XXII—The History of the Rum Demon Concluded—Prohibition Is Making a Free Thinker of the Old Soak

XXII—The History of the Rum Demon Concluded—Prohibition Is Making a Free Thinker of the Old Soak

Another thing that going without barrooms is doing for this country is it is destroying Home Life.

It is pretty hard to get along with your wife after you have been married to her for twenty or thirty years and kind of settle down and realize you are going to be married to her as long as she lives for better or for worse unless something happens which it seldom does.

Not that you don't kind of like her and you know she kind of likes you but the thing is that her and you is apt to treat each other mean now and then because you get to thinking what a good time you could have if you didn't have to turn in so much of your money to making a home run smooth and you know even if you do row with each other you will make up again and you get to kind of looking forward to the rows because anyhow that is a change.

But sometimes you carry them rows too far and then you don't know how to get your Home Life running right again because she is always too stubborn to give in and you won't be the first one to give in because you know she is wrong.

But when there was liquor to be had in plenty it was easier to make up after one of them rows and Home Life went along smoother.

You would get up in the morning and she would say to you, would you have a boiled egg for breakfast or a fried, and you would say hades what an idea. Can't you never think of anything but eggs for breakfast. And she would say yesterday I didn't have eggs and you was sore because you wanted eggs. You would say just because I wanted eggs yesterday is that any sign I want them every day of my life till death do us part. I was only asking what you wanted she would say.

I will go where I can get what I want, you would say. I will eat my breakfast at a restaurant this morning and maybe I can keep them from shoving eggs in front of me when I don't ask for eggs. The trouble with your stomach is not what you put into it in the morning, she would say, but what you put into it the night before. The trouble with my stomach, you would say, is that I am worried to death and worked to death all the time trying to keep this house running and it gives me the dis-pepsy. It is the liquor gives you dispepsy she would say.

If it wasn't for a little stimulant in my stomach, like the Good Book says, you tell her, my dispepsy wouldn't let me digest anything at all and I would starve to death and the mortgage on the house would be foreclosed and you would go to the old woman's home. Whose money pays the interest on that mortgage she would say. Whose? you would say. Mine, she would say. You wouldn't have any money you tell her, if you paid me back what your relations has borrowed of me.

Well, one word leads to another, and you go off without any breakfast, for you see her taking the Bible down to set and read it, and when she sets and reads the Bible you know she is reading it against you and it gets you madder and madder.

And in the old days when there was barrooms you would go into one still feeling mad and say Ed, mix me one of the old-fashioned whiskey cocktails and don't put too much orange and that kind of damned garbage into it, I want the kick.

No sooner said than done.

And after a couple of them you would say, well after all, the Old Woman means well, I wonder if I didn't treat her a little mean this morning I orter call her up on the telephone and give her a jolly.

And then you would think of her relations that you hate and get mad at her again on account of always sticking up for them, and say, Ed, that don't set so well, let's try a whiskey sour.

And you would meet a friend and have another with him, and pretty soon eat some breakfast and think how, after all, it was eggs you was eating for breakfast and they wasn't cooked no ways as good as the old woman would of poached them for you on toast if you hadn't been so darned mean to her.

And your friend would say his old woman blowed him up for coming home pickled.

And you would have another drink and say that was one thing your old woman never done to you. My old woman has got some sense, you would say to him, she knows how a man feels about taking a drink, and she never blows me up.

And you would set and brag about your old woman and you had never had a cross word between you in thirty years. And then he would begin to brag about his old woman, too.

And pretty soon you would say to yourself you better go to the phone and call her up. She has her mean streaks all right, but who knows, she may have been right this morning after all, and you take another drink and get her on the telephone, and give her a chance to say how sorry she was about the way she treated you that morning and maybe you go and pay an installment on a new carpet sweeper for her.

Well, it was that way in the old days. Liquor kept your Home Life running along o. k. You would get mad with your wife and then you would get sorry for her and give her an excuse to make up with you again.

But now, with no chance to get a drink when I am away from home if I treat the Old Woman mean in the morning I don't give her a chance to get on my good side again. And I can see sometimes that it is breaking her heart.

That's what prohibition is doing to this country. It is breaking the women's hearts and it is breaking up the Home Life on every hand.

What is going to become of a country where all the Home Life is broke up?

And what is going to become of the children if there ain't any Home Life running along smooth any more?

These Prohibitionists that is so darned smart never thought of that I guess when they put that Eighteenth Commandment across onto us.

Whenever I think of all them women's hearts that is breaking and all that Home Life that is going plumb to the dogs all on account of the barrooms being closed up it well-nigh makes a free thinker out of me.

I don't claim to be a church man, but I never was a free thinker before, neither. But all the sorrow that is going on in the world on account of them barrooms being closed is making a free thinker of me.