Around midnight on Saturday, July 23, 1932, prohibition officers arrested an Arbon Valley farmer at a dance near the Arbon school and took his car into Pocatello. The Pocatello Tribune told the story on Monday, July 25, in a playful piece on its second page, and added a short follow-up on August 22. These two reports are all this site has found about the case.
The arrest
The farmer was George N. Judkins, 38, who farmed in the Arbon part of the valley. The paper's information came from two officers of the prohibition force, W. A. McGill and Jim Edmunds. By their account, Judkins had been bringing his car to the Saturday night country dances with a wash boiler in the back seat. Bottles stayed cold in the ice that filled it, and anyone at the dance who wanted one walked out to the car and paid 25 cents apiece. The Tribune called the arrangement a "saloon on wheels." The officers said he had kept it up for about six weeks before they caught him.
They took both the man and the car. Judkins was booked on a federal prohibition charge, with bond fixed at $1,000, and lodged in the county jail. His case was expected to come up when the federal court opened its term on the second Monday in October.
The paper also offered a reason. Grain was fetching so little that summer, by its account, that Judkins had decided beer would earn him more than his wheat could. That explanation comes from the officers' report as the paper retold it, in a story written for laughs. Nothing in it is quoted from Judkins himself. The headline called him an alleged brewer, but neither report says where the beer came from or whether he made it.
A month in jail
On August 22 the Tribune reported that Judkins, now called an Arbon valley farmer, had been let out of the Bannock County jail the day before, Sunday, August 21, on the same $1,000 bond. He was to be tried on a liquor charge at the next federal term. This second note is the one that puts the arrest at a Saturday night dance near the Arbon school, and it says federal officers made it. If both reports have their dates right, he spent about four weeks in jail before he made bond.
What became of the case is not known. The October 1932 pages read for this site do not mention it, and no later report of Judkins in court has turned up.
The man and the times
Judkins was probably the George N. Judkins of Crystal who registered for the draft in Power County in 1917. That August the American Falls Press reported that he had passed his physical examination and filed for exemption, and the local exemption board then excused him because he had dependents. A Deseret News death notice of October 9, 1964, for a George N. Judkins of Pocatello, 70, gives his birth date as May 16, 1894, and calls him a farmer in Arbon Valley. That birth date fits the age the Tribune gave in 1932. The rest of the notice is too badly scanned to read with confidence, so his family is not named here.
Selling beer was still against federal law in the summer of 1932, and Power County had voted itself dry even earlier, in 1914. But repeal was in the air. The July 25 page that carried the arrest also reprinted a business magazine's guess that brewing might be the new industry to lift the country out of the depression. The August 22 page that reported his release carried a Democratic campaign speech calling for the Eighteenth Amendment to go back to the people.
On this site: Arbon and Crystal's votes on liquor are in Wet or dry: how Arbon and Crystal voted on liquor in 1914, and an earlier valley prohibition case in A lantern in the pothole: the Saulsberry still at Sunbeam, 1922. The farm prices behind the story are part of Arbon Valley's wheat growers organize for the Farm Board, 1930. See also the Arbon and Crystal pages.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, July 25, 1932, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Prohibition officers arrested George N. Judkins, 38, a farmer from the Arbon district, around midnight on Saturday, July 23, and accused him of selling beer out of his automobile at country dances.
As of Monday he was still locked up at the county jail. The charge was violation of the national prohibition act, bond stood at $1,000, and the case was headed for the federal court term beginning the second Monday in October.
The arresting officers, W. A. McGill and Jim Edmunds, gave the Tribune an account of how the business worked. As they described it, Judkins parked at the Saturday night country dance with bottles of beer buried in ice in a wash boiler on his back seat. Dancers from around that end of the valley who wanted a cold one went out to the car and paid him 25 cents a bottle. The officers said he had run the trade for roughly six weeks before they stopped it.
The paper framed the venture as a farmer's answer to the depression. With grain bringing so little, the paper said, Judkins had turned to beer as a better-paying crop for the dance crowd, and by the officers' report the sales had been good enough for him to pay his way. The story played the case for humor throughout, calling the car a "car bar" and joking that its owner had traded one kind of bar for the bars of a cell.
Besides arresting Judkins, the officers impounded his car and took it to Pocatello. The headline described Judkins as an alleged brewer, but the story did not say who made the beer or where he got it.