Each member of Local 103 carried an alcohol torch in his tool bag. Many funny stories were told of members trying to get their employers to get a supply of grain alcohol rather than denatured alcohol for the torches, claiming more efficient burning of grain alcohol.

While deep in the throes of prohibition, grain alcohol was coveted for its human consumption as well as its torch consumption. Each electrical joint, either "T" tap or pig-tail was fluxed and soldered, using an alcohol torch, before rubber and friction tape was applied.

After prohibition ended, the health of electricians improved drastically. They had been consuming poorly distilled alcohol originally purchased in many cases for alcohol torches. Once in a great while, an alcohol torch will turn up in a flea market, but now with the invention and use of solderless wirenuts, which by the way, are not as good for electrical connections or human consumption, the alcohol torch came out of the tool bag and was discarded in the cellar or garage.

When I was an apprentice in 1956, there was a character who showed up at construction sites, named "Irish Ice Cream." He was a former construction worker who had lost an arm in an industrial accident, carried a cardboard box with a string over the shoulder of his missing arm, and was quite adept at climbing straight ladders to concrete slabs, where he would sell everything from chewing gum to condoms out of his cardboard box. He said jokingly that he was responsible for two deaths and a few workers going blind from consuming his poorly distilled "white lightning" during the construction of the Army Base warehouses in South Boston during Prohibition.