They have have been making Moonshine in these mountains for over 200 years. This is a true story of how they supplied the demand for it in old days and the mountain people who made it and how they hauled it throughout the country.
VIDEO HERE (11:37 minutes)
Best shine I ever got was outta Nelson Co. Va. The spring water in the Gap is sweet. I'd buy shine before I'd buy store bought. I was up on Lewis Mt off the Skyline Drive one day hiking. An old fella told me where I find the remains of a still. I found it. Hadn't been an operation there in years. Ya could see the rings from the mash barrels but the thing that got me there was nothing growing at all. Not even a weed. That shine must have killed off everything and kept it killed for years. There were two logs wired together and I asked the old fella about it later. He said, Ya ever heard of a lookout boy? It was up in a tree for a lookout but had fallen. The fella said he used to bring that shine out with mules. I miss that old fella. He died years ago but he shared some stories with me that I'll never forget.
ReplyDeleteAn acquaintance of mine found his grandfather's old still in granddad's cabin when they went to tear it down for the lumber. He put the still back into operation and made some really good 'Shine. He had different flavors...Birch, Apple Pie, Lemon Drop and Blueberry with a handful of blueberries in the bottle. He also made one he called "Cold Medicine."
ReplyDeleteThe Revenuers caught him and took his still away, but then had to turn around and give it back to him because it was a family heirloom. He still makes a little 'Shine, but is more particular about who he gives it to now.
Its not illegal unless you sell it.
DeleteThe best clear corn liquor I've tasted came from Cocke Co. Tn. Smooth high octane stuff.
ReplyDeleteJD
My great uncle, Little Red Cox, used to run shine out of Harlan into Tennessee. Grandma always said I favored him.
ReplyDeleteDave
My people. My great-grandmother’s father was one of the biggest moonshiners in Monroe County, TN. My great-grandmother was a devout Baptist and wouldn’t talk about him. My, how times have changed.
ReplyDeleteMy Grandma Nellie Bailey made shine during prohibition here in the Buckeye state . Every cop on the force came by on the weekend to get their free jug including the captain who got two jugs . How good it was I don't know but it kept her and Dad eating after Grandpa died young from Black Lung and she never went to jail .
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather was a driver in Armstrong County, PA. He'd drive it from way back in the hills into Kittanning where most of it would make it's way down to Pittsburgh.
ReplyDeleteMy uncle K.D. lived in rural Georgia, maybe 50 miles or so north of Gainesville. He was well like, a Christian man. Henhad a farmmof several hundred acres and mainly grew feed corn for the chicken industry in the area. If you were raising chickens, younwere growing the feed. Years after he died, people still spoke in admiringky of him and his generosity. He also operated a still. He had a couple of bulldogs (not today's scrunched up face bulldogs). Those dogs guarded his still. He loved those dogs. One morning he came to the still and found that someone had shot one if his dogs so they could still.the moonshine. He was a cool headed man and investigated. Pretty soon the thief had done some bragging about the incident and word got back to K.D. K.D. then burned down the man's barn. He thought it was a fair exchange for stealing and, more importantly, for killing his beloved dog.
ReplyDelete"My daddy he made whiskey, and granddaddy did too.
ReplyDelete"We ain't paid no whiskey tax since 1792."
Some of my Mama's first cousins ran shine down from the North Georgia mountains into Atlanta in the '40s and '50s. I heard a few tales from them when I was a boy.
ReplyDeleteI was an apprentice shoe repairman to a third-generation shoe man in NW Atlanta in the mid-'90s. His father opened the shop I worked in in 1951. Once a month an old black man - whose name I can't remember now for the life of me and wish I could - would come down from the hills with fresh vegetables, fruits, and 'shine for sale. Like the man Mike G. speaks of above, he had different flavors: apple, peach, muscadine. All of it was good.
Popcorn says fuck you
ReplyDeleteMy brother had plans to run some 'shine and even bought a car with a V8 and a huge trunk ('58 Studebaker President). Plans were upset when he got drunk one night and ran it through a barb wire fence. I bought the car from him for $75. Traded it in for a Honda motorbike.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdwUpxkfSJw
I was born and raised in Scott County, TN, back in the late 40s, and though the 50s. Moonshine was simply a part of our culture. The church people railed against it, but often the deacons were the best customers. I had some cousins who were active in the business for awhile but they were largely inbred and not very smart about it, and went to state Brushy Mountain prison at Wartburg, same place that James Earl Ray was held. Another cousin (same inbred bunch) was once shot in a barroom shootout in downtown Oneida, TN, but he lived.... until the alcohol eventually killed him.
ReplyDeletePeople today will never know about those times and how hard people had it back then.
My family are among the original settlers of what is now Franklin County and Henry County, Virginia. Though somewhat tongue-in-cheek, a local saying wasn’t far from wrong in saying; “a man was judged by three things; the quality of his cured hams, his sausage recipe and the smoothness of his ‘likker’”. I have photos of several blackpot “submarine”stills that had been operated on the family farm by tenant farmers and destroyed by Revenue agents. Took some doing, but thanks to a good lawyer loss of the farm was avoided. Revenue folks are a greedy lot. Also have a photo of my father hamming it front of Papa’s WWI era still.
ReplyDeleteMy late aunt once took me on a mobile “walkabout” of our “community”. Along the way she pointed out several nice farms that been built, if not saved in hard times, by whiskey production and/or transport.
My only experience in the business was near on 40-years ago. Returning from vacation, I put 3-4 bushels of fresh corn in the back of my station wagon. Underneath the corn was 6-8 quarts of Franklin County’s best; purchased a short walk from the courthouse.
Moonshine stories abound; heard of an old lady that enjoyed an occasional taste. She formed a worm that attached to her pressure cooker. Until a meddlesome neighbor complained about the smell, she cooked off periodic runs – for personal use. As a young man, a long ago acquaintance quietly set up a works in a remote stream fed area of his father-in-laws farm. All was well until a few wandering cows got into a batch of dumped mash. Drunk. the cows staggered home and were nearly shot by FIL. Fortunately, son-in-law arrived home about that time and saved the cows.
Look up the Bondurant brothers. Even made a movie about them. the book Wettest county was even better.
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