Remembering Fred Talbot ...

Harry Talbot's saloon on Main Street,with the banner encouraging the union of Matteawan and Fishkill Landing into the city of Beacon in 1913

We recently learned of the death--at the age of 97--of longtime Beacon Historical Society member Fred Talbot of Syracuse. Fred grew up in Beacon and wrote down for us a family memoir about his father Harry Talbot. Harry was born in Fishkill-on-Hudson in 1884, and for many years owned and operated a saloon/plumbing establishment at 123 Main Street in Beacon. Harry lived to be almost 106 years old. The following is Fred's recollection of life with his father during Prohibition ...

"Now, my father's saloon had been a legal enterprise up to the year 1919, when the Volstead Act of that year put an end to things pertaining to alcohol of any type. It had been a big mistake, as drinking while socializing had been a happy experience for people and they resisted giving it up. So my father split the first floor saloon into two parts: bar in the rear and plumbing display store in the front.

The bar was a sight to see. Done in the way things were then, it sported a stuffed two-headed calf over the back bar. The bar was complete with a jar of hard boiled eggs and other things, floating in a kind of liquid. All was free, naturally, to induce more buying. Alcohol came from Canada, by way of a guy named Eddie Lemke, whom I met only once or twice, rather ethereally, for obvious reasons. Father would color the alcohol with something to make it look like real liquor. Presumably, it tasted like the real thing, too. We would all pitch in bottling it in quarts, pints, etc., wrap it with newspaper to protect it from breakage, then store it under the tread of the third step leading downstairs to the bar. The tread was hinged, so as to be able to lift it, but it was quite invisible. Of course, the back bar had its own supply in regular bottles. Being a plumber, Harry needed the display room for prospective customers to pick out toilet fixtures, tubs and sinks. It seemed more like a 'front' to me, as a child of seven or eight

Harry had a friend, the chief of police, Jesse Dingee, who, on occasions when pressure mounted for action, would call Harry up and quietly ask him to close up for a while. The Chief would test the locked back and front doors and go on his way, feeling and saying he had done his job. So much for law and order ... but that was the way it was, luckily for those who were thirsty and those who wanted to quench it." --Fred Talbot

Harry Talbot as a boy in the late 1800s