What smugglers did during prohibition

I was born in 1880 of German descent, originally, way back when, through my grandparents. They were a family of loyalists. I have a farm. I’m a farmer, and for friends and family I’m also a smuggler. Before the war, the Great War, I sold all of what I produced around here in Abercorn — home liquor, what I call potato whisky. Abercorn had lots of hotels, among them the Bucket of Blood, a joint that attracted bums from Québec and the States. Guys went there to fight. I became a bootlegger when American prohibition started in 1920. Spent all of the liquor wars in Vermont. The border has always been a sieve. There’s a customs post on the way to Abercorn and others in the railway stations at Sutton and Richford. I wasn’t alone in doing this; they were everywhere between Frelighsburg and Berkshire. It was easy at first; we’d take a cow with us and fill satchels full of liquor. We’d cross the border quietly, in the woods. If a customs officer turned up well, we ran away. We’d let the cow go and lose it for a time, but it would eventually find its way back home. In 1925 it became a lot more dangerous to be a bootlegger because Al Capone controlled everything that happened along the border. They’d shoot you on sight. Shoot anybody while they were guarding their stuff before crossing the line. They fired on my Ford truck one time in the middle of the night. I was still able to go out the next day — even with all the holes visible in the truck door. It’s said that several policemen disappeared on Lake Champlain, and one even not so far from here in Winooski. There’s one that no trace has been seen or heard of since 1926.