A Pittsfield, N.H. Wake in 1800s New England: Asa Pettigrew and the Missing Jug

Friends, I write with a black band on my sleeve. Old Asa Pettigrew, cooper of Pittsfield, maker of barrels, hater of Methodists and owner of the worst singing voice ever to crack a hymnal, has gone to his reward. We waked him, we buried him, and somewhere in between some low, thieving son of a she-goat walked off with the best jug I ever drew off a still. Even Barnaby, my four-hundred-pound fur carpet of a bear, mourned in the Christian manner: he ate everything on the sideboard and then lay down to cry about it.

The Bottle at the Graveside

Some speak as if a wake with liquor at it were an Irish invention got off a boat at Boston. Bunk. Your Puritan great-great-grandfather, who would whip a boy for whistling on the Sabbath, buried his own mother with a hogshead of rum standing by the grave. Old New England funeral bills listed the coffin, the gloves, the gravedigger and the rum on one page in one ink, and nobody blushed. The minister drank, the bearers drank, and the sexton drank double, for he had to fill the hole afterward. Then came the temperance societies of the thirties and forties, sour-faced as a pickled beet, and the funeral bottle was one of the first things they went after. They did not stop the drinking, mind. They moved it to the woodshed.

Seventy-Three Strokes for Asa

Asa was so tight with a dollar he died in the morning to save the price of supper. He went in July, the hottest week this valley has seen since the British burned Washington. In Pittsfield, three things happen when a man dies. First, the meeting-house bell tolls once for every year of his age, and every farmer between here and Barnstead puts down his scythe to count. Seventy-three strokes, and old women all down the turnpike saying, 'That's Asa. Good.' Second, the women stop the clocks, cover the looking glass and lay him on a cooling board in the front parlor. Third, somebody puts coins on his eyes to keep the lids shut until he stiffens. I was that somebody. I laid two of my own counterstamped large cents, G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H., one on each eyelid. That makes Asa the first man in Merrimack County to meet his Maker wearing my advertising.

Then comes the sitting up. Somebody sits with the dead all night, partly out of respect, partly to keep the cats off him, and partly from the old fear that he is not truly dead. On the second night, with the ice going fast in the heat, Asa gave a long, low, wet sigh from the south end, like a bellows with consumption. The widow came out of her rocker so fast she left her bonnet behind, and I spilled a good gill of the hearts down my shirtfront, which is the real tragedy of the tale. It was only gas. The dead are full of it, same as the living, same as the legislature.

For one moment I will be serious. This spring the whole Union buried Mr. Lincoln. They embalmed him and carried him sixteen hundred miles by funeral train, and folks stood along the tracks at midnight holding lanterns and their hats. The embalming trade grew up in this war, out of families who wanted their sons home whatever it cost. Up here we still mostly rely on ice and prayer, and the prayer melts faster than the ice.

A Warrant Over the Coffin

On Thursday the whole town crowded Asa's parlor: deacons, cousins, a dozen coopers who owed him money, and a widow who has buried two husbands and keeps her mourning dress in mothballs between engagements. I brought a two-gallon stoneware jug of double-run rye, cut by my own hand, hearts and nothing but the hearts. I set it down, turned to pull a toothache out of Deacon Hobart's nephew, and when I turned back the jug was gone.

On Friday morning, as the procession formed, a young deputy trotted up the turnpike on a borrowed mare, waving a warrant for me. I bear the sheriff's office no grudge, but a warrant served over a dead man's coffin is lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut. Barnaby, there on his long chain to guard the funeral ham, stood up all seven feet and took the whole seat out of the boy's britches in one swipe. The deputy fled to the only hole in the county and dove into Asa's open grave. Barnaby sat on the edge and ate the ham, bone and all, dripping fat onto the deputy's hat like a bishop at a hanging. The boy stayed down there till dark, and when the sexton threw in the first shovelful I never heard a man argue so eloquently with a spade. Asa had to wait another day.

