Martha's Midway Tavern and the Antheunes

1924–1933

At 810 West Fourth Street stood the Midway, the best-documented bootlegging address in Mishawaka's record — and the entry is written at the strength of its documentation, which is a house history, not a court file. Martha and Cyriel Antheunes bought the Midway in 1924 and ran it as "Midway Lunch" — chicken dinners, soda, cigars, near-beer — while, by the house's own history, bootlegging beer and whiskey out of the garage. The same history carries the consequences: arrested on liquor charges in 1930, the place padlocked, the couple spent almost a year in Belgium before returning to reopen as a lunch counter, and so it ran until repeal made the trade lawful again. The narrative rests on a 2009 independent research project on Prohibition in South Bend and Mishawaka, deposited with the Center for History and published as the Midway's history; no press-of-record or court account of the 1930 arrest was reached, and the entry stands attributed accordingly — the house's account of itself, told straight, with its source named.

One name in the Midway's lore is tested and printed as lore. Martha Antheunes recalled, in People Magazine in February 1988, that Al Capone had been a customer — "He was just like any other customer" — and the recollection is carried in the house tradition to this day. It is a recollection offered fifty-eight years after the fact, with no contemporary record behind it in anything reached here; the South Bend file of this build excluded the same class of claim for the same reason. It is printed here at lore's size — named, dated, and labeled a recollection — because the claim itself is now part of the address's documented tradition, and because printing it at record size would claim more than the paper holds.

Sources:

1. Research project on Prohibition in South Bend and Mishawaka (2009), deposited with the Center for History — the Midway Tavern house history, 810 W. 4th St.
2. People Magazine, February 1988 — Martha Antheunes's Capone recollection