Odor Is Pete's Undoing — Smells A Lot Like Raisin Mash!

1920

Odor Is Pete's Undoing

Chief of Police Detects Raisin Mash and Sends Owner to Jail

JOLIET, Ill., Feb. 24. — Chief Hennessey, while driving past Pete Serrabba's house, believed he detected an old familiar odor. Turning his car at the end of the block he drove by the suspected place again. The odor was sufficient. The chief summoned a squad of detectives and the house was raided. A copper still and four 52-gallon barrels of raisin mash in different stages of fermentation were found in the basement. A jug of 140 proof brandy was also confiscated by the authorities. Scrrabba is said to have stated that he purchased the still in Chicago and that he had made a barrel of the stuff which has been consumed by his friends and family. He is being held in the city jail.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 24, 1920, page 1.

Plenty of "Kick" in Grocer's Brew; Still Blows Up and Wrecks Store

1920--

NEW YORK, N.Y., May 20. -- The plate glass windows of a grocery store in South Brooklyn were blown out a moment after Policeman Francis Smith had passed the building at 2 a.m. By the time Smith and Policeman McMahon had climbed through the jagged aperture and made their way through the store's tumbled heaps of cans and green goods, scores of residents of the neighborhood were pouring into the street.

In a back room of the grocery were found two stunned men, who later at the police station, where they are held for the Federal authorities, described themselves as Dario Santeveshl, 35, proprietor of the grocery, and Tony Petitschi, 49, the grocery man's friend.

The police say the explosion was of a home-made still. Apparently a milk can filled with "mash" had been put to boil on a gas stove. From the top there had been a spiral copper pipe running to a barrel. The lid of the milk can was clamped down so tightly that the steam supposed to condense in the pipe, and run into the barrel as "hootch," blew up. There was little left of the can and windows in several other buildings in the neighborhood were broken. The residents for a time attributed the explosion to a "blackhand" bomb.

According to the police, they found near the wrecked apparatus a forty-gallon barrel of wine and a three-gallon jug of alcohol. The two prisoners suffered only from shock.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 4.