles the shoreline with reminiscence. There stood Hanson's Inn. Handon's served roadhouse styled food. What else was provided, no one knows. Across Jefferson from the inn was the real story, though. Margolies (the site of Elias Brothers' Big Boy Restaurant today) was reputed to have "gotten a couple of extra glances since there was a whisper that it covered the operation of a 'blind pig,'" Adrian Lingermann wrote. Greenhouses, warehouses, general stores, and even private homes served as quaint little facades for the sight of gambling chips and clinking glasses. August (Gus) Blumline, remembers his father talking of Margolies and its parade of "big fancy cars - Packards, you know, beautiful women on the arms of known gangsters," and gruff-looking bodyguards running ahead of their charges to see if all was clear.

Continue north along Jefferson Avenue approximately five hundred yards, and you find Club Lido - the club for the middle class. Lido on the Lake, as it is called today, still houses the porch, bar, dance floor, upstairs, downstairs, basement and those mysterious wooden doors well hidden from view. A typical evening at Club Lido saw laughter, dancing, Detroit politicians and their ladies enjoying a night out, but at 2:30 a.m. everything changed.

Curtains were drawn. Rooms were closed off. Patrons disappeared into the woodwork. Swirls of smoke from cigars and cigarettes drifted into the rafters from the crap tables. Faint sounds of dice rolling and hushed voices could be heard well into the early morning hours. A side entrance revealed a latched door with peephole. Entry was available to the customer with the right words.

In most instances, the "locals" would get payoffs to ignore the shipments of booze, the boats, and the "machinery" (slot machines and crap tables), as Maison called them. Even the Coast Guard boats were baffled by the power and strategy of the rumrunners. Luggers filled with bootleg would line up on the Canadian side of the lake, begin their assault, and "open it up full throttle" once they got into open water. The Coast Guard cutters were fast, too, but no match for the quick fan-out technique of so many rumrunners.

A block from the Club Lido, in Blossom Heath nestled back in from Jefferson Avenue. A beautiful ballroom still stands. In 1920, after the death of her husband, Matthew Kramer (owner of the Blossom Heath Inn), Mrs. Kramer, disenchanted with the lawlessness of the times, sold the Inn to William McIntosh for $110,000. Under McIntosh's impeccable management, Blossom Heath became the place in St. Clair Shores. He set up the finest of gambling facilities and served the best of bootleg liquor.

Guests and wealthy patrons dined, gambled and drank from crystal glasses in the luxuriously decorated Lantern Room, the Summer Palm Garden, and the English Tavern. Big-time operators from the cities danced with their gals to the sounds of Frank Cornwell's orchestra and the Big Band of Paul Whiteman.

Added to the refined atmosphere was the elegant dining and outstanding cuisine of Blossom Heath. A menu (date unknown) on file with the St. Clair Shores Historical Commission lists such impressive entrees as these:

• Frog and Broiled Whitefish - $2.00
• Grilled Double French Lamb Chops/Bacon - $2.00
• Filet Mignon with Fresh Mushrooms - $2.00
• Sirloin Steak (One Pound Solid Meat) - $2.50
• Frog and Sirloin Steak (One Pound) - $2.75

The $2.50 sirloin steak dinner included appetizers ranging from crab meat cocktail, marinated herring, and antipasto salad. A selection of delectable soups began the meal. Potatoes, vegetables, "salad in season" and a variety of desserts complemented the main entree.

And yet, Blossom Heath lost money "on the food and entertainment during the Thirties. But it was worth running a loss on those aspects of the business since it provided the front for gambling," says Mary Karshner, former curator of the St. Clair Shores Historical Museum. Thirst quenchers consisted of bootleg liquor or beer. According to Maison, "everybody, including the clubs, made their own brew and the recipe was about the same all over." Whiskey had measured portions of brown sugar, corn and some "foul-tasting substance like garbage," Maison says. The infamous bathtub gin was a concoction of alcohol, water and juniper berries.

Maison believes you got away with making your own home beverage because "there weren't the snitches in those days as there are now," he said.

Raids by federal agents were another matter, though. They could be rough, and there were no "takes" for these guys. "Trouble was," Hank says, "tipsters would get word to the clubs, and the feds would arrive and find nobody there." The St. Clair Shores News gave a different slant on things, however:

Feb. 10, 1928: "Mother Faces Liquor Sentence: St. Clair Shores Woman Pleads Guilty." One hundred bottles of home brew were seized. The woman told the judge she had four children to support.

April 26, 1928: "Truck and Beer Seized on Tip of Local Woman: 275 Cases Valued at $1,000. Loaded on Fresard Blvd." Fresard is a street adjacent to Club Lido.

June 14, 1928: "Liquor Agents in $25,000 Raid: Brewery on Twelve Mile Road yields Large Supply of Beer." The brewery, in a converted residence on Twelve Mile Road in St. Clair Shores, was said to be one of the largest ever raided. Eighteen beer vats, each with a 750-gallon capacity, were in place. Twelve of them were filled.

Hank Maison also parked cars at Blossom Heath. He twitches slightly as he recalls one harrowing incident.

"This guy drives up in this brand new Packard; it couldn't have had much more than eleven miles on it. I got in that beauty and parked it, but I hit another car next to it and took the door off the new Packard. Was I scared when the guy came out and wanted his car! He didn't even say anything when he saw the door. The guy got in his car, tipped me, and said, ' Don't worry, kid, I'm gettin' a new Packard in the morning.'"

Maison helped clean Blossom Heath, even polishing the solid brass spittoons. When things were "hot" around the Heath or the Lido, long, dark, four-door Caddy's and Packard's would speed across twelve-inch-thick ice in the dead of night and winter to hustle ashore into some local redient's garage. A friend of Maison owned a garage at Martin Road. A black car "would enter the garage at night, the door would be shut tight, and the snow would soon melt off the car," Hand says. "In a couple of days, when everything seemed calm, the car would be gone, with its bootleg cargo inside," he continues. "You did what you had to do in those days to make a buck. That garage friend of mine made $40 a night on that loaded car; it kept food on the table for his family."

Hank Maison admits that what was done was illegal, but "everybody's got a price. If you got caught, it was ten, twenty, or thirty years in the slammer. The point is, times were tough, and you didn't sit around wondering if you were happy enough, 'cuz ya had to work to eat," he says, as he folded his hands in his lap.

Memories of the Prohibition era in St. Clair Shores still linger today. Take the journey back along Jefferson Avenue. Stop at Lido or Blossom Heath. Take the Time to go down by the shoreline on a quiet moonlit night. Listen. You can almost hear the clink of glasses, the hush of voices, the abrupt slam of a door and the far-distant roar of a diesel-engined "lugger" charging up somewhere from Canada.

A peephole opens nearby, and a voice says, "Yeh?"

"Joe sent me," comes the answer. A door opens just enough to let you squeeze through.
____

Linda Sprinkle Jaglos is a longtime resident of St. Clair Shores. She currently teaches at Lakeview High School.

This story is taken from an article which originally appeared in Heritage Magazine, August 1986.

Blossom Heath still stands and is available to rent for parties and catering.

Jaglow, Linda Sprinkle. (1993). Welcome to the Club. Muskrat Tales, Volume 6, No. 2, page 23-30.

Photo: Blossom Heath Dance Hall, 1920. Used with permission from the St. Clair Shores Historical Commission.

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