Waco History Podcast

Prohibition in the United States led to the decade most associated with flowing alcohol and crime. The Eighteenth Amendment, on the heels of the Volstead Act, put into place a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol in 1920. Local law enforcement agencies were not prepared. Helen Geltemeyer of Waco recalls a relative concocting whiskey during Prohibition: "But I have an aunt—his sister in Austin—made it. They made it in their bathtub. And the reason why they did there because if they found out the cops were coming, they'd just let it go down the drain." Ann and William Walko of Windber, Pennsylvania, explain how Prohibition affected the moonshine trade: A. Walko: "My grandmother, they said she was in jail almost every weekend. They take her to jail; my mother have to find somebody to go bail her out, you know. But that was survival. They had—they needed money, so they would make the moonshine. And these bachelors were all living with people. You know, they worked in the mine. And