|
Rum-running
in the Economy of the Keys
by Burt
Garnett
Line drawings by J.R. Work
Illicit
importation of liquor was an important factor in the economy
of Monroe County during the Prohibition Era.
Generally the law-breakers, called Rum-runners, boot-leggers,
moonshiners, racketeers, keepers of "dives" and
"blind pigs", were thought of as grim and felonious
characters. There were desperadoes engaged in the business in
many areas, undoubtedly; and they carried firearms and
sometimes used them.
However, there
were persons whose conduct during the 13 years from January,
1920, through February, 1933, while frankly illegal,
nevertheless was gay and adventuresome and tinged with
chivalry and derring-do. They were guarded and protected from
the enforcement officers in many instances by otherwise
law-abiding citizens.
An outstanding
figure of this period was Raul Vasquez, born in Tampa on
August 21, 1890, died in Key West December 10, 1957. Raul left
an enduring symbol of his occupation on his residence at 1117
Duval Street; and one of the "sights" of Key West
today are the palings on the upper porch depicting bottles and
the spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs of the Spanish playing
card deck. (The "club" designation looks like a
three-lobed spot familiar to most American card-players.)
Raul, who came
to Key West with his parents when a child, learned the trade
of "cigar selector" and worked at it for a number of
years - in the Gato factory at "Santa Ella's."
When he was 21
years old, he married Concepcion Magrinat Pellon, aged 19,
whose parents came to Key West from the Canary Islands. They
had one child, a daughter, Marla Onella, who was born March 1,
1920. She is now Mrs. Ernest Betancourt, and lives in the
Vasquez home.
Until her recent
retirement she taught music at the Convent of Mary Immaculate.
She graciously shows the unique "palings" or
"spindles" or "balusters" and tells the
story of how they came 
to be there.
(Despite the
fact that almost every old home of frame construction in Key
West has "gingerbread" enclosing porches and
bordering outside stairways, the residents are not agreed as
to the proper name of the upright pieces between the handrails
and the footings. Mr. Hernandez of Key West box factory and
novelty works, who makes them on order, calls them
"spindles" but he says he is not sure that this is
the correct name.)
After he had
established his "import" business on a reasonably
sound footing, Raul felt that he should advertise. He could
not do this legally by putting notices in the newspaper, or on
billboards, or by distributing hand-bills. Most operators of
bars in Key West attracted the retail trade - both for liquor
and gambling - by posting a notice reading "Club in
Rear."
Raul had an idea
that was not in violation of the law and that also had
decorative value. He reasoned that the gingerbread in the
shape of bottles would tell passers-by that here was a
convivial establishment, and that in addition to available
liquor, the shapes of hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs would
suggest that card-playing also was enjoyed in this domicile.
Just why Raul brought
the symbolic "balusters" from Cuba, instead of
getting them made in Key West, his daughter doesn't
know. It was suggested that perhaps he wanted to show some of
his Cuban friends that he was interested in other things than
alcoholic liquors.
Additional
support of this view may lie in the fact that Raul was active
in the "underground" movement in Cuba which was
opposed to the government of the dictator Gerardo Machado. He
was a friend of, and a supporter of Fulgencio Batista, who
lead the revolution which deposed Machado's successor, Carlos
Manuel de Cespedes in 1933.
Another relic of
Raul's prosperous days is a bracelet made of golden Cuban
coins, which he gave to his daughter. On his buying trips he
always carried gold, because, he said, if the Coast Guard got
after him and he had to jump overboard and swim it wouldn't
matter if the coins got wet, whereas paper bills might be
ruined. The coins on the bracelet are of two-peso and
four-peso denominations and probably are worth today a good
deal more than their weight of gold.
The
"Florence Club" which Raul's new building replaced
was organized soon after national prohibition went into
effect. Its name came from the fact that a number of his
especially steady customers had wives named Florence. I had
the privilege of learning this, directly, from Raul several
years before he died.
It was not a large
place. It had a counter, a shelf behind containing bottled
goods, eight chairs and one bench. (The bench 
had been located on Duval Street for the convenience of people
waiting for the electric street cars which operated in those
days, until appropriated for the uses of the Florence Club.)
