BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 43

1948

DANIEL

John Vitale was a young man when I first met him. In his late teens. Before the Rockford Canal was finished. He knew hardly any English at all, he was herding Bruce Parmelee's sheep near the lavas. That was convenient for his second employment, running a still. The lavas provided good cover from the law and the distance from civilization, while inconvenient, worked to the moonshiners' benefit. The Mackay branch was just a couple miles away, making a trip to the Taber siding for procurement and sale proved no trouble. John picked up sugar there or bought contraband to supplement his product if he was short.

His and most of the other stills were close to the Taber road which ran nearly to the Tilden Bridge out on the flats. That made Pocatello accessible. Once the reservoir went in, of course, that option disappeared. I took the Taber to Pocatello trip off and on for nearly a decade before John started his enterprise, and Henry took over for me sometime in the twenties until the reservoir filled.

The desert provided another kind of cover. The poison used to control grasshoppers and rabbits on the desert had to be mixed with molasses. Five tons of molasses makes a ton of alcohol, so we'd ship a boxcar load to Pingree for pest control and Henry or I would distribute it out on the desert. The depot manager kept an extra set of books mostly for us.

John got in business with Martin Rossi out in Moreland. Not far away was Jake Martin's who farmed at Taber. He had a place in Sterling, too, so he always had a reason for frequent trips between his acreages. Before Henry started running for them, an attorney from Pocatello did the job. He was lawyering the Lost River irrigation projects, giving him plenty of work, but he figured to make a little more on the side by taking loads home from the wet counties up there across the desert to the dry ones down here. He was brazen enough to advertise having lost his car door on the Taber road, which he'd lost outrunning the sheriff. Prohibition came in not so long after that and the ensuing federal crackdown ended his business.

John got caught after the whole state went dry and law enforcement got serious, as did his companions Martin and Rossi. He served his jail time at night and went to his job for me during the day. He was helping to clean the moss from the canal, running a team from the bank to drag out the overgrowth. His English improved during that two week stint and I found him to be a good laborer. I believed those traits merited reward, so invited him to see the lands that the Rockford Canal would be watering. The Italians who filed when we first planned the Canal all went broke, I'm sorry for that, but John picked up all of their ground for taxes so it came out good for him.

The dry farm years shriveled up hope. The County held thousands of acres for taxes clear through the next decade when the Depression hit. There was no point in trying to sell the properties then. The Canal Company saw a lot of delinquencies but let them ride so far as they could but farmers on the canal lost their farms, too, prices being low. I was, am, getting up in the years but was still the informal system overseer. I spent a good amount of time with the financially strapped, communicating with them about their difficulties. Talking sometimes helps, but I don't know how much good I did. I felt like a priest at a deathbed. Listening, administering, erasing myself for the sake of ameliorating suffering so much as I could.

The poorest ground went to the creditors first. The banks clear into Utah and Washington, sometimes life insurance companies that had an agent at Blackfoot. But they couldn't sell in those dire times, either, and not wanting to throw good money after bad let a goodly portion of the acreage around Pingree and Springfield go to the County. I held a claim to a nearby piece myself and spent more time there than I proffered elsewhere, acre for acre. John wasn't my neighbor but he wasn't far. Since the Rockford canal used a pumping station, it tended to give us more trouble from the machinery so required more oversight. I checked that ditch more often than I needed to, and since our shared dealings through Prohibition gave us a history I inevitably ended up at John's. His wife's cooking influenced my involvement, too.

I admit I timed my work route to pass by during coffee time. Riding the ditch could be lonely, not as bad as farming but still lonely, so a break was welcome. Even one comprised of my nonexistent Italian and his bad English. Between us I doubt we shared half a language, but when his kids were around they helped out with translation. We rarely spoke of anything so important that their aid was necessary, hand gestures being adequate to indicate wheres and hows.

But I did provide one important service. I was at the courthouse every week or two, knew everybody and everybody knew me. The clerks told me when a land sale was coming and I in turn alerted John to properties close by. Not reading English so not taking the newspaper, he wasn't privy to the legal notices so I became his source. Initially I helped him through the steps of bidding for parcels of property but he took to the process pretty fast so I wasn't needed much after that.

Once he acquired the land he sponsored others from his home village in Italy to come farm the acquisitions. Pingree became known as "Little Italy" elsewhere in the County. He held their mortgages, showed them how to farm here and warned them of the different climate attributes. After rumor spread of his status as "the Bank of Pingree" others who weren't Italian started knocking on his door for loans.

Sometimes I stayed from coffee on into lunch. There was always food on the table, even in the hard times, and it wasn't your typical fare, it was always interesting. A rotating cast of characters appeared at John and Ansi's table, family and neighbors stopping in at opportune times just like me, our orbits thus intersecting in not-so-random fashion. Because his table got to be so social and because he wanted his kids to be aware of things as he had not, John started subscribing to the newspaper though he never learned to read it. It was how I learned just recently of Grace Peck getting married.

Her picture showed up one morning amidst a front page story. Emmaline Johannson was there, we had been swapping stories about the early days. She saw my reaction to the story but didn't mention anything, she had always been discreet.

Three decades had passed since I last saw Grace, but I instantly saw her again—as she'd been, not as she appeared in the newspaper photo. I got more than a twinge of regret but I let it go to the wayside, recognizing my age. I read the article, trying not to look too interested. She'd been on the way to Las Vegas with her fiancee when they got in a bad wreck. It injured her but nearly killed him. They still hitched up, the photo of them depicting him in a hospital bed, her holding his hand and an official with a Bible sealing the deal. I had to laugh at the Bible, knowing her religious leanings, but it was a laugh that struck a place it took some time to repair.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston