Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History (25 page)

The Miller test, as it has become known, still stands.

The Court also punted the issue of “community standards” back to local jurisdictions. Pornographic films have occasionally been screened at the Court since
Miller
, and after Justice Potter Stewart retired from the Court in 1981, clerks were known to yell out whenever the action started getting hot and heavy, “Yup, that’s it, right there—I know it when I see it!”

As I’m taking a long-exposure shot in the dimly lit Johnny Malloy’s bar, a young woman sitting close by with four friends asks me in a playful, slightly slurred voice, “Are you taking our picture, Mr. Cameraman?” She then flashes me a wide, snapshot-ready grin.

I smile back while adjusting my tripod and tell her I’m just shooting the bar.

“Oh, okay,” she says, feigning a small pout. “Are you a reporter or something?”

I mention the trip and that there was a Supreme Court ruling based on something that took place here years ago.

The young woman pushes back an empty chair and without looking at me points to it. “Sit,” she orders while grabbing a pitcher of beer to pour me a glass.

“I’ve got some driving tonight,” I say, “so I can’t drink, but that’s very nice of you.” I am a bit thirsty, though, and flag down the waitress for some ice water.

“Are you just starting your trip?” my new friend asks me.

I tell her I’ve been on the road for a while now.

“So you’re like a historian?” she asks.

“Well,” I say, never sure how to answer that question. “I don’t have a degree or anything, but it’s a subject I really love.”

“I haaaaaated history.”

“Me, too,” I tell her, and we commiserate about how boring we thought it was growing up.

“What happened here again, like a crime or something?”

I summarize
Jacobellis
and go into greater detail about adult movie day at the Supreme Court.

“Oh. My. God,” she says.

My sentiments exactly.

“What’s your story after this?”

“Actually, it’s about booze,” I tell her, tapping my water glass against her beer.

“To history,” she says, clinking back.

“To history.”

ANY HISTORICAL EVENT
involving mass quantities of alcohol and rowdy mobs gets my immediate attention, and within minutes of reading about the Rum Riot of 1855 in Portland, Maine’s Monument Square, I added the site to my itinerary. At the epicenter of the incident was Neal Dow, whose obsession with curing America of its licentious ways catalyzed two constitutional amendments and ushered in a new era of search-and-seizure procedures that fundamentally altered our judicial system. Plus, Dow was the embodiment of this country’s early puritanical spirit, and no discussion of U.S. history would be complete without a mention of its Puritan-steeped legal foundations.

A quick summary: On November 11, 1620, two days before stepping onto the New World, the first Pilgrims (or “Separatists”) composed the
Mayflower Compact, swearing “all due submission and obedience” to a soon-to-be-formed “Civil Body Politic.” For sixteen years they—and the thousands of Puritans who arrived in Massachusetts after them—governed themselves under a hodgepodge of mostly English precedents and Old Testament edicts until finally organizing everything into the 1636
Book of Lawes
. This, along with Jamestown’s 1610
Lawes Divine, Morall, and Martiall, etc.
, was the earliest legal code written in America. (Ironically, some of the Virginia Company’s punishments were more draconian than those instituted by the early Pilgrims and Puritans.)

Also referred to as Plymouth Colony’s “General Fundamentals,” the
Book of Lawes
covered mundane matters such as bans on thatch roofing for new dwellings, curbs on selling “corne beans and pease” outside the colony to prevent food shortages, and the need to erect “a paire of stock[s].” (Purportedly, the first man placed in Boston’s pillories was the carpenter who built them, guilty of overcharging the town for materials.) Capital offenses included treason, murder, arson, “conversing with the divell by way of witchcraft,” and a host of sexual acts, some of which are still illegal. In 1642, Governor William Bradford recorded in his journal
Of Plymouth Plantation
a farmyard fling that would raise eyebrows if it appeared on a police blotter today. “Ther[e] was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger detected of buggery (and indicted for the same) with a mare, a cowe, [two] goats, five sheep, 2. calves, and a turkey,” Bradford wrote. “He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practise towards the mare. (I forbear perticulers.)”

