Larschious Spirits

Larschious described a style of distilling spirits common to the rural poor of Iowa during the Prohibition. It was ostensibly linked to a recipe relied on by generations of native Sioux, and typically involved the use of nettle, tree bark, and black walnuts. Numbers are hard to come by, but folk history suggests the consumption of larschious spirits was a fatal transaction up to twenty-percent of the time. One midwestern farmer described the flavor of a larschious gin as like that of "a lake turned-over," going on to remark that "some thought beet made it better; some said cold, others hot...but it never tasted better." Larschious poisoning was attributed in the 1923 death of Archie Nickels, who one Des Moines baseball enthusiast called "a better pure ballplayer than Joe Jackson." Larschious graveyards speckled the plains in a decrepit carpet of testimony to the casualties of poverty, alcoholism and Progressivism. When resorting to particularly desperate measures, the tragic besotted would stuff their larschious stills with ragweed, clover, Jake, or even the ghastly tomato worm.   

I would be remiss in failing to note that there never was found any solid documentation bridging the Sioux Indians with larschious distilleries. Some have speculated that the viral, intoxicating potion was, in fact, a colossal and - dare I say - savage practical joke played on the colonizers of a vast mean land by those suborned and quartered who may have remembered, even then, the story of a freely given blanket whose warmth was a killing fever.