Whiskey Rolls-Royce Tommy-Guns

My name is Gerald Galuza and most folks call me Gerry. I grew up on a small farm on the Atlantic Ocean's inner bays. When it was high tide, the salt water washed up onto our hay field. As a boy and as a grown man, I crossed the woods, fields, marshes, and the mud flats, and the scattered small islands. The farmhouse was built in the 1700s. My father was a lumberjack and much more. He was a very good storyteller, as was his mother Melvina. When I was a small boy, I would sit on his knees and he would tell me our family's stories as well as his own. It got to the point that I knew them so well that I found myself correcting him when he would change the story.

Now this is just one story out of many. This story is about man's desires that at times were very selfish and brutal and self-serving! This story takes place in 1930 in Rumford Center Point, Maine. It was a very turbulent time in the United States and most of the known world. The Great Depression was in full swing with Prohibition added to the mix! Prohibition started in 1920 and ended in 1933. My father's parents had a large farm and my grandmother took in lumberjacks as boarders.

The men wanted alcohol of any kind that was available at any given time. On the farm, they set up a small speakeasy for the men. By so doing, there were a lot of bootleggers and prostitutes who came to the farm. This story is about one bootlegger who frequented the farm with his 1929 Rolls Royce with a 16-cylinder engine in his very fast car. He came to my grandparents' farm one day looking for help after running a federal roadblock! The car was all shot up by machine guns, also called Tommy guns by some people. He knew that he could trust my family with his life. Within 3 days after his arrival on the farm, the federal officers showed up looking for him and the whiskey.

I have felt compelled to tell these stories! So much of our rich history has been lost to time from not writing the stories down. I have many of my father's stories as well as my own. I do hope that you like them as much as I do!