H. L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,” and its adherents have yet to shake their reputation as prudish, booze-hating killjoys. But Puritans did not, to be fair, abstain from alcohol entirely (one
Book of Lawes
entry involved price controls for beer; “two pence for a Winchester pint”), and they enjoyed unashamedly robust sex lives, so long as the sex was between married couples. They spurned the Calvinist notion that celibacy was purer than sexual union, and divorce was allowed if a
spouse refused to fulfill his or her bedroom duties. Court proceedings from 1669 captured this emasculating grievance uttered by Middlesex County resident Hannah Hutchinson about her husband, Samuel: “Though he had a pen, he had no ink.”

For Puritans, work was the primary indulgence, idleness their unforgivable sin. They outlawed theatergoing, gambling, dancing, and even Christmas celebrations. Attending church on Christmas was acceptable, but taking a day off to feast and relax in what smacked more of pagan reveling than religious worship was out of the question. (Long after the ban on Christmas was lifted in 1681, the Puritans’ humbug attitude endured, and December 25 didn’t become an official federal holiday until 1870.)

From this austere and pious New England stock sprang Neal S. Dow, born in Portland, Maine, on March 20, 1804. Though physically small, from childhood Dow manifested a headstrong, self-confident personality. In his otherwise staid autobiography,
The Reminiscences of Neal Dow
, he relates a surreal account describing his scuffle at about the age of seven with a local monkey penned up next to Portland’s barbershop. “For what seemed to me a long time the monkey had most of the fun and I most of the pain,” Dow recalled, “but at length the brute got tired and knew enough to give up.” That tenacity only grew more emboldened once Dow found a larger cause to fight.

While employed by his father, a successful tanner, Dow interacted with numerous laborers and was shocked “not only by the prevalence of drunkenness among them, which indeed was more or less apparent in all classes of society, but by the evident inability of workmen to provide for the pressing necessities of their families when spending so much as was their habit for intoxicants.” He went on to lament: “My indignation at the men who brought so much suffering upon their families for the gratification, as it then seemed to me, of a mere taste for liquor, softened into pity and sympathy when I found them apparently helpless victims of a controlling appetite that was dragging them to ruin.”

·  ·  ·

“You have to understand what Portland was like in the early 1800s,” Rob Quatrano tells me as we walk around the house Neal Dow built and inhabited until his death in 1897. Rob, now in his late forties, has been the live-in caretaker here for the past twenty years. “There were three hundred taverns in this small town, and some literally served drinks out of a trough. Every workday a bell would ring at eleven
A.M.
and four
P.M.
, and that was rum time. Workers would stop and have a few drinks before going back to their jobs.”

I confess to Rob that ever since childhood I’ve dreaded visiting colonial-era house museums like this one. Something about the stuffy atmosphere and mundane lectures on antique furniture always made me drowsy, and to this day I find them soporific. But Rob’s enthusiasm is invigorating, and he’s a font of stories unlike any I heard during my grade school field trips.

“Even firefighters got drunk on a regular basis back in the 1800s,” Rob says. “And if your house was burning down, you could pay them with liquor. ‘Water for the fire, rum for the fireman’ was the saying.” Rob goes on to explain that it wasn’t uncommon for two engine companies to arrive, inebriated, at the same alarm and start brawling with each other.

“What drew me to Portland was the Rum Riot in Monument Square,” I say to Rob, “but the more I learn about Dow, the more I’m interested in him and
any
unmarked places connected to his life.”

Rob immediately thinks of two.

“If you look across the road where the Rite Aid is, that’s Dow’s birthplace, 778 Congress,” he informs me as we peer out the living room window.

Rob then tells me that Dow’s “rebirth” occurred in front of what was once the H. H. Hay drugstore, a few blocks from here, just off Congress.

“Dow was walking down the street,” Rob says, “and right by the store he saw a child about nine or ten, drunk, stumbling around. The boy grabbed Dow’s pant leg and begged for money. It was at that point,
Dow later said, that he was transformed. That’s what put him over the edge.”

As a member of Portland’s volunteer Deluge Engine Company, Dow successfully persuaded his fellow firemen not to serve spirits at their anniversary bash. But after the incident at Hay’s, he was convinced that encouraging people to abstain was no longer enough, and he sought to outlaw alcohol entirely. He helped establish the Maine Temperance Society and lobbied throughout the 1830s and ’40s to enact statewide prohibition.

