Rum running escape from the federals in 1926
Recently the Sussex Lisbon-Area Historical Society acquired a photo of a crowd of onlookers that was taken during Labor Day in 1926. On the back side of the photo was this ownership information, "Mrs. Joseph Cullen Jr, Rt 2, Box 85, Menomonee Falls." This is in the extended Lannon area.
What the photo shows is a smashed-up car that hit the Frank Pfeil farm house at the intersection of Highway 74 and Town Line Road. Today, this location is the Lied's Nursery property.
One has to consider the history of this intersection prior to 1910 and after 1912.
Back prior to 1910, Sussex's Main Street east from the old Templeton area did not take a bend to go around and under the then - unbuilt railroad overpass bridge that was the Northwestern Railroad (today Union Pacific). Sussex Main Street east was online to enter Mill Road (also known as Tower Hill Road) at Whiskey Corners. However, with the coming of the Northwestern a job was put in during 1910-12. It was originally a curve that one took to get under the railroad bridge and over the years there were many accidents there. A few years ago there was a massive re-aligning of this intersection with the addition the extra lanes plus stop lights to make the intersection safer and quicker to go through. However accidents still happened.
Meanwhile the railroad bridge structure itself has undergone a transformation as it became the traditional "graffiti bridge" for students of nearby Hamilton High School to tag with spray painted messages. A police-citizen crusade was launched recently to eliminate the vandalism.
Back to the 1926 Labor Day when Prohibition was big and Lisbon, Lannon and Sussex had their part in tweaking up alcohol for consumption. The story goes that the Frank Pfeil farmhouse on the curve was fairly near the intersection and over the years it had been struck three times. Pfeil, a Lisbon teamster and farmer, put up fence posts and planted trees to stop the crashes into his house but it was to no avail.
Now there was this character Frank Schleicher of Menomonee Falls who had a new 1926 Hudson automobile and the Federals were on to him and watching his every move because the Feds had figured out that he was the lead car in a convoy of booze runners and they began to follow him. He noticed their pursuit and sped up to about 70 mph through the Lisbon-Sussex area with the Feds in hot pursuit. They began to open fire and reportedly fired 25 shots with one grazing Schleicher's ear. But away the Hudson went however, when it came to the curve on Highway 74 near Pfeil's farm, his car could not make the proper maneuver and ended up in Pfeil's front porch ending the chase.
The Feds were all over the scene and searched the Hudson for incriminating evidence and found not one ounce of alcohol or a gun. It was reported that they asked Schleicher why he made such a great effort to flee and his response was, "You figure it out." The side story from others is that Schleicher was acting as a decoy to take the Feds away from the real booze convoy. But now the Feds had enough charges to arrest Schleicher and lock him up for about a year. Pfeil had no trouble getting paid for his repairs by the insurance company but the wiley Schleicher also got a settlement from his insurance company according to newspaper reports.
Meanwhile about the same time that Mrs. Joseph Cullen of Lannon took the crowd picture, Roy Stier of Sussex used a "post card" camera. This second photo is a close up of the Hudson in the front porch area of Pfeil's house. Stier put this doodle on the back of the post card, "At speed of 72 miles per hour, around curves and see what it did to the machine, let alone the summer porch."