One Summer: America, 1927

year from the practice. In most cases, according to the New Yorker , the doctors simply handed out blank prescription slips. (In the week that Lindbergh flew to Paris, US Prohibition Commissioner James M. Doran authorized the production of an additional three million gallons of whisky for medicine. When it was suggested that that was a lot of whisky for such a narrow purpose, a Treasury official replied that stocks were rapidly depleted ‘from evaporation’.)
    Religious groups were allowed to stock alcoholic beverages for sacramental purposes, and that market proved remarkably robust,too. One wine grower in California offered fourteen types of communion wines, including port and sherry, suggesting that perhaps not all were intended to be wholly holy, as it were. In California the amount of land given over to growing grapes actually soared in the first five years of Prohibition from 100,000 acres to nearly 700,000, and that wasn’t because people were suddenly eating a lot of raisins. It was because no wine was being imported, so there was a surge in demand for domestic grapes to satisfy a booming market.
    Although it was illegal to produce wine for private consumption, vineyard owners could send out packets of grape concentrate, which could be turned into wine at home. In case anyone missed the point, the packets came with warnings in large type that read: ‘Caution: Will Ferment and Turn Into Wine Within 60 Days’. Unfortunately for lovers of fine wine, grape growers grubbed up most of their existing vines and put in grapes that provided bulk but not quality. It would take California vineyards a generation to recover.
    The loss of liquor sales hit many restaurants hard. In New York the casualties included Shanley’s, Rector’s, Sherry’s and Browne’s Chop House – all beloved institutions. Delmonico’s, the most venerable of all, held out until 1923 before finally throwing in the towel just short of its hundredth birthday. For the most part, drinking was driven to speakeasies (a term that originated in the United States as far back as 1889, when it described any place that sold booze illegally), which made up in imaginative naming for what they generally lacked in elegance. Among the better known spots were the Hyena Club, the Furnace, the Ha! Ha!, the Eugenic Club, the Sawdust Inn and Club Pansy. For those who liked music with their drinks, Harlem was the place to go. There people flocked to the Bamboo Inn, Lenox Club, Clam House, Smalls’ Paradise, Tillie’s Chicken Shack, the Cotton Club and the memorably named Drool Inn, among many others. Sunday night was the biggest night. Patrons could experience some of the best and most original musicperformed by a galaxy of talents – Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Eubie Blake, Bessie Smith, Bill Basie (he would later become Count Basie), Louis Armstrong and plenty more. In many Harlem clubs only whites were admitted. The only blacks in the house were waiters and entertainers. The cover charges in the most popular clubs could be as much as $20 – close to a week’s wages for an average working person – and a couple of rounds of drinks could easily add as much again.
    Attempts at enforcement were sporadic at best, but occasionally some authority or other would get serious about it. In March 1925, Emory Buckner, a successful lawyer, became Prohibition enforcer in New York and hit upon a new strategy that for a time struck a chill into the hearts of drinking people and those who supplied them.
    Buckner inaugurated a policy of padlocking any premises found to be in violation of the Volstead Act. The law allowed him to shut such premises for a year without going to court. So now, instead of arresting a few hapless and expendable waiters and bartenders, as generally had been the case before, it was possible to hit the owners themselves where it most hurt, on their balance sheets. Buckner announced plans to shut down a thousand establishments in New York, and he started with the most famous and visible places like the El Fay club run by Texas Guinan, and Owney Madden’s Silver Slipper. This was a direct attack on the city’s more sophisticated drinkers, and they reacted with something approaching panic.
    Happily for the clubs, the crisis proved to be temporary. Prohibition was much too lucrative to be easily defeated. At least one club used the padlocking as a cover; it left its front entrance sealed and welcomed customers back through a more