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The old mountaineer learned to make whisky when he was twelve, drifted into moonshining for profit by an economic process of elimination. "I always figured I'd get away from this here place just like my brothers did," he said. "Reason why I never did is every time I went somewhere I'd drink up what I worked for in beer joints." He used to cut timber and work in the coal mines as a loader, and even went to Baltimore toward the end of World War 11 to work in the shipyards ("That was in '45, I think. That's when that war was in Germany, ain't it?"). After the war a harrowing experience in the mines taught him to stay away from coal. "A big eight-ton hunk fell right on five of us. They had to blow it off with dynee-mite. I came back up here that night and never went back."
He tried farming and cutting timber, but acid from strip mining had all but ruined the land. So he began selling his corn liquor to the whisky runners. He now has two basic markets: those counties in Kentucky that have elected to remain dry, and the Kentucky-bred laborers in Cincinnati, Louisville and even Chicago who have never lost their taste for homemade corn. He no longer tries to run his whisky. "Back in '47," he recalled, "I was driving this Army truck and I smacked broadside into a state cop with three gallons under my seat. He took my license, but he never found the stuff. Since that day, I never went back to get my license." All he knows is that every so often a man in an old Chrysler pulls up, wraps the jars in brown paper and places them in the trunk, which has been refitted to carry more than 200 half-gallons. The moonshiner receives $5 a jar from the runner, who resells it for $8 and up.
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Making moonshine is hard work.
The man and his two sons (both of whom have served short jail sentences for making illegal whisky) begin with a 25-lb. sack of corn meal, which they scald and pour into a large wooden box. When the mash cools, they add a peck of ground sprouted malt corn and fill the box half full with water. Then they add 50 Ibs. of granulated sugar, fill the box to the top with water, cover it with a pan to keep prowling animals out, and let it sit for six days. By then the mixture, known as "still beer," is ready to run. Says the old moonshiner proudly: "My whisky's got a mighty good taste. If it's made right, it's better than any Government whisky you drunk in your life." With a savor somewhere between kerosene and old overshoe, it is definitely an acquired taste.