In September 1923, 46-year-old Snyder County resident Harry Mutchler got himself in hot water. He was arrested late that month for selling intoxicating beverages to an underage boy out of the “restaurant” portion of his gas station on the southern end of Selinsgrove. His establishment, which had opened the previous November, sat at the intersection of Market Street and the road to Freeburg; it was a frequent stop for both local motorists and those passing through on the new Susquehanna Trail. Mutchler advertised that he sold gas, oil, automobile accessories, candies, and cigars.
Although he didn’t advertise it, he also sold beer. Mutchler’s place was typical of the type of hybrid store/garage that proliferated in the Central Susquehanna Valley during Prohibition. It was a private residence, a gas station, a candy store, a repair garage, and, seemingly, a liquor store. And it was on the edge of the borough in a high-traffic corridor. As licensing became scarce and law enforcement began looking more closely at hotels and former saloons in town, illegal sales moved out to the highways. Marion Schoch, editor of the Selinsgrove Times, noticed this movement in 1924, when it seemed like each and every weekend featured busts of roadhouses, diners, and service stations along the area’s thoroughfares:
It certainly is fine how some of the saloons have been driven out of the towns, but it’s not so comforting to find most of them squatting on the most dangerous curves of the most used highways of the outlying districts. Monday’s newspapers usually carry the best stories on that phase of the success of what’s called prohibition.—Selinsgrove Times, 31 July 1924
Bootlegging and motoring went hand-in-hand, and Mutchler was no stranger to the movement of liquor. He and his 18-year-old son had been caught running 75 gallons of whiskey and gin in Lewistown in the winter of 1923. Mutchler held the distinction of being the person responsible for Mifflin County’s first ceremonial “spilling bee,” in which law enforcement agents publicly dumped confiscated alcohol into a sewer. Such events became common across the country during Prohibition. They were a way for sheriffs and liquor agents to assert a public presence and demonstrate the results of their effort. Mutchler served six weeks in the Mifflin County jail in Lewistown.
Now, in September 1923, he was once again on the wrong side of the law. Milton resident Irene Clemens told Justice of the Peace Daniel Shucker that on August 26, Mutchler had sold her son, Melvin, a $3 pint of beer, enough to make him drive erratically. The sale had apparently taken place in the cellar of the building—quite literally an underground operation. Melvin had crashed into another car near Lewisburg shortly thereafter, and his mother wanted the record to show that Mutchler was responsible. Mutchler’s defense was that any beer that he might have sold the young man contained less than 0.5% alcohol and was thus not covered by the national prohibition legislation.
(Of course, even if the beer was under 0.5% alcohol, Mutchler would still have needed a license under the state’s Woner Act. But no near-beer licenses had been applied for that year in Snyder County.)
The jury, composed of five farmers, two laborers, a carpenter, a miner, a teacher, a railroad inspector, and a shoemaker, were convinced that the gas station operator was not telling the truth. They found Mutchler guilty, and judge Potter sentenced him to a year in the Union County jail. Almost immediately, residents and relatives appealed to have his sentence reduced, citing the dire financial situation of his 31-year-old wife, Gertrude, and their three children, 14-year-old Lillian, 2-year-old Emma, and infant Robert. The Selinsgrove Times said it must have been an Easter gift when the Union County judge released Harry on parole after just three months.
Harry Mutchler didn’t appear again in local newspapers throughout the Prohibition era, suggesting that he either got out of the bootleg game or got lucky. But he’s a good example of the type of figure that must have been common in the area in the 1920s. One stint in jail didn’t stop him from selling beer to a minor, without a license, in his cellar. After all, what are the chances that he’d get caught?
He, like others who would be implicated and explicitly targeted as part of the booze underworld, knew that there was money to be made from the sale of alcohol. The temptation was too great for some, and they kept the Central Susquehanna Valley awash with liquor even in the seemingly driest of times.