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When Seth C. Harris looked back on Farmington, Washington, he remembered Prohibition as something that reached the town’s sidewalks and the garage where he worked. Harris worked in the Farmington garage from 1918 through 1925, placing him there through the opening years of national Prohibition.

In his 1978 oral history, Harris recalled a local bootlegger and town policeman Pete Barlow. He said liquor was sometimes hidden beneath Farmington’s wooden sidewalks. In another passage, he remembered working on a car in the garage that was full of Canadian whiskey. Harris said he did not drink much bootleg whiskey himself.

His memories also connect illicit liquor with a less-visible side of town life. Harris recalled regular town drunks and said that where liquor was found, gambling was generally present too. He also remembered a street with two or three houses of prostitution.

The transportation details matter. Harris described the area’s early roads as awful, and he remembered getting nine flat tires on one trip to Seattle. A car filled with Canadian whiskey therefore gives us a particularly vivid glimpse of how automobiles and garages could intersect with Prohibition-era liquor movement.

What the source does not establish: Harris called the whiskey Canadian, but the transcript does not identify its exact smuggling route or prove where or how it crossed the border.