Copper for the Dead

Much of that burying was built by Silas 'Hacksaw' McAllister, a third-generation coppersmith and the finest hand with a planishing hammer in the Suncook Valley. The widow had seen a patent corpse cooler advertised in a Boston paper and wanted one in copper by Tuesday night, at no Boston price. Silas built a lined box with a tray under the body for ice and a brass drain cock at the foot to let off the melt. The cock was sound, but nobody set a bucket under it. For three days the melt ran through the carpet and the floorboards into a crock of the widow's bread-and-butter pickles in the cellar. The cellar cat drank from it and got fat, and the pickles were served at the funeral supper.

The sexton had cracked the iron clapper of the bronze bell, a hairline through the shank. With no time to forge another, Silas heated a collar of heavy copper cherry-red and shrank it on so tight it squeaked as it cooled. 'You don't trust a bell to solder,' says he. It held, though the added weight rang every stroke a hair flat. The widow judged that it suited a man who had sung flat in that choir for forty years. The engraved coffin plate from Concord arrived reading ASS PETTIGREW, because the engraver had been drinking. So Silas cut a new plate from twenty-four-ounce sheet, planished it smooth and hand-chased A-S-A by lamplight till past two in the morning. As for my jug, Silas saw it last on Thursday night. Someone had set it on the lid of his ice casket to chill. Then the deacon began a forty-minute prayer, every eye shut, and when they opened the jug was gone.

The Run Is a Funeral

Now to your own apparatus. Distilling spirits for drinking without a federal permit is against United States law, so take what follows as history and instruction. For a plain corn whiskey in the old style, cook a bushel of cracked corn, fifty-six pounds, in about twenty-five gallons of water at a slow boil for an hour or so, stirring well. Scorched mash tastes like a burnt church. Cool it to around a hundred and fifty degrees and stir in a peck or more of crushed malted barley to turn the starch to sugar. Rest it an hour or two, cool it to about eighty degrees, pitch your yeast, and keep it warm but not hot, in good air. A working mash breathes out a gas that will drop a man in a closed cellar. Starved or overheated yeast throws the rotten-egg sulfur stink. Fight that with copper in the vapour path, in the helmet, swan neck and column, and keep it bright inside.

Run on a low, steady fire. First come the foreshots, richest in methanol, which takes the eyesight before the life. Pour off at least a gill and a half, about five ounces, for every five gallons of wash, and more if you are unsure. Then come the heads, sharp as a varnish shop: set them aside. Then the hearts, sweet and clean: keep those. Last come the oily, wet-dog tails, which you set aside to run again. Collect in small jars, one after another. On an apple run, be generous with foreshots and heads, because pectin breaks down into methanol. Alcohol vapour is heavier than air and creeps along the floor to your firebox, so never leave a running still alone. Keep sand and a wet blanket by the door, test your joints, and never use lead.

Ash, Oak and the Blue Flame

Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller of Wilkesboro, North Carolina, writes that his uncle swears by hickory ashes or red oak shavings in the thump keg to clean out bad heads. Wood ash leached in a barrel makes lye, and lye is caustic. In a hot thump keg it gives you foam, spitting and a scalding mess, and the methanol sails right through it. Red oak gives up tannin, colour and a woody taste, and old-timers did load thumpers to flavour the vapour. But flavouring is not cleaning, any more than perfume cleans a hog. The thump keg doubles your run and strengthens it. Only the distiller's hand at the cuts buries bad heads. And the blue flame test is hogwash in a silver dish. A blue flame shows only that there is enough alcohol to burn. Methanol burns pale blue too, and a flame cannot find lead.

Where the Jug Went

On Saturday six bearers carried Asa to the burying ground while the bell tolled seventy-three flat strokes. Halfway down the dip by the stone wall, the coffin went slosh. The widow, never turning her head beneath her veil, said, 'Keep walking, boys. He asked for it in his will, and I'll not have him go thirsty where it's warm.' During the prayer she had tucked my jug into the crook of Asa's arm like a newborn. That makes him the only customer who ever beat me on credit and on a technicality at once. She sent me a rhubarb pie on Monday, and I have not yet worked up the courage to ask where she kept it. Here's to Asa Pettigrew. Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest and your fire low.