Prohibition's places: the "Soft Drinks" page of 1921

April 1918 — 1933

The geography, not the war: Indiana went dry in April 1918 under its own statute, ahead of the national amendment, and stayed dry until national repeal on 5 December 1933. The enforcement record of those years — the still raids on the farms northeast of the city in October 1921, the padlocking of the Midway in 1930 — belongs to the Crime section and is not retold here. What belongs to this section is the legal trade's map, and the 1921 city directory draws it in one classified list. Under the heading Soft Drinks, Polk's Mishawaka directory names seven stands: Alphonse Audenaert, 810 West Fourth Street; Barnard Carey, 115 North Main; August Coppens, 901 West Fourth; Alois De Deck, 548 West Sixth; Camiel DeMeester, 546 West Sixth; Henry Himschoot, 125 North Main; and Matz & Forstbauer, 124 Lincoln Way West. Above the list the directory prints the supply side: "Soft Drink Manufacturers — Kamm & Schellinger Co, N Center," the brewery itself, making the Arrow and its soda line (the conversion is the brewery's course, in Businesses and Controversies), and Wm. Magrames & Co., 109 Lincoln Way West, under Soda Water.

What the list shows: Read as a map, the seven stands are the saloon map redrawn at legal strength. Five of the seven keepers carry Belgian names — Audenaert, Coppens, De Deck, DeMeester, Himschoot — and the addresses cluster where the Belgian West End was rising: two on West Fourth, two side by side on West Sixth, with two on North Main and one on the Lincoln Way for the downtown trade. The soft-drink parlor was the saloon's dry-years form everywhere in America; in Mishawaka the directory catches it in the act of being Belgian. And one address on the list carries the next entry in embryo: 810 West Fourth Street, Alphonse Audenaert's stand of 1921, is the address Martha and Cyriel Antheunes bought in 1924 and made the Midway — the room whose whole course follows.

The rest of the dry map: No Mishawaka speakeasy reaches this record with a name and an address of its own beyond the Midway's garage, told in the next entry at the house history's strength; the blind pigs and stills of the county's record are enforcement geography, in Crime. The dry era's end is dated there: repeal, 5 December 1933, returned the legal trade to the same streets and, in the West End, to the same families — the neighborhood tavern, licensed and family-run, becomes the city's standard drinking institution for the rest of the century.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend and Mishawaka City Directory (1921), Mishawaka classified list, p. 1027 — "Soft Drink Manufacturers: Kamm & Schellinger Co, N Center"; "*Soda Water: Magrames Wm & Co, 109 Lincoln Way W"; "Soft Drinks: Audenaert Alphonse, 810 W 4th; Carey Barnard, 115 N Main; Coppens August, 901 W 4th; De Deck Alois, 548 W 6th; DeMeester Camiel, 546 W 6th; Himschoot Henry, 125 N Main; Matz & Forstbauer, 124 Lincoln Way W." Read first-hand in the digitized directory; names as the directory prints them.
2. Crime section of this history — Indiana's dry law of April 1918, the still raids of October 1921, the Midway's 1930 arrest and padlocking, and repeal, 5 December 1933; cross-referenced here, not retold. Controversies and Businesses sections — the brewery's Arrow conversion of May 1920.