In 1851, Dow was elected Portland’s mayor, and with his newfound political power he drafted a bill that, on June 2, 1851, made Maine the first state in America to ban the sale of alcohol, with strict punishments for noncompliance.

Dow’s triumph garnered him national acclaim as “the Napoleon of Temperance,” due to both his diminutive stature and his domineering personality. Between 1852 and 1855, about a dozen other states adopted what became known as the Maine Law. Dow’s popularity began to falter back in Portland, however, and even he conceded in his
Reminiscences
that prohibition wasn’t exactly “accepted in a spasm of excitement.” Distillers, saloon keepers, liquor retailers, and other merchants financially devastated by Dow’s crusade joined forces to defeat him, and Dow lost reelection in 1852. But over the next few years he made enough new allies to eke out a forty-six-vote win in April 1855.

Two months later, rumors started circulating that barrels of rum were being stashed under city hall, and on June 2 a horde of screaming, apoplectic townspeople surrounded the building. What most enraged the crowd was the rank hypocrisy of the man they believed to be stockpiling the rum: Mayor Neal Dow.

“How many visitors do you get here each year?” I ask Rob.

“On average about twelve,” Rob says.

“A
year
? That’s … not a lot.”

“Even people who live in Portland don’t realize how important Dow was.”

Right on cue, the doorbell rings. Three women and a man, all of whom look to be in their sixties, are interested in taking a tour, and Rob is happy to oblige.

I ask what brought them here, and one woman says she heard Rob speak at a community AARP event. “He was very good, very dynamic. Afterward I told my husband, my sister, and her friend that we should stop by.” (We all nod hello.) “We’re from the area and go by this house all the time,” she continues, “but we’ve never come inside before.”

I’ve already heard a good portion of Rob’s presentation, but I lag behind to eavesdrop. Before Rob can launch into his talk, one of the women walks over to a lamp and asks if it belonged to Dow.

“It did,” Rob tells her. “Almost everything you see is original.”

“Oh, look at this,” the other woman says, tapping her finger on the expertly carved piecrust edging around a wooden table.

My hand instinctively goes to my mouth, stifling a Pavlovian yawn.

Pointing to an oil portrait of Dow over the fireplace, the first woman says, “Is that him? He looks like such a nice man.”

“He was! People assume he was this elitist aristocrat,” Rob says, taking a few steps and mimicking the stiff-spined walk of a pompous nobleman. “But he was a very compassionate and generous man. He was also active in the abolition and suffrage movements. And he was a tiny guy like me.” (Dow was just over five feet tall, and Rob’s not nearly that short.)

“What type of shutters are these?” someone asks, and I’m suddenly feeling woozy again.

“Those are Indian-massacre shutters,” Rob says.

“Indian-massacre shutters?” I ask, reviving.

“If there were Indian raids on the town, these would be closed up for protection.”

Just as I’m feeling reenergized, the women start inquiring about the dinnerware, and before I pass out on the carpet, I whisper to Rob that I’m going to meet up with Representative Herb Adams, who’s been waiting for me to call. “But I’ll stop back in before leaving,” I say.

Herb is a lifelong Mainer and local legend, having served as a state representative off and on since 1989, and we’d arranged for him to take me to Monument Square.

It’s surprisingly warm out, but Herb arrives at Dow’s house wrapped up in a blue windbreaker underneath a thick, long scarf. He reminds me of Dr. Dennis Jenkins from my Paisley trip; there’s a distinguished air about him coupled with a stout ruggedness.

Herb’s knowledge of Maine is encyclopedic, and during our short stroll down Congress Street he’s constantly alerting me to historic buildings and other points of interest.

“That, as you can see, is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” he says, identifying a statue of the Portland-born poet.

“It looks restored.”

“Yes, a few years ago. Workers cleaned it using high-power hoses that sprayed a blast of finely crushed walnuts. Water wasn’t strong enough and sand was too abrasive, so crushed walnuts did the trick. The whole area was overrun with squirrels crazed
out of their minds
with joy.”