The club also
had a white marble slab, 14 by 18 inches. If Raul wasn't
present to serve his customers - as he often wasn't - the
customers would help themselves and make notes on the slab of
what they had consumed. At convenient intervals the scores
were settled up, the notes wiped off the slab, and the process
started over.
"No one
ever stole a single bottle," Raul told me.
His absences
from behind the bar were usually on business. He was often
away for quite a few days, going across to Cuba to get loads
of supplies, or supervising activities of his colleagues who
were bringing in "the stuff".
There are
innumerable stories told by Conchs who remember those days
about how bottles were concealed here and there around Key
West - and of course about Raul's skirmishes with the
prohibition agents. Most of those tales have a comic tinge.
Even his
arrests, and the terms he spent in the county jail, were
jolly, rather than sad or solemn occasions, and for the most
part the love and sympathy of the community were on Raul's
side.
There were
numerous other rum-runners, and altogether they bought into
Monroe County large amounts of liquor. The only reliable
statistics on such "imports" are those taken from
the reports of seizures by the U.S. customs officers and
Prohibition enforcement agents, which, of course, fall far
short of
reality.
Before
Prohibition cigar manufacturing had been Key West's major
industry. In 1900 about 40 percent of the employed persons in
the city gave cigar-making as their occupation.
In 1910 Key West
reached its peak of population - 19,945. (In 1910, the figure
for Miami was 5,471.) Labor troubles and other considerations
- particularly the improvement of cigar-making machinery -
caused Key West to lose many of its largest factories. By
1920, the population had dropped to 19,350.
During the
Prohibition decade Key West continued to lose population -
especially after the closing down of the U.S. Naval Station
during the International "Naval Holiday." The
overseas extension of the Florida East Coast railroad was
operating, however, and the Florida real estate
"boom" was on.
The demand for
liquor was high, and Raul and his fellow rum-runners brought
in thousands of cases. Plentiful supplies also brought in
tourists during the winter months.
As the late
Elmer Davis put it, "People had discovered that you
didn't have to go to Havana to get a drink; you didn't even
have to leave home.
"And what
did all that do to Key West? Why, it only made it about the
pleasantest place in the world. Nobody was in a hurry because
nobody was going anywhere; nobody was breaking his neck to get
rich, even in the Coolidge-Hoover boom ... A few citizens were
doing nicely as they always did and the rest seemed to make an
adequate living selling rum to one another, with an occasional
yachting party, or a still rarer tourist by land, to provide
just the margin of profit, even with a gallon not costing not
much more than a fifth costs now."
What would have
happened if there had not been national prohibition is
anybody's guess. It seems likely that the rum-runners, in
small boats, daring the rough seas and the not much gentler
law enforcement agents, would not have prospered. The large
ships - the ferries connecting Cuba with the rail-head in Key
West - would have handled all the business.
Raul's account
of his first trip to Cuba - a story he liked to tell in his
later days - gives an idea of some of the hazards. He had
never been to Cuba, but he knew that it was 90 miles south of
Key West. He knew that there was rough water, but he had been
out in the Gulf Stream many times and wasn't afraid.
He had a small
but sturdy boat with a pretty good engine that he figured
would average about five miles an hour, so that he ought to be
able to make the journey to Cuba in a day and a night.
Navigation had
never been a matter of special interest to him, as he went
from Island to Island and had never got lost. But since Cuba
was away over the horizon Raul felt that he should have some
means of knowing exactly in what direction he was going. He
bought a small compass and discussed its use with some of his
fishermen friends.
He also needed
some assistance - some one to load and unload the cases of
liquor he expected to acquire, and so he got a 
waterfront character who had been out with him before. Then,
with some water jugs and plenty of gasoline, they headed out
to sea, generally following the path taken by steamers.
Inasmuch as the one-man crew did not know their destination,
he didn't show alarm until the boat was well out of sight of
land.
As this occurred
when night was coming on, Raul suddenly had a mutiny on his
hands and was obliged to use his pistol to keep the
"crew" subdued. Also, Raul noticed that his compass
acted peculiarly when he moved one way or another around the
engine, and that the needle seemed to point at the engine
rather than "due north."
