Rum Running part - 2
Lightning
He was nicknamed Lightning when he played ball with the old town team. Lightning
started rum running during the fall of 1929. The boats he traveled on were "The
Accuracy," and "The Ocean Maid." His Father was the skipper of "The Ocean
Maid,"and together they traveled for five years off the coasts of New York and
Connecticut. They used Halifax as their home port. One trip was made to an island
off the coast of Mexico, where they were supposed to pick up four thousand cases
of liquor. The only problem was that they could only hold twenty-eight hundred,
which they discarded in Boston. He made about $100.00 per month, and for extra
money he would make extra trips to places like Bermuda, for about $50.00.
Lightning called rum running "the chase of the hound and the hare", because of the
thrill of escape from the cutters. They used smoke screens as cutters. Lightning also
worked on boats that brought booze to yachts that cruised the United States. On his
way to Halifax two weeks after he was married, he was rum running for 72 days and
arrived home on New Years Eve. Most times they would be home for only three
days.
A Fictitious Story
Once while unloading booze off Connecticut, a fellow named Smiley was loading
cases of booze onto his speedboat when the Coast Guard cutter approached. The
lines of the boat were unhooked and Smiley raced for the shore with the cutter firing
and hitting the boat. Smiley made it to shore and hid the boat, later repairing and
painting it. The Coast Guard suspected him, but he showed them the boat and they
could prove nothing.
Once a young fellow came down the street with a bag of blueberries. A man on the
street remarked how the blueberries were big but not as big as the ones he had seen
in Newfoundland while fishing. He told the little boy that from the boat he saw a
hill that was all blue. When they got on the land and up the hill they saw
blueberries the size of melons. As they started to pick them, the berries fell from the
vine and rolled down the hill toward a flock of sheep. The berries broke open and
the juice flowed down the hill drowning the sheep.
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