By the 1900's, Smirnoff was rolling out one million bottles per day and everything is about as cool hookers who take food stamps until the Russian Revolution. The distillery is confiscated and the Smirnoff in charge is sentenced to death. However, he manages to escape to Turkey and continue making hooch, demonstrating either dedication or a weird kind of insanity.
By 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, Smirnoff sells the company to Rudolph Kunett who brings it to the US. Decades later, a near infinite number of college girls stumbling around with fruit juices and steadily lowering inhibitions are his legacy.
Jim Beam - Basically the rulers of a bourbon empire, the Beam family are kings of southern booze making. Not content to just make their own, since the company's origins in the late 1700's, nearly every other major distillery that has made bourbon has employed someone in the family, for seven generations. These guys were serious as sh*t about bourbon and in a straight up fight against Kentucky's other famous businessman, the mint-julep touting fancy boy that was Col. Sanders, would probably straight up murder the man.
When Prohibition forced the shut down of the distillery, Jim Beam left and wandered the country like an entrepreneurial Kwai Chang Kane; growing citrus, then coal mining, then running a lime stone quarry. When Prohibition ended, Jim, now 70 years old, returned to his roots and went right back to making bourbon, driven by a dedication to see his countrymen sh*tfaced.
Most people who live in large, urban centers, or anyplace where the population has cracked 100 or so, probably have at least one hobo around town. And while the popular sentiment is that homelessness is a problem and we need to help, there's also the pervasive monkey on the back of every hobo: namely that they're a raving loon who thinks they have a monkey on their back. But this is just a stereotype and the fact is there are many stereotypes that deserve equal consideration. And thanks to the current economy we're all enjoying, the future of hoboing is brighter than ever. Thus, in the tradition of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, we offer you this guide to identify and catalog hobos.
The Ranter - A popular vagabond due to their "look at me" style, the Ranter is the wastrel you cross the street to avoid and not just because of that stank. Indeed, on a warm summer's day, the Ranter may set himself up outside your favorite mall, one eye looking skyward while the other attempts to peer into your very soul and begin raving about how the government put arsenic in his oatmeal and those geese in the park are nothing but sodomites who talk about him behind his back. The Ranter's effectiveness seems to directly correlate to both how loud he can share a string of epic obscenities and how well dressed the people he wants to listen to him are.
The Entrepreneur - No regular bum this, the Entrepreneur is the 'can do' vagrant of today. Not content to be like his begging cousins, the Entrepreneur has a get up and go that makes him wait at busy intersections with a scrap of newsprint and an old Coke bottle he's filled with water and hand sanitizer from down at the clinic. When he finds a potential client stuck at a red light, he springs into action by hobbling over and smudging the sanitizer-laced paper across their windshield in exchange for a few cents. And while this may actually make the window dirtier, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and this drifter can't make your window clean if he's covered in his own urine.
The Millionaire - Curiously, once a town gets large enough, the Millionaire inevitably shows up in local lore and will remain for many years. Potentially disguised as a Ranter, the Millionaire is just what his name suggests. He's stinking rich. At least that's what everyone says, because it's fun to believe when you're enjoying the lower middle class life, someone out there achieved their fortune and decided that instead of living in a mansion, living behind the KFC dumpster and wearing shoes made out of hardened discs of feces would be an interesting adventure to go on. This tramp never speaks of their fortune, potentially due to dementia or just snobbery, and will often be seen counting out pennies to buy McDonald's coffee on a Sunday morning.
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