This is a picture of my father Howard "Bill" Cokonougher (1922-1984) and his brother Herbert Miller Cokonougher (1924-1967), taken in 1960. They were two of the four sons of John Henry Cokonougher and Amelia Irene Miller Cokonougher of Wisecup Hill in Ross County, Ohio. I took this picture myself when I was 11 years old.
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I knew my uncle Herb well.
He and my father were both alcoholics and spent many weekends together drinking.
My mother, my siblings, and I had to tag along, by default, on many of those weekends because my mother hoped that our presence would keep the two drinkers from getting into trouble. The two drank anything they could get, if it had alcohol in it, including whiskey, home brew, wine, beer, and hard cider.
Most of the time, their weekend binges ended in a fist fight between the two of them, with aches and bruises to both, and injuries to one or the other.
I recall one winter when they frequently bought hard cider from Ralph Kerr at his Mile High Fruit Farm in southern Twin Township, Ross County, Ohio.
Ralph kept the cider in 50 gallon barrels in an unheated barn.
The bitterly cold temperatures froze the hard cider and separated the juice and water from the alcohol that had formed earlier when the fresh apple juice had fermented.
The alcohol settled to the bottom where the drain spout was located.
Every jug of cider that was first drained from the barrel therefore came out as almost pure alcohol.
Drinking this special brew resulted in quick and complete intoxication.
Those weekends caused my family members and me much worry and missed sleep, and were long and hard weekends.
Eventually though, Herb and my father stopped spending so much time together and moved on to other drinking buddies.
Herb finally settled upon cheap wine as his chosen drink of choice.
One summer, Herb's and my father's brother, Cecil Cokonougher, suddenly died and left each of his siblings a good sized amount of money. Herb started buying plenty of cheap wine and drank more heavily than ever.
He drank a minimum of one, and many times more than one, bottle of cheap wine every single day.
The wine began to take its toll.
One day, he doubled over in pain and had to be taken to the hospital in serious condition.
The doctors found that his insides were full of bleeding ulcers.
The wine, accompanied by a bad smoking habit, was believed to be the cause.
I guess they don't call it "Rot Gut" for nothing!
Herb was given an ultimatum.
He either had to give up the alcohol and smoking, or die.
The doctors were shocked when Herb told them that he'd rather die than give up his wine and cigarettes.
They discharged him from the hospital and sent him home to do whatever he wished.
Of course, Herb liked to embellish the story a little bit whenever he told of his hospital visit.
He liked to say that the doctors had told him that he had to not only give up both smoking and alcohol, but sex too.
They hadn't.
The sex claim was made just to make his story more interesting.
Herb had chosen the worst alternative, and he got his wish, as perverted as it may have been.
One morning about six months after his stay in the hospital, he woke up spitting blood and then he keeled over dead.
His insides were completely eaten up by the acidic nature of the wine.
When his family cleaned out his house, they hauled away a full farm wagon load of empty wine bottles. Herb was buried in the local cemetery at South Salem, Ohio.