This presented a
problem, but Raul had heard that a boatman could steer by the
stars, and so he tried to keep going in a direction consistent
with a star that he chose. He got to Cuba, not on the schedule
he had set for himself and not anywhere near, Havana.
It took him 5
days, in fact, to get to the capital and pick up his load of
liquor. The mutineer accepted the situation and helped load
the boat. The dealer who was supplying the bottled goods
thought that Raul's boat was merely a dinghy and that he was
going to transfer his cargo to a larger boat outside the
harbor.
Raul got some
more information about navigating before setting out on the
return journey, because Key West, he could readily see, was
not going to be very easy to find.
He had engine
trouble, and the heavily overloaded boat floated helplessly
and perilously in some very rough seas for many hours. They
came close to running out of fresh water, and Raul was a very
tired and bewildered and worried man, but he refused to
lighten the boat.
He was somewhere
in the vicinity of Big Pine Key when he finally sighted land.
He made for shore and encountered another boatman from whom he
tried to buy water, gasoline and food. The man, however,
suspected that Raul had liquor aboard and he demanded some of
it. Raul had to give in, surrendered just one bottle. He
boasted that that one was the only bottle lost out of the
entire cargo.
Some of the
older residents recall that there was eager demand for his
merchandise among the "binder boys" engaged in the
real estate boom in South Florida. It permitted them to
conduct their negotiations in a more convivial manner.
And there were
some big deals. Once there was a Shriners' convention in Key
West, and Raul supplied some 150 suitcases of imported goods.
But he had 60 cases left over and some enthusiastic delegates
suggested that they be sent to Miami. This was done. Raul got
a gross return of about $3,500 on the transaction.
By the time the
"bust" of the Florida real estate boom came around
Raul had accumulated a considerable amount of property and
money in the bank. As more piratical and reckless characters
became engaged in rum-running and began to give him stiff and
some unpleasant competition, he retired to more tranquil
pursuits, such as shell-collecting and training fish.
(He operated
"Raul's Club" where the Seven Seas Restaurant on
East Roosevelt Boulevard, stands, and he delighted visitors by
putting parrotfish, young sharks, groupers and other specimens
through their paces in the pool behind the club building.
Indeed, he became nationally famous and was written up by such
magazine writers as Quentin Reynolds, Henry McLemore, Joe
Williams, John Cowles and others.)
Rauls'
rum-running activities were interrupted, often, by the law.
He was caught,
tried and sentenced to jail. But his many friends (and
customers) did all they could to make incarceration as
pleasant and unconfining as possible. As has been pointed,
Raul's acquaintances trusted him just as he trusted nearly
everyone.
At the jail he
was a sort of "super-trusty" and was permitted to
carry on some of his business operations outside. He was
supposed to be honorable about coming back at night, after
being let out in the morning. He was faithful about it.
Sometimes, if he
was delayed by some pressing affair of commerce (perhaps
supervising the unloading of a new cargo of liquor just in
from Cuba), he'd have to wake up the jailer by pounding on the
door and demanding admittance.
The jailer, who
didn't like to have his slumbers thus disturbed, had a
duplicate key made and gave it to Raul so that he could come
and go as he pleased.
As Elmer Davis
has pointed out, there were many bars on Duval Street and
elsewhere about Key West. At times retail liquor business was
carried on almost as if there was nothing illicit about it.
There is little
question that it helped to attract the winter visitors who
came by sea as well as by railroad. The wholesale business
carried on by Raul and others was more hazardous, because the
Prohibition agents were more interested in large loads and the
bigger and bolder violators of the law.
The collapse of
the real estate boom, which came at the end of the 1920s, and
the subsequent depression caused a major crisis in Key West
and the loss of well over a third of its population.
The tourist
business also dwindled. Key West was a "poor man's
town" until the completion of the Overseas Highway and
the resumption of activity at the U.S. Naval Station.
It might have
been an even poorer city, however, if rum-running and the
retail sale of liquor had not been continued to provide a
considerable number of people with a means of livelihood.
Copy of article in Martello,
1967 Vol. 4
|