Who Was August West?

 As made famous in the 1971 Grateful Dead song 'Wharf Rat'?

Augustus West (1814 - 1887) was a real life runaway slave who in 1837 arrived in the area of Greenfield are of Fayette, County Ohio. With local farmer Alexander Beatty, West co-authored a story that has become a part of local history, and later part of the history of the underground railway, which undermined slavery from inside the USA. The story they co-authered was that to raise money for West to purchase his own land, West and Beatty devised a scheme to take West back south, sell West back into slavery, and then Beatty would help West escape. The pair would split the profits. The laws that regulated the slave markets were lax enough for them to run this scam on Southern slave owners a minimum of three recorded times before deciding not to repeat the scam any further. Their story became the foundation for a 1971 alternaive Hollywood cowboy film, 'The Skin Game', starring James Gardner and Louis Gossett, Jr.

West used his share of the profits to purchase land near the intersection of Bonner and Barrett Roads, in Fayette County, in the state of Ohio. Some distance from the road West built a big house, The dirt road leading up to his front door became known as Abolition Lane.

In the years that followed, at least twelve cabins were constructed on West's land. They became temporary residences for other runaway slaves who needed a place to live and work as they stole their way further north, to a sustainable freedom away from them and their decendents being the property of slave owners.

But in the Garcia/Hunter song 'Wharf Rat' what Augustus West could do for others, be a staging post for their route away from slavery into liberty, August West could not do for himself. He became dependent on the drink. Enter real life Methodist minister Purley Baker who was the head of the Anti-Saloon League, a temperance organization based in the U.S.A. until shortly before his death in 1924, aged 65. Illegal bars were sometimes named 'Purley Baker's', to give alcohol consumption a double false identity.

Who knew that in the 1971 song lyic that Purley Baker's was both the underground name for a bar, and name of the dry house where drinkers could feel they were a safe distance from the temptations of the alcohol, that they needed to avoid?

In the lyric August West expresses this confusion so neatly most listeners would not notice how well their ambivalence towards the lyriccould be made part of the scene that the song describes. From the underground railways that helped slaves escape to double identity of a Purley Baker's, the double identity of seeking to do good unseen, and unintentionally being exposed to disguised temptation has never been bettered.

Amongst followers of The Grateful Dead, Deadheads, a fanbase who were perhaps more in danger of falling victim of their addictions than fans of more mainstream music, there is a 12 step support group called 'Wharf Rats', who exist to be ready to help whoever needs the assistance and the time to clean up/dry out, and restart life 'clean from addiction', though temptation will remain.