Bootleggers Day

[Subdeacon Joe]

Today is National Bootlegger's Day. During WWII, a bootlegger set up a still on Tulagi and ran a booming business selling moonshine for $10 a bottle to the crews stationed at the PT boat base. He recycled one-liter beer bottles discarded by the nearby Australian army base.

 

 

[Sedalia Dave]

WOW Those sailors were willing to pay almost $200 in today's money for a bottle of shine.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 18 by Sedalia Dave

[Subdeacon Joe]

18 minutes ago, Sedalia Dave said:

WOW Those sailors were willing to pay almost $200 in today's money for a bottle of shine.

 

That was between 3 and 4 months worth of pay during WWII.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

selling moonshine for $10 a bottle

 

They only got paid $3/month?

 

https://www.navycs.com/charts/1942-military-pay-chart.html

 

[Alpo]

Yeah the Indian wars cavalry got either 13 or $18 - I disremember which - so I really can't see 50 or 60 years later the military is paying them less than a quarter of that.

[Pat Riot]

Joe, how does that chart work? Is “GRADE” the rank / rating?

 

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

My bunk mate in 'Nam was a "shiner" from Arkansas.  He had a small outfit making custom flavors, but he did it for fun...and actual expenses.

 

He had some pretty high ranking "clients", too.

[Subdeacon Joe]

6 hours ago, Pat Riot said:

Joe, how does that chart work? Is “GRADE” the rank / rating?

 

 

It's kind of reverse of what you would expect.   7th is an E-1, 1st is an E-7.

 

From: http://www.cv6.org/company/muster/organization.htm

 

Enlisted Mens' Pay Grades

Pay grades shown below were the basic pay per month for each indicated grade, as established in 1942.

Grade	Pay per Month	Class or Rating
1	$138	Chief petty officers, permanent appointment.
1A	$126	Chief petty officers, acting appointment.
2	$114	Petty officers, first class.
3	$96	Petty officers, second class.
4	$78	Petty officers, third class.
5	$66	Nonrated men, first class.
6	$54	Nonrated men, second class.
7	$50	Apprentice seamen.

Men could receive additional pay in some circumstances:

• Men on duty where quarters or rations were not furnished were granted a daily allowance of $2.75 to $5.00 a day, depending on their station.

and other additions. 

[Pat Riot]

Ah, I see they had “military intelligence” back then as well.   Thank you. 

[Alpo]

It's sort of like rating the way some girl looks, and she's Oriental.

 

You tell her that she's a 10 and she's going to get severely pissed. Because in the Orient the best is number one. So on a scale of 1 to 10 the gorgeous girl is a 1, not a 10.

[Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001]

DRINK up and be somebody 

 

at least in your own mind 

[Pat Riot]

1 hour ago, Alpo said:

It's sort of like rating the way some girl looks, and she's Oriental.

 

You tell her that she's a 10 and she's going to get severely pissed. Because in the Orient the best is number one. So on a scale of 1 to 10 the gorgeous girl is a 1, not a 10.

I think you’re thinking of Vietnamese folks and no one calls them “Oriental” any more. If you say “Oriental” around Asians when discussing a person they will probably tell you “Does he/she look like a rug or a vase to you?”

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

15 minutes ago, Pat Riot said:

I think you’re thinking of Vietnamese folks and no one calls them “Oriental” any more. If you say “Oriental” around Asians when discussing a person they will probably tell you “Does he/she look like a rug or a vase to you?”

If they are descended from forebears from Asia, they are as Asian as African Americans are African.

 

I'm Scottish, English, Irish. Welch, Walloon, Italian, French, German American.  That takes too much time, effort, and space on a page, sooooooo....

 

.I AM AN AMERICAN!

 

Besides, I'm too lazy to keep track of all that crap.

 

I am, however, a Scottish Laird.  Bought the title in 1960 for $10.00 and own a square inch of land somewhere in the Highlands. (I was trying to impress the ladies and it seemed a good idea at the time.)  

 

We have a clan tartan (the original was as ugly as original sin, but over the years it has grown into something acceptable.) and the Taylors are sept to the Cavanaughs and Stewarts.  There's even a clan crest.

 

You may address me as "Your Lordship" if you don't mind.

 

You are welcome (he said humbly).

 

 

[Alpo]

Not just Viet. Japanese Chinese, Korean all use number one as the best.

 

If the Thais and the Laotians and the Cambodians don't, I would be very surprised.

 

As to your Asian thing. Asia is the largest continent in the world. Half of Russia is in Asia. All those white people living there are Asian. India and Pakistan are in Asia. All those Hindu types in the subcontinent are Asian. Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are in Asia. All of those semites are Asian.

 

But ain't one single one of them Oriental. Oriental is a race. Asian is a location.

 

If you were describing Denzel Washington and Donald Trump to people that had never seen them, would you just say they were both Americans? Or would you say that that one is black and that one is white?

[Subdeacon Joe]

2 hours ago, Alpo said:

Half of Russia is in Asia. All those white people living there are Asian.

 

One of the Old Russian Ladies at church,  may God grant her rest, was born in Harbin, China of Russian expats, I think from St. Petersburg.  She got a kick out of telling people that she was Chinese and watching them grind mental gears processing that.  But that's how her papers read when she immigrated to the US.  

[Alpo]

I read about a young man. His parents were missionaries, he was born somewhere in Africa. When he was a teenager they came back to the States. He's in college and he sees they got some kind of scholarship for African Americans. He applied.

 

His grades and everything else was right up there. The only thing left was the personal interview. So he shows up.

 

Black woman asked if she could help him. He said he was there for the African-American scholarship interview. She told him that he was not African-American. He was white. She was African-American.

 

He asked her what part of Africa she was from. She said she'd never been to Africa. So he said he suppose that meant her parents were African? No, her parents had never been to Africa either. But he wasn't African-American. He was white.

 

I think he ended up going to court. He got the scholarship.

 

"You can't be African-American! You're white!!!!"

 

 

They had a Disney movie, years ago. I believe it was called The color of friendship. Something like that anyway. This black family was going to take an exchange student from Africa. Got a little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl from Cape Town. Oops.

 

"Something's wrong here. We wanted an African girl."

 

Yeah.